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Welcome to Counterpoints.
I'm Emily Dashinski here with Ryan Grimm and there's big news today. Actually it feels like there's big news every day, Ryan, But the House Speaker carousel has a new member, and we're going to talk all about Mike john Mike Johnson, who by the end of today may actually be the Speaker of the House.
So we'll bring you that information.
We are going to start with updates on the war in the Middle East. We're going to take you through how the White House handled that situation yesterday. We're going to take you to questions about the American presence in Lebanon and attacks that have happened on American troops according to our government over the.
Last couple of days.
We are going to talk about the Plea deal that both Jenna Ellis struck, and also news that Mark Meadows was given immunity former chief of staff at the White House.
And then we're going to do some really interesting.
Stuff here about Bernie Sanders, John Fetterman, and censorship of people with kind heterodox takes on Palestine. So Ryan, we also have a guest here who's going to talk about one of your pet subjects, and that psychedelics.
So I'm looking forward to that too.
Yeah, and this is two guests here.
One is a general, a retired general who was advocating on behalf of psychedelics for.
Veterans.
And it's interesting timing because if you guys watched yesterday, Sagar and I covered that wild situation where the Alaska air plane almost went down and it turned out the guy is saying that he was on shrooms and thought he was kind of getting out he was going to wake himself up by shutting the plane off. That's a nightmare for everybody on board, but also for people who
are urging psychedelics be brought out of the shadows. I would argue it means we need better education and regulation around them because we have prohibition and what happened happened, But we're going to talk to our guests about that at the end of the show.
Quick plug.
Remember, if you go to Breakingpoints dot com become a premium subscriber, you can get the whole uncut show right into your inbox. You can get that early second plug, as you'll see up here. I got a second book back here now. It's out in late November, early December. It's called The Squad. It's about kind of the American American left over the last couple of years. We'll be talking about that more, but I'm just a little little subtle reminder in the background there.
For the next couple of weeks.
Yeah, that's great, good cover, good cover, we'll take it. So let's talk about the spiraling war in the Middle East, and let's put up a one here because this is the most kind of bellicost language that we've heard from the United States yet, where they're saying that they will hold Iran responsible for attacks by what it considers to
be its proxies, its clients around the region. Because you know, Iran has clients in Yemen, obviously, in Gaza, in Lebanon, in Syria, in Iraq, and previously the Pentagon and the White House's line had been, Look, we don't want to get ahead of ourselves here. If there is evidence that Iran directed a particular attack, then we will hold Iran responsible for that, But in general, we're not trying to ratchet things up here. This is removing some of those
qualifications there. What did you make of the White House coming out through the Pentagon saying that from here forward, attacks on US troops by proxy by Iran proxies will be blamed on Iran.
Well, let's put two up actually, because I think this gives us some indication of exactly how we should take it.
So this is saying correctly.
The Pentagon says US troops have been attacked ten times in Iraq and three times in Syria over the past week.
Now, Ryan, if we go to A three.
This is a story from the intercept that basically gets to exactly how many stories, how many people are on the ground in Lebanon, which the government is actually kind
of cagy about. Here's the quote from the story over at the over at the intercept, It's that the White House, in a June quote War Powers letter to Congress President Joe Biden noted that quote, approximately eighty nine United States military personnel are deployed to Lebanon to enhance the government's counter terrorism capabilities and to support the counter terrorism operations of Lebanese security forces.
And this is operating under what's known as two seventy e. It's the provision of law to seventy echo they call it, that allows the United States to operate through proxies, through basically unvetted proxies. And so, in other words, you might only have eighty nine we don't know, Like this is what they say. You might only have eighty nine personnel, But how many proxies are those eighty nine American personnel, you know, equipping, recruiting, training, and operating. And what effect
does that create? And in creating let's say targets for Hesbela and Lebanon, what vulnerabilities does it create and what assets does it gives the United States in that region? It shows that there's been this kind of war build up across the entire region. People might be wondering, wait a minute, we're getting attacked in Syria. How are we getting intact in Syria? That doesn't make sense. We're not at war with Syria. We're not in Syria. Well, yes, turns out we are in Syria, We're in Iraq, We're
in Syria, every place we are. That's an opportunity for some group, some iron back group to lob shells at us.
Well, yeah, exactly when we can put the next element up on the screen too, because this gets to it. This is from meium Bremer, who says, eighty six thousand approximately Americans live in Lebanon, six hundred thousand Americans live in Israel, and to just pause for a moment, and I think acknowledge that it's from my perspective, entirely likely
Iran is behind some of this. There are obvious questions, and I think there's good reason for skepticism about what our government is telling us as it pertains to Iran's involvement. That said, given the kinetic conflict now in Israel, given the fact that this is a very hot war now in Israel, I think, of course it's possible that Iran is behind some of this. And I think that actually
gets to the threats we had. How many Americans killed in the attacks, upwards of thirty at this point in the original October seventh attack, Americans that were held as hostages. That puts responsibility on the American government, and that puts responsibility on the American military, and they are straining ourselves,
They're straining the country. They are putting us in a position where it makes the escalation of the conflict more and more dangerous and more and more likely by this sort of cavalier spreading out of troops across the world and particularly across the Middle East, that in times of peace we sort of look the other way, we don't think about it very much, but it's happening, especially because of things like one twenty seven Echo that we don't even think about or talk about on a normal day,
And now when a conflict spills over into something serious, it's an incredibly fragile ecosystem that is really teetering on the precipice of something a massive escalation.
And to me, that's why one of the most important things that I think Barack Obama did was successfully negotiate the Iran Deal with Russia and with five European countries. The argument that he was making at the time, and he ran over Israel to do it. It was Israel's number one objection to Obama was that he wanted to that he was inking this Iran deal. His argument was, this conflict isn't working. Constantly ratcheting up tensions is only going to lead to dangerous places, and it's also not
preventing them from getting a nuclear weapon. So if we bring Iran into the fold, that they show good behavior, reduce support for their proxies, roll back their military nuclear program, and instead, you know, AEI, let in the inspectors to follow their progress of their domestic kind of industrial nuclear capacity. Have Russia involved, have Us involved. It brings them into the fold so that they're less likely than to see
benefit in some global or regional conflagration. It's the same reason that getting a ceasefire in Ukraine, getting to a truce, Getting to a truce there is so important because every day that wars go on, every day that tensions are ratcheted up, unpredictable things can happen. I think Iran, there's no evidence that Iron directed the Hamas attack, but the fact that Iran and Hamas are connected then just spirals
this into the place we are now. And I think that it is it isn't often reflected upon enough in Washington that people who advocate for a position, like a hard line approach to Iran, like you know, Israel successfully lobbied Trump to withdraw the US from the Iran Deal.
So those hardliners got what they wanted.
Oh though it wasn't very hard.
I mean basically every Republican was opposed to the Iran Nuclear Deal.
So it wasn't as though Israel had to push very hard.
Oh absolutely, And and Trump wanted to do it because it had Obama's name on it. He hated it was the Obama you know, Iran Nuclear Deal, so he Obama. So he's like, it has it's Obama's thing, I'm going to undo it like that, Like, yes, but it was Israel's number one priority. But yes, it was very easy to convince them to do it. And so he does that. So he got his wish. And then Biden, to his great discredit, did not get the United States back into
the Iran Deal. And so I feel like people who got their wish there argued that this was going to be a better step forward, and look where we are.
That's what I'm saying.
There needs to be some accountability for if you get to implement and execute your preferred strategy and it blows up, literally blows up, then there should be some.
Reflection on that.
Yeah, I mean, I may disagree on the point about the deal, but I think you're raising a really important point about how the parallel with Ukraine that like when you have actually other nuclear powers that are attached to proxy wars or attached to conflicts that have become hot wars. We look at just Sheijin Ping and we talked about this personally.
I talked about this last week.
Chijin Ping and Vladimir Putin were in Beijing last week peacocking and talking about how they're old friends and whatever you think of those two countries, they are allied against the United States and definitely against Israel. They try to sort of say that they're going to be the new peace brokers of the world and they're going to step in and try to mediate these conflicts. They haven't done a great job of that so far. Putin started one
of them and invaded Ukraine, and Chijinping has not condemned that. So, you know, the prospects for peace in a world order led by those two I don't think should give anyone much optimism. That said, this is a coalescing of like this is a real coalescing of countries against United States hegemony,
and that means that this is even more fragile. That means that you have nuclear powers, you have North Korea, China, Russia, Iran, and the more people you have fanned out across the world on what the authority of one twenty seven echo. It's terrifying and it is so so much more fragile, I think than we realize. I feel like people are recognizing it now. But if something were, if China were to take this opportunity to move on Taiwan and had we saw them in a conflict with the Philippines naval
conflict with the Philippines last week. This is These are dominoes, and you don't always know that a domino is the first domino has fallen it until years later when.
You look back.
And I think it's one of the few good things Obama did on foreign policy. But his argument was this unconditional support for Saudi Arabia, for the United Air members, both of now which want nuclear programs right and Israel, which has a nuclear program, and isolation of Iran is not useful long term for the United States. That it's
going that it's just going to lead to conflict. It obviously was working, Yeah, and so they tried to unwind that the Washington Swamp is so dominated by Saudi Arabia UEE Israel and the Republican Party is kind of lockstep with Israel, Saudi Arabia UAE, and so it reverted back to the mean.
And here we are what the world about to blow up?
Speaking of the world being about to blow up, let's actually pivot here and take a look to look at what John Kirby told White House reporters in a briefing yesterday. He was pushed by one reporter who actually asked him about Barack Obama's medium post saying that the Israeli government had basically not done enough to mitigate the harms to civilians in Gaza. And then she also pushed him on Obama saying that cutting off food, water and electricity in
Gaza risked Israel losing global support. Let's take a walk take a look at how John Kirby reacted.
