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Good morning, and welcome back to the Counterpoints.
Later in the show, we're going to be interviewing Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky.
Before that, we're.
Going to get to some updates on the Israeli war. In guys that we're going to talk about some developments in the West Bank. Settlers have been rampaging abusing Palestinians there, and we're going to talk about a really disturbing new TikTok trend coming out of the coming out of the West Bank, where in which IDF soldiers and now it's really civilians are kind of humiliating Palestinians just for a kind of a TikTok dance.
What else we got today, Well.
They're elections next week, so We're now into November. Happy November everyone. That means next week Tuesday. There are some big elections coming up. Of course Ohio, we've been covering that for a little bit, but we're going.
To abortion and marijuana in Ohio, yep.
Both of them on the ballot.
At the same time, my doppelganger, Tate Reeves, is facing off against Elvis Presley's cousin down in Mississippi.
Do people say you little tight race?
Is it just you that says you look like?
I wish it was just me.
It's not the most flattering thing that anybody's ever said about me.
And a Republican of all people, Josh Holly is introducing a bill that would undercut Citizens United. We're going to dive into all of that, but Ryan, we have so many updates to get to. This situation in the Middle East changes on a minute by minute basis. We're always looking at regional what other developments are happening. Yemen, for example, yesterday is one of those examples of how this can become even bigger and broader. So we're going to talk
a little bit about that. Let's start though, with the attack on the refugee camp Jibalia from yesterday. We have a first element here you can put on the screen. This is some footage from the bombing of the refugee camp in Jibalia. Fifty confirmed dead so far according to reports,
about one hundred and fifty missing. Ryan since we saw this, and if you're watching this, you see people carrying bodies out of the rebel Since this happened yesterday, there was another bombing of the same camp, actually just today before we started taping this.
Right right this hour, we're getting news.
Yusef moone year, who's been a guest on this program before, actually just a couple of weeks ago, I believe, was reporting that there's been another air strike in this same refugee camp, just within the last couple of hours previous one.
UH witnesses said seven or.
Eight missiles struck the area, just annihilating entire apartment blocks. That the news strike, according to mune Or, is a similar annihilating, you know, blocks, blocks of apartments, creating massive craters. And what's remarkable is the way that even wolf Blitzer, and we'll talk about wolf Blitzer's background in a second, was appalled at the carnage that he was witnessing.
I think we have him on CNN here last night.
But even if that Hamas commander was there amidst all those Palestinian refugees who are in that in that Jebali refugee camp, Israel still went ahead and dropped a bomb there attempting to kill this Hamas, this Camas AMAS commander, knowing that a lot of innocent civilians, men, women and children presumably would be killed. Is that what I'm hearing?
I know what you're hearing.
Well, we again were focused on this commander again who You'll get more data who this man was. They killed many, many Israelis. We're doing everything we can. These are it's a very complicated battle space. There could be infrastructure there, there could be tunnels there, and we're still looking into and we'll give you more data as they are moves ahead.
But you know that there are a lot of refugees, a lot of innocent civilians, men, women and children in that refugee camp as well.
Right, this is the tragedy of war wolf.
I mean we as you know, we've been seeing for days move south. The villains are not involved with please move south.
And just trying to get a little more information. You knew there were civilians there, you knew there were refugees, all sorts of refugees, but you decided to still drop a bomb on that refugee camp, attempting to kill the SAMAS commander. By the way, was he killed.
I can't confirm you. They'll be more updated. Yes, we know that he was killed.
It's like the best journalism I've seen from Wolf Years and Wolf Bliss.
And did you notice in there that he said that there might have been tunnels there. Yes, you can't blow up an entire refugee camp filled with people because there might be tunnels. Well the things I mean, clearly they can and they're going to.
But if there are tunnels, then say there are tunnels. And if there is, they haven't named still yet.
They just didn't know, they seem Abu A Gina who was listed as a battalion commander and was involved in commanding one of the battalions that was involved in a massacre at the kit Sim outside of Gaza. So but not a high a person with direct culpability in the atrocities that were committed on October seventh, but not a high level commander either.
Yeah, and I think that was a big problem yesterday. I'm glad that they've since named him, but all day yesterday, as you're getting questioned like this and saying we can't name the guy yet, et cetera, et cetera, I think that's a real problem to not be able to say publicly why you did it. And if you're in the tunnel thing, your point actually reminded me of that. And so I mean, again, we've had these conversations for weeks now,
and I think generally disagree on some big points. I do think, and we're going to get into actually another clip of wolf Blitzer. I think this is a really big problem going forward, obviously for public facing, forward facing Israeli officials who are going to go on the media and have this conversation.
Right, And wolf Blitzer in the nineteen seventies was wrote and edited an APAC newsletter. He spent the nineteen eighties as a correspondent in Tel Aviv. Right before he became a household name in the Gulf War, he was Washing based correspondent for an Israeli newspaper. This is somebody who literally worked for APAC who is saying, let me get this right. You knew that there were hundreds thousands of
civilians in this area and you dropped these high explosive bombs. Anyway, right there, he said, this is a truegy of war, is what the idea of spokesperson.
Well, it's also a war crime.
Well, and that's okay, So we're going to play the next clip. But we talked about this in reference to
John Kirby last week. John Kirby gave that answer and we'll talk a little bit more about it in the next segment where he said war is ugly and I think he used the word messy, boy and bloody right right, Well, yes, and I think I said something like this is at least it's honest, and I mean that's the problem with In this clip in particular, at one point he says, well, it's the tragedy of war, and in the other points he sort of dodges and jumps around. It is true
that Israel did tell people to evacuate. It's doing the same thing right now with hospitals and Gaza. Palestinians are saying we don't have anywhere to go because Israel has continued to bomb the South, and so you leave your house, you go to these According to the Associated Press. Some of these shelters are triple overflow. They're completely packed, yes, obviously. And so you just have this gospel situation where Israel has an enemy that says it should be wiped off
the face of the earth and just massacred civilians. But that enemy also lives in a densely populated, tiny, crowded territory, is you know, careful about how it conducts its operations in civilian areas. So it's you know, it's a horrible situation. You have to be able to answer questions like that from wulf Blitzer.
Right, and the US saying from the mouth of the President and then from the mouth of Kirby that civilian casualties are the price of war. They're unfortunate, but it's the price of war. It's it's just this is what happens in war is a green light to Israel to do what it's doing. And so as the United States expresses concerns about the loss of civilian life and this strike, remember that they are the ones that ahead of time gave it the green light by creating.
The space to allow for it to happen.
Somebody pointed out that in two thousand and two or maybe two thousand and three, right after, very soon after nine to eleven, Israel struck the leader of Hamas and a founder of Hamas and killed him along with seven civilians.
George W. Bush put out one.
Of the sternest kind of statements condemning the action, condemning the loss of civilian life, saying that there's no justification even if you're attacking the commander, like the commander, not a battalion commander, but like the head of Hamas, killing seven civilians along the way is an unacceptable price to pay.
That's George W.
Bush, who later would have more blood on his hands than probably any president in one hundred years.
And for him to say that this is too much, and now.
To get very little reaction from the White House to who knows how many civilian casualties we're going to have? And it's and it's almost untoward to be kind of quibbling over the numbers when you look at those those images. So here's Anthony blinkoln Scretary of State, testifying before Congress and getting interrupted by media Benjamin of Code Pink not shrinking back, not in the face of Russia's aggression against Ukraine, not in the face of an intensifying.
Strategic competition in the Indo Pacific and around the world.
If the witness will suspend, and I asked that everyone again respect this hearing, we will suspend and till the room misitary.
So we still don't have any sense of other than the plan that was floated by the Military Intelligence Bureau to just completely clear out Kaza of where this is going, right, Like what okay? They they killed this battalion commander along with countless other civilians. They're going to try to kill
other hamas battalion commanders. They say they're going to dismantle the organization whatever whatever that actually means, because the organization, you know, broadly speaking, has some significant level of support from the Palestinian people, which means that whatever organization you dismantle, the one that has put in its place will be will have a similar politics or else they won't win
the support of the people. As you'll hear a lot of Palestinians say, we've the party that advocates negotiations with Israel Is out of political favor because they've been negotiating for thirty to forty years, and over those thirty to forty years, they've got less, the economy has gotten worse, they can their travel restrictions have gotten tighter, they're down at electricity four hours a day before the strike. There's no hope, no sense of dignity connected to those negotiations.
So you're gonna wind up with somebody who says, well, we're going to then confront Israel likely So that so logically that seems to leave the idea of the intelligence ministry plan of we're going to clear out the North, occupy it, and then we're going to clear out the sale South and push the push the Palestinians into sin and Sinni peninsula. Is that your sense of what's your sense of what the actual plan is here?
I have no sense of what the actual plan is. And that's not surprising at all because there was no sense of what the actual plan is in Iraq and Afghanistan. There's no sense of what the actual plan is short of quote whatever it takes in Ukraine to the tune of billions and billions of dollars. But perhaps you know close to one hundred thousand casualties on both sides, if not more, there is no plan, And I do like again this is not in we have to have room
for Israel to disincentivize the conduct of Hamas. Israel cannot say we will not retaliate because that gives Hama green light to massacre more civilians, so that that can't be the case either. But I just don't have confidence in Western war strategy anymore. And I don't think I also think we're gonna talk about this with Lindsay Grammon a
little bit. I think when you listen to IDF commanders, it's really hard to understand or to give them the benefit of the doubt and the fog of war mentality, because again, like some things are up in the air, but I don't see anything concrete. I don't see what are you going to do about. You know, let's say hundreds of civilians die hamas Is. You know, even though their leaders are in cutter, you know, you get the battalion commander, guys, they're they're out of the way. Does
that make the situation better or worse? I mean, at what point does that make the situation better and worse? And how does that make the situation better or worse? And then what do you do afterwards? And actually the news reports into Kate. That's still being discussed as opposed to what We've had this terrorist threat living next to us for years. What is the if they mask her civilians and a ground war is necessitated, what is the
next step. There's just I'm not saying it's easy, but I am saying that you have to have that if you are going to wage war on the scale.
