11/29/23: Israel Hamas Truce Extended, Elon Visits Israel, Bernie Weighs Conditioning Israel Aid, Koch Network Backs Nikki Haley, Desperate Push For Ukraine Funding, Black Friday Spending Reveals Bleak Economy, Ryan Spars With Ted Cruz On Israel And Gaza.

Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here, and we here at breaking points, are already thinking of ways we can up our game for this critical election.

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If you like what we're all about, it just means the absolute world to have your support. But enough with that, let's get to the show.

He thinks he's so funny.

Frank, good book, Franson, who's going to start the show today?

We first of all, welcome to Counterpoints.

But if you were listening, Ryan was opening the show by looking straight to camera as though he was busy reading his book, The Squad amc and The Hope of a Political Revolution.

I don't know if that kinds of starting the show right.

I'm enjoying it. It's fun to go back through it. Speaking of this book we're gonna have. Ted was on the show later today. We promised last time that Ted Cruz was going to join us.

We talked a big game, we were really going to nail this guy to the wall.

And maybe he was watching the beginning of the show and he decided he's not gonna make it. He rescheduled for today, so he will be here later. That's what we're told. We make no promises because he controls his schedule, but he says he will be here later in the show. The reason it's relevant to the book is he's currently

This is so bitterly competitive it is.

I'm going to make it the most boring interview ever, so nobody watches it, nobody.

Buys the book.

That's pretty good. Well, maybe don't do that.

I won't do that. It'll be an exciting interview.

We do.

Go ahead and buy the book. If you like Ted Cruz, go ahead and buy book.

You know he's always game to have debates and arguments, so I expect that's what's going to happen. By the time this airs, we will know how it went. But that's my expectation for it at the very least. But Ryan, before we get to that, we do have a lot.

Of news to go over.

More hostages were released yesterday, more negotiations towards a potential extension of the ceasefire.

We have elections.

Nicki Haley got the coveted Koch brothers in Noorisement.

And rods, and Nicki Haley just had an.

Interesting reaction to that. We're talking about all kinds of stuff and.

Yes, and Congress is now trying to figure out ways to get money to Ukraine. Yes, and so the new strategy that they have landed on is they're going to tighten asylum rules. They're going to add more money for border security. There's a deal being worked out between kind of Ukraine. Yeah, it's sort of kind of like, well, the kind of hardline immigration hawks don't like it, obviously,

Nobody seems to like it.

But that's how they get things through Congress that nobody likes.

How we get things done in this country.

It's right.

Everybody means everybody hates it. That means it's likely to become law.

Everybody hates it except for the lobbyists. Probably.

No, it's great, great Northern Virginia real estate, that's for sure.

It'll do great for that.

We also had some interesting numbers coming out of Black Friday about by now pay later functions that have been added to different shopping websites and what that might say about the economy. After that, we will get to ted Cruz, but let's start with the hostages.

Ryan. More hostages were released yesterday.

We can put the a block up on the screen here, the truth, I guess, if you could call it, that was extended two days and eleven more hostages were freed yesterday. What did you make of some of this footage that was coming out yesterday of the Middle East ryane of hostages being released.

Yeah, And what I think people who are hoping for is that this two day truce will lead to another two or three day truce which leads to another one and can eventually reach to get to some kind of long term truce. Because you're not going to get to a resolution, You're not going to get to justice at this point. Because at the same time that this is unfolding, you have the complete collapse of all civilian infrastructure in Gaza.

Like that leads directly to rampant disease.

Cindy McCain actually is, you know now, the head of the World Food Program, which I had forgotten, but she's been out warning that Gaza is approaching famine conditions. There are only about two hundred trucks of you know, containing humanitarian relief supplies getting in and that's just not enough for a city of what used to be a city of two million people, which is now a gigantic pile of rubble on which two million people are expected to survive.

And we have more from the New York Times.

We can put this next graphic up on the screen here, the first round of hostages released as extended truce appears.

Behold, that's their headline.