President former President Obama shared some of his views about the conflict yesterday. One of the things he said is that the Israelis haven't done enough to avoid killing or injuring civilians as they seek to take out a mosque in Gaza? Does President Biden share that deep?
President Biden has since the very beginning of this conversation been talking to the Prime Minister, and we have been talking to Israelis at various levels at the cabinet level and below about what separates us from hamas as two democracies, and that's respect for human life, that's abiding by the law of war, that's by doing everything you can to try to prevent civilian casualties and collateral damage. And that's an active conversation we continue to have with them.
President former President Obama shared some of his views about the conflict yesterday. One of the things he said is that the Israelis haven't done enough to avoid killing or injuring civilians as they seek to take out hamasque in Gaza.
Does President Biden share that view?
President Biden has, since the very beginning of this conversation been talking to the Prime Minister, and we have been talking to Israelis at various levels at the cabinet level and below about what separates us from mos As two democracies, and that's.
Respect for human life. That's abiding by the law of war.
That's by doing everything you can to try to prevent civilian casualties and collateral damage. And that's an active conversation we continue to have with them.
And speaking of those casually numbers, we have those, if we could put up a five, of course, it is rarely casually. Is after most of them civilians from October most and most of them on October seventh, one thousand, four hundred, roughly two hundred hostages still held on the Gaza side of Palestinian authorities saying that seven hundred civilians killed over the last twenty four hours and at least five thousand, seven hundred killed. We don't have a breakdown
between civilians and militants there overwhelmingly. If you look at the destruction of the of the of Gaza north to south, you're going to see massive numbers of civilian casualties. The scenes that are coming, the scenes that have come out of October seventh are boggle the mind, and the images that we're seeing out of Gaza boggle the mind.
Just absolute hell on earth.
Those numbers boggle the boggle the mind. What has happened in such a short period of time.
And I think they're undercounting significantly. I hope I'm wrong about that.
So you can see where John Kirby is going to increasingly be pressed about this. And I want to read actually from Axios, which is I think kind of reacting to the back and forth yesterday. They don't say they are, but they're reporting this morning, President Biden, despite full throated support for Israel and it's right to strike Amas, has methodically and meticulously delayed the expected invasion of Gaza. US
officials tell us that's Axios. Biden dangled high level visits, military support, and public backing to buy time in Gaza. He also made plain that America doesn't want Israel to act impulsively or without considering usque concerns. That's an interesting thing to be leading off Axios's newsletter with Ryan the morning after John Kirby is pressed in such a public way on the fate of so many civilians in Gaza.
Right, And if you watch that clip and you understand the dilemma that Kirby and Biden administration and Israel in when it comes to the siege of Gaza, there is yeah, nobody out there who's going to say, you know, what, Yes, it does sound reasonable to cut off food, energy, and water from a population that was two million at the start. Like sure, that's sure, we understand that. From a military perspective. Nobody, it's it's utterly in defensible Israel's argument that they've come
up with so far. As well, Hamas has some energy, they have some fuel, and they're using it for rockets. Okay, that's terrible, bad for Hamas, but that's a tiny amount of fuel like that.
That is not what we're talking about here.
We're talking about the entire enclave being blocked off. We're talking about people because the salination plants are down drinking salty, dirty water. You know, the UN says you need roughly fifteen liters minimal them of water for all purposes hygiene, drinking, et cetera, just for basic survival. The average gusin is down to less than one liter of water a day like one like that, that's that's for everything, start to finish for twenty four hours.
You can't survive on that.
And there's nobody out there who thinks that there's any kind of military justification for that.
It's also just straight up illegal.
It's like against international laws of war and so, and it's why I think Obama was you know, Obama didn't talk about apartheid, didn't talk about you know, he just he laid out that that. I think that's why he zeroed in on that, because it's there's just no counter argument to it. That's and that's where Obama likes to go is a place that is kind of comfortable but also critical.
Let's actually, I know that we don't like to skip around, but if we could, because it fits so perfectly with what Ryan just said, go to a eight. This is another John Kirby quote that has drawn a lot of criticism from the briefing yesterday.
A role AA that would be great war.
It is combat, it is bloody, it is ugly, and it's going to be messy and innocent civilians are going to be hurt going forward. I wish I could tell you something different. I wish that that wasn't going to happen.
But it is.
It is going to happen, and that doesn't make it right, It doesn't make it dismissable. It doesn't mean that we aren't going to still express concerns about that and do everything we can to help the Israelis do everything they can to minimize it. But that's unfortunately the nature of conflict.
I don't think we've ever heard comments like that from a White House podium ever in American history. At the very end, he says, obviously, we're going to do what we can to help Israel do what it can to minimize civilian casualties. But if the preceding thirty seconds it's all about how, look, civilian casualties are inevitable. This is war,
It's going to happen. And then to say we're going to continue to express concerns about civilian deaths that have not happened yet that we are going to be complicit in, really undermines how concerned you actually are, Like you just can't plausibly and authentically express concerns for something that you're about to do, because if you're really concerned, you could not do it.
You could just not.
The That's interesting because my reaction to that clip was his honesty.
Which I agree with you as unusual.
Yeah, is something that especially as journalists, but even as people who are critical of the kind of political establishment we often demand. That's exactly the sort of honesty.
I just want different honesty, right, but.
I mean, like, I think that's almost commendably honest, because that is at its sort of most basic level, are approached to this, and I mean, he's not wrong about it, like he's reflecting US policy accurately there.
And what I've been surprised, I guess, to learn is that some of the pretense that was articulated in past bombing campaigns was more than just pretense. So let's say take May twenty twenty one, when Israel's last bombing Gaza. You know there actually there was, I think there was a bombing the three day bombing campaign in twenty twenty two, but the longer bombing campaign twenty twenty one was accompanied
by claims that civilian casualties were being minimized. And the number of civilian casualties then compared to now is a fraction of what we're seeing. And so when you remove even the pretense you had, an Israeli top is very defense official said. He said, the goal is damage, not precision. So when you're explicitly on the record saying that you're going you're going for damage and not position that and
you're explicitly minimizing your ability to reduce civilian casualties. It turns out that in real life, many real, many more real lives do get snuffed out. Like there is actually a link between the rhetoric. It's not just rhetoric. In other words, like there were some gloves on, we now realize, you know, in hindsight.
And we can see that by what we see with the gloves.
Off, hamas Is I mean makes it virtually impossible for Israel to exist on a day to day basis with any semblance of peace and security without having obviously, as you know, we find like a fifth of their military budget and an annual basis, although it pales in comparison, and.
Speaking of mos this is something I want to ask the general when he gets here. Yea, they have They clearly have invested heavily in missile technology. They yesterday they spent more missiles it feels like than the last couple of weeks to very little effect other than striking fear. They're not killing people that don't and they know something about a lot of the landing in the airfield. Yet they have zero anti aircraft capacity. These F sixteens are
flying over Gaza, it's unmolested. Drones are flying over unmolested.
It's a great point.
How is that possible? To me?
It feels like everyone's incentives line up to have gods and civilians suffer. But I want to i'd I'd love to hear the general's take on this. Why has Hamas been unable to develop.
Even rudimentary any aircraft?
Now, presumably it's a more fixed structure, and so it would be easier to take out immediately like whenever you know, you see, whenever you see wars break out, any aircraft weaponry lasts like a couple of days.
So maybe that's what it is.
But we'll ask him see what his take is, because obviously I have no idea what I'm talking about.
Well, I think that's actually a really important point, and I think actually the point about Hamas is really important too, because there's no Israel has to If Israel wants to sort of stamp out Hamas, that goal in Gaza, that goal is I mean without because of the way people live in Gaza, without harming civilians to the degree that we're seeing right now, when we have the death counter up over fifty seven hundred as of right now, that number is sure to climb because the ground in vision
hasn't even started yet. When you see numbers like that, and when you look at the reality, I mean, it's if the United States is saying that we're going to help Israel minimize the casualties, and Israel is saying that we are doing We're not about precision, We're about maximizing damage.
That's a really difficult thing for the White House, especially because as we started this block, we were talking about how the US has a presence fanned out across the Middle East, hundreds of thousands of civilians in Israel, plenty of civilians, well actually just people stationed in Lebanon.
I forget what the numbers are.
We have it right here from the intercept, eighty nine US military personnel deployed to Lebanon. All of these different I mean, this ecosystem is very, very fragile, and it is you know, when Access is saying Biden is trying to remind yahoo that US interests need to be sort of front of his mind when he's making these decisions, which is also just a strange position for the Israeli government.
There was a great tablet piece over the summer about how US AID actually harms the Israeli cause because it puts one hand behind their back, essentially, because now they have to keep the interest of the US, which has six hundred thousand people in Israel front of mind and presence fanned out throughout the Middle East top of mind. That is, I mean the task of minimizing civilian casualties in that situation, but also allowing Israel to stamp out an existential threat.
Good luck and.
The scale of the slaughter is turning the world against the Israeli assault, and we saw that yesterday with UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres. We can place some of his comments that were taken in Israel deeply offensive. Let's roll Guterras seven.
The relentless bombardment of Gaza by Israeli forces. The level of civilian casualties and all sale destruction of neighborhoods continue to mount and are deeply alarming. I mourn and honored dozen of UN colleagues working for UNDUA, Sadly at least serty five and counting killed in the bombardment of Gaza.
Over the last two weeks.
I owe to their families my condemnation of these and many other similar killings. The protection of civilians is paramount in any armed conflict. Protecting civilians can never mean using them as human shields. Protection civilians, Protecting civilians does not mean ordering more than one million people to evacuate to the suce where there is no shelter, no food, no water, no medicine, and no fool and then continuing to bomb
the solves itself. I'm deeply concerned about the clear violations of international humanitarian law that we are witnessing in Gaza.
The Israeli Foreign Ministry reacted extremely harshly to that statement. But the numbers and the stories that we're seeing out of there, you know, tell a brutal picture.