It's also not clear strategically what Hamas was going for, like where they saw this ending, and that kind of sets up our next conversation here. One of the things that Hamas leadership suggested in the wake of their October seventh masacer was that they were hoping for a broader conflagration that they were. You had to kind of read
between the lines and some of their interviews. They were saying, you know, other actors can choose what they would want to do, but I hope that they would kind of live up to their broad commitments to Iran and others saying that they're Iran has claimed that it's you know, implacably hostile to Israel, so stand up, you know, defend us like.
They they didn't.
They didn't go all the way to saying that, but it was very clear that that's what they meant. So if we can put up this element, this is the uh Yemen's houthy government has now declared war on Israel, right Uh, and uh you know has this comes after they launched a couple of kind of drones and missiles, you know, toward Israel, but uh saying that they're going to be kind of ramping up the Uh, you know, they're going to be kind of ramping up.
That that level of assault.
What that what that exactly means, uh, is is unclear given kind of Israeli defenses iron Dome Uh.
And also US.
You know, the US said that they intercepted some of those hoothy missiles previously. So at the same time, you have Egypt, if we can put this up here, Egypt has moved tanks to the Rafa border. And this is not I don't think precipitating any type of invasion or
anything like that. But I think this is a response to the public reports both from the Netnyaho connected think tank, which produced a paper basically calling for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza, plus the Israeli Intelligence Ministry, which is which, as everybody points out, as a small kind of just policy organization yet run by a you know, Lakud politician with links to Netyah who they also put out a paper gaming out what it would look like to ethnically
cleanse Gaza and part of that plan, essential to that plan is pushing people through the Rafa border, closing into Signi Peninsula. So I think Egypt sending troops to that, sending tanks there is to say no, like you're not doing this, We're not going to allow this to happen.
And back to the Huthis, I mean, so their slogan this Reuter's was I was reminded of this in a Reuters article yesterday is death to America, death to Israel, cursed the Jews, and victory to Islam.
And this is the Houthis.
Yeah, some of the hoothy rallies are just like wildly anti Semitic, like just that kind of rhetoric, right, like whereas Hamas has actually taken out of its charter. Yeah, this is not Hamas apologia, but like their charter used to say, you know, kill all the Jews.
They literally like now they say it's.
It's actually we're just against Israel, and it's Israel that links Judaism with Zionism, and when.
We don't right, they like control f't for jew like they replaced Jews with Israel in their charter, like in twenty seventeen. It was like nineteen eighty seven, the original charter was blatantly anti Semitic, and then.
The Houthis are still rocking with the original.
Yeah there's yeah, exactly, but that's I mean, so again, I don't think it doesn't mean much as of right now. What it does mean, though, is that there's more potential. It's another sort of it's not a huge point of escalation, but it does show that as these things ratchet up, as you have one escalation on top of another and they start to snowball, other people get dragged into this.
The Saudis can get dragged into this really easily in a way that I mean, it's just a total powder keg when these things start to the domino start to fall, and you know, I don't think this is the most concerning thing that's happened, but it's pretty concerning. I don't want to be numb.
To it, right, And it comes after Airdawan's like hinting at a rally that he could send ships down there that he could intervene militarily, because I think a lot of people around the world are watching this and saying this can't happen right, like say, largely defenseless civilian population getting just pounded around the clock, and it feels like you should be able to call someone and say, look,
what's happening this, This is happening in broad daylight. Somebody stopped this, And then there comes the realization that there's nobody to stop this, and so then you have pressure from populations in Turkey and Egypt elsewhere to say, do something, stop this. They don't want to get involved in a regional war either, But most wars start by people, are started by people, and are involved people who never wanted to be involved in war in the first place.
And I do think there are some I mean the sort of access of resistance. I do think there are some people and some leaders who would gladly get into a regional war. I mean Hamas is a good example
of that. That sort of question. Just to go back to your question about what was their strategy, what is their kind of end goal of the massacre that they plotted apparently for some two years I think obviously they had to know where that would go immediately, where that would I think everybody knew immediately where that would go. As soon as it happened, everybody understood that we were going to an all likelihood to see a ground invasion.
We're going to see mass civilian casualties, and that's the problem. On the other hand, with a ceasefire, there's a really legitimate question about what that means for the safety of people in Israel, what that means for the future of Israel.
But it's again like I think the media conversation about this is wildly unhelpful, and it allows and it enables the IDF representatives and Lindsay Graham, who we keep teasing we are going to get to him, because he was on CNN last night to make a lot of sort of facile statements, and you know, it's useless, Like what am I supposed to argue against what Lindsay Graham's crazy war mongering. I don't even think it represents the position
of the Pentagon. I think he wants it to represent the position of the Pentagon and the White House, which is why he's out there wish casting.
Last week in a low moment for this administration.
President Biden was asked about the contradiction between net and Yaho's claim that he was doing all he could to minimize civilian casualties and the fact that on the ground more than six thousand people had been killed in just the first few weeks.
He responded like this.
Do these numbers say to you that he is ignoring that message?
What did they say to me?
Is I have no notion that the Palestinians are telling the truth about how many people are killed.
I'm sure innocence had been killed, and that's the price of quagy to war.
News outlets quickly noted that the numbers reported by Hamas in previous wars had been broadly found to be accurate by human rights and relief organizations, the United Nations, and even Israel itself, truly showing how absurd Biden's claim was. The State Department itself routinely relies on the Gaza Ministry of Health, despite his connections to Hamas, which rules over Gaza.
Yet still, defenders of Israel's assault have suggested that the list released by the Ministry of Health is meaningless, that it might just be a collection of random names.
Now it turns out that.
A few weeks ago, I reached out to a source s iide met doing previous reporting. His name's Marum Aldada and he was born and raised in Godza but now lives in Orlando. Still he's been in regular contact with his family over there. Reached out to ask how his family was doing, and he said that thirty people on his mother's side and seven on his father's had been killed so far. A week later I had him on my Intercept podcast Deconstructed to talk about what life was
like for his family in Gaza amid the bombing. But because Mariam had told me about the killings before the Ministry of Health's list came out, that meant we could compare the two lists, and if his relatives were on it, it would mean that the list is not just filled with random names, but that each name does represent the tragic snuffing out of a life. So the list was first released in Arabic and includes the ID numbers given out by Israel to Palestinians, as well as their age
and gender. My colleague Mariamsala, who speaks Arabic, helped me go through it, and the ministry later released an English language version as well. We found forty three of his forty six relatives on the ministry's list. The youngest Tahani was just a baby, not yet a year old, and the oldest was a seventy.
One year old grandmother.
What has struck people the most about the denial of the slaughter and the hand waving it away is just the price of war. Is how different it was when the White House was talking about civilian casualties in Ukraine.
Here's now this news with a quick comparison.
Being honest about the fact that there have been civilian casualties and that there likely will be more is being honest because that's.
What war is. It's brutal, it's ugly, it's messy.
I've said that before. President also said that yesterday doesn't mean.
We have to like it.
It's hard to look at what he's doing in Ukraine, what his forces are doing in Ukraine, and think that any ethical, moral individual could justify that.
It's difficult to look at the sorry, it's difficult to look.
At some of the images and imagine that any well thinking, serious, mature leader would do that.
Since the start of the war in Ukraine, by the way, there have been just under ten thousand civilian casualties in Gaza. Already more than three thousand children have been killed. The Health Ministry's new death toll has climbed above eight thousand. Hassan al Tayeb noted on Twitter that according to Save the Children, the number of children killed in Gaza over the last three weeks has surpassed a number of children killed in wars around the world over the past three years combined.
And so now that we.
Know that the Ministry of Health lists that is being put out in Gaza does have the names of real people who who have actually died, you know, it kind of I think puts the White House in a difficul whole position because.
The attempt to say that, ah, well, this is.
Just coming from Hamas, we can't really believe this is belied by that fact that we now there are real, real people on that list, real people who let real lives that were ended in the last couple of weeks. Combined with the images that we're seeing, and you you see John Kirby talk about how hard it is to look at the images of civilians killed in Ukraine, that's equally true in Gaza. And so I wonder if you're starting to see any shift.
You had.
John Kirby do this like weird West Wing video yesterday. Did you see this, He's like he's like walk, he's like doing a walk and talk and he's talking about how there's a humanitarian crisis in Gaza and and here here are all the things that the United States is doing to alleviate the humanitarian crisis, which seemed at least to suggest that there was some awareness that the world was turning on them on this. It's it's remarkable. Israel has taken global sympathy and torched it in the faster
than anybody I've ever seen. Like the entire world was united behind Israel on October seventh, after the atrocity is carried out by Hamas, and the response has just obliterated that empathy and sympathy.
And I think some of that was inevitable. Inevitable because I do think that there are some activists and particular lawmakers who had no room for almost immediately we're calling for a ceasefire and calling for Israel not to retaliate. And that's a ridiculous position. But even so, it's a ridiculous position that you know, we have no limit on civilian casualties, that the whatever it takes position in Ukraine like these are also ridiculous positions, and.
So we have gram on that.
