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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If you like what we're all about, it just means the absolute world to have your support. But enough with that, let's get to the show. Good morning, everybody, It's Thursday. We have a big show for everybody today. What do we have, Krystal dvdo.
There is a lot that is breaking right now in Israel and in Gaza. The Secretary of State Tony Blinkn is on the ground there. We also have updates Visa v Ukraine and what is going on. There's Zelenski wanting to make sure he is not forgotten about as these things are unfolding. We've got developments here domestically as well, with some movement maybe towards the Speaker of the House.
We've already I don't know, it's a mess.
I can't even say at this point, but we'll give you all of those details. Also, we wanted to talk a little bit about the discourse. Yes, in general, the rhetoric on both sides, which has been horrific, genocidal. I've never seen so much just like casual talk of genocide in my entire life, and I genuinely do mean from both sides. So we're going to show you a little
bit of that. We us to have a new presidential contender on the Democratic side, janke Yuger, founder of the Young Turks, who kind of sort of teased it all which we announced it.
I would say, we got this.
We accidentally got the exclusive. He brought it up on our show. We're like, at first, I didn't.
Know he meant it, and then he said it again and I was like, wait a second, you're serious about this. Well, he made it official last night, so we'll play a little bit of that, and also we have some updates on RFK Junior the Right now definitely taking the knives out, and he went on for what he I assume thought would be another friendly interview with John Hannity.
It went very differently.
He's also launching a new ad that I have to say is really quite good.
It's a great ad. We're going to break all of that down. We have two administrative things that we want to know. We hadn't been bringing it up obviously because of everything going on, but our crew is flying down to Atlanta tomorrow for that focus group, so just everybody stay tuned. We will have that democratic focus group that is happening there. We'll be asking about Israel and Palestine, but there's a lot of other stuff obviously to get
to as well. And then second, on an administrative note, we will not have a weekend show as normal as a podcast that usually posts along with those clips, so that we can be available for breaking news that will happen over the weekend, just so everybody can keep that in mind. Thank you to all everybody who has been supporting us, though by the way, this week it does
mean a lot. We've been working very very hard, none of us have been sleeping all that much and making sure that we're getting things very accurate and all of that. For all of you, we take a responsibility incredibly seriously, so I just want to say thank you to everybody for that. We will have that focus group some more exclusive content for everybody next week, but we will preview that as the clips roll in, and just thank you for enabling this it's going to be higher production than last time.
Yeah, and shout out to Griffin and Mack and the whole crew who have been working over time this week to do our best to make sure that we are providing you the most up to date, most accurate information that we possibly can and what is a very difficult and challenging situation to report on.
All right, so let's get.
To the very latest with regard to Israel and with regard to Gaza. Our own Secretary of State, Tony Blinken is on the ground in Tel Aviv in Israel this morning. He just gave a press conference with Bobe Net Yahoo. Let's take a listen to a little bit of what Tony Blinken had to say.
If you'll permit me.
Personal aside, I come before you. Not only is the United States sectory of state, but also as a Jew, my grandfather Maurice Blincoln fled Pilgrims in Russia. My stepfather, Samuel Pizzar survived concentration camps Auschwitz. Docout my Donic So Prime Minister, I understand on a personal level the harrowing echoes that Hamas's massacres carry for Israeli Jews. Indeed for Jews everywhere.
And I think that's emblematic of the personal connection that many Americans feel to Israel and have, you know, deep connections there or family there, or relatives there, friends there, et cetera. You also had in that same press conference net Nya who emphasizing that he views Hamas in the same way that he views isis that he believes that they should be treated in the same way that they
shouldn't be dealt with, negotiated with. Any country that does deal with them, should be sanctioned, that they should be you know, completely sidelined and kicked out of the nation of communities, which you know, understandable sentiment there. We also have an updated number in terms of the number of Americans who were killed in those attacks.
We can put this up on the screen.
We actually have even more updated numbers as of this morning. Yesterday the number was twenty two. Today the number is twenty five. They say at least seventeen other Americans are unaccounted for. We know that some unknown number also held hostage. So that's where we are in terms of an American
death count. Yesterday, Blinken made some interesting comments as well as he was preparing for his trip to Israel, and obviously the Israelies watching and listening very closely to what top American officials have to say, you know, very important that they continue to receive the endless support that we've always provided to Israel. Biden giving very clear comments, you know, we will stand with Israel, We always stand with Israel, et cetera, et cetera, exactly what you would expect any
American president to say. And one of the things that Blincoln brought up was a little bit of a reminder, as Israel now launches this all out assault and siege on gods, and we're going to give you an update on that in a moment that you know, Israel should be holding themselves to the same standards of international law as all nations should be. So a little bit of a reminder there, let's take to listen to that.
And of course, what separates Israel the United States and other democracies when it comes to incredibly difficult situations like this is our respect for international law and as appropriate, the laws of war. We do everything we can to make sure that in these situations we avoid civilian casualties. That is in direct contrast with Hamas, which uses people as human shields. It actually seeks to be put palestinians, civilians and situations where they could be harmed.
Cyber Hamas obviously murders. There's no need to defend them or justify any of the atrocities they committed.
For the US to talk about.
Following international law and making sure we don't target civilians, you know, people who have been murdered our drone strikes might have something to say about that. And then with regard to Israel, even putting aside the apartheid steam and putting aside the blockade and putting a side the occupation, the legal settlements, etc. We already know they have announced a complete siege which they have undertaken. You now have all of Gaza without any electricity. This is two point
two million people we're not talking about. These are not all people in Hamas back. Half of them are children. This is already collective punishment in violation of international law. You already have hospitals, schools, medics who have been actively targeted by the Israeli military. So for him to say, of course, Israel's going to follow international law, well, they're already in violation.
I think it's a point of pressure on them.
And I'm going to save some of my geopolitical commentary on how the US and all of that for a little bit whenever we're going to talk about Gaza specifically, because I do think that there's some stuff that needs to be highlighted in terms of the response what they are in a situation right now.
And I saw it put very eloquently actually.
By Marshall is that previously the Israeli state in the international community looked at Hamas as a political organization with a terrorist element within it. So Hamas would periodically carry out acts of terrorism. But this is at the end of the day, we are not going to say legitimately elected, but it was elected, let's all be honest, by people inside of Gaza, and so it had some sort of political administration. This is something that Christoph Hitchins used to
talk about all the time as well. Now, though after the attack and specifically on a bulk of the casualties being civilians, the shift in the Israeli and the Western international community, it's towards the way that we used to look at isis, which is this is an eliminationist tactic.
Now as opposed to one that can be managed.
You previously alluded to one of our past shows about quote unquote mowing the grass. So to them, they're like, we have to eliminate Hamas entirely as both a military and a political entity. Now that is obviously an incredibly, incredibly difficult task. On Let's save some of them actual
military commentary for what that will look like. But that's part of why they are in the difficulty that they are because Isis did the exact same thing in our counter Isis campaign when they would occupy the city of Mosul, any of the cities that they took in Syria, they would intentionally, you know, stack women and children on top of them, and you know, the international community and air strikes both by the US and also by a lot of the Syrian you know fighters that we had there
on the ground, Like we all have to be honest, a ton of civilians were murdered, you know, in that in that anti Isis campaign, and that just underscores, I think the immense difficulty of all of this situation. Now you can't I'm not going to tell you which one is which. That's for all of us really to decide. Well, I just think that that's that highlights the you know, the real, the real pretzel that all of us are in in terms of quote unquote how you deal with all of this.
Well, and.
Hamas has no scruples whatever. They're happy to use civilians, including you know, fellow Palestinny, no doubt. But also Gaza is one of the most densely populated places on Earth, and these people are locked in a cage like they cannot leave, they are not allowed to leave. All efforts to establish any sort of humanitarian corridor have so far failed,
you know, negotiations with Egypt. I've seen mixed reports, whether they're ongoing or whether Egypt has just said, no, we're not going to spell like we said, an emergency corridor. And so when you have this densely packed population, you know, even if Hamas wasn't trying to use civilians as human shields, you have babies, families, children everywhere in you know, huge high rise apartment buildings, and as I said, in hospitals.
I mean, they've been striking marketplaces, they've been striking mosques everywhere. There have been more than two thousand strikes. And we'll get to some of the imagery from that, But one parallel I did want to drawn with isis is. You know, in a sense he's correct because both of these organizations have either I mean, isis Is directly comes out of blowback from American you know, war in the Middle East and deep stabilization in the Middle East and war in
Iraq in particular. And Hamas has also been bolstered and built up by the West and specifically by Natanya. I mean, we had that quote for you the other day of how he active told his own party, uh, the Lacud party, that hey, if you want to thwart a Palestinian state, which he does, then what you got to do is build up Hamas. And we're going to get to some of the domestic Israeli backlash and rage at net Yahu and his administration. That is the key part of it
that you know, people have seen that tactic. They've seen how net Yahu and his ilk and his ideological brethren have thought Hamas was like a useful foil for them to prop up. So there's also a blowback element here that that does actually track with the creation of ISIS and how that all.
Came to be.
We wanted to update you as well on. There had been this report that Egyptian intelligence officials were saying, hey, this attack didn't.
Come out of nowhere. We warned you.
We directly warned Prime Minister Netnaho ten days before this that something big was.
Going to happen.
And now we have an American congressman Conssman call put this up on the screen, seemingly confirming, saying, we know that Egypt had warned the Israelis three days prior that an event like this could happen, three days before. We know that this has been planned as long as a year ago. And then you know, when he's pressed further, he says, I don't want to get too much into the classified, but a warning was given. So Americans now
confirming that Egypt had warned them. And recall, part of the context here is that Netanyahoo, with this very extreme government that was very in favor of the illegal Jewish settlements. They had moved a lot of idea forces from near Gaza to the West Bank to protect Jewish settlers, and
that's part of why the response was so slow. That's also part of why this intelligent perhaps was dismissed down of hand, because they were more focused on what was going on in the West Bank with the settlers, and they wore what was going on in Gaza and the other thing.
I would say, even putting.
Sager aside, these reports of the Egyptian intelligence and the you know, very clear warnings that they are saying that they gave to the netan Yahoo government Hamas was conducting war games.
They were like, and Israel knew about this.
They thought it was just a faint, but they were out there conducting fake raids on villages and practicing many of the tactics that we saw deployed in their atrocities and in this massacre. So you know, there's a lot of rage on the Israeli side at these clear failings that you know that we're learning more.
As we said, we have a couple of clips we're going to show you, guys, which are crazy from this is not rally around the flag time inside of Israel. They may be rallying around the nation, but they are not rallying around, not around NATO in the same way that Americans did for George W. Bush to extra contacts
on that. Congressman McCall was one of the chairmen of the intelligence committees and actually received a classified intelligence briefing, but explicitly confirming outright that Israel was warned by the Egyptians.
This was also backed up Channel thirteen Hebrew and Israel also reporting that bb Netanyah, who's office had to secretly then walk back his comments and was like, yeah, actually they did warn us, but of course they report that in Hebrew, that they didn't actually put anything out in English.
That's another thing I want to highlight.
Just remember, anything that comes out of English from Hamas and from Israel, it's intentional and it's directly targeted so that people like US can report on it, but they don't always tell the full story. And I've noticed this pretty significantly in terms of the efforts by putting stuff out in Arabic in Hebrew, which is totally different than what we are getting. Part of the reason why it's extra difficult and we have to parse translations make sure
the translations are correct. There's also an interesting other backup to this Intel story. Let's put this up there on the screen. I'm curious we could read this in a couple of ways. CNN is reporting quote. Initially, US intelligence suggests Iran was surprised by the Hamas attack on Is So we could read that as truth. We could read that possibly as we could read that as the actual thing that happened. The other way to read it, this is the uncharitable way, but I think we should to
represent this as well. Is America doesn't want to get into a war with Iran, and so.