If we can put up was it a nine here? Starting to get something?
You know, the UN reporting forty two percent of Godz's housing units are damaged or destroyed and one point four million gozzins, well more than half the population has been has been displaced. This is that's a statistic that justifies the entire idea of statistics.
That's just a monstrous number.
If we can put up a ten from my health post, colleague Phil Lewis, quoting the AP, the World Health Organization says nearly two thirds of Gaz's health facilities have ceased functioning, and I just think that those numbers are difficult for us to absorb. Over here, look what that looks and feels like. And I think it helps to explain why somebody like Antonio Guterrez would be willing to go out on what seems to us like a limb and be so heavily critical despite the politics over at the UN.
I'm sure it didn't surprise.
There's really delegation too much, But I will say I also think it's hard for us to understand, to overhear the task of I mean, virtually everyone in the United States after October seventh said and worldwide said, Israel has a right to respond because there cannot be any type of incentive for people, no matter what you actually think of what's happening in Gaza, for the humanitarian or the crimes against humanity that occurred in Israel on October seventh,
there cannot be an incentive for that, and so Israel has a right to respond. Now, how Israel responds is obviously where there's disagreement, massive disagreement that spans the full spectrum, but also just about everybody in the world stage looks and says Israel's response should minimize civilian casualties. Well, what does that mean? Does that mean you stop at fifty seven hundred? I mean, it's just such a gross thing
to even have to talk or think about. But there is a I mean, there is a real challenge at a being able to respond and be doing it in you know, a tiny, tiny area like Gaza that is so densely packed with civilians, where you have a group like AMAS that, even if it's overstated, does sometimes even just for space reasons, whether it's for space reasons or much worse reasons, which I tend to side with. The latter has military facilities and planning places and puts missiles
in civilian areas. That just makes it incredibly difficult to have any kind of response that also minimizes civilian deaths. So all that is to say this is and the Israeli government put out video yesterday of some of the people who are implicated in those crimes against humanity in Israel talking about how mad they are at Hamas leadership for putting the people of Gaza in the situation that
they're in. And I don't take very seriously what they're saying, but I do think there's truth to the fact that Hamas put the people of Gaza in just an ugly and unbelievable situation, because from Israel's perspective, there does have to be some kind of response. That does not mean that Israel should not be prosecuted prosecuting this war. In the scope of history, would be very unusual to supply your enemies with food and water, et cetera, et cetera.
But it is morally what Israel should be doing this situation, and they should be. They absolutely should be minimizing the harm and the suffering of all of these civilians, all of the children in Gaza.
It's not easy, though, and.
It makes our own political problems pale in comparison. Let's take a look at the journey of Tom Emmer. Anyway, yesterday, if we can put up B one, we're going to talk about the speaker fight, which might resolve itself today. So yesterday morning, and this is Jake Sherman, you know, reporting that Tom Emmer had dropped out of the race for speaker yesterday morning. As we reported here, tom Emmer was the speaker designate. If you took a long nap by the time you woke up.
He was done. He put up put up B two here. He had, you know what, more than twenty no votes.
He didn't crack. He didn't crack two hundred. He needed two seventeen on the floor. It was clear he wasn't going to get there if you can put up B three. The reason it became clear that he wasn't going to get there was that Donald J.
Trump, despite a slobberry.
Phone call from Tom Emmer, put out just an utterly brutal I have many wonderful friends wanting to be Speaker of the House, and some are truly great warriors. Rhino Tom Emmer, who I do not know well, is not one of them.
You never respected the power of a Trump endorsement. Anyway.
It's a delightful truth social from Trump as always, and his operation texted it out to everybody in the house, and within moments dom Emmer said, all right, forget this, I'm out of here.
He was the whip.
Maybe he still is technically the whip, and so he knows how to count votes.
He knows he didn't have it.
So they went back to the drawing board and they emerge with Mike Johnson.
It sounds fake right.
I know we're going to take their word for the fact that Mike Johnson is a Republican member.
Of Congress, is a is a human American man.
But you don't have to be a Republican member of Congress to be Speak of the House. So whatever, So they picked Mike Johnson, so gates himself. You know who lit this fire is saying that Mike Johnson is good enough to doubt and so tell us. So it looks like looks like we might get a speaker Mike Johnson. So, Emily, what do you tell us about Speaker John's Speaker designate Johnson?
You know, it's I can confirm that he is a Republican member of Congress and a human American man. Great start for Mike Johnson. He's from Louisiana. I think he was actually just selected in twenty seventeen. He's the vice chair of the House GOP Conference. So he's in kind of a leadership position, although sort of a to the extent you can say back bench leadership position.
That's kind of where he is.
He's a very like he's actually as kind of archetypical as he sounds, right, like a boring Republican middle aged white guy to you know, use the cartoon.
Well, Emmer ran an insurance company. Could it be better than that?
Let's see, could it be better than Emmer?
Because Emma actually, and I'm going to like, you guys are gonna get funny.
He was almost an astronaut or something.
You guys are gonna get annoyed today.
But I really I'm gonna skip ahead while we're talking about archetypical Republicans. If we could go to B six, this is actually how Emmer could maybe out run Mike Johnson and the sort of cartoonishly republican, middle aged white guy race. He got stuck on upside down on a zoom call.
Today's gig economy sprung out from the last recession. It offers a job to anyone who wants. During COVID nineteen, we must make sure that our nation's sole proprietors and the smallest of small businesses received timely.
Gentlemen, suspend. I'm sorry, mister Emmer, Yes, are you okay?
I am you're upside down, Tom.
I don't know how to fix that.
And get it right side up?
What's that cat? Yeah, Madam charritt? At is this a metaphor. I don't know, but he's.
They couldn't even figure out why he was upside down, what it meant that he was upside down, let alone him figuring out how to not be upside down. Mike Johnson, I believe, is slightly younger than Tom Emmer. I don't know exactly how much younger. I think he is younger, but all that is to say he's a very let's say he's a well respected kind of social conservative. He's the type of guy who'd speak at sea pack, which is sort of unusual.
What we mean by that hardcore like pro life guy. Yep, anti gay marriage guy. Yeah, like that whole thing.
So you.
Scratch the Republican Conference, you're going to get a lot of those people. You know, they've done a decent job of kind of just having the Supreme Court take the lead on that stuff. But it looks like with the elevation of Mike Johnson, some of that is coming to the fore.
And again, this is where Tom Emmor yesterday, I think you were following some of this. I think some of it was overstated, but there was a storyline that Tom Emmer's support for same sex marriage was a sticking point for some of the hardcore of Republicans that wouldn't give me.
There was one guy who told them that, or something right who told him. I forget who somebody told them that's why I'm not voting for you.
Yes, it became like a minor subplot. And when you have one or two people in a situation like this with the math, for Republicans, that's like an issue, even though it wouldn't be if they had a bigger margin, it's a real issue. And so actually, I think what's happened, what we're seeing happen here, is that they have exhausted the time they're comfortable with. They already did not have enough time to do what they need to do to
fund the government going into December. Because they don't want to do omnibuses, they want to do single subject bills. They want to fund the government that way, they can't really agree on any of those funding levels they actually have. You know, as kind of funny as I think it is to see the House that doesn't do anything good, hasn't done anything good in a while, and chaos, they actually do have things to do.
By the end of the year.
If we want to avoid a government shutdown if they want to avoid a government shutdown. There are some serious things that do need funding, and I think they realized that they had exhausted all their options. It actually looked for about twenty four hours, like Byron Donalds, who got the backing of Freedom Coccus people, and we're suddenly really excited about Byron Donalds. I like Byron Donald's. They got behind him briefly the conservative movement started aligning behind Byron Donalds.
But I would say Mike Johnson is maybe like a more like milk toast, kind of boring version of some of those flamethrowers in that he's not like on CNN like Byron Donald's always on the CNN yelling at people and it's relatively funny. But Mike Johnson isn't going to be that guy. He might decide to be that guy. But Republicans also sort of realized that being Speaker of
the House kind of ruins your career. They don't necessarily want to put their rising stars in the Speaker of the House position because you end up having to compromise in ways that are going to really piss off the and denigrate your fund raising ability, under cut your fundraising ability, I should say so he's sort of a run of the mill, hardcore Republican, which is.
A share of the Republican Study Group, which is the kind of big block of conservative Republicans. And speaker I think is cool to have on your Wikipedia, especially if your name is Mike Johnson Mike j because it's going to be in a parenthesis the speaker speak.
How much a portrait, right, It's got to.
Be hundreds of Mike Johnson's Wikipedia, so it's hard to hard to distinguish yourself just as a member of Congress. Yes, so if you're speaker, that helps. It got so bad if we put up before. Kevin McCarthy thought he briefly had a path back in he was floating an idea where he would be a speaker and Jim Jordan would be assistant speaker, which is funny because like there's already
that title already exists. It's called Majority leader. Although they did actually create an assistant speaker ship for Jim Clyburn in the House back in I think twenty nineteen. No, no, it would be when they got bumped out of the majority because you get fewer leadership posts in the minority.
Than you do in the majority twenty fifth.
Yeah, and so nobody wanted to nobody wanted to bump cly burn out, so they kind of made a new position that allowed.
Him to stay in.
But that would be weird, like doeses Jordan go to every White House meeting when the speaker's called over?
Yeap?
Like would have been funny, but looks like, you know, Mike Johnson might have it.
I think, yeah, So that's the thing.
It feels like what's happened is they've they think they've exhausted the clock.
They've run out the clock to.
The point where, uh, they are kind of itching to get back to business to do what they want to do, and they're also realizing the public is looking at them and laughing. I think there was a brief moment where you know, nobody on a regular basis, like your average American doesn't know who or really care that much who's the Speaker of the House. And I don't think they
necessarily should. But at a certain point, when you're going through what he's like the fourth guy to get votes in the conference, like, it's starting to just look completely ridiculous that they have they're getting the votes in the conference, private votes, and then when you go to the floor, they can't hit the two seventeen mark.