But if you're looking at this, if you're watching the show, you can see these figures here of the people who have passed away in captivity, the people who are eighty years old in captivity, eighty years and over in captivity, which we saw actually some of them being released Israelis yesterday and getting jeered pretty brutally as they were released.

We saw a we see.

Here people fifty five years and older, eighteen to fifty four and older. Eleven Israeli hostages were released yesterday, and according to Reuter's, Hamas had said earlier that it received a list of thirty three Palestinians that were going to be released from Israeli jails in return for.

Those eleven hostages.

People probably remember that the Israeli the Israeli stance on this was that they would extend the truth by one day for every ten more hostages that were released ran.

Where do you think that stands right now after yesterday.

I think that they're sorting out who and how they're going to move forward. I do think that Hamas wants to continue releasing hostages.

They certainly prefer that to you.

A bombing rampage they have, they have essentially signaled that they would release all the hostages if there would be a kind of permanent ceasefire reached. Is basically Israeli government is rejecting that, saying that no, like they're they're still committed to completely annihilating Hamas. The calculations of what that would take though at the current pace, you know, they they there are various estimates of how many Hamas fighters

That I'm.

Sol oh so become a response by could she that what the lost romot? You call it the.

Awesome slso?

Could she? But mohammed.

So just horrifying stories that we're hearing coming out of from from the detainees. And then we're also winding up with this situation where the detainees are the former detainees being told that they're not allowed to celebrate, not allowed to meet with people, not allowed to speak to the press.

That's part of the deal.

That's part of the deal. They're not allowed to celebrate. Struck me.

It's you know, actually, let's even get into this next clip because we see some of this kind of the sparks really starting to fly.

On this issue that Sky News.

I believe we understand that a teenager has been shot. Is this the right way to handle this situation, given that tensions are already rising and emotions are already quite high.

Well, we're talking about the release of attempted murderers. You call them children, but we're talking about teenagers who stabbed other teenagers. We're talking about.

That's not my question, Deputy Mayor. I totally and fully understand that they haven't been accused giving you the contract, I understand, but I if I can, Deputy Mayor, Deputy.

Mayor, I'm just going to interrupt you.

I am fully aware of I'm fully aware of I'm answering that, Deputy Mayor.

I'm fully aware of what they've been vibrations. Part of the deal was that there would be no celebrations, and the reason that these clashes are occurring is because exactly against the deal that there would be no celebrations celebrating the release of attempted murderers in East Jerusalem, in my city, where many people, many of the victims live side by side with the people who try to kill them.

Part of the deal was that they would not have these celebrations. And if the clashes are occurring, it's exactly because of that.

Well, so that was the deputy mayor you heard of Jerusalem speaking on Sky News and ran, you know, I do what you said earlier makes sense to me. It also makes sense to me that celebrations can fuel potential conflict in a way that she's making a decent argument that that's what happened.

So it goes back to this talking point that we constantly hear that Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East, that that's why, that's why it needs to be protected, the only democracy in the Middle East. Would not insist that you cannot celebrate, because you have to understand that's also in the context of laws they've implemented

In fact, we talked about a journalist last week on the show who and those were not sympathetic posts that she ended up being detained over. They were not I wouldn't characterize them as sympathetic so much as I would characterize them as sympathetic with hun loss, they're sort of blocking people who had been taking hostage.

But yes, she was detained, right, And then the idea that though not only can you not celebrate, but you can't have family members come visit you after you've kind of left detention. It just really exposes or or asks the question of what kind of democracy are we talking about here. It's last democracy in the Middle East or the only democracy in the Middle East. Also, why does a racket short shrift on this all the time? Levin has elections too, didn't we create a democracy?

I thought we did that.

We did, yeah, and also they do have elections.

Are you saying the mission was not accomplished?

It was a mission was accomplished clearly thought more anyway.

We needn't litigate or relitigate that.

But no, I mean, I think it's legitimately a challenge because you you do have a serious potential for a security situation to erupt and obviously want to avoid that as much as possible so that.

You can get your own hostages back.