Yeah, well I think we have something else before that, but yeah, it's it's that's a position that Lindsay Graham has taken. We'll get to that in just a second. We have actually right here, speaking of support, we can put the next element up on the screen. This is from time Biden's Goza stance spurs stunning drop in Arab American support. I'm just going to read a little bit
from it here. The first national poll of Arab Americans since the war in Goza began shows how deep that sense of betrayal among Arab Americans goes, with only seventeen percent of Arab American voters saying they will vote for Biden in twenty twenty four, a staggering drop from fifty nine percent in twenty twenty. So in twenty twenty fifty nine percent of Arab American voters say they're going to
vote for Biden. Now that number is seventeen percent. So James Zogby, who is the founder and the president of the Arab American Institute, says, quote This is the most dramatic shift over the shortest period of time I've ever seen. This is a really interesting point from time. The pole results are likely to increase concerns among Democrats about Biden's standing with Arab Americans heading into twenty twenty four, particularly
in Mischi. We're roughly two hundred and seventy seven thousand Arab Americans call home and Biden won in twenty twenty by a margin of one hundred and fifty five thousand votes. That's a huge blow to his ability to win Michigan, that's for sure.
There's an interesting primary unfolding in Houston, Texas. This Democratic challenger named Pervez Aguan, who actually wrote about a couple months ago maybe back at the Intercept, is challenging kind of a backbench Democrat Sturdy apac ally named Lizzie Fletcher. That primary I think is not until March, so we won't we won't get a look at how that's unfolding till then.
But he is running his campaign.
Just head on against Fletcher over Fletcher's support for Israel's war effort. Fletcher's unconditional support for Israel's war effort. And you know, if he is able to kind of campaign on that. He would be the basically the first candidate I think ever to Auston incumbent for being too unconditionally supportive of Israel.
That has never happened before.
And if that happens, you know, you still have nine months between that and the election.
Now.
I don't think we should be making war and peace decisions based on polling and focused groups, because this is these are questions of morality and good and evil. On the other hand, that is an extraordinary swing away away from Biden, and it also puts voters, our voters in particular, or anybody who is sympathetic to Palestinian dignity in such a difficult position. Because you just had the Trump's ambassador
to Israel. I think he was suggesting that anybody who's a foreign exchange student and is a quote quote unquote Hama supporter, he doesn't really mean Jama supporter. He means anybody who is kind of critical of Israel's war.
And Gaza should be deported.
And you've started to that from elements of the right that if you're here on a visa and we don't like your political views around the Israel Palestine question, you're out of here, and you're so people are faced with the choice of sitting election out or actively working against Biden and helping to elect someone who's then going to try to deport foreign exchange students calling them supporters of from US, or voting for Biden, who is actively overseeing this just ongoing war crime.
Yeah, and without getting too much into the campus stuff, you know, if you look at the Students for Justice and Palestine toolkit, it does concern me if there are people who are on visa's here and we're sharing the paraglider me in paraglider template that was in the Students for Justice and Palestine toolkit. Like I actually went and looked at toolkit and I was like, holy spoke, this
is some wild stuff. Not entirely unsurprising. But if there's somebody on a foreign visa here who's like, yay terrorism, which is what the paragliders engaged in, and that's not representative of Palestine, but it is Hamas, that's yeah, I
mean I would have an issue with that. But I think the broader point about Arab Americans looking at the Biden administration is completely a serious one for Democrats and it's also I mean, in some respects Republicans had made inroads with the Arab Americans, especially in Michigan actually in the DC area on some of these education issues. That is not going to be a durable coalition, that's for
sure going forward. Now, we do have the Lindsey Graham to a clip that we've been teasing because it's I think actually very useful. This is Lindsay Graham on Abby Phillips Show on CNN Tuesday night.
Is there a threshold for you? And do you think there should be one for the United States government? And which the US would say, let's hold off for a second in terms of civilian catchup? Is there a point in which you would start to question.
A lot if somebody asked us after World War Two? Is there a limit what you would do to make sure that Japan and Germany don't conquer the world? Is there any limit what Israel should do to the people who are trying to slaughter the Jews. The answer is no, there is no limit.
But here's what you need to do. Be smart.
Let's try to limit Savilian casualties the best we can. Let's put humanitarian aid in areas that protect Dennison.
I'm all for that, but this.
Idea that Israel has to apologize for attacking Hamas, who's embedded with their own population, needs to stop. The goal is to destroy Hamas. Hamas is creating these casualties, not Israel.
So I'm supposed to trust Lindsay Graham, who just you know, was a huge backer of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and of drone strikes to limit civilian casualties.
I don't, especially when you're saying he basically doesn't care.
Well, and that's there's a really easy answer to that question, by the way, which is I cannot answer it. I cannot tell you because that's fodder for enemies. Benhapiro, who I'm sure a lot of our viewers don't like, I think, actually made a really legitimate point here when he said, if you answer the question, you allow Hamas to hit that number of civilian casualties and then pressure the West to just feel like, Okay, we're done, We're totally backing
out of this. So just don't answer the question. You don't have to answer the question. You can actually explain that if that's really what your concern is. But then again, that's asking us or ascribing to Lindsay Graham the sense of concern about it that I'm genuinely unclear on whether that actually exists.
But I think the question would not be asked if there was there was a sense that there was genuine concern about civilian casualty and there was an actual attempt being made. It's only when you have people start to say, look, it's just a price of doing business.
It's sad, but we just have to do it.
Then that's when you say, okay, well what's the price, Like you're just saying it's a price.
What's the price?
And if the posture were no civilian casualies are okay, we're going to do everything we can to minimize them, and we're going to and we're going to be, you know, critical of Hamosfort's hiding behind civilians, but we're going to be the civilized ones.
And so okay, we're going to say that they have a human shield.
We're not going to shoot at them to say that, well, they have a human shield. Therefore, unfortunately we had to shoot and kill the innocent civilian. Right does not make you the civilized one in that exchange, Kirby was actually asked about this from a Palestinian reporter in the White House Guard basically the same question.
Interesting back and forth.
Let's roll that thousands of Palestinian civilians have fallen so far, including one hundred and sixty of my own relatives, and I'm just wondering how many Palestinian civilians need to be killed before the United States called for a ceasefire.
First of all, my condolences to you and your family.
Are you in touch with some well that.
There's as much as I can not as much as you'd like to be.
Yeah, but I'm very sorry to hear that. I'm very sorry to hear that, And so I can see this is obviously personal for you. I can tell you it's personal for the President too. We don't want to see anymore civilian casualties. So in terms of the ceasefire, our concern with that is that HAMAS benefits to the tune of being able to refit, renew themselves, plan and execute additional attacks. And as I said yesterday, right now is not the time for a general ceasefire.
It is, however, the.
Time to consider pauses in the fighting long enough so that folks like your relatives and family members can get this incredibly needed humanitarian assistance and perhaps a way to get out if they want to get out. So we're supporting that and we'll see what we can do.
Do you notice what he said, well, humanitarian pauses from time to time, Like that's kind of an assumption that this is going to go on for a very long time. I was kind of chilling and distarving to hear. You saw him raise his hand right afterwards that His next
question was also a good one. He asked about whether or not the United States would guarantee that if the civilians were pushed out of Gaza, that they'd be allowed the right of return, because a lot of Palestinian civilians were guaranteed that right in both in nineteen forty eight, nineteen sixty seven, ninety seventy three, and it never came
to pass. And a lot of people in Gaza can see their old farms and old land from behind the fence, and so a lot of them say, we're not going to the desert because we're not going to be able to come back. And Kirby's response was, our policy is not to have some sort of permanent settlement outside of Gaza for the people who call that home, we want them to be able to go back home and do so safely and effectively. We are not calling for them their permanent refuge from the country.
But again, it's good to have that on the record. But if you try to kind.
Of show this clip at the border when you're trying to get back in, I'm not sure it's going to work.
No, And that's exactly what we were just talking about. Okay, So what is your plan you're evacuating if we already have what some one point four million I think is the latest report I saw displaced Gazans that have have gone south to the South of gazas Israel in the United States have said as the plan, and then to
move people into Egypt as it's possible, et cetera, et cetera. Okay, So what is the plan to bring people back in a way that makes Israel feel as though, and reasonably they have concerns it can exist safely without another October seventh happening right away or in the near future. How do you do that and how do you tell people to leave their homes and the land that they're clinging to and that they believe in and then you know,
say yeah, you're going to come back. And this is also going to please the other stakeholder who's prosecuting this war. We have basically just John Kirby saying we want to do it. That is the extent of what we know about this plan from both Israel and the United States, is that we know that we want to do it. Great step, How are you going to do it? Because it's an impossible it's a feat, it's a feed, and there's just no clear sign. And again this is also
what happened in Iraq and Afghanistan. We had really nebulous goals and we had a you know, adjust and well I shouldn't say that we had I definitely shouldn't say that, but we had so after nine to eleven, obviously we had reason to go after al Qaeda, so that pretense had that sort of sheen of a just cause, and what happened was a disaster, just a let's let's use
the word quagmire. It was a quagmire because we had nebulous plans for what we would do in the power vacuum, that continue, what we would do with civilians, and as as much as I understand, and you support Israel's rights to retaliate. I know we disagree on that point, and you know, believe that Israel faces an existential threat. I don't trust our government. I don't trust Western governments to prosecute this ward justly.
Moving to the West Bank, and there's a related point to be made there. In that Ministry of Intelligence Intelligence Ministry document that was leaked the other day, there was a point a piece that didn't get talked about much, but it proposed, you know, one of the one of the proposals was a complete cleansing of of Gaza, pushing
everyone into the Sinai desert. Another of the proposals in there was which they rejected, but said, here's here's an idea that you could consider, was to have the Palestinian Authority, which kind of which operates in the West Bank, also run Gaza. And it said that is not desirable for Israel because the status quo of Hamas in Gaza and the PA in the West Bank keeps Palestinians divided, which is then an obstacle to Palestindian statehood.