I appreciate that time. By the way, that's the truth. I appreciate that, and I also support you. However, let's say if the facts said actually Iran helped plan this attack, I'm not quite sure that America would report that currently with the domestic political situation that's happening, so I am
skeptical that that is actually the case. I would match rather listen to the Israelis and to the Egyptians and the other people in the region who actually have buy in into this situation now from right now, the Israelis themselves have not said that there is any indication that Iran was involved in the attack.
In fact, they said they.
Have not seen any of that indication.
So I am going to go off of them because they have a direct interest in this. I'm not saying I believe them, but I'm saying for if they had any indication given Netanyahu's past me came to our country to lobby against the Iran deal. This is a regime in of people who if they believed Iran was directly involved, I do not doubt that they would say it. Now, we could also read it the other way, which is they are terrified of also fighting a two front war.
So even if they have a direct evidence that the Ayatola himself, you know, ordered this attack, maybe they wouldn't report it because they're like, listen, we got enough on our hands. We got to deal with this whole Hamas situation. I don't need a two front war with what is going on. But you know, even I don't, actually, let's put the truth aside, Like I think that's probably to a good end in order to avoid a big geopolitical conflict.
I'm just gonning to contextualize what that quote unquote intelligence could say. I do believe the Egyptian report, though I do believe that one hundred percent the Egyptian now by the Israelis has been confirmed by the Israelies, confirmed on the record by the Egyptians, and not confirmed by the US intelligence, because that's just a matter of where you warned or not, and that's an explicit, explicit failure.
It shows you too that so much of like you can gather the intelligence, so much of it is up to the human beings to interpret what is relevant and what is not. And you know, the picture that appears to be painted here is that Netanyahu and his government had their own bias and interest in the West Bank, over southern Israel and near Gaza. And so they dismissed it as like, oh no, they're they're actually just interested in more work permits and I think it's cool, We've
got this handled. And so they didn't see what was right in front of their face. And as I said before, because they had redirected the IDF to the West Bank. I mean the stories about how long people had to wait to get any I mean people hiding for twenty hours, left on their hours, left on their.
Own, fending for themselves in terror.
And this is part of what is so shaken Israelis to their core because they had so much faith in their and understand I mean how much money goes to their surveillance state and their intelligence apparatus and to the IDF.
I mean it's massive, all of the billions of dollars spent on the high tech fence that was easily disabled by Hamas using one hundred dollars drones, So that not only failure of intelligence, but the failure and response is part of what has so shaken the Israeli public at the same time, back to the point about, you know, fears of a broader conflict and specifically fears of a potential war with Iran, which some US politicians on both sides of the Aisle have already.
Been calling for.
You had a warning issued from the President of the United States yesterday, I would say directly to Iran, but he says, you know, any actors, Let's take a listen to what he had to say.
Are you clear to the Iranians? Be careful?
So be careful, he says directly there to the Iranians. Put actually Colvin up the tenth element here a ten because.
It actually fits directly into this.
Solder and I were watching very closely yesterday afternoon and were getting ready to do a breaking news segment because there were false alarms all over Israel about potential second front of this war opened up by Hesbelah, which of course has Iranian backing. And the reason this was so significant is because you have tensions so high and you
already have war drums beating from so many quarters. They were saying, there's drone strikes, there were reports of new paragliders coming in from Hesbola, there were sirens sounding all across Israel.
And I mean, this.
Just underscores how high tensions were. They say in that article of as an example of how tense things are. Along Israel's northern border with Lebanon, a suspected airspace intrusion into Israel from Lebanon had Israeli authorities telling residents of northern communities to seek shelter until further notice due to human error and app designed to alert residents malfunctioned, adding to the confusion.
This was a terrifying hour.
Or so when we were very closely watching what was going on, because it could be exactly the spark that leads to a much broader war.
Yeah.
Remember, we've got a carrier strike group that's always moving, already moving to the eastern men. We've got another carrier reportedly on its way. That's a hell of a lot of firepower. We've got the entire naval three hostage stuff, got Americans held hostage. We have thousands of American service members who are in Bahrain not that far away from all of this, so things could jump off very very quickly. Yeah,
and that's what you said. Also, that's a great reminder, you know what, you know what, I'm glad we did. We sat and we said, let's see if it's real, let's see if actually what happens. And unfortunately, you know, immediately all the reports were getting massively retweeted and shared and I saw Israel's under attack two front wars confirmed, and then an hour later they're like, oh, it's a false alarm. Another reminder, you know, part of the misinformation
block that we did on our Tuesday show. Be careful, wait for confirmation, triple confirmation, quadruple confirmation until you see it with your own eyes. Even then, make sure it's not deep fake, make sure that it's not deceptively edited. That is the difficulty of the situation we're doing.
Yeah, and this was coming from Israeli.
This is coming straight that this.
Was an official news source.
We wait, but yes, we waited to have visuals and confirmation, and I'm glad we did because it was you know, it.
Would have been terrible if we rushed to air with.
Like, oh my god, this is happening and it could lead to this broader war when it was not accurate. So everybody just keep your heads about you as best as you can. Let's move on to what's happening now in Gaza, which is horrific. We've got now over two thousand air strikes. You've got Israeli troops massive border. Gaza is under a complete siege. That means no food, no water, no electricity. Uh, there is one power plant in Gaza.
It is now run on a fuel. That means the entire two point two million inhabit inhabitants of Gaza, a million plus of whom our children, are without any basic electricity.
That means no that.
Means no sewer, that means no phone, no internet, cut off from the world, complete blackout. As I said before, there is no humanitarian quarter that has been established. I saw an update just recently from out of Gaza that the hospital system is completely collapsing. They do have generators at the hospitals. Those are probably maybe a day maybe two days away from running out of fuel. So anyone who has been injured in these attacks who was seeking
care maybe showing up at a hospital system. We're already they're out of beds, and very soon they will have no power, no electricity, no nothing. Let's put this up on the screen in terms of the latest death count on both the Israeli and the Palestinian side, So twelve hundred Israelis killed, around twenty eight hundred injured. In terms of Gaza, there's actually an updated number that I saw this morning, which was thirteen hundred and fifty Gozzins killed
in these air strikes and about six thousand injured. So and remember this is while Israel is still getting stuff together. There has not been a ground invasion. This is just based on the over two thousand airstrikes which have already occurred, which have hit I mean all sorts of targets, hospitals, schools, marketplace, mosques, etc. Based on the reporting that we have on the ground.
We have a little bit of a report from a journalist, Yusuf hamash Ap, who is there in Gaza and who can witness these strikes and give us a little bit of a sense of what this is like for the residents who are living there.
Let's take a listen to what he had to say.
This little boy was built out alive, his face black at his Riskuler brushes to his mother, but before she can't embrace her boy, she passes out. In a shot, Anica becomes an ambulance. This woman is driving off before the boot can be shot. We've been told to get out, but where do we go and how do we get there? There are more than two million people living here, almost have our children. Families are rushing, trying to make plans. Every second matters.
What do you do?
What becuz is under a complete seat, no water, no food, no electricity, and no escape. It's too hard. Some almost give up, but you can't stand still for long.
Please my family, They're just kids.
We are not strangers to war. But how it feels this time, it's hard to find the worlds. It feels like the world is collapsing. Many are confirmed that even more are missing. This woman cannot find her son.
I haven't heard from him since Saturday.
I haven't heard anything from him.
Nothing.
In addition, we can put this up on the screen.
We have confirmed now that a number of aid workers have been killed. Eleven workers with the UN Refugee Agency and five International Red Cross members have been killed in Gaza.
That's as of yesterday.
There are reports that medical facilities, ambulances in particular were hit in two different incidents, so directly hit and four Palestine Crescent paramedics were killed in those attacks. So it's horrific. I mean, there's just remember the people in Palestine. In Gaza were told to leave. They can't go anywhere.
They're trapped.
It's a very small space. They are trying to flee to safety, but there is really nowhere that's safe, and they have no electricity, no water, no nothing, So it is it's horrible.
What's unfolding breaking news just now from some leaflets I can read directly translated from Arabic in the Gaza strip quote to the residents of bait Leiha, the actions of the terrorist organization Hamas have pushed the IDF to put act against the organization in the areas where you live. For your safety, you must evacuate your homes immediately. The IDEF is not interested in harming you or your family members. Anyone who is near Hamas terrorist or terrorist facilities will
put their lives in danger. The issue is, if everyone can recall is that there are only there.
Is only one crossing into Egypt.
That crossing actually was a place where Hamas had turned out, had been keepaying some weapons and it was bombed by the IDF. That crossing remains closed via Egypt. The Egyptians refuse to open it.
As of now.
There is no active or at least like well or near the end situation to create a humanitarian corridor outside of Gaza, and that is the only place that it is.
This is another area where.
I've i continued, I don't understand why the Egyptians don't get the criticism that they frankly deserve. They refuse to open it because they don't want to deal with the Palestinians Crystal. Their fear is that they believe that the Palestinians won't leave once they come over, and they're like, well, we don't want to pay for them, we don't want
to deal with them. Then we're going to be Jordan, so where they're willing to just let them be locked up, despite the fact that they have all this you know, fake rhetoric and all of that same thing. There's been no international pressure from in Kuttar, from Saudi from Iran, from any of these countries that supposedly care so much about the Palestinians to get them out.
Also, here's the other problem.
Hamas has told all of the people in Gaza, you can't leave, don't leave.
This is fake.
They want to use them as civilian targets. That's why it's part of such a nightmare situation. And look we have to say too, look these mas, the hospitals, in some cases they deliberately store weapons there because they want the headline of mosque destroyed, hospital destroyed. They literally had their headquarters inside of a hospital. I'm not saying though that I'm not saying then that the people in the hospital deserve to be killed.
And that's why it's such a difficult situation.
The Israelis, obviously, I said previously, they're moving to an elimination a strategy. Here is my great fear, and this is from an American perspective, which is really what I think most of us should care the most about. Let's say you don't even care about human rights or any of that stuff. I am of a great fear that
what will happen is very similar to twenty fourteen. In twenty fourteen war with Israel and Gaza, around fifteen hundred civilians were killed, which is right around where we're at right now inside after a fifty day war the IDF, remember, they mounted an invasion and it did not go well.
They ended up having to pull back and they had to bomb the crap out of the area that they were working with the international community, Europe and the Middle East got inflamed to a point where the Israelis and Gaza eventually came to a ceasefire and Crystal that's very similar to the situation where we are before.
We have even launched a ground invasion.
My great fear on this is I do not believe that the Middle East is in such a way that they would stand by if let's say, ten thousand Goazas are killed, which does not seem outside the realm of possibility.
It probably will be more.
Let's be honest, I believe that that very easily could escalate to a situation where Hezbolah or Syria or Iran or who knows, I mean get involved.
The other fear is that what.
Will happen in Gaza could become what happened with Fallujah, where it became a magnet of global jihat. So don't forget what happened in a lot of these places, and also with Mosil. After the conquering of Isis is when it becomes like and passion's flame to that people, you know, Muslims from all over the world and could fly, you know, to the conflict or whatever and insert themselves. And now we're in a full blown, you know, multi year insurgency
of what we're dealing with. I think it's going to be very, very difficult for the Israeli military to accomplish this military objective because Hamas is not ICEIS is not just a small group that is hated. You know, in the City of Moses hated Isis. Most people did not support ISIS. A lot of Gazans do support Hamas. I'm not saying they deserve death, but I'm just being real in terms of what the poles are And so that
effectively would require a full scale occupation. And if that's the case, and I don't know if the Israeli military or population is ready for that either. So all I see are nightmares ahead agreed, all I see is mass death. But worse for our purposes is let's say fifteen twenty thousand Gozins are killed.