Like it's just and I think stupid.
I think all the talk of Democrats being willing to help and some Republicans beginning to entertain that prospect took away some of the leverage of the Crazy eights.
As McCarthy calls the Gates.
Crewe said like, okay, because if we keep holding the line here, we can keep holding the line, but we're not going to get Mike Johnson. You know, we're going to get whatever you know, whoever gottheimer wants to pluck out of yes, like the no labels problem solvers thing.
Right, they realized it was giving ammunition to the Centrists, and the more ammunition they give the Centrists in the court of public opinion, it was more like more and more likely that there was going to be a deal struck with Democrats that was really bad for them, which was always a possibility. And you know, Gates knew that.
And if Gates like this is actually kind of a win for Gates because he's you know, when he did this, the likelihood that they were going to get someone much worse than Kevin McCarthy from a Freedom Caucus perspective, was really high because who could step into that role. Steve Scalise,
Tom Emmer, those were the big names. Like Emmer was one of the biggest names, because people in the Freedom Caucus thought that he had brokeered some compromises that were good for them and some deals that were good for them kind of behind the scenes over the course of this last Congress. That said, he still is very business friendly, very establishment friendly, in a way that wouldn't always go well for them.
And so when Gates got rid.
Of McCarthy, McCarthy was one of the few people, as we've talked about many times, that was willing and had good relationships with the Freedom Caucus and was willing to listen to them. Mike Johnson is someone who the Freedom Caucus should be pretty happy with a Speaker of the House. I think it's unusual that you have somebody that is on such good terms with the conservative movement that's in
a position of Republican leadership. So that's kind of a win for Matt Gates, even though you know, do I care that much that he threw Congress into chaos for the last couple of weeks.
Honestly, not really.
Nobody really does.
I mean, so, all of this is still at the stage of maneuvering because it hasn't resulted.
In policy yet.
But would you say that this power play ended up being ultimately to the power benefit of the right in the House or not so much?
Or is it too early to tell.
I think it'll depend on how the Johnson speakership goes, and I am assuming I think it might take them a couple of votes today. I'm assuming that they have, you know, run to the end of their line here. I don't know that for sure. It could still go either way. They don't really know, But I do think this is the most likely that they will have a speaker by the end of the day of any of the previous people who've made it out of conference. So again, could take a couple of votes today. They don't know
at this point, and that's very clear. So but I would I would say it's more likely than it has been in the other situations that they leave today with the Speaker of the House.
All right, let's move on to one of the other circuses down in Georgia. Another one of President Donald Trump's alleged co conspirators in the Rico case down in Georgia, where Trump is accused of trying to go out and find me eleven thousand votes and flip the election, and we'll create some fake electors. His attorney, Jenna Ellis, pleaded guilty in rather dramatic fashion to a much lesser charge, which suggests that she's ready to cooperate at a trial.
Let's play.
Jenna ellis here speaking to the judge.
Thank your honor for the opportunity to address the court. As an attorney who is also a Christian. I take my responsibilities as a lawyer very seriously, and I endeavored to be a person of sound, moral and ethical character in all of my dealings. In the wake of the twenty twenty presidential election, I believed that challenging the results on behalf of President Trump should be pursued in a just and legal way. I endeavored to represent my client
to the best of my ability. I relied on others, including lawyers with many more years of experience than I, to provide me with true and reliable information, especially since my role involved a speaking to the media and to legislators in various states. What I did not do but should have done. Your honor was to make sure that the facts the other lawyers alleged to be true were
in fact true. In the frenetic pace of attempting to raise challenges to the election in several states, including Georgia, I failed to do my due diligence. I believe in and I value election integrity. If I knew then what I know now, I would have declined to represent Donald Trump in these post election challenges. I look back on this whole experience with deep remorse.
Can and put up the next element. She's basically charged with aiding and abetting false statements and writings. Conditions of the plea agreement NBC News include the requirements she served five years of probation. I hope that's supervised for her sake. I've been on supervised probation.
It sucks.
Pay five thousand dollars of restitution to the Georgia Secretary of State, and testify at hearings or trials in the case.
I'm trying to move past that. You were on supervised previation.
It sucked.
I don't recommend it. They treat you like total garbage. To take drug tests, cost you money for the privilege it's unpleasant.
That sounds unpleasant sometimes I just learned so much of your unexpected times. But you know, Jenna Ellis, so to Ryan's point, also required to complete one hundred hours of community service and write an apology letter to the citizens of Georgia. She also agreed to provide any request of documents or evidence, not post about the case central social media, and not have any communication with any witnesses or the
media until the case has been closed. Now, we do have another element that sort of looks back on it, sort of puts together. This is from I think the Republican Accountability Project or Accountable GOP something like that.
It's the Twitter handle.
They spliced together videos of Jenna Ellis from twenty twenty with Jenna Ellis just yesterday.
Let's take a look at.
That strikeforce team that is working on behalf of the president and the campaign to make sure that our constitution is protected. We are a nation of rules. All of your fake news headlines are dancing around the merits of this case and are trying to delegitimize what we are doing here. Let me be very clear that our objective is to make sure to preserve and protect election integrity.
What is the point of all this.
Well, the point of this, of course, is to get to fair and accurate results. Because the election was stolen in President Trump won by a landslide. We knew already that the election results in at least five of the swing states were irredeemably compromised. So we already have sufficient evidence for these states to decertify their electoral result. Your question and is fundamentally flawed. When you're asking where is
the evidence? You clearly don't understand the legal process. What we have asked for in the court is to not have the certification of false results.
I think it's actually easy to watch the clip of her yesterday and have sympathy, and I'm not saying that's entirely unwarranted.
When I see that, I think good for Jenna Allis.
I actually wish a lot of people that have sort of come into Trump's orbit and been poisoned or just compromised in the frenzy of Republican politics in the last few years would come out and kind of explain how they got sucked into all of this and how seemingly reasonable people, I mean a lot of folks who lived in New York City under Rudy Giuliani do not recognize I mean, whatever people originally thought about him, they don't recognize the Rudy Giuliani that's become a close Trump ally
from the Rudy Giuliani is when he was mayor of New York City. And wonder, you know, how is it that people who are seemingly intelli, reasonable, normal successful people come out and say things like in that last clip, one that stuck out to me was Jenna Alis saying President Trump won in a landslide.
That I think it is.
Almost impossible to understate to emphasize how seriously it changed the country in twenty twenty and will have an effect on the country for years and years to come. Because the trust deficit there, people like Jenna Ellis were being told and she played a huge role in this because she was on TV saying Donald Trump won in a landslide, and people around the country look at that and say, this is an attorney for the President of the United States who has information that must.
Be pretty good because she's.
An attorney for the President of the United States that is telling her that he won in a landslide. That's exactly how you get people sacking the Capitol because they think that the election is being stolen, a landslide election is being stolen out from under their noses. And honestly, when they're being told that by an attorney for the president who is so confident she's saying it on television,
that responsibility. I mean, she she should be crying when she reflects on it, because it is so tragic the way that people were misled by. And she's passing the buck to other attorneys right now, and I think that's, you know, again, I don't know what the truth is to that, but she's she obviously feels badly for doing it, I guess. I mean, maybe those are crocodile tears, but.
Man seem pretty real.
And maybe she was getting bad information from I don't doubt that someone was getting bad information from Sidney Powell or Rudy Giuliani in twenty twenty. But even she is saying that she failed to do her due diligence, and that is for damn.
Sure, right.
And some of it is a little bit of hubris and youth in the sense that I think it's true that Trump had run through so many attorneys on dred percent that he's got an inexperienced young woman who's who's kind of easy to bully and push around by some
of the more senior attorneys. And maybe it's youth and hubris that doesn't allow her to ask the question of I have so little experience, what on earth am I doing in this incredibly pivotal role advising a president of the United States who's trying to overturn an election, Like it's not my skills, background genius that got me here, nobody else would do this. And then to ask yourself, well, why will know why would nobody.
Else do this?
Eggs He doesn't pay them be because they looked at it and they're like, the facts are not on your side here. And you know, one of the most wonderful things that the United States kind of has given to
the world is the peaceful transfer of power. We've we've delivered a lot of pain to the world, but that the transfer of power over thousands of years has been a place where so many people have died just for the pursuit of vanity and power by different factions, and to have developed for hundreds of years away to transfer that power from one side to another, from one faction to another without people dying.
Is is.
An innovation that we just can't kind of allow to just slide away because one guy didn't like the results of the of the election that leads to that transfer of power, and so you try to undermine that, you come for the king and you miss, You're going to get a five thousand dollars fine to the Georgia Secretary of State.
And what she's doing there is not quibbling with the constitutionality of Pennsylvania's mail in voting laws. Right she's saying Donald Trump won a landslide, and Sydney Powell was out
talking about dominion voting machines. And by the way, while all of this is happening, Mark Zuckerberg is steering millions of dollars into a part of an electioneering project that people behind it actually told Time Magazine was like they essentially Molly Ball wrote a piece basically being like, this was a conspiracy, but it was a good one.
To quote rig the election.
So while you're talking about dominion voting machines and Donald Trump winning in a landslide, there are actually serious questions about money and politics and money and elections being raised, and nobody is talking about them. Anymore, because Jenna Ellis was saying Donald Trump won in a landslide. Just really quickly, before we get to Mark Baddles, I'll read Jonathan Turley. He said Ellis is the type of plead that tends to concentrate the mind, and Turtley has been generally favorable
to Trump. He's George Washing University law professor, hardly like a creature of the conservative movement, but somebody who has kind of come to Trump's defense in some of these cases and talking about how their lawfair. Powell pleaded to relatively minor charges. So she pleaded, as people remember last week, involving unauthorized access to voting machines and areas. Those charges tend to be easy to prove. It is not clear if she would tie Trump to a conspiracy or racketeering.