And so it's that it's described.
The obstacle is described in the document as a good thing for Israel, like they want the division, and that is reflective of this long time kind of net Yahoo policy that Hamas is actually good for the interests of Israel because the Hamas is not a negotiating partner that can be taken seriously.
Just credits the Palestinian cause.
And you know, implicitly in that there's there's going to be some Israeli civilian casualties from Hamas rockets and Hamas border raids. But that's that's the price of making sure
that there's no Palestindian statehood. October seventh put a price tag on that far beyond you know what what yah who could have expected to see a document post October seventh still say that the status quo of a divided Gaza and West Bank is preferable because it prevents Palestinian statehood is just chilling because it does it desecrates the memory of all of the Israeli civilians who were killed as a consequence of that strategy, and so that also raises the question of what is going on in the
West Bank.
That's what we're going to talk about here.
If we can put up this first elements, this is Palestinian authority run West Bank Settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank.
Is rising now over the past year.
Violence in the in the West Bank from settlers and from the idea of toward Palestinians was already at kind of record levels over the years we've seen, but we've seen pagrams directed at Palestinians that have been you know, kind of ramped up to you know, a completely new level.
And again there's no, there's not amas.
This is a Palestinian authority which Palestinians see as a as an arm of the Israeli occupation, like at Post Arafat, who there's an interesting die documentary on how he was killed that alleges that Israel poisoned Arafat. Post Arafat, the Palasting authority is seen by a lot of Palsetatians is just kind of another just a wing, just an arm of the Israeli occupation. Yet this is what we're getting in the West Bank.
Well, I think that's actually an important point of context. In before October seventh, violence and casualties were already basically coming close to record levels of the past couple of decades, both for Israelis and Palestinians, and so tensions, you know, it did come out of it. If it felt like it came out of the blue, it did not actually really come out of the blue. There was a lot of I mean, there was an incredible amount of tension.
And that's another reason that you know, instead of and we were just talking about this in the last segment, instead of the paragliders and whatever else, what Hamas did. And to your point, it's likely that Netanyahu knows this, and people in Israel knows this, know this. What they
did was set back the cause of Palestinians. And so instead of the paragliders and you know, saying that this is the cost of decolonization, et cetera, et cetera, that's completely misplaced celebration of you know, the what has it been called, the you know, the the the decolonization effort, the you know, retaliation, et cetera, et cetera. That set
back the Palestinian cause enormously. And Israel knows that, many Palestinians know that, and so again, like that's just another example of how poorly served so many civilians are by world leadership, their own leadership in that area.
Yeah, and it feels like the settlers and the IDF in the West Bank are using the focus on the war in Gaza to ramp up the polity that was already being implemented. Put up C two here this from hot retz Us threatens to stop supplying guns after Ben Gavier gives them out at political events. Ben Gavier ultra far right like there isn't there is enough adjectives to describe how far right this net Yahoo minister is.
And he wouldn't rebuke that, No, he'd say to add some more onto it.
He's handing out weapons to Israeli settlers who can then kind of use them in the put grams and the clearing out of of these of these territories. I think we're decided we're not going to play it. People can
find it on their own. There is extremely disturbing Abu Graban like footage circulating online of Palestinian civilians in the West Bank being kind of beaten, held naked, dragged across you know, hard scrabble dirt ground just abused in some of the some of the most horrific ways you can imagine. And again West Bank, this is happening in the West Bank. Uh,
this is not happening in Hamas controlled Gaza. I think I think we have c three here Jewish voices for piece saying that the footage of Israeli soldiers torturing Palestinian men in the West Bank is horrific. The Israeli military has brutally abused Palestinian prisoners for decades. As the Israelian military wages a genocidal war in Gaza, its soldiers are no longer hiding this abuse from the public. And part
and parcel of this entire strategy is also humiliation. And that gets us to the TikTok trend that we're talking about here. There's a song, it has a name. I don't know the name of the song, but it's a typical TikTok trend where people are doing basically the same thing to a little dance to the same song, and
everybody's participating across society. Except this one is people who have captured, you know, young Palestinians and blindfolded them in handcuffs and then humiliating them with this dance being done at kind of weddings being you know, children, you know, it's really children are doing it. We could play we could play a couple of the of the clips here, So.
If you were listening to that, what you saw was a couple of videos, or what you would have seen if you were watching a couple of videos of Israeli's driving cars. The first video had what appeared to be a group of Palestinian hostages in the back of the car and the driver was sort of laughing along to the meme. And then in the second video, again Israeli driving a car and a.
Group of kids prominent journalists, I believe, so a group.
Of kids sort of mock having their hands tied together, having their hands cuffed, kind of bopping along to the song and smiling in the back ground.
Yeah, and.
Palace Citians and Israelis have to live together in this part of the world, like they have all decided that this is where they're going to live. And it just seems like there's just no recognition of that fact that I feel like that there can be an if there's just you know, enough enough walls built, enough fences, enough attacking back and forth, that somehow that will resolve itself.
But that's not the case.
It's just enormously difficult to imagine, you know, the effort that it takes to resist that sort of human the negative human impulses when you've seen and you know, just given the numbers, basically everyone in Israel knows somebody who was killed slaughtered by terrorists in the massacre. And the worst human impulses bring us to positions like those bring us to sort of laughing and smiling about the mistreatment of other people, of civilians, and we saw that again.
They keep going to Iraq and Afghanistan and you invoked Abu grab We have seen that impulse take us. And I do think over Amas we have the moral high ground that that that is not helpful, that is allowing us to forfeit the moral high ground in in ways, and I'm sort of conflating the US and Israel and appropriately so in the broader West. But that's giving into the very very worst of us.
And it's not easy.
And a lot of this is going on post October seventh in the West Bank. But these these types of humiliations are endemic to the occupation and so that's that's also why it's an interesting question of what would the Gazins even say if you said, Okay, the palest any authority is going to be administering Godz at this point, Well, the palting authority administer is the West Bank, and it's brutal, like why would we want that?
And there's I mean, there's there's generations of anti Semitism in uh. You know, there's just such a deep seated and endemic hatred. You know that we would be foolish to ignore in Gaza in the West Bank. But there's also you know, we can't ignore it when you see
videos like this either, absolutely not. And what we can do is not have John Kirby say, well, we want to be able to have Palestinians come back, like we want them to leave and be confident that they'll be able to come back when the plan is to have again people living in extremely close proximity. You know, there is no end to the October seventh cycle and the post October seventh cycle, there's just going to be a whole lot of civilians caught in a rinse and repeat.
Let's do some rapid fire election stuff back here in the United States.
You've told some examples that I didn't even know we're on the ballot, and actually one is the first one is a really important one. This is Ohio, the story
that we've been covering on Issue one in Ohio. I had no idea, And this seems to me so importan to the story that weed is also on the ballot, that when people are going to vote on Issue one, which we covered similar ballot measures in Michigan and Kansas over the course of the last year, that's actually partially what inspired pro abortion activists and actually anti abortion activists to want this on the ballot and to fight for this on the ballot going forward. That's really what they
were looking at. And now you add to all of that energy, people are going to be going to vote on Weed. Not a good sign for the anti abortion people on my side of that issue.
No Emily saw that. Oh boy, five points.
Yeah.
So the reason that the anti abortion crowd pushed for that amendment back in August, which would have made which would have required a sixty percent threshold for questions to be successful, was because this has been polling at fifty eight fifty nine percent right at the threat. Right at that line, maybe they would have gotten over, maybe it wouldn't have. Now it only needs fifty percent because that that maneuver was defeated.
To amend the Ohio Constitution that would in shrines, basically says that you can make, as NPR describes it, reproductive health care decisions, including abortion. That is a constitutional guarantee in Ohio. Should this pass next week?
So I think it's going to pass. You've probably been filling a little bit more closely. Just generally it seems like the it's well ahead. But what's your sense from people on the ground.
I think it's absolutely going to pass, And now that I know weeds on the ballot, I don't even think it's going to be that close.
It should pass to this is a recreational it would allow stores, it would allow it's basically would regulate it similarly to alcohol. Would have a Bureau of Cannabis or whatever help to oversee it.
Yeah, it creates like an entire department, right, an entire sort of regulatory.
INFRASTRUCTIONACK structure that then funds schools, treatment centers, and all that sort of stuff.
So, yeah, you can have two and a half ounces of cannabis and up to fifteen grams of cannabis extract if you're over the age of twenty one, and that's possession. You can have up to six cannabis plants, or as many as twelve if there are at least two adults twenty year older in the household, which is kind of a funny detail, Like if there's two of you, you can go up to twelve plants.
Fair enough.
So if you're in Ohio, do go out and vote. Come on, do your civic duty, get this done.
You know what. And again, like as we talk about issue one, it's incredibly serious because people in the anti abortion side, in the kind of conservative movement space, say, we saw what happened in Kansas, we saw what happened in Michigan. We're basically getting routed in red and purple states, states that we feel comfortable in, states like you know, Kansas. Ohio is a place where they see this as kind
of the test lab for the United States. Like this is a state that has rural areas, urban areas, that has a total cross section of America in it, but generally is red, generally in recent years has lean right.
And if you can't keep abortion out of the constitution in Ohio, all of the dominoes will fall across the rest of the country, and the left is going to pour money into those remaining red states because a lot of blue states post Doobs were able to sort of shore up their constitutions or allow for abortion, find ways to allow for abortion. And the aftermath of Dobbs and the sort of post Row landscape, they say, well, we can basically do this in all of these individual states
if we put enough money into it. And because it's unpopular.