Now do you think Iran can hold.
Hezbola back, you know, from fighting its internal enemy the entire time, like they follow orders, but only to unlimited extent. Now we're in a war there. Now, what about the carrier strike group. Do you really believe that the entire global Islamic population of two point two billion is just going to sit by while that happened. No way, Look at already, what are the crazy protests that are happening
all over the world. It could lead to inflamed tensions here, it could lead to terrorist attacks against the United States, against Israelis all over the world. So I'm just looking at this and I'm seeing very much like it just seems so much like two thousand and three. The rhetoric around that we're flying, which we'll talk about so simple, but you know, fortieth order consequences are very very real,
and I wish that we would be more considered. If my ideal solution quote unquote is we need to establish two things, a humanitarian corridor outside of Gaza and an international agree or statements something by Israel that they will not fully reoccupy and that the Palestinians can come back to their area and you know, rebuild or whatever post conflict, then whoever remains in Gaza is just like Fallujah previously free fire zone. You are part of Hamas's battle game
on even that has a lot of consequences. Don't get me wrong, but that just seems like the only middle ground that we can get to.
But I don't know.
All I see is extreme danger in the days ahead, especially for the United States. The only reason we're not in a war with Russia is because they have nuclear weapons. Iran, at least far as we know right now, does not. And you know, if things get to that jump off point where they got to with Ukraine not that long ago, you know, I mean.
We easily could get into a war with Iran. That's a complete nightmare.
And I just want to people to think, like long term, think about those those kids, those families that you saw in that video. You know, you've got children now who are growing up, whose apartment has been blown up and they have nowhere to live, who are seeing friends, family, perhaps their parents be killed in Israeli airstrikes. What do you think that their philosophy is going to be growing up? Like, what do you think that their approach is going to
be as they become adults. Do you think that it's likely to de escalate the situation? Do you think it's likely to lead in a direction of peace? Of course not, of course not. And we've see this because this is what the fifth war that Israel has launched in Gaza something like that, quote unquote Moa grass, I mean, how
has that worked out? And for all of their expenditure on their surveillance state, and you see the way that technology, in some ways, you know, technology and desperation has leveled the playing field in terms of what these rogue terrorist criminals are able to do and the damage that they are able to inflict. Like this is not in any way a sustainable situation. It's no way for Israelis to live, is no way certainly for Palace to means to live under blockade and under siege.
And I just I genuinely.
Can't wrap my head around how there is so much less concern for the Palestinian children innocence who are being killed now than the Israelis.
And my heart breaks for the Israelis. You know, the outpouring of.
Support for the whore that they experienced is actually a beautiful thing to see that global solidarity against those sorts of senseless barbaric atrocities. But now that's exactly like one atrocity does not justify another. And that's already what's happening, I mean, already complete siege. Imagine what that's like to live with no power, no water, no food, no hospital, no ability to live, to leave and two point two
million people, over a million of whom are children. And that's what we're now watching unfold, and you know, much of the world is cheering it on very little restraint. I did see Ertawan in Turkey, not someone I give a lot of credit too often, but you.
Know his applying He's an Islamist, that's why.
And well applying pressure also trying to be involved in some sort of like diplomatic discussions as well. But I don't think you have to be a quote unquote Islamist to just care about the humanity of the people who are on you know, both.
Sides of this world.
I don't disagree, Crystal.
I think part of the reason why this is impossible to escape is and from what I've seen in Israel, this is an existential fight for them. They're moving to eliminationism, and they point correctly to the Hamas constitution says that the death of the State of Israel. They're like, look, they don't want us to live. They literally want us to perish. We have no choice but to destroy them, and that's genocidal. Well, no, I'm not talking about Palestinia.
I'm talking about Hamas. They're like, we have no choice that destroy Hamas.
Okay, listen, I accountability for Hamas one hundred percent on board with that, no problem there. But when you say destroy them, I mean they're not just destroying Kamas. They are killing indiscriminately civilians. And so as I said, one atrocity does not merit another. And look for me, the you know, the core rot here outside of you know, the terrorists who have their own agency and the atrocities
that they committed. But it's an ethno state that has, you know, increasingly moved to being an authoritarian police state visa VI the Palestinians. And I don't know how you that this is just not a sustainable situation. You are going to continue to have this violence, death, terror, chaos. And that's why this is so difficult to watch unfold because as you said, I just don't I mean net Nyahu and his party have already taken a two state solution off the table.
Well, most of Israelis don't really believe in it anyway.
They don't.
But the reason they didn't believe in it is because they were they were led by their you know, their leaders, people like net Yahoo to believe that, oh, this is a status quo, this is going to be fine, it's going to be sustainable.
I mean, that's been completely shaken at this To.
Be honest, Crystal, the Palestinians don't only believe in it either. I mean, this is where we also have to be honest.
No majority do believe in a two states.
Last majority of them support Hamas And that's just like when we're in that situation.
Even in the West Bank.
I was looking at polling, Hamas got a fifty three percent approval rating inside the West.
But a majority of Palestinians support a two state solution. And think about it from their perspective, how much have time. They've spent a lot of time, including hamas As, negotiating with the Israelis, and they feel like they have never been further from any sort of a peace deale And they're right, they are right. So so then and you know, any sort of global protests and they like bds or trying to apply economic pressure. Oh, you're an anti semi and so this again is like the horrors and the
antrocities here there is no justification for the tactics. But yeah, that's what drives people to support a terrorist organization like Hamas is because you feel like we've been trying to negotiate and we've never been further away from getting out of the situation.
She is, they've never accepted a two state solution in the past.
I mean, they've had opportunities in forty eight and in the seventies and the sixties, they didn't support it.
They thought that they and look, I mean I blame the Arabs as much.
They always told the Palestinians said, don't accept a two state solution because we're just going to conquer Israel and then we'll give you guys your land back. And then they got their asses kicked in the Yamkipur war and we've basically been in the status quo since then. So look, I don't disagree, and there's plenty of criticism I think on the Israeli side. I absolutely break for Palestinians. I mean,
it's horrible that video that we showed. I don't think it's all that simple, though, is that in terms of like they just simply support. We are in a situation now where I think the truth is is that the vast majority of the Palestinian people support violent organizations like Hamas. Also a lot of Israelis believe, well, yeah, I don't disagree.
With people are not just born.
Think of those little kids, like what kind of ideology are they going to support? You know, where does isis? Where do terrorist organizations come from? Like it doesn't come out of nowhere? And so yeah, in a way, it's like, yeah, it's not simple. It's very complex, and there's complex history, et cetera. But it's also is very morally simply when you just say, like I am opposed to war crimes by Hamas, I am opposed to war crimes by Israel. And I see a lot more concern on one side
of the ledger than the other side. I see a lot more care and concern for one type of life over another. And that part I just can't as you could say the politics are complicated and coming to solutions.
All of that is true. And the other part that I think is really simple.
Is I think that if you have a state that's based on being an ethno state, you're always going to end up in this horror of apartheid, which is exactly what they have inflicted even on the Arabs who live within Israel, you know, the occupation of the West Bank, the blockade of Gaza. I mean, these are atrocities and in violation of international law that Israel's committing all the time, and to me, that is also very morally clear and morally wrong.
So in a way, yeah, it's.
Complicated, all the nuance et cetera, et cetera, but you have to also have some moral clarity about holding both sides to account for their violations of international law, the atrocities they commit and the war crimes they commit. And we're going to talk more about the discourse. Like the fact that there are so few people who can just say that and say it clearly and be comfortable with just condemning war crimes when they happen is one of
the most troubling things I've ever seen. The amount of just outright genocidal rhetoric about like.
Finish them, punish them, destroy them.
Or the Israelis deserve to be massacred at a music festival because of what.
Their government has done. It's despicable. I just can't even wrap my head around.
I think it's horrible. I agree.
I guess I'm only just trying to represent that. I wish that people had the same level of concern I think that we're trying to represent on the show, but they don't. And when they don't, it's going to lead to mass bloodshed into violence, and we have to kind of get into the minds of who these people are. And you know, the reason why we are where we are here is both populations genuinely feel as if they cannot coexist with the other side. And there's a lot
of blame to go around, absolutely a ton. The more the crackdown has happened in Israel, it's you know, created more polarization inside of Hamas, which has led to more polarization inside of Israel. And you know, I don't think this is going to be the most difficult probably moment diplomatically to solve the past ones Yam Kapor and the Sixth Day War, we were dealing with nation states like Egypt and Jordan and others.
Here, we're not dealing with that.
We're dealing effectively with one state and then a terrorist organization which also happens to be in charge of two point two million people with a full blown humanitarian crisis, and then the States are all surrounding it as well.
So I don't know.
Yeah, I mean, this is why it's so difficult to talk of this, why nobody has been able to solve it so far. So there you go.
Let's move on.
We want to talk about Israel, actually inside of Israel and the tremendous blowback that is happening to Prime Minister net On Yahoo despite the fact that he has now created a coalition government. Let's put this up there on the screen. Benny Gance agreed to form a wartime coalition government with Netsan Yahoo.
This is from the Times of Israel.
Some of the more controversial elements are actually sitting out the coalition over the demand that the Prime Minister actually oust the actual Defense Minister and others. For now, all quote non wartime legislation has been suspended, including the judicial overhaul.
Prime Minister Netan Yahoo and the Unity leader announced Wednesday that they will have this coalition government that will remain as a national emergency government akin to what happened in the UK under Winston Churchildren in World War Two, and will remain in place until they believe that the quote unquote time is over.
Now we don't yet know.
What all of that is going to look like, but it does come at a time when there is tremendous domestic outrage inside of Israel at Neta Yahu. And just to give you an idea, these are some of the statements that are even coming out of the former defense ministry. Can we put this place up on the screen here? For example, the former defense minister says, I have called on the opposition not to enter the government with Netanyahu,
but to instead demand his resignation. He was warned several times he did not let the chief of staff speak to the cabinet. There is no trust in him. How can you lead a people to.
War like this?
Every hour he remains in office is a detriment to our country. That's the former defense minister, A right wing defense minister, I would add, also is really military chief of staff also called on Netanyahu to resign. And one way that we know that this is organic also is from some of the videos that are coming out of Israeli ministers getting shouted out of public places.
So here is one.
Video that we're going to be able to play for everyone. Let's put it up there on the screen. Here we have the really environmental minister who is visiting a hospital. She's being shouted at by one of the people who was waiting there. She says, you're disrupting here. You're not welcome here, and she says, I was a good girl, wasn't I?
I was a good girl.
You ruined this government. Now a nurse is getting involved. You ruined the negotiations. Get out of here, Get out now. It is your turn. We cannot stay here. We will help right Left United people without you. And this man is shouting here, you ruined the negotiations, You ruined it. Get out of here. Just to give people an idea of found anger. And that's a member of the staff there, you know, at the hospital. This next clip that we're
about to show you is absolutely heartbreaking. It's the same thing of a relative in the hospital being interviewed about the situation. And we can go ahead and we can put this up there on the screen. What you can see is in a couple there who is grieving you know, in the hospital, and this man is shouting, repeatedly shouting at the camera. He says, quote, mister Prime Minister, go outside, face the media, apologize. A thousand people were murdered on your.
Watch, sir.