Ellis pleaded guilty to false statements that could conceivably implicate the president if she claims that he was aware of the falsity and facilitated the crime. Moreover, Ellis recently broke with Trump. She called him a malignant narcissist who cannot admit mistakes and said she would never vote for him again. Meanwhile, we can put elm of four. He four up on
the screen. Just yesterday, ABC News reported that Donald Trump's ex chief of staff, as all of this was going down, Mark Meadows, was granted immunity and told the Special Council that he warned Donald Trump about twenty twenty election claims. Now, this report says Meadows quote repeatedly told Trump in the weeks after the twenty twenty election that allegations of significant voting fraud were baseless and that Trump had been quote dishonest with his quick claim of victory right after the
polls closed. So to Turley's point about Ellis potentially implicating Donald Trump in this conspiracy that Fanny Willis has charged him with. Fannie Willis has charged him with. That is now a position Mark Meadows reportedly is in. I think the story has been questioned by people close to Meadows. I think they're saying that it's not necessarily true.
But we'll see.
He's going to testify to it anyway.
That's the thing.
What are people saying is true?
How do you mean so you said that people close to Trump don't think Meadows his claim is true.
I think it's people close to Meadows have said this story is not necessarily accurate, and that could mean different than interesting.
I see, I see.
Yeah, and again I remember when we were going through the Rico indictment out of Georgia. They're one of the unfortunate things about it is that a lot of the conspiracy charges against people like Jenna Ellis was obviously law her and was obviously ridiculous. But then there were kernels
in that lawsuit. There were just like, it was like two or three of them where Willis shows that people like Ellis, I don't remember if she was specifically one of them, but people in Trump's legal circle, in Trump himself, there were a couple of instances where they were obviously spreading things they knew that were not true. Right, And if that had just been like the tight indictment instead of like conspiracy because they booked a conference room and
whatever else, man, that would be really devastating. But maybe it's actually maybe that's how they maybe they did that intentionally to get people like Ellis to flip by just flooding the zone with different charges and medals too.
So moving over to the Senate side, Progressive senators and House members have been under a lot of pres sure from supporters of Palestinian rights lately to back a ceasefire in Gaza.
If we can put up this first element here.
It began with nearly three hundred Bernie Sanders alumni calling on the Center to back a ceasefire in Gaz. It is now well over three hundred and thirty former staff members for Bernie Sanders congressional offices and his presidential campaign.
So in the letter sent Tuesday, which is provided to the Intercept, former staffers ask Sanders to introduce a Senate side companion to the ceasefire now resolution in the House to support an end to US funding quote for war crimes against the Palestinian people, the expansion of settlements and the occupation of Palestinian lands unquote, and to support an
end to the blockade of Gaza. That the letter rights, President Biden clearly values your council, as is shown by the way as you've managed to shape the outcomes of this presidency, The staffers wrote, we urge you to make it clear what is at stake in this crisis politically, morally, and strategically. They also released a video it's up on
my Twitter feed. I don't know if we I don't think we have the video here, is that right that has a bunch of the staffers directing comments directly to Bernie Sanders, who has called for kind of the bombs to stop. On all side, which is a lot of people like that's close enough to a cease fire, and it does that is that is saying stop firing, would
stop and see the same thing. What they're saying is introduce a Senate resolution so that there's something to organize around the House has a resolution that people can you know, the members of the House can sign on to. The Senate does not have one, saying Bernie Sanders could be the one to put that in. On the other side of the progressive wing of the in the Senate, you've got John Fetterman, who has been one of the kind of most outspoken, unconditional supporters of Israel's war, Israel's war
on Gaza since since it began here. He is on at a pod Save America event recently.
You know. So it's to remember that Hamas doesn't want peace, he doesn't want to be negotiated with or I mean, and you know they massacred you know, you innocent children, women, and now they have over two hundred hostages with him right now as well too. So I really believe that I'm always going to decide to stand on the side of Israel, you know, in this place.
So one of the things that Vetterman's critics have pointed out is that it's so and we can go back to the primary that he had that he had last cycle. He worked very closely with DMFI Democratic Majority for Israel on his Israel position paper, Like he reached out to them, like the Jewish Insider has reported this, I've done some reporting on this.
Reached out to them, said he here's you know, we'd like to hear from you.
They so they had a meeting, then they constructed an Israel Palestine policy platform. Send it back to DMFI. DMFI said this is pretty good. And they've said this all right, said this is pretty good. Here are the changes we'd like to see. Kicked it back to Fetterman campaign. He's like, we're good to go. And the politics underlying all that were that Connor Lamb was a conservative Democrat also running for Senate, had been very publicly pleading for super Pac support.
His brother was out there like explicitly saying like we can beat Fetterman. But we don't have the money. We need a super pac to come in. Here are the messages that you could run, we can win. And APAC and DMFI looked at the Fetterment interaction regarding Israel Palace and payment said we're not going to back Connor Lamb. We're not backing Fetterman, but we're not going to back
Connor Lamb. So that's the previous context. The future context is that Pennsylvania's swing state, and so if APAC decided that it wanted to get in in a general election, you know, they could certainly do that. And so, according to people close to him, this has never been an issue. This is not one that's like coming from the heart. Like for a lot of people.
That's interesting because he's a creature of.
The left right.
But for a lot of people, including Summer Lee, AOC others, they've said publicly growing up Israel Palstin was on an issue that we talked about, like in a lot of working class communities, Right, you don't think it just doesn't it just doesn't come up.
It doesn't mean that you don't you know, it's just a.
Foreign policy in general, unless there's unless your community is being shipped to war, which is very true in the two thousands.
But yeah, and it's in a little bit of it comes through in that video.
It sounded like for a second he was he was referring to Hamas as the like a person, like a leader of an organization, rather than the organization itself.
He said, he and then he said they right, and so the people.
But so the politics of this are if I get on the wrong side of it, I could face you know, millions and millions of dollars now. Lots of his former staff and the Intercept reported this too. If we can put up this next element, have have sent a letter to Fetterman as well, urging him to support in Israel Hamas cease fire. This is kind of part of this very unusual bubbling up of dissent from from kind of
staff members and young people around around the country. You also had if we can put up this this next element, the political director for Rocanna, He's started on a Monday, and it was really how it's started, how it's going.
It's like professional news.
I'm joining Rocanna's office two weeks later and puts up he tried to get represented Rocanna to sponsor Rashida Talib ceesfire now resolution he refused. Personal note, I resigned from my job on Monday because of a refusal to call for a ceasefire. I'll be doing everything in my power to standing against war. Rocanna gave me a statement saying, you know that he's still They're still tight. He's he's a passionate support, passionate voice for human rights for Palestine.
I will continue to call for protecting civilian life, humanitarian aid, Conna said, and living up to the standards of the Geneva Convention, but would not be signing on to to leave. So this is Adam Ramer residing within two weeks of starting over at the over in Conna's office.
So a real kind of would you call it grass roots?
I don't know, because it's a little higher level than grassroots. You've seen some of it over in the State Department. There's so much kind of hostility to the State Department policy. Blincoln had to have a listening session with dozens of members. Josh Paul, a veteran employee as we have up here, resigned in protest, putting up a letter explaining that he felt like the unconditional support for Israel was trending in such a dangerous direction that he couldn't stand by it.
So it'll be interesting to see how this kind of almost generational divide.
Continues to influence American policy.
So this is one of the reasons this issue is, I think politically one of the toughest and most interesting issues from political perspective is that elite opinion on Israel and Palestine is in and of itself divided, as opposed to, you know, elite opinion on medicare for all or elite opinion on.
You know, same sex marriage.
Like, there's a legitimate divide among elites when it comes to Israel and Palestine. And so you see some people in positions of power saying, you know, the media is pro Israel. We have seen really bad media coverage from people who are pro Israel, and we have seen really bad media coverage from people who are pro Palestine. We have seen really bad arguments from people who are pro Israel, and we've seen really bad arguments from powerful people who
are pro Palestine. And what you just said about the generational divide is really interesting because I wonder if that actually is where the split and elite opinion comes in, because both sides are right that the media is in some ways pro Israel and the media is in some ways pro Palestine. Because there are people all sides of that divide in elite circles, which is super unusual for
any of these issues. Like you just don't see that happening, Like there are no elites that, for instance, support Donald Trump, Like it's so rare. I mean, there are a couple billionaires and people in like conservative media that are supportive of Donald Trump. But it's we're talking it's like, you know, nine oh one ratio, but.
It's it's more split.
And it's not wrong to say that there are positions in power that are disproportionately pro Israel. But it's also not wrong to say there are people in positions of power, for instance, the State Department all the way up the chain in Rocanna's office, lots of to the point where there's enough staffers to put these letters together and to really challenge Bernie Sanders. The Biden administration itself is kind of split. You had Karine Jean Pierre pivoting. This was
a super interesting clip from Tuesday. I'm sorry from Monday. When she pivoted, she was asked about anti Semitism and immediately pivoted to xenophobia against Muslims, and then the White
House tried to backtrack that. I think that reflects the internal kind of ideological tug of war that is in all elite circles, not so much on the right, but it's especially acute on the left that you have people who are very vehemently supportive of Israel and people who are arebemently supportive of Palestine, and that is I just find that to be very unusual on almost any other issue.
And I think also when you get these kind of less elite communications operations, like with a Caribbean Korean Jean Pierre, you end up accidentally getting more honest stuff.
Out of them.
Interesting because a good communicator would not have made that mistake that KGP made, A good communicator would not have made the mistakes that Kirby has been making lately. And being honest and just yeah, a little bit too much honesty coming through and then you're like, oh, WHOA, your job is not to be honest.
Yes, your job is propaganda.