Right so far, the anti abortion movement has taken l's in Kansas, Kentucky, Montana looking like Ohio and yeah, like you said, it raises the question where can they win? What would be a state if they can't win Kansas, Mississippi, maybe Kansas.
I actually intempted to give people the sort of devil's advocate argument in Kansas because the way that referendum was written was insane, I think it was. And they yeah, and the Kansas one was, if I'm remembering correctly, that was the first one, and it really caught people off right right, And so people didn't immediately realize, you know,
how unpopular. A lot of people on the right didn't immediately realize how much they were actually going to have to make that argument that the ball was in their court, that they were going to have to proactively sort of make the argument for what you know, abortion law looks like after Row, and they allowed the left to come in and just absolutely bulldoze them. They didn't realize how unpopular.
And that's actually I think a real problem with the pro life movement is not sort of understanding how unpopular the position is. Yeah, oh yeah, and so and and understand the reality on the ground, which is that these arguments are really really hard to make. It doesn't mean you shouldn't make them, of course, I don't think that, but you have to. You have to make them well. And so the consequence of what happens in Ohio could be tons of money and political resources being expended around
the country to specifically target red states. And I think it's very likely that this passes. And I think that's very likely that dominoes from the perspective of somebody on the right and in the pro life space, those dominoes are going to continue to fall around the country after next.
Week potentially groundbreaking referendum in Maine.
This is an interesting Yeah.
So right now there's.
Two utilities and utility monopolies in Maine. This would be I think D three. People hate their utility monopolies. There's nothing that unites people, you know, more more quickly and
more strongly than hatred of your local utility. And so what this would do is it would create Pine Tree Power, which would be a basically publicly owned and run, consumer owned and run power company where the positions would be elected, which would be interesting because now you've got you're going to have like nuclear and gas and solar and when people like running candidates to be on the utility.
I'm sure that I'm sure thought thought all this through.
Yes, I would hope.
So at least there's.
A huge debate over is this going to say money? Because ultimately what this comes down to people you know, like the ideas in general, but the real question is am I going to pay more?
Am I going to pay less? For electricity?
And importantly in Maine, is it going to be more reliable or less reliable a place like Maine with you know, it's called pine Dream power. When you've got trees all over the state and you're getting snow four or five months out of the year, you can have you can have a lot of power disruptions, and so the ability
to keep power going is key to keeping popularity. And so this referendum would then would basically get rid of both utilities and combine them into one, one kind of people owned utility, which should I think it would be. It's worth a shot, Come on, Maine, try it well.
The industry, interestingly enough, has been sort of dangling the and this is from main public the article just on the screen and arguing that quote this could ultimately star renewable energy development of it, So trying to drive the wedge between the hippies and their their quest for a public utilities, saying it's either the environment here or it's the duopoly.
I'm sure, yes, the diopoly deeply cares about the transition to renewables, no doubt. The independent economic analysis suggested there was what it could save potentially eight hundred million dollars over the next however many years, But there will be some upfront costs basically to buy out the utilities and
transition over. So we'll see, we'll see if people's kind of fear of the unknown and fear of change overrides their kind of desire to take control of their own utility, and how much faith people have in their kind of own collective democratic ability to run to do big things.
Well, surely this also I mean really really fascinating A the initiative and b what could come of it, but also surely there's this is opening a lot of doors and peaking the interest of the industry as of right now. They obviously don't want to get obliterated, but they have to know that there will be plenty of opportunities for grift and cronyism should this actually pass, because the transition period sounds like it'll be a mess.
True, but hard to be more corrupt than a than like an energy monopoly.
Yeah, it's like like PGN like at this point, just formalize the public nature of it and let people vote.
Right, There's never been a benign monopoly Like, that's just not how they work.
That's happened. So moving down to Mississippi, my man Tate Reeves.
Ryan gets apparently Ryan is told he looks like Tate Reeves.
I told that too often. We put up D four here.
These are numbers from five thirty eight which show if your Reeve's a disturbingly close race. The Democratic Governors Association kind of put out its own pole, which take with a grain of salt, obviously from mid October that has Reeves only up one previous polling had Reeves up anywhere
between eight and seventeen points. Aside from kind of Brandon Presley internal poll that they put out in the summer, you should take with the extra extra grains of salt that had the race even now, Brandon Presley, if that name sounds familiar to you, Yes, that is the king's cousin.
It's Mississippi.
Yeah, it is Elvis Presley's cousin.
So and we can put up this next one here, I guess was just D five of so Tate Reeves.
This is Mississippi today.
A huge story breaking late in the campaign, Tate Reeves top political donors received one point four a billion with a B in state contracts from his agency. This kind of slots into the public scandal that you're probably already familiar with involving Brett farre And, you know, using welfare money to do whatever Brett Farv was dealing with welfare money. And so it raises the question like, is there any
way that a Republican can lose in Mississippi? And if there is, it's this, it's at the hands of Brandon Presley Els. He's not just Elvis's cousin, he's an elected official in a Republican leaning district who the Republican's over there love him. So he speaks like a good pop
he speaks the populist language. So it's like, you have an ideal Democratic candidate on one hand, you have just the platonic anti ideal of a candidate on the Republican side, no offense to my man, Is that enough to lose in Mississippi?
I doubt it? But what do you think?
You know, it's funny. I was talking to actually some journalism students from Mississippi yesterday before we even decided to cover this topic, and they specifically mentioned Mississippi Today's coverage of the election. We're kind of talking about journalism, and
they said, it's a little bit delusional. There's this this kind of idea that Presley's really close, when from some of the perspectives that I was hearing, it's still kind of a real long shot that Mississippi is really, you know, not vulnerable.
I don't obviously, you might be right.
I have no idea. That's just what I heard from those folks, and it does seem to me like the Democratic poll there is an outlier. There was one poll that had them, even from back in August. But the other right, yeah, the others from the last couple of months, look like you have Reaps up by a fairly comfortable margin eight to eleven points. Although polling in these state races is just really hard to trust anymore, extremely hard
to trust anymore. I think they probably feel pretty pretty okay on the Tate Reefs campaign, and pretty okay is you know, what can you do in the age of Trump and Biden, both Democrats and Republicans. If you have a couple of pole that have you up eight and eleven and you're like, I'm pretty okay, that's probably the best you can do.
And it feels like deep blue states are so much more willing to elect Republican governors than the reverse, like Vermont the Republican governor, Kentucky's I'm sure Kentucky has it down, but almost all of New England had Republicans in the last ten years. Maryland doesn't right now, but for a long time had Larry Hogan. Louisiana elected a Democrat who was just that they now have a Republican there. But that's kind of interesting because Kansas actually has a democratic government.
And those are two areas where there's still that transit, Like there's such a historical gravitation towards Republicans in New England and a historical gravitation towards Democrats. And so I think those margins when there are marginal elections, the margins
of people who will still vote. You know, people in my family, for example, in Wisconsin, you know lifetime union members, deep Catholics, who will literally not vote for Republican even though they probably a lot with Republicans on almost every issue except for probably like union support, but almost everything else down the line, They'll never vote for a Republican. And we all kind of know people who are in
that camp. I think that's probably still is why Republicans are able to get elected in New England and Democrats are able to get elected in Louisiana. I mean, Richard Shelby of Alabama was a Democrat. He was till I think, yeah, he just left eighty two the Senate, but yeah, I think there's still some of that muscle memory.
And so.
The reverse is going on in western Pennsylvania. If we can put up D five, got some interesting elections there. First of all, there's a Pennsylvania Supreme Court election, which Democrats could lose and still control the court four to three, but if they win it that kind of locks them in for a long time. Pennsylvania Supreme Court obviously insanely important for elections, yes, just like the Wisconsin Supreme Court is, but in Alligating County, two really important races.
Going on there.
So the executive is a kind of berniicrat Lefty Sarah and Mamrano won the primary there but is now locked in a very fierce race with a with a popular Republican, and Republicans feel like if they ever have a chance to win, and county executive is the biggest position in right, that's that's the uh in in the Pennsylvania political structure, like to be Allegheny County Executive is bigger. That's a bigger deal than like being Pittsburgh mayor or whatever.
Uh.
And so they feel like they have they have a real chance to upset Democrats here.
They're there.
Their argument is that Sarah's too far left and and it'll be interesting to see how the or if the kind of war in Gaza, you know, plays into this election. It shouldn't because obviously the Alleghany County Executive has nothing to do with what's going on in Israel Palestine, but it's it's a hot issue and is an emotional one is going to and is going to probably bring people
out on both sides. And so if I forget the guy's name, even but if the Republican wins, will have to learn his name because he will immediately become a candidate for governor and for Senate, having you know, having one in a blue area. We'll see separately the there's a DA race where a criminal justice reformer won previously and is kind of being challenged by a Democrat who just registered as a Republican.
And so that's one way that.
In these kind of deep blue areas you can get around to have the fact of not being able to win a primary, you just switch parties and run in the general election. So that that'll be an interesting one too, and a test of kind of the criminal justice reform, which reminds me we should mention Wesley Bell, a criminal justice reformer in Saint Louis, you know, was elected prosecutor out there.
It's now challenging Corey.
Bush with and and really hitting her kind of from the right, and I suspect it's going to have a lot of report yeah from I don't think he's hit her yet on that, but I suspect that, Uh, we'll see a lot of well, I think I suspect we'll see Israel Palace.
I'm playing that race.
A robust Jewish community in the Saint Louis area, isn't there.