Where are you, Ben Gavier? You are the world champion in bullshitting? Where are you, mister handgun? On Twitter? We will never forgive you never? And you can see that's actually on a pro net on Yahoo channel there, which is part of why the host ended up cutting him off.
But you could see the absolute passion from this man.
There are scenes like this breaking out all across Israel, and it's one of the reason things that we actually really wanted to highlight here on our show, to represent that the discourse inside of Israel Crystal is so different than what is happening here, or if you said anything like that, you would be called an anti semi or.
Something inside Israel.
Actual Israelis and Jews are like, no, this is a colossal military failure. It's almost like the reckoning that happened in America for George W. Bush after WMD, except it's happening in real time immediately after the attack, and they wise up because they know how much they have had to sacrifice, how much their government has been you know,
how much their society is driven by security. So when you give up all your civil liberties, all your kids have to serve in the military, when you can't get into a mall in Israel without getting wanded down, and then a thousand of your citizens, which is equivalent to almost twenty thousand, you know, per capita here in the US, just get murdered overnight.
You're like, Okay, I'm done.
And I think you know, in America, if we had, let's say we had another nine eleven attack after nine eleven, there would have been a similar reckoning.
It's only because we were so shocked at what happened at the time.
Yeah, we didn't it different, no social media like, it was just a different moment. Also, I don't know if we would have had quite the same just rally around the flag and you can't.
Criticize the president.
I don't know if it happened today, if it would have quite the same effect. But yeah, and that respect is very different. The reaction is very different from nine to eleven. I mean, I think there has been you saw all the you know, all the IDF reservists and members who had been protesting the net Nahoo government. Now they've said, Okay, we're coming back, we're getting called up, we're going to report for duty, et cetera. So in that way, you've certainly seen this national unification but not
rallying around net Yahoo. And you know, I don't doubt that there's like very desperate opinions about the root causes of the problem and who's to blame in.
All of that.
But it seems to me that you've both got like a left of center critique and a right ring critique, which is like, you weren't strong enough, you didn't do enough, You were playing footsy too much with Humus, You weren't you know, you weren't cracking down on them and treating them.
Always as the terrorists that really are.
And so you have a sort of you know, both left and right factions in Israeli politics who are disgusted.
With his government right now.
Remember this is a man whose supporters styled him quote unquote mister Security, like that's his whole thing, and perhaps more than anyone else in Israeli politics, he has been responsible for this intentional shift away from the previous era of Israeli politicians were, you know, going through those the Oslo Accords, and they're going through the process to try to come to some sort of two state solution, with the idea that that would be the real way to
achieve security for the Israeli people, which I personally agree
is a much better direction. His approach has been to intentionally try to thwart those talks, make a two state solution impossible through means such as the expansion of the illegal settlements, which makes you know, stitching together any sort of Palestinian state again virtually impossible, and convincing people that no, you're good, there's no security threat here, like we've got it through our high tech walls, through our through the IDF,
through intelligence, through all of the surveillance tech. You don't have to worry anymore. Those fears about security are in the past. I've got you covered. And so when this happens, and it's such so horrible, and it's such a shock to the system, and there's so many manifest failures, both in terms of listening to the intelligence that he was clearly given from Egypt and perhaps from his own intelligence services.
We don't know about that part.
They were doing conducting wargames in Gaza that were ignored, and then the response is a complete failure. So if your whole stake, your whole claim to why you should continue to hold power in spite of the fact that he's been this incredibly divisive figure in Israeli politics, is I will keep you safe. Yeah, this is going to be a strike to the blood, to the core of
your legitimacy as a leader. One other thing I wanted to say SoC about that Unity government, because I think the ins and outs of this are are kind of important.
Uh.
The other opposition.
Leader, Yea or Lapede, has has decided to stay out of the government for now, and the reason is that one of his demands is that these two outright very extreme minister Bezaliel Smotrik and Itamar ben Kavie. Uh, that he wanted them sidelined. You know, that's who that irate man relative who was speaking there, that's the person he called out. Ben Gavier, among other things, is known for having called for an entire Palestinian village to be wiped out. So just outright genocidal talk.
Uh.
Netanyahu refused to completely sideline them from the government. Now they are sort of like, you know, not directly involved, but they're still included. And so Lapde is staying out of the government for now. You have Haretz, which again is like the New York Times of Israel saying no, don't form a unity government.
Netanyahu needs to go first.
And that almost is a daily drum coming from left of center press.
So there is a real you know, there's a real.
Reckoning happening right now within Israeli public too, about how they want to move forward and how they're going to ever feel safe and secure again.
Yeah, it's I think it's important for people to understand. You know, Israel is a very complex country, and I mean that in terms of their domestic population, you basically have secular jew This is like Tel Aviv people who live in Tel Aviv who work in tech.
These people, many of them are even atheists.
They're culturally Jewish, they're very probably more akin to like Americans cosmopolitan who live in New York City, for example. Then you've got like people who are religious but who are still actually a lot like Nato Yah, who somebody who is religious, who is an Israeli nationalist, but who is not ultra Orthodox or Orthodox Jewish that is very much like a nata yah who type figure. The people who I first described, they are very much of like
older Israeli societ. They are the ones who would support a peace process in the past, support people like the gangst government, not Netan Yahoo the middle type. They break both ways depending the real like wild card in Israel is the ultra Orthodox population, which in twenty five thirty years ago was I don't know, maybe twenty something percent
of the population. But there's a huge fracture in society because the people I described the right of the right of center and then the left of center people, they are the ones who actually serve in the ideaff into the military. Right the ultra Orthodox don't serve in the military. They get an exemption. And they also all have like nine children, and a lot of them are on welfare too.
There's actually a ton of resentment, intra resentment, and they don't even live together, you know, inside of the country. Those people I'm talking about who are really ballooning the population. A lot of those folks are the ones who have really come to play a bigger role in Israeli politics because they have a lot of votes. To be honest,
and that's who Benetan Yahoo has been catering to. And these are the folks who are the ones who are like, you know, everything's driven by the Torah and the Hebrew Bible, and like which areas can can be controlled by Jews.
They don't care as much about politics.
They're also the ones who are much less likely to support of Palestinian state. They are much the ones much more likely to support you know, the West Bank, the settlers again coming up with all of this justification.
So that's what people need to understand.
I think about the internal pressures that Netaniahu himself faces, and I think that the like you said, those right of center secular types who served in the IDF, they are going to be furious because they're the ones who can you know, really agreed with the security state. And then the left of center folks, to be honest, really the people inside of Israel who are the you know, the capitalists, the people who are the billionaires who do all the tech work and all.
That they too.
I mean, they've had to basically live, you know, in a politics where they have very little representation over the last decade, and then to still.
Have the security failure.
I think there actually will be a great secular empowerment inside of Israel after this entire conflict, because they're the ones warning about all of.
This they hate.
They're also the left center people are very much more likely to hate the settlements. They're the ones who have always been warning about this. So there will be reckoninged, Yeah, at least, I hope.
So the last thing that I'll say here that I took a note of because he's just such a he's got whatever else you could say about him, the man has his finger on the pulse. Donald Trump was speaking to a group of you know, of course Republican Jewish audience in Florida, and he was critical of NETANYAHUO.
And I took special note of that because I.
Mean the two are actually, you know, politically kind of similar.
Nothing was like Trump but less martyr yeah.
Correct, I mean as evidenced by what he's been in power for like sixteen years. I mean, this is the Yeah, this is a man who has he has done whatever needs to be done to get himself back into office. There were all these elections where they couldn't form a government, and that's how he ends up in league with these incredibly fringe figures because he had to in order to get power back, and part of why he needed to get power back is because he was facing corruption charges
that he needed to get out of. Sound familiar in the American political context as well. So anyway, Trump very critical of net Yahoo in front of this Jewish audience in Florida, and so again just to give you a sense of how widespread the criticism is and how it's not just coming from left of center people.
I thought that was very noteworthy.
Because again, he's one who has a sense of where audiences are moving, what they want to hear at a given moment. And if he didn't think that that audience wanted to hear that right, then there's no way he would have said it.
So I took note of that.
You were one thousand percent correct.
At the same time, here in Washington and across the world, the question is being asked, what about Ukraine. President Zelenski, being the chief person asking that question, put this up there on the screen. Zelenski is now asking to visit Israel quote in a show of solidarity.
You might view it that way, Crystal.
The other way to view it is, hey, guys, please don't forget about me and please don't let the Israel Palestine conflict wipe my interests off the face of Americans, off the face of American legislators, probably more specifically, and
the Biden administration. And that's pretty maybe uncharitable, but it is almost certainly the way that he and his administration are looking at it, because behind the scenes, Crystal, there's been multiple reports that the Ukrainians and even those in Washington who still are you know, very much pro Ukraine aid are like, oh my God, like we may have to choose, especially because we have a limited amount of weapons now. People are definitely there's gonna be way more
of a bipartisan contessans to send weapons to Israel. But what about what are we going to do in terms of continuing to fund Ukraine? The White House and others have come up with a new strategy. Here's their strategy. It is kind of a make sure, got to catch them all type thing.
Let's put it up there on the screen.
They are now going to lump Ukraine, Taiwan border funding, and Israel and kind of an all in one type category or Congress everybody gets their little pet issue. It's a little Earmark strategy trying to support the overwhelming bipartisan consensus on Israel, then to try and get House Republican right wing support on border security, to get those who say that Ukraine is distracting from Taiwan and China's defense by putting in Taiwan funding and then shoehorning Ukraine into that.
We'll talk a bit in a secon about the speakership and how that is well being received over there, but it does show you that this is a big problem for Ukraine. They were top of mind for every international relations you know, a professional, for every national security person in the White House, you know, frankly, for the media, you know, and for the front pages of every newspaper
in the country. That is not the case, and it is not likely to be the case now for some time to come, which is a big problem for them. That's what they relied on in order to continue their funding and in order to continue pressuring lawmakers to keep passing these extraordinary amounts of money for them.
The Ukraine flags are coming down and the Israeli flags are going up.
And Zelenski is no fool.
Not only is he, you know, publicly like showing his solidarity as a way of reminding like, hey guys, I'm here and I still need your out. By the way, he made a surprise visit to NATO headquarters in Brussels, urging them to maintain their flow of weapons, even as they say the much of the westerns its attention of the brutal outbreak of violence in Israel. Top NATO officials
sought to reassure him, But I mean he acknowledged. He said, of course, everybody's afraid that Western assistants could dwindle.
And he also says, who knows how it will be. I think nobody knows with regards to whether the flow of weapons is going to continue. Now.
On the other hand, I think while certainly media attention is going to shift away from the Ukraine Russia war, and you know, the liberal sympathies are going to shift, and certainly the right is all in in terms of Israel, given that you now have this funding approach on the table of hey, let's tie it all together and get it through, I actually think their chance of getting the immediate aid this next package through has probably increased greatly
given both the speaker chaos and the fact that you have this new strategy, which I think is very likely to succeed.
I think you're probably right.
I will say though, this highlights what I have been trying to say about Ukraine from day one is this is going to come at the expense in the future of something, and now we're in that something. For example, if you didn't know Israel, we had a massive stockpile of ammunition in Israel, both to be able to dispense if we ever wanted to to the Israelis second though, so that we might need it in the event of a war in the Middle East, and we decided Israel
was a safe place to keep the AMO. Well guess who depleted a vast majority of that AMMO and sent it to Ukraine.
Well, now what are you going to restock it? What if you need it?