Our job is to be as honest as possible.
Your job, you're supposed to be the propaganda's you're supposed to make the sift through this to get to the truth, not just kind of accidentally drop it out here.
Yeah, exactly.
Another phenomenon developing on the left has been kind of cancel culture coming home to roost on a lot of the people who have been pushing for support for Palestinian rights over the past several weeks.
That biggest, not.
The biggest, but I think the moment that got the most attention was from man named Michael Eisen If we can put this first one up, he posted, I've been informed that I'm being replaced as the editor in chief of eLife for retweeting an onion piece that calls out indifference to the lives of Palestinian civilians.
What is eLife does not matter? Nobody knows. It's a thing.
It's apparently a big enough thing that has a lot of other employees, because you had other you know, since then, you have had, i'm looking at it now, seventeen point
six million views on this tweet. Even if you believe, even if you think Elon Musk is inflating that by ten x, it's still been you know, passed around rapidly, rapidly and significantly, and you've had a number of other E life managers and employees coming out and saying I'm stepping down or I reject this, this notion that our editor in chief should be fired for posting an onion clip. But it's it's not just that you're seeing it all
over the place. A writer was a sports writer was fired for actually you know this one.
I don't know about that one.
So good.
Yeah, there's a there's a guy who he said that this post sucks slidary with palis sign always because it was seventy six ers on top of a seventy six ers thing, just saying that, you know, warning the hundreds of innocent lives lost there are There are a lot of people who kind of cross lines of decency and ended up losing jobs over that. And I think that's different, yes, than expressing a political opinion and losing your job over because everyone says you you don't have a right to
a job, and okay, you don't. You don't have a right to a job, but also we have a right to defend you for losing your job over a political statement. But if you cross lines of decency, then that's a slightly different situation.
But a lot of these are not that case.
You had the ninety second Street Why canceled Vietnam win event because he signed an open letter supporting palessign That was but it was there was nothing offensive in that. Michelle Goldberg in The New York Times is a great column that picks up on on.
Wins kind of cancelation. Literally his event was canceled.
She writes about how Nathan Thrall had a bunch of events canceled. He wrote he had written a great book called A Day in the Life of Abed Saloma, which is about a kind of father who's searching for a lost Palestinian boy in the West Bank and uses that narrative to write about daily life for Palestinians in the West Bank. A bunch of organizations said, we cannot do anything that humanized as Palestinians in this moment. So canceled
a bunch of canceled a bunch of those events. You had somebody who was chanting free Palestine.
Yeah, this is the next element from here.
On the London Tube. Who is then like suspended from work. You had a Canadian member of I don't know if it's Parliament, I don't I don't know. All of the Canadis like legal system. But you know, she said she stood with Palestine and was centered and kicked out of her left wing party, the NDP kicked her out of
the out of the party, the Kanesset. I think we have this next one here, Kanesse suspended a lawmaker this israelis for over Casis for criticizing Israel's war on Gaza in a in a way that everybody I think would ackowledge it within valves. Well obviously not everybody, because the Knesset kind of run him out of here. And so one of the things that Michelle Goldberg touched on in her piece was that for years, people like her on the left have been saying, be careful with this cancel
culture because it's going to be used against you. Yes, she would, and she and she and other people like her would say, just in principle, you should not you should be supportive of free speech. It shouldn't need to be utilitarian and pragmatic for you. But if it needs to be, guess what the shoe will be on the other foot. And also if you're on the left, the shoe is always on the other foot.
Like you're you're always going to get kicked with this, and.
So you're shunding whether you're really on the left right exactly. So now there are people saying, where where is the where are the people on the left to stand up for free expression? And it turns out there aren't. That that has been so polarized and an element of the right that it's that there's now nobody to stand for them.
And I think they've muddied the waters and real unfortunate way too. Because let's put this next and up on the screen. This is five I saw this and this
is reported for the Daily Signals. Governor Desants just ordered the University of Florida and the University of South Florida to deactivate their quote Students for Justice in Palestine groups for violating Florida's laws against anti Semitism and also for you can see in this letter here based on the national s JP support of terrorism and consults consultation with Governor DeSantis, the student chapter must be deactivated.
So they're making this argument that s JP had.
Offered material support to a foreign enemy, essentially essentially because they had claimed that operational acts of flood was you know, they needed to mobilize and support of the quote operation because they had used that word that this was material support to like a terrorist organization essentially, and thereby under
Florida law, they needed to be unrecognized. And we talked a lot about the Stop Woke Act and run DeSantis came out with it, and there was some really overly broad language in it that I really didn't like, especially as a conservative who kind of saw the free speech problem for what it was and over the last decade, I wasn't super happy with everything in that. And so I saw that tweet and I was like, what the like,
what is going on? Like this sounds ridiculous, And I still think the justification that they came up with was ridiculous, precisely because of a point that you just made. I want to actually read from the SJP toolkit that DeSantis is referencing, because I took a look at it and I was like, my god. They wrote today we witnessed a historic win for the Palestinian resistance across land, air,
and sea. Our people have broken down the artificial barriers of the Zionist entity, taking with it the facade of an impenetrable settler colony, and reminding each of us that total return and liberation of Palestine is near, they say, national liberations near. Glory to our resistance, to our martyrs, and to our steadfast people. They also stay when people are occupied. Resistance is just normalize the resistance. These events are the natural and justified response to decades of oppression
and dehumanization. And that is in reference to this, says the Palaestindian people have the right to return to their homeland and free themselves from the complete land air and see siege they've been subjected to.
Then here's another one.
Rather, liberating colonized land is a real process that requires confrontation by any means necessary. In essence, decolonization is a call to action, a commitment to the restoration of indigenous sovereignty. It calls upon us to engage in meaningful acts that go beyond symbolism and rhetoric. Resistance comes in all forms, armed struggle, general strikes, and popular demonstration. All of it is legitimate, and all of it is necessary. And of course this is in reference to an attack that was
targeting civilians. And it's parroting, by the way, some of the language from Israel when they say by any means necessary, that's actually what a lot of people on the left are criticizing from Israel right now by any means necessary. Okay, so that means shutting down the water, the electricity to Gaza. That means bombing civilian spaces, hospitals, etc.
Etc.
And that's exactly what people who support Palestine right now are objecting to from Israel. And this template or this toolkit includes templates with paragliders in them, and we all know what that means. That means supporting the paragliders who just mauled civilians down in Israel. And so it's completely reasonable that the University of Florida would have in its code of conduct something that prevents that, because there's political disagreements,
and then there's decency disagreements. And where our problem comes in is when people on the right and some people on the left inflate the definitions of terms like anti semitism to implicate reasonable political disagreements and say that because Ilhan Omar said something in favor of Palestine, she is anti Semitic. I don't know whether Ilhan Omar is anti Semitic, but I do know that supporting Palestine is not necessarily definitially anti semitic the left. That's one of the ways
we see language creep on the right. I think we see it, have seen it, as Michelle Goldbler points out, much more from the last left. In the last ten years, terms like bigotry, terms like white supremacy have been inflated to include reasonable disagreements. But this is the problem with that. This is precisely the problem with that is it makes
it impossible. It becomes a free speech conflict. When you have people that are justifying the slaughter of civilians and mobilizing to support it, not just making abstract, esoteric arguments in favor of it, but doing activism to support that, it becomes a free speech conflict instead of this is just a normal student code of conflict conflict.
Yeah, well, I think I think we have to distinguish between kind of private companies and public institutions here and so. And when I say that there's a distinction between kind of political disagreements and decency on the private sector side, what I mean by that is if because you really just like somebody doesn't have a right to a job, somebody doesn't have a right to other people defending them if they get fired the way you earn that right is you stay within bounds of decency.
But if you but if.
You're within those bounds of decency, but your politics are off, people don't like what your politics say, then I think everybody should defend your right to not be fired, even from even from the private even from the private sector, because that's what you know, McCarthyism ultimately, you know, hit a lot of people in the private sector. But I think the public sector protections have to be even much
more expansive than that. And I think, you know, as deplorable as what Jewish Voices for Peace chapter is saying here, I think it still falls all within the.
Realm of speech, reasonable boundaries. Well, and even if you don't think it's decent, it doesn't matter if it's decent or not. It's still speech.
And so this Daily Signal claim that they violated laws against anti Semitism is nonsense because there are no laws against anti Semitism or the claim yeah, well, the Daily Signal.
Is supportive of it.
Yeah, right, that the.
Tweet from the Daily Signal there there aren't laws against anti Simensons.
Anti Simonsons should be condemned.
It's deplorable, but it's not illegal, nor should it be speech. We have First Amendment protections, yes, in this in this country. What they're leaning on, as you said, is the word material material support for a terrorist organization HAMASA terrorist organization. Material has always been understood to mean material like money or other like tangible material support. Speech support has never
been that. Even if you said on September eleventh, two thousand and one, that you were happy that al Qaeda had done what it did, like that would be protected speech. And it's important to protect the most deplorable speech because that's where that's where they restricted. The things that you disagree with the most are the things you have to defend the right to make. Now people have zeroed in on what we're going to have a mass mobilization. That's
a rally. They're just having a rally. They're going to have twenty people chanting somewhere.
The SGP people were giving templates for like social media, and yeah.
That's all speech. It's all to me, that's all speech.
It's all just standard organizing, its rallies, it's speeches.
It's posting on social media.
And we don't want to get to a place where you're criminalizing posting on social media or holding rallies.
No, I mean I agree with that.
I think there's a much better rationale than material support for a terrorist organization that they could have found, which would have been like in the student code of Conduct about being respectful.
And you know what those I got charged with one of those in college.
They are dangerous and they have to They've been used against conservatives at private and public.
They dropped it.
See that's it, And so yes, although that's what I'm saying though exactly, is that the left has muddy the waters over the last ten years to the point where those are rendered completely meaningless. Even when you have people saying what this toolkit said, it is rendered completely meaningless.