I don't know much about Saint Louis. Actually, screw, I really don't know much about that. I've driven through it. It's got that arch. Yes, I stopped and we looked at the arch. That's about all I got.
I'll say lowis for you.
So these races are happening on Tuesday. We'll be back here on Wednesday. And actually, Brian, I feel like this is your bread and butter. I love covering elections with the election.
Nights right, it will be we'll be here the day after the elections.
You have eyes all over the country. It's actually amazing you have all of these like little it's your memory. You're able to just like recall these little races and know the dynamics.
I just mostly follow the uh the Twitter account at Daniel ta and I e I'll just follow him on every election and seemed like an expert.
Yeah, he'll tell you what you need to know.
Although obviously some usually consequential things on the ballot, things that are not just important for people in states like Ohio and Pennsylvania. But we'll have ramifications in terms of funding and money all over the country, ripple effect for the next couple of years and in the presidential cycle as well, because everyone here in Washington is taking cues from these races in terms of what's going to happen over the course of the next year.
Also, Virginia, of course, that's right, Virginia. Let's let's put's put Betts. Now that they the woman who.
Was busted, oh, the Washington Post woman.
The Washington Post busted on camera doing like what was the whatever the website was.
I don't know. I ignored the entire story.
Say that the Republicans have since taken like explicit photos of her and mailed them to like every voter in the district.
This is counterproductive.
This with a like note on the mail that said do not open if you're under eighteen, which every fourteen year old in that district immediately opened.
And they're like porn is discussing and unbecoming. Here's something here's.
Here's something mailed directly to your house orchect pointed out the amily throughout most of the twentieth century, that would have been intercepted and they would have been arrested. Yes, yeah, thankfully those laws have been overturned.
But and Republicans are taking advantage of it. So does she win or what?
I don't know, I actually don't know.
It's a Richmond suburb and her seat could decide control of the Chamber, which would then put pressure on Youngkin to push forward on like an abortion ban or something. So, uh, it's we'll see if the Republican kind of moved backfired or if this district is not also not it's kind of a buttoned up place.
So and remember with Virginia, Younkin as really stakes his political future on the outcome of this election. And I think a lot of the signs are really not great for Youngkin at this point. I think he wasn't able to get as much money for the races that he
wanted to out of national publican organizations. So just a really important night next Tuesday, and some of these random races that when they're settled, will help us piece together a better puzzle of what the landscape looks like going into the presidential election and will obviously affect voters and people living in these states that have big ballot measures and elections coming up.
I kind of want to go to that Richmond district and go to that far.
Yeah, we go to some precincts and just ask people get their take on how they're voting on this because people have written her off. I don't think you can. I think it's I think I think it's gonna be close.
Yeah, I mean my instinct would be to say that, actually that she wins, because I don't think this stuff lands like it used to. It's an absurd story, but this is a post Trump era and people have sort of put those usual kind of boundaries aside and said, you know, I mean that's how Joe Biden want. Everybody's looking at this guy he's seen now and they're like, well, we just don't want.
Donald Trump, we don't want person.
Yeah, exactly. So we've kind of crossed that rubicon.
And was her husband she was on camera with, you're come on.
Family values, Come on, it was monogamous in the bounds of marriage, and she did it voluntarily.
Of course, Yes, consenting adults. Leaves people alone, you leave them alone.
Well, I don't know, Josh Hawley is now wants to overturn Citizens United.
This isn't amazing about this. This is just an amazing story. So this was a scoop from a real clear politics Bill Wegman yesterday, obviously friend of the show, Josh Holly told him that he was introducing a bill that would
undercut Citizens United. Obviously, a legislator can't reverse the Supreme Court decision, but you can introduce a bill that's kind of a ridiculous rebuttal, actually, because that's sort of the whole point of Congress is to make these laws, and the courts interpret them and say when something is unconstitutional or goes too far. But very much money in politics is the business of Congress. Congress just refuses to act on some of these questions, and it's unlikely that this
Holy Bill will go particularly far. But Holly makes this argument against Citizens United, which was the rallying cry of the conservative movement just ten years ago. Because Citizens United itself is a group of the conservative movement. Dave Bossi, who became very instrumental in Trump world as the leader of Citizens United, they were punished essentially by a law that was interpreted in a way that was not allowing them to broadcast anti Hillary, anti anti Hillary Clinton, anti
sort of political establishment messaging. And the court made that decision back in twenty ten. It paved the way for basically the super pack structure. You've been covering this longer than I haven't, probably have some interesting thoughts on this. But Josh Holly is making his argument in the language of originalism. He's saying there is no originalist argument for equating corporation's speech and human beings speech and saying that
that is both equally protected under the First Amendment. So did he sort of come out and make this absolute and absolutely vigorous argument against this long standing conservative position on speech. Mitch McConnell himself has been a huge champion of Citizens United and a huge opponent on any limits to political spending and elections. Holly comes out on fire against that and also makes the argument from a conservative perspective. So he's sort of using ROOSEVELTI and the phil points
this out in the story. Arguments about business and lobbying and private interests, influence and politics, but then he also talks about originalism and the sort of conservative approach to constitutionalism and says Citizens United flies in the face of all of that. Now, this obviously rankled Mitch McConnell. We can put the next element up in the screen. I actually shouldn't say obviously, because why is Mitch McConnell getting all upset and hot and bothered about a bill that
is likely going nowhere? Well because he knows that this is a really powerful argument with Republican voters. Jake Sherman of punch Bowl reports that McConnell went after Holly in a closed Senate Republican meeting yesterday. Holly signed onto the end Citizens Knightabille. McConnell told Holly that he's only in the Senate because of the Senate Leadership Fund, which accepts unlimited contributions, and then McConnell warned that anyone who signs
on will get heavy incoming from the right. Absolutely true, total threat and a serious threat. But by the way, Mitch McConnell saying, as your argument that because Josh Holly was elected by bad rules, he should not protest those bad rules, that is not an argument. It is the laziest argument, and the dumbest argument you could possibly muster in defense of your position.
But McConnell probably feels like a parent, you know, who's like left left wing kid is complaining about whatever.
Just got back from his first semester at Oberlin.
Right, How do you think this Without this inequality and this tax structor, you wouldn't have been at Oberlin, right, You never would have done it.
So that's Holly. He's the Oberlin kid complaining about it.
Good though, But Holly is more than the Oberlin kid. I mean, this is a guy who's legal pedigree is in terms of like conservative legal circles. He's very accomplished, Like he's a former state attorney general. I think he clerked for Alito on the Supreme Court has I mean, his pedigree is very impressive. So it's not as though he's like some young whipper snapper who doesn't really know much about the court and is coming in firing off. And I think that's why it bothered McConnell.
Yeah, and look, I welcome converts.
I question how sincere it is, you know, is it just political posturing because he knows it's not going to pass. But his argument, as Philip Quoter means I am an originalist, and I don't think you can make an originalist case for business corporations being treated like individuals when it comes to the right to political speech. And I think from an intellectual perspective, he's completely right.
You can't.
You have to just do it from a raw power person act of the way that McConnell and the Conservative Supreme Court kind of rammed it through. Up until Sits United, it was broadly understood that the Constitution gives the government broad power to regulate elections because without faith and elections, everything else crumbles. Like you need that, and so therefore you can do a little extra to make sure that
people believe in them. When in Citizens United, the argument was made that as long as spending is done independently's and that's their word, independently, then there can't be a quid pro quo because you gave to a super pac, Right, you gave to a super pac, not to the candidate. And if songs a super pac never spoke to the candidate, then you know, how could the candidate possibly owe the
super pac anything that was transparently silly? Right, But we've since seen that people who are elected by super packs or beaten by super packs very much, are then kind of controlled by those super packs. McConnell undermines the entire argument right there. He says, look, you're dependent on these super PACs.
How dare you?
Yeah?
Well, the whole.
Reasoning in Citizens United was that there's independence between super PACs and the candidates.
So then how can McConnell come in and say that's a good point, like it's such a good paint you depended on them?
He just made the counter argument proudly right.
But it's not an intellectual argument. It's a power argument.
Well, and that's okay. So from the conservative perspective, by talking about Citizens United, the group Citizens United not the case, they will make this point, and there is very much legitimate there's very much a legitimate argument here that the left sort of controls the federal bureaucracy. And when I say the left, I mean really the kind of center left, not the left left, not like Bernie people, the federal bureaucracy, but the sort of center left controls the federal bureaucracy.
They control Hollywood, they control these various institututions, levers of power. The one thing conservatives have any say in the one like kind of major institution. Again, this is, as the argument goes, is wall Street is the business sector. Like, that's the one place where conservatives feel like they have allies in this larger this larger landscape. And so that's why they said, you know, citizens united, the raw power argument. Here's the legitimate here, here's the sort of the virtue
behind equating corporations and people. It's because we have absolutely like we will be punished if we air something critical of Hillary, because the federal bureaucracy and all of these laws about campaign finance, et cetera, will be weaponized by the kind of center left bureaucracy against conservative speech. And so opening up this can of worms on super packs and campaign spending is the only way that conservatives can compete with the Hollywood superstructure, can compete with all of
these various institutions holding them back. But now Josh Holly sees that it is like Wall Street, and this is part of the argument he's making to people like McConnell. Wall Street actually hates Conservatives. It might find alliances with Republicans when it comes to taxes and like limited government, Like does wall Street love limited government? No of course not, but they do. Sometimes sometimes they really want to limit
a government. Other times they want more government because it will help their monopoly or whatever it is, as we were talking about earlier, and so they will sometimes make these alliances with Republicans more often than not. But then on the cultural side, Josh Holly looks at, for instance, what the MLB did with Georgia's voting law back in twenty twenty, and it's like, these people are not your friends, Like you seriously thought that this was the one alliance
in all of these institutions that would benefit you. You're wrong about that. And maybe Josh Holly was wrong about that. I don't know where he stood on Citizens United originally. But to the point about the sort of the raw power argument, yeah, I mean, I think punishing people for being critical of Hillary Clinton is a real problem. At the same time, equating corporations with human beings as mitt
Ronnelly sort of smugly, famously quick about people my friend. Yeah, it just sort of smuggly look like winking into the camera when he says it. It's just disgusting.