Let's say a war does breakout with Iran? Well, oops, don't have the AMMO anymore. Now what the issue too? By tying Israel, Ukraine, Taiwan all of that together, they actually, in many cases crystal they want the same stuff. So for example, yes, Patriot missiles is the perfect one. Well, guess what we sent to Ukraine and guess what Israel
is going to want as well. Also, in terms of there's certain type of missiles and other things that we've been sending to Ukraine, which also has been directly drawn out of weapon stocks that we were supposed to send to Taiwan, and this let's put all of them out of this Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan. We also don't have many of these stocks that take years to replace. Now we are all learning that the world, and if specifically weapons,
is zero sum. When you give something to someone else, you don't have it, and then also the people that you may want to give it to in the future may not have it. So in the immediate term, you're probably right that something will pass. But that one hundred billion that they wanted, I think that's gone.
And specifically just because.
We don't we genuinely if we are involved in this right now, we do not have the weapons to be able to send over there. We don't have the defense industrial base to replace them in a timely fashion. This is probably one of the more precarious moments for the United States in literally decades from a defense point of view, with three different places that all could flash and could draw us into a global world war all at the
same time. Honestly, even more heightened than at some points during the Cold War, just even though it may not feel that way because that was nuclear and this is you know, it starts smaller, but definitely could escalate. And I think that is why a limited amount of aid is very likely to pass. I do think for Ukraine, but the days of their blank check I do think ended the day that Hamas went into it. Yeah, because of that reality, I.
Think you're right. And also I mean the reality of like where the media attention is going to be, where the sympathies are now going to lie. I do have to say one thing, just to make one point about this strategy of tying all these pieces together. It's like it shows you when Washington, when the White House wants to get something done, they figure out a way to get it done.
I would take the border security plus child tax credit deal.
Like, where's that deal?
You know?
I mean, this is a strategy that they use all the time to get things like Ukraine aid or Israel aid or whatever it is. We'll say, all right, here's a priority from the right, here's a priority from the left. We're going to put them together and then everybody pass it,
and that's the deal. Like why can we never do that when it comes to good things for the American people, child tax Credit being a perfect example of something that supposedly there are some Republicans who are at least like open to and which had a clear like massive impact on child poverty and was hugely beneficial and administered well and used in you know, good ways that helped the nations get like why are those deals never on the table?
It's endlessly frustrating to me.
But just remember that next time there's this learned helplessness in DC of like, oh, oh gosh, we would love to but there's just not the before.
No, no, no.
When they want to get something done, they act very quickly and they get it done. So remember that next time you're hearing that nonsense from any of these politicians.
All listen on that one. You know you are one hundred percent correct.
It's astounding, isn't it that the Israel and Ukraine aid can spur all these people to action, and as actually happened during the Ukraine invasion, baby formula gets put to the side. We figured it out eventually, how many kids didn't have any baby for how many people were stressed out about that. I remember I was actually very attacked for this and got in to quiet arguments. Christ when I was like, I was like, they care more about Ukraine than they do them out American baby, But how
can you say that? That's outrageous action. Speak louder than words. Say whatever you want. And and look, we got to blame some of the voters too. As you were talking about my neighbors are a great gauge, I'm like, all right, where are these people's heads at because they all work in the government, they work in the media. Yeah, all these people, they're working Pentagon whatever. As you said, Now
the Israel flags, they're starting to go up. Ukraine flags, the Ukraine bumper stickers, the one lady who's got parking for Ukrainians only now there's been an Israel flag right there. They only have a limited amount of attention. And there it is, you know, quite literally zero sum in this case,
especially when we're talking about weapons and aid. And also I think that if there was there's no country on Earth but Israel that could have so surmounted Ukraine like this because it has such heavy bipartisan support and lobbying power here in Washington than anybody else. Like if you were to put yourself up against anyone. You would never want to put yourself up against Israel whenever it comes to US attention and the US funding, and yeah, just
the overall US military support. Yes, you know, like I have probably a conversation for another day. I did lay it out though earlier, about how this could easily draw us into a bigger war with Iran, which would be a total nightmare kind of which there's a massive construt I.
Was in say, that's a good segue into what Senator Graham has been saying recently, isn't it.
And people need to understand that this is a very real conversation. They want to go to war with Iran.
A very sizable portion of the GOP, frankly probably elements of the Biden administration, as well as best exemplified by Senator Lindsey Graham, who has been going on television in recent days calling this quote a religious war, indicating that it's some sort of holy war, putting US, I guess, against the side of is on the side of the Jews versus Islam, and then also calling directly for strikes on Iran.
Let's take a listen.
I am tired of peasing the Hamas apologizing for them. They want to kill Israel, so does the Iran. The Itola wants to destroy the Jewish state. They don't want to coexist with Israel. This is not a land problem, a boundary problem. It's a problem of you cannot live in my world. My God determines that you. The Germans believed that the Jews were inferior people and their goal
in the final solution was to eradicate the Jewish people. Well, Iran and Namas believes that the Jewish people should die as a result of religious teachings.
We're in a religious war here.
We are in a religious war here. That is the most dangerous rhetoric. It hearkens back to George W. Bush and the whole axis of evil. We are on the side against it, specifically allying himself, it seemed at that time against Islam.
So let's think about it two things.
One way is this, there are two point two billion Muslims on the planet.
I would rather not be a war with all those people.
The other way to look at it, too, is this is now extrapolating from an area of actual national interest to state actors, a terrorist organization versus a government and then trying to blow it up into a much bigger thing. Now, look, we'd also be idiots if we didn't say that there is some truth to the right. Obviously there's a religious element too. Israel is a Jewish state. Hamas is an
Islamist terrorist organization. There are members in Israel who call for the total elimination of the entire Palestinian people, And there are people a lot of Hamas doesn't believe that Israel or any of the Jews should be allowed to exist in the area called Israel today. So let's not
pretend that that isn't all of that. But well, let's also not pretend that not that by talking and embracing this type of thing, he's explicitly trying to put America into a global holy war that, how can we not recognize, is a nightmare for us and is exactly what turned the entire Middle Eastern nightmare of two thousand and three Iraq and Afghanistan into the terrorist wave that we had to deal with for over fifteen to twenty years since then,
because we explicitly made it, in the eyes of many Muslims, some sort of holy war against America, and we fulfilled the greatest dreams of Oslambi and lad Whenever we did that, breathe life directly into the Jihattist movement at that time, after the entire world really was with us on nine to eleven. So the worst possible thing we could do is feed directly into these very disgusting tropes.
Lindsay Graham has never seen a war he didn't like, right, one of the foremost neocons remaining in the Senate, and there are many of them, by the way, who remain in the Senate and are completely unreconstructed and would still defend the freakin Iraq war.
To this day, he is advocating, let's be clear.
For World War three fought along religious sectarian lines. Do you all want that that sound good to you? Does that sound like a great idea? I mean, it's literal insanity, and he I think has gone the furthest although I've heard some other things as well, But you see this from a lot of the neocons, the Nikki Halees of the world. I heard some similar things from Marco Rubio, a lot of Republican figures in particular, who are really
trying to make this directly about America. Saying saying things like, you know, Hamas wants to attack us here, which there's no indication of, but trying to call our security into question in an attempt to bring us into this broader war. So this is why we mentioned before there were these false alarms yesterday about a second front in the Israel
Gaza war and HESBLA getting involved. And the reason we were so freaked down about it is because you already have so many hawkish elements both on the right and in the Democratic Party saw Dean Phillips also calling directly for war with Iran that you know, you give these people any excuse. You don't think the media picked this up and run with it.
You don't think, I.
Mean, the media is consistently and this is on the right and the left wing media, of the liberal media and the conservative media consistently extraordinarily hawkish. So yeah, Lindsey Graham wants a global sectarian war fought, and it is total insanity. And I have to think that American people are have a little bit of a different opinion about how we should proceed from here.
Inshalla, as our friends in the air world might say. And just to totally clear it up, Here's what he said. When they're like, are you saying we should bomb Iran, here's what.
You have to say.
The money financing terrorism comes from Iran. It's time for this terroist state to pay a price for financing and supporting.
All this chaos.
Yes, if you're the Iranians, If we're up to me, this war escalates, I'm coming after you.
I think this is what I'm trying to clarify here, because I'm wondering in Israel, US, in Israel US, the United States is crystal clear, the United Let me just let me just let me just understand you, just to be clear, you're saying that you would want the United States and Israel to bomb Iran even in the absence of direct evidence of their involvement in this attack.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, you got it.
Yeah yeah, great Iran, country of tens of millions of people, massive military, you know more embroiled war in the Middle East. Iraq went so well, why why not just do the neighbor Iran. By the way, this is the craziest thing. Iran is stronger than it has ever been before. You know why, because we invaded Iraq. We took out their rival regional power. We basically turned the country over to them. They run it now we don't run it. The entire
like Shia majority is effectively ruled from Tehran. Has Bola today is stronger than it was before the invasion of Iraq. The invasion of Iraq led to the Syrian Civil War and the Islamist explosion.
Which was then.
Now Syria is a Iranian and Russian client state, wouldn't they We gave the greatest gift the world could give whenever we invaded Iraq.
Not to mention that, you know, the Iranian nuclear deal that the Obama administration negotiated and then Trump backs out of and then Biden never gets back into. I mean, doctor Parsi warning us from the beginning that that failure would enable and embolden and empower hardliners in I run.
And that's exactly what happened.
So I really like, how many wars would be we be in right now if it was up to Lindsay Graham. I remember, this is something I ran for, probably certainly in Russia, certainly Iran, probably China, maybe maybe throw Mexico in there.
I never heard of funding on China.
At least, you know, he'd love it.
He probably it doesn't fit the same paradigm for Lindsay. Lindsay's more of like a civilizational type.
Guy throw back.
Let's both share on me.
What's gonna say.
Iran is bad enough, I'm laughing, but like war with Iran is a nightmare.
I keep saying it. But I've read enough about what it would look like.
And there were serious discussions actually at the time by Baby, by the way, who wanted to bomb the Iranian nuclear reactor site before the Iran deal where the Obama administration. I think Jeffrey Goldberg wrote an entire thing about it. Goldberg himself is a neocon and supports war, but he has some of the behind the scenes stuff that I recommend people go and read. And they Obama people laid
it out to him in very real terms. They're like, all right, man, this is what's going to happen if you do that, And it was like tens of thousands dead in a matter of hours.
That's actually what it would look like.
Remember, we have lots of service members who are stationed very near Iran and Bahrain. They would all, you know, he's one hundred percent be attacked. The Iranian military is a very capable force. Hesbola itself one of their proxies. One of the reasons why we should all pray that they do not get involved in the war in Israel is those you know, those rockets, those like Pitdley rockets being fired from Gaza. That's nothing compared to what Hezbola has.
Iron Dome cannot do a damn thing when it comes to what the Habola is. What Hesbola would be able to launch into Israel, and by the way, it also could attack us. Don't forget we lost three hundred Americans in Lebanon not that long ago, in the nineteen eighties. There's a hotbed and long history of the US responsibly actually trying to keep itself out of it until George W. Bush came into power and knocked out everything over.
The one thing I will say to end on a little bit of a hopeful note here in a very dark segment, very dark moment in terms of what's happening around the globe, is the fact that the American officials and the Israeli officials were so quick to come out and knock down those reports that Iran was directly involved. That to me is encouraging because I don't know if it's true or not, but clearly like they're trying to avoid that signals to me they're trying to avoid a direct hot conflict with Iran.
But again, these things are not.
The pressure can build very quickly in a way that American presidents find very hard to resist, even if they don't directly have an interest in getting us into those wars.
So very true something to keep an eye.