Like if there's that like point zero zero one percent of cases that are brought have legitimacy, and maybe this is one of those cases, and like we can't even have that conversation because it all just gets muddied into a speech conversation instead of just like at some point
we have to be able. Nobody in this country, for the most part, believes that there should be zero limits on speech, Like the material support for a terrorist group is a great example, Like we do have limits on some of this stuff, and as I feel like I'm as close to the boundary as you can possibly get on that, like a free speech absoluteist, to the point that it's possible. And so I don't really want to see anybody criminalized or punished for speech. And that's why
I think it's stupid to do this. At the same time, I do think it's unfortunate the waters have been muddied to the point where you can say stuff like this, and we have to have this conversation about like cancelation. It's not cancel culture. If you all the other examples I agree with you are cancel culture, this one is not.
I think a lot of this stuff, by the way, I think, is not okay.
Anyway, we got to rapid move on to the to the guests. We got the We got the guests in here.
We're going to talk about the movement to bring you know, psychedelics out of the out of the shadows.
Stick around for that, all right.
Joining us now is Jesse Gold, former Army ranger and a founder of the Heroic Hearts Project, going to talk about the kind of growing, kind of movement to bring psychedelics kind of out of the shadows and.
Into the into public.
Were also joined by General Martin Steele, who is with Reason for Hope. General Steele, thank you so much for joining us.
Thank you for having me. Honored to be with.
You, got It and Jesse.
This is our first time having one guest live and one guest remote, So we appreciate you guys doing this. You're here at either fortuitous or unfortuitous time because your issue is in the news. Yesterday we covered this Alaska Air bizarre situation where it looked like a pilot might have been trying to do some type of crash by suicide. Turns out the pilot has said that it was his first time ever taking psilocybin mushrooms and thought he was dreaming and tried to pull tried to basically shut the
plane down to wake up. And speaking of waking up, as soon as I heard that was like, this sounds like a nightmare for Jesse. So when you saw this news report, what did it mean you think about the way that this issue has kind of been playing politically around the country, Because I want to get into it's so alive, so in so many states around the country.
Absolutely, and thank you so much for having me, and I'm glad we can test your guys' system to set rolls, and so honored to be joined with by the general who's also doing some amazing stuff. For me, it's more fortuitous because these conversations are coming in terms of America's perception of psychedelics.
And what we immediately jump to.
And for me, this news story there's a lot more to unfold if you read it. It just kind of lumps into different pieces, and it's that media association that media does of this thing bad happened psychedelics. Uh oh, this guy went crazy? Right, it's very read for madness esque. You could take this article one hundred years ago and they could say the same thing with cannabis and everybody like,
oh yeah, that makes sense, whereas now that seem ridiculous. Right, So I'm not saying saying psilocybin had nothing to do with it, But there's also many other factors that they noted in there, including forty hours of no sleep right, including one article I read that this gentleman was going to San Francisco to go onto a flight. So that's kind of basic adult rules. Don't do psilocybin for the first time if you're going to do some sort of flight.
Don't do it on a plane, and don't do it if you haven't slept for forty hours.
Yeah, and so this is no matter what psychedelics are coming. Soil Simon itself has been declared to break through therapy by the FDA for depression. These are starting to be a main staple mental health as we pass laws, but we still have the stigma hurdles that we have to overcome, and lazy media like this does not help because it doesn't delve into it. It's just that clickbaity. Hey, this is a crazy story. Let's throw in psychedelics in there.
Let's not explain anything further, let's not get any more information about it. But people are immediately going to do that association you could do anything else. For instance, they always do this when there's some sort of tragedy. Oh, this guy visited a mosque a week ago. Is there some sort of correlation? Never dive into the actual facts around it. The other issue, and this is a much
longer issue, is the mental health issue. It's known that pilots are afraid of addressing mental health concerns because they could lose their job. A friend who runs a similar nonprofit no fallen Heroes. He comes from a top gun fighter pilot and actually works with pilots through psychedelics because when they retire, they have been dealing with their mental health issues and their only resort is to turn to alcohol.
So sorry to shock people who are flying, but there is a crisis of many veterans who become pilots, many others who have mental health issues, and these are the people who are flying our planes because they have unaddressed mental health issues. And to just lump it in of psychedelics are going to CAU as crazy people. There's no
fact evidence to support that. In fact, if we had an honest conversation, ssrise and other mental health medication actually have a strong correlation at least eight percent caused psychosis. There's never been similar research showing that association with psychedelics.
And that's the big pharma advertising you just don't hear. Ryan General Steele, I want to bring you in here to ask basically what your path was to advocacy in this space, because as we were just talking about their decades of stigma to overcome essentially, so for you, how did you come to this point advocating on behalf of these important medications.
Well, I want to thank you for having me again. I think that if I had to summarize it in one word or at my age, it's frustration, a little bit in line what Jesse said and his answer to your previous question. It's frustration with a lack of urgency from our government for bold initiatives to improve the mental health situation in our country, which we are in a crisis.
And so.
I have been involved in this in the form of research since I retired from the Marine Corps in nineteen ninety nine and have worked with scientists looking at comorbidities with traumatic brain injury and post traumatic stress military sexual trauma across the spectrum and looking at viable alternatives to ssriyes, and the frustration with the treatment protocols in the Veterans Administration health system, which have been lack of confidence for veterans,
and so people like Jesse who are inspirational to me and part of the Veteran Mental Health Leadership Coalition, which I have the privilege to be the co founder and leader of. There are over forty five organizations. Were all of the same built from coming from an experience and a frustration that we're not doing the things that need to be done, the initiatives like research into psychedelic assisted therapy to be able to improve the mental health situation
in our country. This is not about decriminalization from our perspective or social use. It's about research that needs to be done in these medications, just like what was mentioned here MDMA and psilocybin, and that's what we're doing with the Breakthrough Therapies Act HR thirteen ninety three and S six's eighty nine with co sponsors on both sides of the Aisle.
Bi cameral support.
Of getting legislation passed which would reschedule these medicines to be able to do much more research in the space, moving them from Schedule one, which is an illegal medicine to Schedule two because they have been granted that condition from the FDA, and getting research done and expanding access to all Americans who are experiencing these traumas in the mental health arena. It doesn't matter whether they're veterans or
civilians or first responders the medical field of pilots. Just like what Jesse brought out, we just have to do a better job. So what brought me here was the frustration that it's not moving, it's not moving fast enough, and that far too many veterans have gone outside our country. And Jesse can speak to this because he's a living example of helping those veterans but go outside our country to get treatment using these medicines that save their lives
that they can't get in the United States legally. It's either underground or taking a risk of being arrested. So for me, it's changing the law to do.
That, and not just our veterans, but also our president's son. So I wanted to We talk a lot about m d m A and mushrooms, but I Begain is one that doesn't get enough attention relative to the amount the ability it has demonstrated to help people battle with addiction. And so Hunter Biden is known to have gone. I think was it Mexico?
More likely?
Yeah, for an e for an ibagain treatment and his sobriety I think is understood by people close to him, including his father, to be connected to I Be Again. And so what are we seeing when it comes to the VA and to federal legislation or state legislation to open that up either to either to veterans others and what can you tell us about ibogain in general?
Absolutely, we're getting all the good poster child for psychedelics today.
Yeah.
Also, if it moves Hunter from that Hunter to you know one is just you know, doing paintings for donors.
No.
Absolutely, and you know on our side, everybody deserves some sort of form of healing. And what we're seeing from the statistics coming from the VA and other organizations is that modern Western accepted medicine is just not doing it. The rates within the VA are abysmal, and we see with the suicide rates, I think the VA just came out and they're always revising it, which just shows that they don't even have a base of handle on it.
Anywhere from twenty two to forty four veterans commit suicide a day, right, and that this is over twenty years of war, which is even more shocking now that people are talking about getting into another war without even addressing this underlying issue that's affecting hundreds of thousands of veterans.
So there's across the board of many of these different psychedelics are almost being rediscovered by the Western world of how effective they are, only because the research has been squashed by you know, these sort of media articles, the war on drug uggs, government propaganda, which has been very effective.
I Began has been particularly effective with addiction. So they've they've established clinics in Mexico, there's a couple in Canada, and where addiction rates generally have abysmal sort of you know, these these malab resorts. More than often people go into recidivism. But I Began has actually shown very effective results where people go in with opioid addiction and they go out of it not having that addiction at least for a
time being. And then there's also the same sort of psychological benefit where they can understand the root trauma that caused them that addiction in the first place. So it gives them this window of opportunity to really change their life in an effective way. And we're seeing this across the boarders different psychedelics in different ways, and so there is research going on, but it's all been private funded through organizations like ours and not and sort of shoulders
turned from governments. And so for instance, General Steel's working on a bill with Kentucky to find get in government funding for I begained research from settlements from the sack from the opioid crisis that the funds from that.
Ye, General Steele, can you tell us about that that Kentucky bill does it doesn't have serious prospects.
We believe it does. There have been three hearings. We've been involved in the Bettermental Health Leadership Coalition assisting the Opioid Abatement Advisory Commission in the State of Kentucky, which has been meeting in regards specifically to using a proposed forty two million dollars toward I Be Again research and development out of this fund that Jesse just said. Our position is that we think that this has great promise
by researching it. We're thrilled to be working with the State of Kentucky, who's out front on this because of the opioid crisis and the deaths that they have due to overdose and addiction and the success that I Be Again has proven to be so effective against It's clear that the treatments as we've set up to this point aren't working, and I Be Again isn't the answer for everyone,
but from our perspective, it has tremendous great promise. There was a hearing just last week, a third I've testified there before that Commission, but a hearing last week we had a member of the FDA who clearly is talking about the need to balance the potential risk and benefit of I BE again through proper testing and research, and is absolutely that they'll be considering the condition that we're in in this crisis and that I Begained is a viable next step alternative and Jesse.