And that's I mean, it's no easy feat, but obviously doing it while proving that you can live up to the standards of the sort of middle Eastern democracy.

I mean, it's important obviously, right and.

Even if you have cut a deal with Hamas that there would be no celebrations, Like the people who were released from prison were not part of that deal. They were just told that they were released from prison. And then if you're if you're celebrating the fact that you've gotten your freedom. The other choice that the Israeli soldiers and Israeli police have is to not shoot them like that's You could also just let the celebration kind of wind down and people go home like that's that's that's

No, he's not.

He walks it back.

He's now walking back in. Well, his aids are walking it back. Two reporters do we have here? Let me get your reaction and I'll find the I'll find the exact quote.

Yep.

First of all, I mean, imagine it's your job to write these tweets for Joe Biden.

And you accidentally called for an end of.

War and you don't.

And we're going to get into what Netna who talked about with Elon Musk recently and Elon Musk's trip to Israel, because actually Nina who was talking about a two state solution. Whether or not he supports the two state.

Selection extremely important.

It's very relevant. Yeah right now.

We're going to get into some of that in a second, but it is really relevant right now as we're talking about this post from by on X, because that is in contrast with the statement of the government, the stated position of the government of the country who is reliant on our aid in this situation. I don't mean our money,

But we don't know, I mean, we honestly have no.

That's what he claims, right, right, right, We don't know what's happening behind the scenes, but yes, that is that's what Biden has been saying that he's and he's kind of alluded to it a little bit when he was asked about conditioning AID, whether you should condition AI days or based on whether or not they're committing human rights abuses, he said the other day, that's an interesting thought, and it's something we should consider.

That's the furthest of American.

President has gone since well back back in the eighties. The posture even of the Reagan administration was further to the left than we're in now. But in this new era, that's that's a step that hasn't been taken before. And then Biden said, if I had started by saying that, then I wouldn't have He basically said that it wouldn't have been able to develop the wiggle room privately to

If we can put this put this one up here.

Ben Vere Basically he says, if you don't hurry up and restart this war, I'm going to bring the government down.

And he's the national security man.

And now Gavier could leave the government, and if everyone else stayed, net Yaho wouldn't have enough support to stay. But Gavir is not alone in his hawkish approach to this. Now the counter argument that who has been making to the right, and this is the argument that he's been making four years that we refuse to hear in the

So that is.

Netanyahu's argument for why he should be prime minister. That is what he effectively ran on just when he became Prime minister.

This is yesterday, that's from yesterday.

Well, Joe Biden is posting a tweet that he posted.

Right saying that Biden Biden insists that everything they're doing is in furtherance of a two state solution, while Netanyahu has been very publicly and openly saying he does not support a two state solution. And the reason, and he has said this in the past, the reason that he bucked up Hamas was because Hamas makes it more difficult

Well, the word quagmire is underused an American foreign policy and that's where this is headed from my perspective. As again, you know, I know a lot of our audience disagrees with me on the question of Israel and generally supportive of Israel and take a different position on this, although I have plenty of problems with the way they've prosecuted this war and the way that they've chosen to run

What have you done so far?

We actually don't know, to your point that you made earlier, we don't know a breakdown of Hamas and civilians. We don't know the extent of the damage to the Hamas military and government operation, the terrorist operation, it's extremely hard

For them with Hamas.

But that only goes so far when you have dramatically different endgames, and that to me feels like a quagmire.

Right or yes.

And the folks like Ben Gavie are very clear that they have absolutely no interest in giving up the West.

Bank like they have absolutely not.

They have seized vast portions of it, and they do not plan on its slowing down the settlements or slowing down the expulsions or what peace would take, which is actually rolling back the settlements the land for peace. And when it comes to Gaza, they've been also very clear like that there are significant elements of the Israeli governments say we should just clear it out, yeah, and turn it into Israeli settlements.

And I mean, our government is funding supporting a war that the government we're supporting has a completely different endgame as opposed to what our position is on our public position.