On, speaking pressure, and about how the impact already of the Israel conflict is having on American politics. It is putting massive pressure on the GOP to wrap up its speaker drama. But not just quite yet. Let's put this up there on the screen. Steve Scalise a sho actually yesterday and won the internal vote to become the GOP speaker nominee. Designant, but he does not have yet a
majority support. The thing what happened is they had a secret ballot behind the scenes where what Steve Scalie was able to get one hundred and thirteen votes, Jim Jordan was able to get ninety nine votes. The thing is, though, Crystal, is that Steve Scalise's team got about eight to a dozen members to actually vote present. So if they hadn't voted present and they would have voted for Jordan, it would have been a direct tie.
So some smart maneuvering on his.
Behalf and Scalise is the web right now. Yeah, this is counting votes and whipping votes. That's what he does, and clearly hed did it very effectively.
So he wins the he wins the vote. Okay, that's good for him.
But the problem is they immediately are like, great, let's go to the floor and let's get this wrapped up, because they kind of had an agreement that whoever voted, whoever won that vote, would then win and would get all.
The unanimous consent. Didn't happen.
Instead, they immediately shut down the vote on the floor and people behind the scenes, multiple congressmen are saying, actually, no, I'm not going to vote for Steve Scalise.
I'm only going to vote for Jim Jordan.
One of them actually is Congressman Marjorie Taylor Green, who laid out her case agains Steve Scalise.
Here's what she had to say.
Well, I think Jim Jordan is the fighter we need to be Speaker of the House right now. Our country is in crisis with our border situation becoming such a grave national security crisis. Jim Jordan, I think is the
guy for the job. You know, there's a lot of concerns right now, some untel reports saying that we could even have a prorist attack here at home, and we've already witnessed one in Israel right now, and that's certainly a situation that we're all praying for, as we see in with Israel, but we're also here, we are still.
Engaged in Ukraine. This seems to be.
Another foreign war that we're funding, funding their government with no end in sight, while the American people are suffering under pulling inflation and possibly illumining recession with our economy. The Speaker of the House is the hardest job in Congress, one of the hardest jobs in the country, and it's extremely demanding and it's very personal to me. And I say this with the most compassion. My father died in
April of twenty twenty one with cancer. And I like Steve Scalise, and I like him so much that I want to see him be able to put all of his time and energy into defeating cancer. And I say that with just hoping the best for him.
You know, to be honest, I think that's a respectful and totally legitimate position. I see you do it.
I'm just saying, of course, I mean he.
But it's also not untrue. I mean he is diagnosed with with was it blood cancer? He's undergoing chemo.
There.
He obviously made the choice of like, I'm up to the job. So for her to in this very like paternalistic way like, oh, I'm just worried about you. No, I mean she likes him to be. He has the vibes that she appreciates. He's more vocally anti Ukraine. To me, it's very naked. But it's sort of like, I find it's sort of shameful to then use his illness.
Oh I really have your best interest at heart.
No, you don't.
You just have your own like political agenda. Let's be clear about all right.
Well, you're maybe right. I don't know.
Maybe I'm too I'm too good hearted because I'm like, oh that's sweet.
Let's put this up there on the screen.
From Matt Gates, he actually said Steve Scalice is better than McCarthy, but he also said the same thing for Jim Jordan.
The thing is is that Jim Jordan. And this is kind of the twist.
Jim Jordan has offered to nominate Steve Scalie on the House floor, but despite that, all the people who want to vote for Jordan are not following Jim Jordan, which just goes to show you how much of a complete circus this entire thing is.
Here's the truth. It's not about Jim Jordan.
It's that they want to either extract concessions or they don't back up Steve Scalise. Nancy Mace yesterday she is a special one. As Kevin McCarthy's true.
He had right, he truly did.
Yesterday she was like, I can't support steve'scallee because he once spoke at a rally that David Douke has.
I'm just like, what, like are you who are you?
You know, like, but you support Jim Jordan, First speaker, what are we talking about? First of all, that's a ridiculous thing in terms of the circumstances of how that all worked out. The other element that we wanted to highlight though, is how big of a loss this was for Trump and how irrelevant he appeared to be in this entire process.
Put this up there.
Do not forget that he endorsed Jim Jordan hardcore six days ago. He said, Jim Jordan has been a star. I completely support him for Speaker of the House quote. He will be a great speaker and has my complete and total endorsement. He didn't even win a majority of the votes.
He goes on and on wrestling. It's relevant to rare.
Yeah, that's totally relevant.
But it's fascinating to me that the House Republicans did not care at all what Trump had to say in this and Trump actually appears to be a tertiary character at best in this entire saga for ultimately what will be the highest ranking Republican in the United States.
Yeah, so true.
That's a pretty substantial loss I think for him.
You know, I wonder what you think about the saga. I feel like if he had when he really has power is when he not only like affirmatively endorses someone, but when he rips the opponent to stretch and makes that person toxic and nuclear. And he didn't say a word against Steve Scalise, So it makes it so that people aren't afraid they're going to get like punished or smerrored as a Rhino or whatever if they backed him.
And so that's why I feel like just just his like positive affirmative endorsement of Jim Jordan, it didn't really it didn't scare people. It didn't really matter for them, was my reading of the situation.
No, you're right, absolutely.
It's interesting too that a that he didn't matter, but also that the disparate concerns about Scalise run the gamut. You have more freedom Coccus types. They trust Jim Jordan, they don't really trust See Scalice because he's former leadership. They want to continue to back Steve Scale even though Jordan himself is like, listen, I'll back Steve Scalie. Then you've got the Nancy Mays types or a quote, a
whole other story, as Kevin said. But you also have a few people like Ken Buck and others who are upset with both Scalice and Jordan for both saying that who refuse to say whether the twenty twenty election was stolen.
So he's like, I can't vote for either of these guys.
Didn't you have a couple of people saying I will only vote for Kevin McCarthy.
A couple of people said I only vote. Most of them have come around. They voted for Steve Scale or they voted for Kevin. The point is that we are nowhere even close to electing a speaker. Steve Scalice may have won the majority. Personally, I don't think he's gonna be this speaker. I don't think he gets the two seventy.
Here's my other question here is, you know this is all sparked by Matt Gates predominantly, and you know, it seems like he just like genuinely despises Kevin McCarthy and I think has this like personal issues over the fact that he's being investigated.
On ethic story. Now whatever. I'm not going to get mac Gates's heads.
I don't know what his goals are, but it doesn't seem like he's really achieved anything.
Like what is he achieved?
Chaos his name and headlines fundraising.
Yeah, I mean that's like in terms of his stated goals about like we're gonna spend less and we're not gonna have Ukraine aid and you know this thing he floated that oh maybe we'll get this like actually reforms that I would support, like stock trading mans or whatever. It's right now it doesn't seem like there's any kind of negotiations over any of that going on. So it really does seem like the only thing he's going to get is Kevin McCarthy, who apparently personally didn't like out
and someone else in. But it's not clear to me that he's really achieved any of his ends.
Oh yeah, I mean I don't disagree with you actually at all. In terms of the Ukraine AID, I do actually think he want a victory there just to show you that they could. You know, Kevin McCarthy was going to put some sort of Ukraine AID on the floor up until Israel.
I think Ukraine actually was dead in terms of AID.
Now they might get something if they tie it forward, but don't forget Jim Jordan came out and said no tying Israel aid to Ukraine. He explicitly said, we're going to do Israel first and we're going to pass that and then we'll talk about Ukraine.
The would be supporting him, well yeah, I mean, I mean he's saying he's open to school.
The thing is is that Scalasee himself, scalise is a chameleon. He's never said one public word about Ukraine. I've looked by the way in the last year he has never said anything. So if he has a sizable amount of his caucus that won't go for it, then he'll just quietly be like, no, we're not going to tie it together. I think actually McCarthy was a lot more sympathetic to
Ukraine AID than he originally let on. In that way, I do think it is a victory, and at the very least is people Marjorie and Matt Gates, many others opponents of Ukraine AID.
They could prevail in this.
So even though we talked previously where I do think something will come through, there is a chance that they disaggregated and that it's only Israel alone.
We'll see, we'll see.
But yeah, I feel like a lot of the heated rhetoric and the audacious goals in Matt Gates right now seem to have not come to fruition. So anyway, it continues to be chaos. I genuinely don't know how it's going to shake out. Who's going to end it could be not either neither Jim Jordan nor Steevesclease or Kevin McCarry, could be someone different entirely you could end up with this dude, what's this I always.
FORRAI his name mcchenry. Is he the one Patrick mckenry.
Patrick McHenry could end up with him just hanging out in the spot for a while and then just deciding theseies patricks and then just deciding like, yeah, we just decided we can actually pass legislation with the temporary speed of the house.
Who knows, but we'll keep an eye on it, all right. We wanted to talk a.
Little bit about something we've alluded to here, which is the general discourse on Israel and Palestine and this particular conflict which has been at frequent times disgraceful and outright genocidal on both sides of the ledger. I've never seen so much casual dehumanization of whole categories of people in my life, and I've been on Twitter for quite a long time. So we thought we'd get into some of this discussion. One of the particular flash points here that
has sparked a real national outrage. If you want to talk about cancel culture, huge cancel.
Culture on this cancel culture.
All right, Okay, So is the statement put out by a coalition of Harvard students who were trying to remain anonymous. I'll put that to the side and we'll talk about that in a minute, But go and put this Harvard statement up on the screen. So I think it's a coalition of thirty five thirty four to thirty five different groups, some of whom have actually backed off of it at
this point. But the part that folks really objected to, and which I also really object to, is they say, we, the undersigned student organizations, hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible
for all unfolding violence. Okay, entirely responsible. So they are erasing any sort of responsibility from the Hamas terrorists who actually went out and massacred innocent Israeli citizens, paraglided into a music festival and murdered hundreds of people, stormed into a kibbutz and murdered a significant proportion of the entire population that know that they don't have any responsibility. Really crazy, And obviously you guys have heard my commentary. I'm highly
critical of Israel. I think it is an artide state. I think the occupation is illegal, the settlements are illegal, the blockade is illegal, the current siege is ille.
I think all of these things are horror horrible.
I think what Israel is doing in Gaza right now is an atrocity. I would put it on the level of what Hammas did here. But to say they are entirely responsible for the massacre of their own citizens and are rasing any culpability from the Hamas terrors that I cannot get down with it, and so there was a huge backlash.
I wanted to ask you about it, and that's what we were talking about it on the call whenever we decided, because I, you know, I work with you know a lot of people who are left. I get it, you know, and I think what your position is entirely not even defensible, but like it's one of those where within the realm.
Of conversation, I have no you know, I've seen.
People like, oh, Crystals, you're putting pro Hamas talking points.
I'm just like, shut up, Okay.
That would be like saying that the state of Israel doesn't a right to exist or that all Jews should die, So.
Just shut your mouth.
I've seen it in terms of compassion for the Palestinian cause, but more importantly, like a desire to be able to treat this a more of objective way and to look at and talk about human life an equal term. And I think that's completely legitimate, and I think it is fine. I wasn't as where does this shit come from? I don't understand. You know, you're pretty left. I know a lot of people who are lefties. Yeah, I see them, follow them, you know, we've listened to him. Now over
the years through working with you. None of them are taking this posuit. Maybe one or two I've seen maybe one, but this seems to be widespread through academia. I'm like, where did this all come from? This Like it's all is you know, BLM Chicago. It's all completely Israel's fault, no mention, as you said, of like terrorism and innocent civilians being slaughtered and there they didn't ask for anything.
It's like, where where does this sentiment come from?
Well?
They do it like bubbled from nothing like from it to me? Shocked me. I'm like, I spend a lot of time with the American left.