And I think before we move on to Rampaul, it's interesting to think about whether or not. The FEC really blew it and going after Citizens United. So for people that don't know the story, Citizens United created a basically a documentary hit piece on Hillary.
It was an AD, but it was like an hour and a.
Half long ad or something like that, and they wanted to then spend his money to air it, and the FEC said you can't do that within you know, sixty days of the general election or thirty days at the primary, whatever it was.
And they said, well, that's not fair. This is just speech.
And FEC should have been like, you know what, run your just run your little Hillary documentary.
It's fine.
We don't need to set precedent in the landmark case, right because the court's not looking good for us right now, and we're going to just obliterate our ability to regulate anything in which they did. Yeah, I mean this is Citizens United. And again, like you, I really value your perspective on this because you saw this happen in real time. What it did to campaign spending was enormous, and I have heard I was, I was glad Holly introduced this bill. And I don't know if this bill itself is the
right answer. But conservatives have basically completely swept under the rug the issue of campaign spending and finance campaign finance reform. And again that's not to endorse like a McCain fine Gold solution either. It is simply to say that since Citizens United campaign spending has gotten so completely insane and out of control, there's there has to be a conservative answer that is not good. Prusions are people, my friend,
And there's literally no conversation about it. I've heard it from or in cass and now from Josh Holly, but there's basically been no discussion about it. So let's have the conversation because we have to come to some solution here. The status quo is horrific.
Always welcome, that's right. You can see where ran Paul sits on this.
Yeah, that's right. We have Senator ran Paul is going to be with us right after this.
We are very.
Pleased to be joined now by Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, who is the author of the new book Deception, the Great COVID cover Up. We're eager to dive into this book and all of Senator Rand Paul's work on this extremely important issue. First, I want to get your thoughts, Senator Paul, on your exchange yesterday with Christopher Ray, which is actually entirely related to what you wrote about in the book, and I just want to ask you about
one of his quotes. In particular, you're pushing him on the FBI's conduct with social media companies, and you say, to my knowledge, or Christopher Ray said, and answer to your question, to my knowledge, our agents conducted themselves in compliance the law throughout. And that's in response to your question about whether or not they were attacking constitutionally allowed protected speech. I want to ask, did Christopher Ray perjure himself yesterday based on what we know from reporting and
other sources. You mentioned depositions about how the FBI conducted itself during the pandemic in relation to constitutionally protected speech.
You know, I think it's an open question.
You know, one of the things that they say they were involved with was election integrity. Well, what if election integrity involves the dossier that was forwarded by a campaign, a political campaign, the Clinton campaign, the Steele dossier forwarded and then a lot of these things are predicated upon that. What if there's a Hunter Biden laptop that then is suppressed. It seems to me that there is in this area constitutionally protected speech that you could have an opinion one
way or the other. But to somehow say that the government should be suppressing this is.
A real problem. Now.
To my mind, what I've been most interested in is whether or not the virus originated in the Labin Wuhan. For over a year, Facebook suppressed that, and they said they did it at the behest of the FBI.
They basically said, the FBI.
Came to us and said there's going to be a lot of misinformation out there, particularly maybe misinformation with guard to elections, but also misinformation about China.
And they were worried that too much bashing of China was going on.
And so there is a question of whether or not the FBI, or the Department of Homeland Security, or frankly, the CDC or the White House directly was involved. I want to know what was going on in these meetings. I want to see the minutes of these meetings. I don't want to hear the characterization from Director Ray or the characterization from Secretary of my org is that they
weren't censoring. Let's hear what they were discussing. And what I asked people to imagine is imagine at the end of this interview you are given a surprise visit by the FBI and they want to discuss our interview, and they want to discuss which portions of what I said did they consider to be misinformation or disinformation. I'm guessing
you would resist. I'm guessing you would be outraged. It's the same outrage we should have towards any from anybody from the government meeting with social media companies as well.
On the question of the origin of COVID's really the subject of this book. I'm curious what your interactions have been like. You're kind of behind the scenes with Democrats over the last couple of years. As I try to think about Democrats who are open to even kind of interrogating the question, I can think of Representative Brendan Boyle, a Democrat over in the House, and a handful of other Democrats. I'm not sure I can think of many on the Senate side, if any. And I'm wondering, what
was it like. Did you try to reach across the aisle and find democrats who could make this less of a partisan issue so that you could get to the truth of the matter, And what were those what were those conversations.
Like from the very beginning, I've reached out Tomocrat chairman's of Committee because the Biden administration, and to be fair, the Trump administration said they wouldn't reveal any data to anyone who didn't have the signature of a chairman. So I've worked with both the chairman of the Health Committee, Bernie Sanders, as well as the Homeland Security both of which I'm one of the top Republicans on to try to get information. But I have to get their signature.
But the only way I've been able to get the signature is really usually by trading. I have to hold up like a dozen nominees, hold up two dozen pieces of legislation, and I have to play hardball and I release things in exchange for signatures to get records.
But then the White House still resists.
Even when I get a Democrat to sign on, the White House resists. I'm having more trouble getting NIH grants that are unclassified than I am in talking to the CIA, and that's saying something because the CIA doesn't divulge much of anything, but the NIH and HHS is actually worse. So it's been a real struggle, but it's not for lack of trying, and it is still to me a
curious fact that the Democrats are disinterested. There just has been no interest on the side of Democrats to investigating this or to doing much.
Now we're slowly getting breakthroughs.
I've started working with Chairman Peters and he signed a few letters and we're actually talking about doing some joint.
Hearings, but it's very, very slow.
And to me, the comparison I like to make is that if you want to have a hearing and your allegation is that the plastic in your water bottle causes cancer,
I think we've had two dozen of those hearings. But if a million people died from a disease, and we all can pretty much document a lot of people died from COVID, both here and worldwide, we haven't had real hearings as could we possibly have been the cause, could we possibly have funded the lab that allowed this leak to happen, And shouldn't we reform our safety procedure as our scrutiny.
You would think they'd be all over.
This, and yet the mainstream media as well as a Democrat party which sometimes there's not much difference, really have done nothing other than sort of recommend million dollar prizes for Anthony Falci and put his he's got his mask now on the Smithsonian, his Washington National's mask, which is of absolutely no health benefit and actually was a disservice to all of us to recommend anybody at risk would wear a cotton mask, because basically that's just malpractice, it's bad advice.
Back on the code origin question, what would they say when you're meeting with say a Senator Bernie Sanders and saying like, look, we need these documents because it is possible that it leaked from this lab, and we need to think about tighter regulations for the health and safety of the entire globe. And these are very democratic sounding arguments. You know, you're a libertarian talking about more regulations. You
would think that they're kind of intent. Would go and say, hey, there might be even if I don't want to get into some China bashing, we should regulate this mortally. So would you hear back, did they under stand the underlying kind of.
Information or no?
I think that you know, we live in different worlds, we have different tribes, we look at different news. I don't think they've really read or have been too much interested in the origins of this. But here's what I've tried with Bernie Sanders. Jeffrey Sachs is a progressive economist. He's been a high ranking UN consultant, He's been in every progressive wing of a lot of things you can imagine. But he's also an honest progressive and I'm a big
fan of his. Actually, he headed the Lancet Report. He initially started out thinking that in all likelihood, Anthony Fauci, Peter Daizak, all these people write it probably game from animals. He investigated it for eighteen months and came to the opposite conclusion. Well, he was also known as Bernie Sanders' economists. I mean, he was a supporter of Bernie Sanders during his presidential election.
I thought, well, wow, why.
Don't I get him to see if he can help me get Bernie to be interested. And we actually did set up a meeting where he was there, and Bernie came by, I believe, and said hello. But we still have had trouble, and Bernie privately will say, well, yeah, maybe you know you've got a point.
And this and that.
Then we get stiff armed by his staff and todate. We haven't had one signature. We're not even talking about a hearing. We're talking about a signature requesting records. And this really at one point in time, it was us against them, the legislative branch against the executive branch. Now it's all Republican Democrat and they on this issue have decided that the Democrat position is to support the government
and government secrecy. And it's disappointing, but it's not for my lack of trying to get cooperation.
It's just that I've gotten no cooperation.
Yeah, And I want to get to that question actually of motivation in Peter Dajac, because you have a quote in your book from Peter Dasjac where as you say he's sort of bragging about all of the different coronaviruses that could exist. He said, you know, the Wuhan Institute of Orology had discovered over one hundred new stars related coronaviruses, and you right, So, yes, it's quite possible. There are many coronaviruses that Chinese have not been forthcoming about. You
also write about Fauci. He knew one thing for certain. He had funded those labs, he had publicly supported gain of function research and had purposely allowed that research to avoid the scrutiny of the Pandemic Pathogen Committee. And we can only conclude that he weighed the odds and decided that the cover up was his best option. This is all happening under the nose of the Trump administration, and I wonder to what extent you believe this implicates the
United States government. You talked about it a little bit earlier in this conversation, but the Chinese government is certainly implicated here. It's just it's hard to get around the issue, given all we know about Dazac and Fauci at this point, that the United States may have been complicit a in the pandemic, complicit at best A in the pandemic, and then B in covering up our role in the pandemic's origins. And that seems to be a grave reflection on America.