At least we're not that stupid, though, are we.

Well, if our position is two state solution and this is the government, the head of the government that we're supporting is saying something basically completely different than that. Let's move into the second part of the block, because we have net and Yahu talking exactly about this. We're going to start though with Elon Musk, because the two of them had a conversation when Elon Musk went to Israel this week and toured. Let's start with some clips and some of the audio here is a little bit hard

Last night some of them home, that's home yet, but the most of them were.

Taking the murdered signed them in order to breach doors from windows.

Obviously that there are three things that need to happen in the guz's situation. I mean, there's no choice but to kill those who insist on murdering civilians. There's our choice. They're not going to change their mind. And then the second thing is to change the education so that a new generation of murderers is not trained to be murderers. And then the third thing, which is also very important, is to try to build prosperity.

So as Elon Mus talking to Yahu and the first part of the clip, and we actually have more from a conversation they had that we're going to roll, I think we might as well just roll right into it.

It's still very relevant. Here's that club.

The Germans hold themselves up in the German cities. Nobody said, well, don't attack the Wehrmacht, the German army, the Nazi army because you have the civilians there. In fact, that's exactly what the Allies did, through the cities of France and the cities of Germany, and many, many, many civilians were killed. I don't know what history would be like if you had, you know, the kind of mass communications that we have today in protests would have been launched against the Allies

I mean it is. It was troubling to see massive protests in almost every major city in favor of a moss or well. They generally characterized it as sort of a free Palestine movement.

And obviously a lot of international law was developed in the wake of World War Two and exactly what who was talking about. We sort of came to a consensus, at least a lot of the West came to a consensus and what was appropriate uses of some of these vastly power, more powerful new technologies.

Military right now?

Yes, like the world, including the West, said no. Dresden was not okay.

Actually, and planes, by the way, are new in Dresden.

We take it for somewhat for granted now, but like planes were within one hundred years of their existence.

I mean decades way less.

Yeah, we're trying decades into the existence of airplanes and are being used in completely foreign ways to wage war that humanity had never seen before in World.

War One and World War two.

Right, and so yeah, to go back and say that the things that the world like, they were actual not like the Germans were actual Nazis, Like you didn't have to stretch the like some weird comparison to say that

That was Elon Musk Withhu on X. They were doing a space's conversation on X. So this was a public

In that discourse.

Yeah, And his point, Musk is this very very smart guy and so when he says like really dumb things, I always wonder.

Like what on earth is going on?

So he talked about the basically we need to re educate people in Gaza and then we need prosperity. I'm all with him on prosperity, Like basically the way that the troubles in Ireland, you know, wind up, is that the Ireland was given basic dignity but also economic growth and opportunity, and so the costs of joining you know, Shinfein were higher because you had actual economic opportunities. The cost of joining Hamas for a nineteen year old kid in Gaza is zero because it's like a seventy five

Going to take them.

That's why you see kind of prosperity and peace and the end to conflict moving in Tantum.

So.

I think he's right on that the education point was just absurd. I interviewed a guy who went to school in Gaza a couple of weeks ago, and I actually asked him about what you hear about all the propaganda that Hamas and before them, you know, Fatah was giving to children in Gaza schools, and you read some of it, you're like, yeah, this is this is gross stuff, Like

I mean, there doesn't seem to be it again.

It's it's very hard to know how the public has reacted in Gaza to Hamas in the wake of October seventh, because obviously it's different, it's not all it's Gaza is not a monolith. The Palsenian people are not a monolith. At the same time, though there's a completely legitimate argument that they should be blaming Hamas for putting themselves in this.

Sort of be the block right.

But the Palestinian Palestinians have seen this movie before in some ways, and so they know where this is going. So back back in the early eighties when Israel invaded Lebanon to clear the Palestinian Liberation Organization, the plot out of bay Rout after indiscriminate bombing of bay Rout, after massacres, after huge, huge numbers of civilian casualties, PLO basically waved the white flag and said, you know, we will leave.

Just peacefully rebuild the place now?