We have a sizable leftist audience that also watches this show. I feel like I know you guys decently well, don't agree all the time, but I don't get shocked like this to see a huge constituency of these student groups outright immediately, no questions asked, like this is one hundred percent on is I'm like, what is going on here?
It's just sectarian.
Yeah, that's it.
I mean it's the same as so a few things I want to say. So, first of all, there has been a lot of this discourse on the left.
There's no doubt about it.
These are there is no one who holds power in Washington,
DC that actually holds this view. And you saw AOC coming out against like some of the rhetoric from DSA in New York City, and they should I think even the most even the statements that went the furthest in support of Palestinians, like from Corey Bush and Rashida Tulip who herself as Palestinian American acknowledged the atrocities committed by Hamas, but tried to situate that in the broader context of why you need peace in the region and you need
Palestinians to also have their humanity recognized, which is you know, certainly my view and my position, and it should be a simple one of just like I'm opposed to war crimes on both sides, but it's just it's purely sectarian. People decide these are the good guys, these are the bad guys.
And I think there's.
Also a reaction because Palestinians are murdered all the time and no one notices or cares year after year. And if you look at the graphs of you know, Israeli casualties in this ongoing conflict versus Palestine Gatty, there's no comparison. Thousands and every year thousands more Palestinians killed than Israeli's in this conflict. So I think it also comes out of this sense of like, you know, you all didn't care when it was the Palestinians, no one cared, and now everyone cares.
And it should be.
But rather than being like, so I'm not going to care about these ones, now, it should be we should all care about all the humanity all the time. So that's one thing I think, you know, the fact that the other thing that gets erased is as I was saying, this view has no power in terms of like elected officials in government. As much as people want to pretend that this is the view of AOC or this is
the view of ilhan Omer, it's not. They've never said anything like this, they've been critical of groups that have set you know, been just completely like on the side of the Palestinians without acknowledging Israeli humanity. The other genocidal view of like wipe out all the Palestinians and who cares about civilian life is the majority sentiment in Washington.
It's you know, expressed not only by people like Lindsay Graham, but tacitly is embraced by Joe Biden, who has nothing to say in critical of a critical nature of the complete siege that is being executed on Gaza right now. So you know, there's there's two very sectarian and overtly genocidal parts of this discourse, and one of them has a lot more powerwridden government than the other one.
I think that's fair. No, I actolutely think that's fair. And that's why I do, ye know, I think it's absolutely correct. It's true because you know, the same level of condemnation doesn't come through. And I also, you know, you rarely hear this, but I was getting annoyed because people were like, Rasheta to leave is you know, co signing the DSA, And I'm like, that's not what she said. I judge people based on what they say. Her statement
was like, yeah, it was pro Palestinian. It also expressed a lot of like sorrow for the lives lost in Israel.
AOC said the same thing, so of you.
So it's Ryan and I'm like, the dominant view that I see from the commentariat and from the electorate has nothing to do with That's why I was just so shocked by it. I'm like, I don't understand where this comes from. It's like, it's just so maddening and insane to me that they could just immediately come out and just be like, no, it's all Israel's fault, and basically they were like they deserved it, and that is just
such a disgusting, you know, thing to say. I agree with you, though, it's equally disgusting when people are like innocent Palestinians deserve to basically wiped off the face of the earth as a result of this.
Which you see all the time, and one gets scrutiny and the other doesn't. And so there was a lot of a time rightfully so paid to This was actually a rally that was in Australia, but you saw some bad things said at some rallies here as well, but where they're actively channing gas the Jews and f the Jews.
Let's watch a little bit of that. So gas the Jews, okay, insane, I mean, discussed it like there are no words, no words for the disgusting nature of that kind of rhetoric, which, as I said, got I mean, I saw this clip on a loop all over social media all the time.
But there were Israeli protesters who were expressing equally genocidal intent towards Palestinians, which again is a viewpoint that is held by a lot by most of Washington, whether expressly or de facto, and that gets next to zero attention. Take a listen to what some of the the pro Israel protesters had to say.
What do you think the response should be from thet yahoo and the.
Military to okay, Palestinians them now one well, from the river to the sea past that will be deceased.
And you said, I need to do like this, you see now Gazza like this, Gaza need to.
Do like this.
Oh oh like this, but all this Jewish.
So he's pointing there to pictures on his phone of Gaza literally obliterated, wipe out and turned into a parking lot. Or he says that it can remain, but it has to be no no Arabs, no Muslims, only Jews, and you know.
There's there should be no Like this is so basic.
How about we're against genocide, whether it's Hamas, whether it's Palestinians, whether it's Israelis. How about no, how about no genocide. How about we abandon this just like nakedly tribal sectarian thinking. How about we apply the same standards to both sides in these the Harvard students who put out that statement that again it.
Was insane, let's be real.
Yeah, no no qualms there.
Okay, you now have billionaires, yes, including Bill Ackman, but a whole bunch of other CEOs who are like this, the statements put on anonymously. He's like, we need to do them so that we can make sure that they are never hired. Okay, someone is paying for a truck to drive around in Boston with their names and faces on them, branding them as anti Semits. And I'm not saying the same Republican concern about cancel culture on this one as I have in other situations.
Here, Sagar, I think that's fair I will say, you know, they created it, they started this game, so it's.
But you never say that about the other cancel. Of course, I'm not just all sorry.
I'm saying that's what people are saying. That's what the response.
Because I asked my friends, who are like very happy about this, Well, you know, I've heard you guys get
upset about cancel culture the one. So the only reason I think it is somewhat amusing is and Barrow said this, He's like, there's something deeply discontinent between someone who is like all in on palestinianjustice, but also who is working and is at Harvard Law and gets their job canceled by going to work for like Big Law, to work in the accounting division for Exon Mobile or something like that.
So they're talking about there was this one girl who had her job offer rescinded because of her I don't even know what her statement.
She actually publicly signed it, to be honest, she publicly signed the whatever and made her support clear in a law firm, by the way, which is also run heavily by a Jewish like members and partners, but also has a lot of clients where like, we are not going to employ this person.
This is where, and this is what I look.
Even on all the whole cancel culture discourse, it was always very difficult. For example, there was this guy Kyle Kashov. I don't know if anybody knows who he is. I've met him a couple of times. He was one of the Parkland kids, and he was like the conservative Parkland kid. He actually had his acceptance I believed Harvard rescinded because he made like a racist joke in a g chat
when he was like fifteen years old. Now, I also, though, don't see a lot of people cheered for him to get his acceptance rescinded, you know, at that time, which I think is outrageous and ridiculous.
But now they're like, oh, this is awful.
So I agree. I think we should apply the same thing to both sides. I will say this is where I try and parse it. I think if you're a law student, that you have a more developed brain and you're old enough to know better than to get involved in this type of nonsense like to be signing on to the general. But if you're an undergrad, I don't know.
Maybe I'm too forgiving, but anyone under twenty two It's like we all said, a lot of stupid things are are twenty two years old, So those people, I think we should leave him alone.
Oh, which listed from ever working for your entire life, which is what Bill Ackman is advocating.
For the law students.
That one is just because to me, they're all trying to go work in the fortune five hundred and all of that, And I'm just like, what, you're stupid enough to sign on to something like this. You still want to go work for Nike Corporation or for Walktail Lipmanners something like that.
I'm like, I don't know, I don't.
Have as much sympathy for those folks, but I will say for the undergrads, anyone under twenty two, I think they should be left with perc Yeah.
I mean, well, what do you think I think if you're twenty five, you should know.
Better and you're well enough of a developed adult, you know.
How they Well, but what are you advocating for that they should like never work or that they could lose their job?
Now?
Well, I think that if they are dumb enough to basically, like openly like call and say that it's Israel's fault, then they shouldn't be surprised when they get their offer rescinded by a majority Jewish firm, especially with clients who may even work in some cases with Israeli. At that point, in my opinion, you're old enough to know the realities of the world and you shouldn't be dumb enough to
be doing this. By the way, if you believe in it enough that you were wanting to lose your job for it, go for it.
I don't care.
But I think though that the people who are really pushing this, one of the ways that they're taking it way too far is by targeting eighteen nineteen year olds who have signed on that. And that is where I'm upset, because I'm like, listen, these are freaking kids. Every dumb things are in vogue when we're eight teen or nineteen.
I think everyone should get a past.
Well.
I think that it illustrates is the cancel culture. Conversation is a little more nuanced, and it's sometimes portrayed like sometimes you say things that are egregious enough that Okay, there are some consequences, and you're, you know, old enough person that you should understand that there could be consequences from your actions, right, But I don't often see it portrayed that way, with that level of nuance, especially from the right, where it's very like, no, there should be
no kind of like you shouldn't have a professional consequence, in particular because sometimes it's also just an objection to like, you know, shaming online, which I'm not going to say is not like a brutal experience, but here you have direct like we want you to be blacklisted from ever working or being hired by anyone ever at doxed and blacklisted and branded an anti Semite, and we're going to fund a truck to drive around the town branding you
an anti semi. I just I think that conversation would be going a little bit different if it was on the other side. It was like, you know, somebody's face and branded like a white supremacist first racist remarks that they said, and you know, we're going to dox them and we're going to make sure that they can never work again.
I have a feeling that right would have a little bit of a different view if that was the situation.
You're right, BDS has always been the biggest glaring blind spot on free speech conversation from the right. There are multiple laws on the books and states in the United State. Glenn Greenwald is some fantastic work on this about the BDS laws that were on the books. I believe Abby Martin successfully was it Georgia and got that law correctly rescinded, of which, by the way, the Israeli government has been pushing in America.
And that always ticked me off because I'm like.
This always succeeded in court when it's been tested.
As it should be. And this is what I always say. You know, I've had said even passed to some of my Israeli friends. I'm like, listen, you guys, do what you want. You can call us anti Semis and all other stuff, but do not you dare try and come to our country and the infringe on our free speech rights by lobbying for this type of legislation in our Congress.
Because maybe we'll start doing the same in yours.
Maybe we should. You know, It's like, but then they would be like, oh, the Americans are interfering. I'm like, okay, well, you know you can't complain that whenever the roles are reversed.
If you're going to do that to us.
Katie Halper fired from the Hill oh yeah, over and this were not this was not over the line. It's only you know, justifying atrocities was just like recognizing Palestinian humanity. Nathan Robinson let go from The Guardian as a calumnist. Ken Roth, who we rely on on this show for very nuanced, professional fact based commentary, I think you know, was he had had a university position that was turfed because of concerns over him being pro I think they walked it back, remember under public.
Then they were like okay, no, now you can work.
And he was like, no, I'm good. Thanks, So listen, cancel.
Culture when it comes to support for Palestine is very real and very very often ignored.
Absolutely.
Okay, We've got.
Some other big domestic political slash YouTube news which we kind of got accidentally to break on this show, which is that Jank Huger, the founder of the Young Turks put this up on the screen, is actually running for president. This is from Semaphore Dave Weigel here. He's running as a Democrat. He is challenging Joe Biden the primary. Now, with RFK Junior exiting that primary and running as an independant, that leaves Jank and Maryanne Williamson as Joe Biden's two opponents.
I actually listened to his whole He spent an hour with Anna on the Main show last night. She asked him some very tough questions. I don't want to speculate on how she feels about it, but the mood from her end was not super upbeat, because you know, she lived through like his congressional run, which was very difficult on him, and the way the media treated him was
extremely ugly. They dug of course, as you know, they dug up everything they possibly could that he's ever said over his long career being a commentator, etc.
Was not pretty. I'm sure it was very difficult for her as well.
Anyway, Jank, as he did on our show, explain kind of why he's getting in and what his strategy is gonna be, what he's aiming for.
Let's take a listen to that.