You know, The thing is is that it's easy for us to believe that the totalitarian government in China might cover things up. In fact, they've covered up their death rate, they covered up the transmissibility. They initially said it didn't
transmit human to human. We now know that the three people who got sick first with this in all likelihood worked in the lab of the gain of function scientist doctor She and it occurred in November of twenty nineteen, didn't start in January, and it was riproaring by January, but it really probably started in November. So we expect that from Chinese totalitarian government. You wouldn't expect it so much from our government.
Sort of.
One of the things about democracy or representative government is supposed to be openness and transparency. That makes us so much different. But we've had the same thing here. And I've told people that this conspiracy involves hundreds of people in our government, and people are aghast and they say, oh, no way, that's crazy. Hundreds of people. Well, I think
George Carlin explained it best. Conspiracy theories are not necessary where interests converge, and the interest here is that if you touched any money that went to Wuhan and you think the virus might have come out of that lab, anybody that was involved with funding the lab or involved with this at all, feels a self interest in preserving or obscuring.
The fact that they were related to this.
So Anthony Fauci's first responses were no, funding went to wu Hunt at all, and he's basically lying because it went to a conduit, it went to an EcoHealth and a secondary gram.
And then he got over that argument and he.
Said, well, no gain of function research went there. But then we find private emails or that everything virtually that he said in private is the opposite of what he
was saying in public. We find a private email that summarizes the February first, twenty twenty conversation, and in that in that email, he says, all the virologists got together today worldwide and we all kind of agree it looks like the virus has been manipulated in the lab, and so we think that it's, you know, very possible that it came to the lab, and we're equally suspicious or even more suspicious because we know they do gain and function research.
And he described some experiments. Well, the experiments he described.
Were funded by the NIH, funded by his division. They have a grant number on their acknowledging their funding. And so basically in private, he's basically admitting that exactly everything that he denies in public.
And it's the same for the others.
There's a Christian Anderson who says at one point, this is no fringe theory, this is no conspiracy theory in a private email, but in public he's calling everybody a kook or a nut who brings this up. And then you have the whole idea that was the government involved
in suppressing the knowledge of this on social media? And I absolutely believe that we will find I think actually the Missouri versus Biden depositions have already shown the government was involved wei trying to suppress anybody or any story that had to do with the virus coming from the lab in Wuhan.
And we're at a place now where Anthony Fauci himself even acknowledges that it is an open possibility that the Wuhan lab may have been kind of the origin of the coronavirus. So given that he acknowledges that at this point that it's possible, that raises a lot of questions about how we ought to think about gain of function research going forward. We have more labs around the world doing this dangerous research than we had before the pandemic started.
Monica Berknoli has been nominated to run the NIH. You asked her what her position was on gain of function research. I think white Coat Waste published some of those responses. You've obviously seen them since he responded to you, how would you characterize her response and do you how will you be voting on her when she comes if and when she comes to the floor.
I'd say her responses were mostly bureaucrat tease, mamb pamby nothing definitive, but really no acknowledgment of the danger of gain of function, saying we've got all these controls in place and we're.
Doing a good job. Just look the other way.
Well, we do have some controls, but one of the points we make in the book is is that the Pandemic Safety Committee the research never went there. The Pandemic Committee doesn't have the ability or power to reach out and look at grants.
They have to be volunteered. And so what I asked Fauchi about this, he.
Says, my experts have looked up and down, they've.
Looked at this research and it's not gain a function. Well, then show us the deliberations.
We still haven't seen those deliberations, and explain yourself why you chose to go around the Pandemic Safety Committee and allow this funding to go to Wuhan and understand that it was a terrible judgment error on his part to allow it to go around the Safety Committee and make the judgment on his own, because in.
The end this may well have led to the pandemic.
So there are a great deal of problems, and I don't think she recognizes the absolute need to reform the system. We need a much strengthened regulatory apparatus pandemic regulatory safety apparatus over this. I don't think she recognizes that. The other reason I'll vote against her is that in her career she's received over two hundred million dollars in grants from Advisor, and if Visor were just developing drugs, it
wouldn't be such a big deal. But they developed drugs that then the government mandates and the government pushes and they may say, oh, it's not a mandate. Well, once you make it sort of strongly worded by the CDC, and government filters down to governors who may mandate it, but also filters to school systems who say, oh, we're making the kids get this because the CDC says we should.
So in some ways, they are giving mandates to for a drug that a private company makes money off of, and she's been intimately associated with that company in a large, multi million dollar way.
I just think it'll be hard.
I mean, I think she should Probably the better part of valor would be to recuse herself from all decisions concerning Advisor, and I didn't get that in my answers either.
Republicans have been focused a lot on Chinese culpability, and we'll say China unleashed this deadly virus on the world. Do you think Republicans have done too much fingerpointing at China and not enough You're pointing at our own government for what it may have unleashed on the world.
You know, I met with the Chinese at Tache.
The ambassador wasn't here, so I met with the second in charge, and I tried to convince her of that that this doesn't have to be about just beating up China. We funded most of this, we were complicit in it. So really the blame should go all around and shouldn't be just directed at China. And I'm not a big bashler of things of things China. I'm not for trade embargoes,
I'm not for banning all business with China. I'm for not giving the research money and making sure that we try to get answers from them.
But I think trade with.
China has largely benefited the United States, and so I'm not for abolishing trade. So I do think the voices, particularly in my caucus, are beating the drums daily for war, and I think that left unabated, we will have problems with the rashness of the voices, particularly coming from my side, but really both sides.
And so whenever I.
Here everybody wanting to engage in war, particularly with another nuclear power, I've tried to become, hopefully a saner voice for moving slowly diplomacy and not Even though I do blame the virus on the coming out of the lab, I also blame ourselves as well, and don't want to make it just that, oh, this is we're going to rupture and have no relations with China, which I think would be a mistake.
And speaking of where, I wanted to ask you one question about the war that's going on in Gaza right now. A couple of days after October seventh, you were on Fox News and you said, let's let Israel do what they need to do, which is to have a punishing response the people in Gaza to say no more, we are not going to let this happen. We've now seen what that punishing response has been, a minimum of eight.
Thousand plus casualties.
We've seen what appear to amount to war crimes from Israeli israel defense forces targeting the entire apartment buildings, entire blocks. Do you stand by the original claim and where do you what do you feel like should be done now? Should there be a ceasefire at this point?
And you know, I think when you see the horrific images of young people being mowed down with automatic weapons at a concert, images of whole families being killed, it's hard not to be moved by that and understand Israel's desire to want to respond and to try to wipe out, particularly the military leadership of this. But you're right, they're embedded in a civilian population and many civilians have died.
And this is ultimately a judgment that Israel will have will have to make whether or not the disruption of Hamas chain and command is now sufficient or whether they go on. Because you are right, as more civilians die in Gaza, not intentionally, but as they die in Gaza, there's always the question, are ten new terrorists created for
every civilian that was killed. The same can be said of the drone attack throughout Africa, the drone attacks that killed a humanitarian worker after our soldiers died in Afghanistan as we were leaving.
So there always is the.
Question of blowback, and ultimately that decision has to be has to be made by Israel, and I think that
the reporting on it will make a big difference. There was a great article recently talking about this by Bonnie Christian that was in Reason magazine, and the way she ended her article to me was just amazing, almost poetic or from a novel, talking about how we descended to moral chaos if we let ourselves be consumed by revenge, either revenge of Palestinians civilians that were innocently killed, or
Israeli citizens that were innocently killed. If we let ourselves, we'll descend into sort of a moral chaos that really is ever escalating and never ending. And so there has to come a time when we do talk about how do you make things better in Gaza. But I'll tell you it's hard to in the midst of the death
and carnage. I was there in twenty thirteen and spoke with net and Yahoo about trying to facilitate and allow Gaza to open their own port, and I said, maybe you do it like they did the Panama Canal.
For so many years with joint security.
By Israel and Gaza, but allow them to collect their own duties and allow them to have some income coming into a port. And his response to me, and this wasn't after a massacre, this was in more of a relative time of peace.
He says, they have a port in Israel.
And that kind of thinking won't get to a point where we can have a peaceful arrangement.
But on the other side, I mean, if.
They were sitting here they say, how do you negotiate with the country, it says we.
Want to wipe you off the map, and they kill civilians.
It's very, very difficult situation. But ultimately, if you want peace, you want stability, and you want the end of a lifetime of terrorism, there has to be something that allows the Gaza, those who live in Gaza to prosper and thrive. But you understand the problem. If they're bombing Israel, it's going to be very hard as well.
Senator rand Paul, also the author of the new book deception, the great COVID cover up. Thank you so much for your time this morning.
Thank you.
That does it for us today on this edition of Counterpoints. It was a really interesting interview.
Ryan.
Yeah, I think he's I think he's right, and I think he needs to in the sense that you had a lot ask a lot of questions about what the goal is here of this assault at this point and whether it's it's even going to kind of blow back on Israel, like if that, if that's how people need to need to think about it to get themselves into a place where they think about a ceasefire.
I guess we'll take that.
The book, by the way, it's like five hundred and fifty pages or something, very long book.
It's a big book. And you know, we saw a lot of bluffs just on that point between Rand Paul and Lindsey Graham type Republicans during the Obama years. He was a really interesting voice during the Obama years actually, and he mentioned dronings just now, and so I actually wonder, I think your question was really helpful. I actually wonder to what extent we're going to see that going forward during this administration. All right, Well, that does it for
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