And again that's where we get into Quagmar territory, and it's where we get into this question of like, how have they proven?

How has any of the United States proven that.

The eradication the destruction of Hamas is possible here.

In all sincerity?

And so we without having that, it looks like, you know, it's it's headed for. There's there's nothing that's going to happen right now that's breaking any cycle.

It's just not going to be.

It's not breaking the cycle, it's it's perpetuating the cycle. Nothing here is going to change, and we have no plan to anything that will change because you're not eradicating Hamas, you're not destroying Hamas. And if you do, say you do that, what comes into the vacuum. We also have absolutely no plan for except for more violence.

The only people that seem to have a plan, the only faction that seems to have a plan, are the ones who say we're just going to lock this completely down and we're going to basically empty out the population one where or the other of the gods strip right, which will then only leave a handful of West Bank regions to just keep under perpetual lockdown. Like that, that's

Right, No, I agree.

Then what's worse is that we're not being given anything clear anyway. And that's because they know, I mean, it's like it's a completely feudal exercise to say like, oh, yes, we have this very clear path to peace, we have very clear path.

To a better situation. There isn't one, and that's why we're not hearing.

Right, and roughly even populations between Israel and the Palestinian territories.

To be a country. You can't just be a prison.

It's no minor difference between Biden and Nyah who Biden's saying two state solution, two state solution, and yah who's saying, I'm not budging on this period, there's no two state solution. To have the two leaders say that within such close proximity to each other on the same day. Again, it's not surprising if you follow both of these governments, but it's it should be shocking to the sort of conscience of where this hot war, hot conflict is going in the near future.

And to finish up with Elon Musk, we can put this last element up. Musk had suggested that he was going to make Starlink available to Gaza humanitarian outfits. The Israel pushed back and said, no, do not, do not do that because Tamas will end up using starlink. And so Israel has now told Elon Musk that Starlink can only operate in Gaza with its approval.

You know.

Their quote is basically, you know, any operation of Starlink within Israel, you know, must have the permission of Israel, and that includes Gaza, which contradicts there kind of earlier claims that Gaza is like independent and that they've left it right.

Well, I mean, just to the you know, we're what we're almost two months into this hot conflict. We're coming up on the first week of December, which we'll make it two months.

And you know, the New York Times.

Had a staggering again not particularly surprising, but a staggering report on the proportion the apparent proportion of civilian deaths in this conflicts.

Because women and children making up like eighty percent.

From yeah, I mean from several different ways that people have have sort of crunched these numbers and analysts have looked at them, and it is by what the information we have available right now, it does not compare favorably to other conflicts. It does not compare favorably to Fallujah,

Numbers that were coming out.

But all that is to say, when you have that situation juxtaposed with the lack of direction from these governments, the lack of clear sort of paths forward, it's just it's a disaster.

And we might find And how horrifying is this that the proportion of civilian casualties carried out by the Israeli assault on Gaza will be higher than the proportion of civilian murders by Hamas.

On October seventh.

And that is not at all to defend or minimize what Hamas did on October seventh. What what it does do is it puts in context the brutality of what Israel is doing here. If Hamas even had a lower proportion of civilian deaths in what we all agree it was a horrifying atrocity, then what does this count as.

Ryan on this question of a ceasefire.

There's new reporting in the intercept about how Democrats in Congress are handling the question of where we go from here. Take us through a little bit of what you guys have learned from Bernie Sanders yesterday, yes when he was questioned by Daniel bogus Law YEP.

Senate Democrats yesterday met and discussed whether or not to condition aid to Israel. My colleague Bogus Law talk to Bernie Sanders ahead of time, and Sanders said that you can put.

Up this element here.

I think it's c one said that he was considering forcing a vote onto the Senate floor condition conditioning aid. Now this comes as Senator Peter Welsh, the other Senator from Vermont, has called for an indefinite ceasefire. Representative Becka Ballot, who's the only member of the House from Vermont, has called for a ceasefire and has signed on to that resolution, leaving Bernie Sanders is the only elected official from Vermont

We'll ask Ted Cruz if he.