The idea is to create enough pressure on Biden. And here's how you get the pressure. One of the ways you get the pressure is everybody thinks that I have almost no chance of winning. Right, Well, let's keep it real. Everybody knows that, right They're like, oh, your name is funny. You weren't born here, you're a progressive, you're an outsider, et cetera, et cetera. Right, if I get to twenty or twenty five, panic sets in. There's no question panic
sets in because there's two things that happen there. One, the other candidates go what Biden is enormously weak. Right Number two is Biden begins to realize the handwriting's on the wall. If this Jank Eber, who probably probably can't pronounce, has gotten to twenty five, the handwritings on the wall, he's gotta go. And by the way, Anna, the reason why this is realistic is because there are a lot of people in Washington, inside the establishment that are trying to get Joe Biden to drop out.
We need to help them. We need to create that pressure.
So few things that I'll say. First of all, I'm me to say I like jink on a personal I've known jenk for a long time. We actually overlapped at MSNBC, so we go back that far. He's never been like a close friend, but he basically gave Kyle a start.
He really helped us out at the beginning. So I just want people to know, like I have a lot of affection for Jank Huger, and I think in terms of independent media, whatever you think of his political ideology, he's a true believer in the power of independent media and a fierce critic of corporate media, you know, going back a very long time. So we put that, Do
I think that this is going to be successful? I mean, no, I don't, And I'm sad to say, like I think that the launching, especially right now with the news moment that we're in, he's likely to get very little attention.
The attention he does.
Get is going to be some mix of like scorn. Scorn is going to be very dismissive. They'll once again dig up, like, you know, all of the things that he said over the years, which take a out of context and even sometimes in context sound really terrible, which she dealt with during the congressional campaign. You know, he
did run for congress. It was not successful. So it's hard for me to see how he's going to get a lot of traction when Mary and Williamson, who's been in there from the beginning it was a very similar platform, by the way, and also has our own national fan base and was a best selling author, et cetera, et cetera. I don't see why he's going to succeed where she hasn't.
It just doesn't add.
Up for me.
I completely agree with you, and I actually wish I had known whenever he interviewed. Just to show you, by the way, how accepting I am. I assumed he was a naturalized US, a natural born US citizen. Someone was like, how did you not ask him? Why you know how he could run if he was born in Turkey. I'm like, I didn't know that he was. He was from here.
So shocked and surprise.
I was so so prom I had no clue.
Yeah, it was so If I had known, I would have done some research and I would definitely have asked him about it at the time. Look, I think he's fundamentally wrong. I watched it as well, about the media angle in particular, He's like, look, we've got independent media now. Independent media is more powerful than it was in twenty sixteen, in twenty twenty, But for the people he wants to reach,
it's just not true. The median democratic voter is a fifty five year old white guy with no college degree. That person, as much as I wish they were watching Breaking Points or tyt or the PbD podcast or Tim Poole or anybody.
Who runs the Gamut.
They're not they're watching cable or they're you know, getting their boomer email things coming to them. So the power of institutional media, as we all found out in twenty twenty, is still immensely powerful. Democrats still trust the media, and they trust them a lot. They have seventy five percent trust younger Democrats. Certainly they trust people like us and many other shows. Young people in general much more trusting
in independent media. But they don't vote, and so if you were to really have an impact in the primary, you actually have to start surging in the polls and get the real media attention that you deserve. I'd also say Israel Pales sign is probably the worst possible thing that could have ever happened, you know, to any shot that he once had, because domestic politics right now is let's look at our bar. This is the number six story. Yeah, you know, in a normal time, maybe it's the number
two story. Yeah, that's the truth. You know, we have we have freaking wars that we have to contend with, and there's only a certain amount of attention. So even the limited bump that he might have seen from media. It's not going to be the same. We, of course, are going to cover it. The CNN's not going to cover it, you know. Yeah, the MSMB say, those are the people he really needs on his side.
On the natural born citizen piece, now he has a theory.
Facing case laws.
This a whole of how the Constitution was mended in a way that should grant the same rights to naturalized citizens as natural born citizens.
Which, by the way, I agree that's how it should be.
I have no idea whether the courts would actually find it to be that way. I mean, the text of the Constitution is quite clear, just like on its face about how this would all work out. So that's an additional obstacle that he would have to overcome. So anyway, interesting development. You know, jenk is certainly not going to be.
Shy about his views.
I know he's going to do everything he can to get himself and his message out there. And you know he's really leading with just this is the other place where I disagree with him, and we got into this a little bit when we had him on the show. Is he is very adamant that Biden will lose I've heard him say like it's a certainty, it's guaranteed. On the show last night, he was more like, I think there's a ten percent chance he could win, but a
ninety percent chance he could lose. I I just don't have that level of certainty about any I mean, I certainly think.
He could lose.
I certainly think he's historically weak, but I also think Trump is extremely weak. I mean, this man is facing a bunch of criminal charges and indictments, and we've seen what a psycho he is, and he lost to Joe Biden before, right, so to say like Biden has zero chance or even a ten percent chance, he's an in common president, He's got a decent shot at winning again. So even his analysis of why he's jumping into the race, I don't fully I'm not fully on board with.
I agree. I think it's a tows up. I think it's fifty to fifty right now.
I think that both sides easily could both could easily win, and both could easily lose. And anybody who doesn't grapple with that reality is really not living an area.
Yeah, okay, we have another update out of the presidential contest. So as mentioned four, R K Junior has moved out of the Democratic primary is now running as an independent. He just launched this week and it is official. The love affair that the Republican Party was having, and that Fox News was having in particular with RFK Junior is officially over. Now RFK he has been I think, going on with Sean Hannity for a long year.
They know each other time well and.
Seemed to yeh, know each other well. He told us they know each other quite well. So anyway, went on with Sean Hannity for an interview and Hannity very different tone these days now that RFK is running as an independent list taglism.
I hope you don't mind, but I did a little research on you.
You're pretty liberal.
You know you've called for curbing logging, oil drilling, fracking. You wanted to eliminate it. You called it a victory for democracy. You want to curb us fossil fu fuel extraction, keep it in the ground. You once tweeted you want to ban on fossil fuel extraction, ban on fracking. You called the NRA once a terror group. You've supported over the years Democrats score Kerry Obama, Hillary, You've praised Bernie Sanders multiple times you support affirmative action. So why is
this party of yours? Why didn't they even want to allow you to compete? Because that's as pretty liberal of a record as anybody I know.
You have a litany of talking points from statements I've made over forty years. Some of them are stale, some of them I never said. But you know, what is your question? Why the Democratic Party? Why I'm not running in the Democratic Party?
You know?
Why did they kick you out?
Your life?
I mean, by the way, I'm giving you comments that you've made it twenty sixteen, seventeen, nineteen, endorsements, we know the year's Gore, Kerry Obama, Hillary, Bernie Sanders. They're all recent quotes. The NRA quote you made about calling them a terror group is twenty eighteen. So these are recent positions you've had that I'm not sure why the Democratic Party wouldn't allow you to compete.
Dude, Do you want to talk about my positions?
Sir?
Yeah?
Yeah, you want to read talking points from the drum campaign.
Excuse me, These are not talking points. These are called Hannity points. I do my own research.
Points though.
That's a nightmare show.
Let me tell you Wow, it was things getting spicy over there. I enjoyed it. Actually, It's just so funny how naked they are. They loved him whenever he was running against Biden, and yeah, like you said, I mean, r K himself told us, I don't think I'm betraying confidences. I think he said this publicly. He's like, yeah, I've had a good relationship with Fox News. I knew Roger Rails,
you know, many years ago. He's like, you know, they used to beat me up and all of that, but the Murdoch machine, and I like, anyway, he knows these people, like on a personal level. But yeah, I mean when he runs independent and now Hannity and the Trump campaign knows that he's a threat to Trump because they can view the data. They're like, oh, actually, they're like, we got to remind everybody he's a liberal folks and start attacking him. But I got to give it to RFK
for this first. That was smart to go on and to actually challenge and even laugh in Sean's face. I actually thought it was the he handled is the worst that he'd just be like, He's like, you're a joke, You're a clown. That's exactly how to handle it. He also put out his first general election at and you know, got to give credit where it's due.
It's really good. Let's take a listen.
How's remobl Kens continue to fight us?
The left as a cult.
It's not long they're here.
Helping your party anarchy across America.
Yeah, I was fed up too, and that's why I'm running for president of the United States as an independent.
I'm Robert F.
Kennedy Junior. And I approve this message.
That's a great at Crystal, and it's very effective.
It's about the media, it's about division, it's about people hating each other. He doesn't say anything about what he believes, and he's just like, yeah, I'm fed up with it too. That is actually a uniting message right there. So no, I'm not saying he's gonna win, but maybe he wins more with his last name and with a message like that.
The more that he does that, the better off he's going to be.
The more like vague and just like, don't you hate these people too? And don't you hate what they've done to us as well? I mean, who disagrees with that? No, you can't disagree with me.
I'm like huh, yeah, maybe, but then I'm like, oh, the nuclear power.
Thing I forgot.
Yeah, So I sort of feel like the more vague and high level he's able to keep it, the better he will do. But let me say, with regard to the Republican attacks on him and the Trump like Trump teamsally going after him, I think it will work to cut down his right wing support for sure, and to rebrand him as you know, they were making real common cause with him. They were emphasizing the views that he holds that that I should say, I mean are kind of like cord to what he's.
Leaning into these days, iron mentalists, like that's what he cares about the most, or at least has in the past.
It has in the past on that one, But I mean, the core views that he's been talking about are like, you know, cancel culture and censorship, which has been real you know, concerned on the right recently, the weaponization of government. They had him testify at this like weaponization of government thing, that's true, The anti vax views, which used to be more lefty and now are very much more commonplace in
the Republican Party. And his complete opposition to any h Ukraine also codes right especially in like you know, Republican elected officials context. So they were emphasizing those pieces as a way to have a cudgel against Biden. Now they're emphasizing like, yo, you and Doris Tiller Cuinton in twenty sixteen, and how about that, And you know you're opposed to whatever practing, whatever his list is, you back.
The Green New Deal.
I think that that shift in branding and labeling of him coming from the Trump people is going to work with regards to how he's viewed from the right. So that's why I've always been I have never been as certain which side Kennedy is more likely to take votes away from. I don't think it's clear cut. I think the Kennedy name is very powerful. I think this effort to smear, you know, attack him from the right and label him a liberal, I think that's going to be pretty successful.
So it's just to me, it's not clearcut.
Yeah, I guess that's what I would say. I think you're right.
Thank you everybody for watching. It's been a tough week. You know, not gonna lie, But it's not about us on a personal level. I know that so many of you are also going through a lot of emotions and how to process this, and it's a great privilege of ours to help you and just know that we're doing our absolute best.
All of us are working around the clock.
We've got big projects next week, like the focus group will continue to monitor everything at a breaking level, So this probably won't be the last time that you hear from us in the couple of days, and we're looking forward to that. And we also really thank everyone for supporting us, you know, in critical times like this. It does mean a lot and it validates, i think the
mission that we're really trying to go for. So I'm very proud of our show this week, Crystal, and I very proud to work with you as always.
Yeah, same Sager, and again to our producers Matt Griffin and the whole crew that is behind the show. You guys have been putting in the lots of work and it's just, you know, it's it is a very difficult and emotional issue to cover, and thank you guys for
sticking with us. Reminder that we're not going to have our normal weekend show, but Soccer and I are going to try to you know, hang around so that if there is any big breaking news which seems kind of likely that we'll be able to jump on it and give you guys some updates start at the weekend, so make sure you're looking for that as well.
See you all later,