In early October, Gavin Newsom veto to psychedelic piece of legislation out in California. He in his veto message he said he wanted something more orderly.
It seemed like, sent back to him.
You tell us what happened there and what's next in California potentially.
Yeah, And this is very indicative of the frustration that General Steel mentioned earlier. This has been an over three year process, many iterations. By the time we actually got it through both the houses in California by Parson support, wide popular support, it would have been an easy bill for Governor Newsom to sign. And what everybody speculates is it's because of his looking forward to what's next in his sort of career and using the veto, which in
my opinion in this case is very undemocratic. When it gets to that level of passing all this with a lot of work, and everybody agreed it was a good bill sort of baseline and just a very basic People should not be criminalized for having personal possession of just grown psychedelics, an LSD that's synthetic, so just mushrooms, just all this other kind of stuff. As we can see, people are already using it illegally, but because we criminalize it, we put this sort of blockade of any other people
talking about it. There's there's a stigma around it. So any other organizations that can help out that can bring much value education, like you should not take mushrooms for the first time before possibly piloting a baseline education. It has been prevented because of this criminality, and people are we're seeing this seeking their own mental health relief because of the failure of this system. This all of this news is showing how much the system is failing. And
so very disappointed in Governor Newsom. And you know it's a very politician thing where he had this. Hey, if you had just done this, it would have been great. He had more than three years to tell us. And it's for the veteran population. A lot of us are disappointed because this is what we come to expect. These politicians will say, Hey, I support the troops, Hey I have these veteran friends over here next time around. But what they do is they kick the can. They utilize
our name, our voice to get what they need. But when we ask them the very basic to help us, they do not. And again, I want to circle back. This is so important right now because we just got out of twenty years of war. There's over six hundred thousand just from the past twenty years of war veterans with PTSD. There has not been effective legislation on a federal level to resolve this, or address this, or even
talk about this. We haven't even looked at why we had twenty years of failed war and there's already people salvating about getting into the next war. The contractors get paid up front, we're still their hat in hand. My friends have to go to Capitol Hill and beg politicians to pay attention to the suicide rate. There's no reason, with that many veterans dying from suicide that this should
not be a national crisis. We show how fast the government can work when it wants to, but there has not been the same sort of urgency around veterans and mental health issues, which is very tragic and in my opinion, Governor Newsom's decision with self serving and falls right in line with what we come to expect from politicians.
And General Steele.
I'm curious what the reaction has been from your kind of former comrades and colleagues in the military too. You coming out and taking a position on this, do you do do you hear? Do you hear more good for you? This is desperately needed, or do you hear more? There goes you know, crazy hippie General Steel out?
You know with what we'll hear the latter, uh not to my faith, I would say my generation. I'm a Vietnam era military member, two tours of combat in Vietnam, my father stepfather I never knew my real father was a prisoner of war in World War Two, and my son had three tours of combat in Afghanistan.
So we spanned the whole gamut.
But the support that I've received from my peers, once they are educated in regards to what and why, they clearly understand the crisis and the mental health situation, I would say my generation of warrior is saying to me, thank you for what you're doing, and all of the people of the coalition, these veteran service organizations and groups like Jesse. I wish we would have had that for us because as Jesse said early on, I mean, alcohol
was the drug of choice. It's a problem for all of my peers and excessive use of alcohol and we never got our arms around this, and the situation now with SSRIs and the VA is just making it worse getting any better. So tremendous amount of support. A lot of them want to know more, they are studying what we're doing and why, but on the whole they are firm believers. I've had no pushback to summarize the answer from any of my peers or even the leaders that I had that were ahead of me.
I mean I was a.
Three star general, my four star people that I'm very
very close to that are also retired. Now all of them very much support what we're doing because, as Jesse indicated, six hundred thousand out of the Global War on Terror a twenty year war, and we haven't touched the surface yet of them coming to the forefront with their issues, and we're still not wrapping our arms around the needs for viable alternative therapies, which we believe psychedelic assistant therapy will be a major player in changing the mental health crisis in our country.
You're both optimistic and general steel.
I also promised our viewers earlier in the show that I picked your brain on some basic military questions, and Jesse, if you and he takes on these two and we love him.
Got two questions.
One and since you were a veteran of Vietnam, I'm curious for your take on what the role the tunnels that that Hamas has built over the years in Gods and might play in a land invasion, given that in Vietnam that the tunnel system was so effective for a guerrilla warfare, and that we had a there was a tunnel system in Afghanistan that was also problematic, and you know for American troops that got that got less attention.
And the second, and maybe this is an ignorant.
Question, why is Hamas so able to build missiles and rockets that they constantly are able to fire into Israel but apparently has zero anti aircraft capacity that that I just can't understand.
Either one of you want to take either one of those.
I'll be glad to start sure the opening with the tunnel situation. It's obviously very complex. They've spent years doing it, and I believe that just as in the case in Vietnam, they were problematic, as you said, they're going to be much more problematic if there's a ground if and when the ground invasion takes place, So there's significant obstacles to overcome a lot of challenges like we had in Vietnam.
Some of my high school classmates were of the size, if you will, physical size that they were known affectionately as tunnel rats, and they were traumatized by their experience going into the tunnels. Tremendous warriors did the job, but traumatized by that experience. So in the case of your second question, I would say they're being more supplied with these weapons of rockets than manufacturing them.
I watched your program the other day.
I thought it was very thoughtful as you were looking in these kinds of areas and questions. But I think it's more external supplies that are providing them with those capabilities. And the third question regarding why don't they have anti air capabilities, I'm not qualified to answer that right now.
Yeah, from the from the tunnel. It's just it's it would be a nightmare. I mean, if you you remember, I mean you were.
Not in your head at the Afghanistan tunnels.
Afghanistan tunnels, I mean, but I was also thinking, like World War two, Japan had notorious for the tunnels, and that factored into our decision of how in trench they were, and especially without our understanding it's a completely different warfare.
Uh.
And it's it's it's would be unlike what we've seen in Afghanistan generally is pretty open, pretty flat, so that allowed a lot more air support, all sorts of other intelligence that we just want to have. But then we're factoring not only the urban warfare and the tunnels, which we really just haven't seen for quite a while, and
just the density of the population. It factors into all these other dynamics because if you're going into there and you're going against a the Hummas that's not going to wear uniforms, and you're in this very dense population, it's gonna be chaos and a lot of factors. And then you're bringing in other serious military potentially like Iran as well as what happened in Afghanistan. When I was over there.
There was an estimation that this was a little bit deeper into the war that the majority of the people we fight were fighting weren't even Taliban or from Afghanistan. The vast majority we're from other countries, other networks surrounding countries that were just there because that's where the fight was. And I feel like this is even more that case where it's gonna be sort of that ideological not only fighting US fighting Israel in this centered spot that's just
going to be a hotbed. And again we have not even done an after actions review on the last wars. Why were we there for twenty years? And neither the general are our piecenicks, you know, like I would reenlist again if I was at that age. And there's an unspoken agreement where there should be in any culture or
any country between the serving veterans and the politicians. We will risk our lives, but we expect them to have intelligent analysis of the wars we get into, right, and we did not have that analysis with the previous wars. And I'm not saying one way or the other of that, but we need to actually factor in the real cost, not just a cost to the war. Contractors, but the lives as well as the mental health issues that we have not even factored in with these past few wars.
The very least we can do is at least research.
Therapies that could be beneficial to people coming home with the moral wounds and the emotional and psychological wounds as well as the physical ones. And so the organizations are Reason for Hope, Heroic Hearts Project.
Where can people find more information on this?
So Heroicartsproject dot org is our website and as the General said, our main goal is that we help connect veterans to countries where this is legal. As tragic as that sounds, veterans are going to other countries to get life saving support. That's where we come into place.
And make sure they do it as safely as possible.
As safely with support, so these sort of stories don't happen. If the General I think it's Reason for Hope dot org, he can correct me if that's wrong.
No, that's correct.
And the Veteran Mental Health Leadership Coalition also, which is the comprised of these over forty five veteran service organizations that we have all part of doing the same thing that Jesse just said efficacy in this space.
We're really appreciate you.
We really appreciate you guys joining us and for the fight you're waging.
Thank you so much.
Absolutely, I want.
To tell you go ahead.
Well, I just want to say thank you for what you're doing too. Having had the opportunity to look at some of your work. It's thoughtful, thought provoking, but very necessary right now and so affording us the opportunity to
come on to talk about this specific issue. We hope we have an opportunity to come back, but this is the space if we're going to do something differently, because what we've done and what we are currently doing is the true definition of insanity, providing the same treatment protocols that do not work for this population as it comes forward. We're not there yet with the six hundred thousand. As they come forward. It's like a tip of the iceberg
right now. And it's the perculean work that Jesse Gould is doing his organizations and others. But to have to go outside our country to get treatment to save your life is unconscionable and it is the definition of suicide to think that you can do the same thing over and over that we have been doing now and get a different result. So thank you for what you're doing in this space to help us get the message out.
All right, thank you for saying so.
I think we have a new Breaking Points premium subscriber there, hope.
So I think I think General steeals hooked.
It's good you say that, Ryan, because you can now go to Breakingpoints dot com to subscribe, as our producers are telling us to make sure we remind you breaking Points dot com. And the thing is with Counterpoints, if you are a premium subscriber, you get the full show, uninterrupted early on YouTube, as opposed to the few clips.
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Right yeah, So you get to support our work and continue coverage of issues that mainstream media, so called mainstrea media doesn't want to touch, like psychedelics for veterans super important. You don't have to, you don't often hear about it elsewhere, and if you subscribe here, we will do our best to continue bringing coverage.
Just like that.
All right, Chryslsaga be here tomorrow. We'll be back here next week. Thanks for joining us,