Wants to introduce this when he comes here later today. Any Senator can put a privileged resolution on the floor that it has to sit in the committee for ten days. After ten days come out of the Committee and then you vote on it. If it passes the Senate, it would force then the State Department to take thirty days to conduct a study of whether or not Israel is engaged in a pattern of human rights abuses, and if they are, then a congressional resolution of disapproval would be privileged,

So the day after Thanksgiving, he said he told reporters that conditioning AID is quote a worthwhile thought, and said, I don't think if I started off with that.

This is Biden, though, this is Biden.

Yeah, okay, great, So that he said we'd have ever gotten to where we are today, which was to your point earlier in the show about Biden's argule even Biden's So what he said publicly versus what he said.

It seems like Bernie is not willing to go further than Biden. It seems like.

But I think that also reflects Bernie's stance on this, that he thinks this is sort of an attack to whole I don't want to say neutrality, but almost the sort of neutrality and the question of a ceasefire, not a neutrality in the conflict, but this question of a ceasefire. That it's helpful to have a public stance that allows you some more wiggle room privately.

Yeah, I think Bernie has just really dug in.

And he's not someone who is you know, who really takes pressure from the left, well right, he doesn't. I mean, he doesn't take pressure well from anybody. He's he's very he's an he's an independent minded person.

You talked about some of that in the book that in the Squad.

Go get that, Go get the book.

And uh, you know he a lot of his family was wiped out in the Holocaust. He took you from people close to him, you know, he took the October seventh massacres, you know, extremely hard as as I think it's easy to say that we all did, but you know, I think for for for some you know, who have that that experience, that that experience and that heritage, no, it hits, it hits even harder, incredibly, And so it was it was visceral for him and then and he is he is not like I said, he's not somebody

So this is a live question.

Now if he says he's considering the bare minimum, which is to say, our security assistance should not be used for what we all acknowledge, our human rights abuses, international war crimes like that. Should that shouldn't be a difficult step for him to take.

Now, you've been following John Federman very closely throughout his his young political cameritment, especially over the last couple of months.

When you can put this next element up on the screen here, Obviously people have seen.

The images of John Feedder, not this one from the oh right, So this is John Fetterman. Ryan's going to get into this in a second. But if you're looking at the screen right now, this is some background. It's really helpful context and background on John Fetterman's approach the question of Israel super pack support, APAC support and all of that. So let's take a look at this vo and then Ryan, you can walk us through some of

Now, John Fetterman, as.

We've talked about a little bit here, is is definitely Ryan a man of the left.

Has been right sort of populist left.

This is he's not just sort of cautiously like Bernie staking out a different position from the left on this. He was draped in the really flag at the demonstration, the Perriginal demonstration here in DC recently, and he has done that not just literally but also rhetorically and with his votes throughout the course of the last couple of months.

This comes from my new book that's out next week. And so during the twenty twenty two campaign, when he was running for Senate, he had to fend off not just a primary challenge, but also a Republican because it's a swing district.

And so I'll just read a little bit of that.

Fetterman was locked and what threatened to be a tight primary race with the Representative Connor Lamb for the Senate nomination. Lamb's campaign was openly pleading for super Pac support to put him over the top. Early in the year, Jewish Insider reported Mark Melman, who was the head of d MFI, had reached out to Fetterman with questions about his position

Quote.

I want to go out of my way, he said, to make sure that it's absolutely clear that the views that I hold in no way go along the lines of some of the more fringe or extreme wings of our party. I would also respectfully say that I'm not really a progressive in that since Betterman unprompted stress that there should be zero conditions on military aid to Israel, that BDS which isott the boycott movement toward Israel, that

Like it's clearly a sincere.

There's something more going on than just just this.

Well, and I can imagine, you know, the pictures of the hostages. For example, we were just talking about how incredibly visceral the witnessing what happened on October seventh was for a lot of people who descend from Holocaust survivors, his families, as you mentioned Bernie Sanders, where a lot of his family has wiped out. The hostages here are are really I completely understand him putting their pictures up

I mean, it is symbolic, but it is.

The enduring symbol and the enduring you know, example of Hamasa's specific culpability.

In October seventh.

John Fetterman, on the other hand, though, for the sort of the way that he's handled this, it is really really interesting that he seems to almost relish right being anti populist Left when he so relished being pro populous left, and the rest of his campaign he really wasn't shy,

Him, right and right, I think, you know, calling for the hostages to be released, I think is something that basically everybody can agree with, like.

At least the hostages. Yeah. Uh.

It's it's the inability, it seems, or the unwillingness to say anything about or anything significant about the catastrophe and Gaza, Right, that's the part I think that that has people kind of shaken that like wow, Like okay, you want to wear an Israeli flag at the at the rally.

Okay, you know you want to, you know you want to.

Even he saw anti war protesters on the street and a bunch of veterans getting arrested and he waved an Israeli flag like in their face as they were getting arrested. Like, all right, that's a little bit over the top, but I get it. But if you couple that with at least expressions of concern for the Palestinians facing a slaughter that is kind of orders of magnitude greater than what happened on October seventh, then at least you can sense the humanity in the situation.

Yeah, Hamash should release the hostages. There shouldn't have to be a negotiation. Hamash should release the hostages.

You can condemn hamas but also condemn collective punishment of two million people.

This is you know.

So the House of Representatives took a vote last night on an resolution that was build as basically just a pro Israel resolution and an anti like Holocaust resolution, a very just like sort of symbolic gesture that the House does every so often. Two votes were not for it.

Massy said, I'm voting.

No on the resolution because it equates anti Zionism with anti Semitism. Anti Semitism is deplorable, but expanding it to include the criticism of Israel is not helpful. And the reason I brought that up is just because two things can be true at the same time. We can have two different positions or two positions on different issues at the same time and acting like they're constantly mutually exclusive.

I get having priorities.

I get that the priorities, and I think the priorities here should be the hostages.

Again.

That's why I understand Fetterman having them on his wall. That can be true, and it can also be true that, as The New York Times documented this week, the proportion of civilian casualties is disgusting and unacceptable. You don't have to pick one or the other. Let's move on to Nikki Haley. Nikkia Haley scored the coveted Coke Brothers endorsement yesterday when the conservative group Americans for Prosperity came out and gave her their steal of approval in the twenty

Like clockwork, the.

Pro open borders, pro jailbreak bill establishment is lining up behind a moderate who has no mathematical bathway of defeat the former president. Every dollar spent on Nicki Haley's candidacy should be reported as an in kind to the Trump campaign. That's from the DeSantis comms director Andrew Romeo, and I will add Ryan, it is pretty interesting for a couple of reasons.

One, it's a Pete Amy twenty twenty move.

It's an attempt to consolidate the field because in a state like New Hampshire and actually even in Iowa. If you put together the anti Trump votes for other candidates, that will generally in polling that means Trump will have a much harder time that you don't have Trump over that fifty percent threshold in early states. So if you can consolidate the votes, then you can have this like last gasp attempt to get get in and potentially undermine Trump.

NICKI. Haley is a hawk.

The Cookes are not Americans for Prosperity and stand together the broader Coke Network are not hawkish on foreign policy. They have this very sort of traditiontional libertarian approach to

Blah blah blah.

The DeSantis campaign seemed quite salty. There were they hoping that they were going to get the Cope endorsement.

I don't think so, and I actually don't think anybody really wants it. But on the other hand, The New York Times lays out how it could be helpful for Nikki Haley, who has this somewhat of a surge in New Hampshire where she's basically overtaken Dysantis in some poles in New Hampshire, and she's you know, feels like she's on a surge, and states like Iowa, South Carolina obviously now that Tim Scott has dropped out, that's extremely helpful to her in early states.

So that comes with.

AFP's infrastructure, and so the one thing that Nikki Haley didn't have. You know, it doesn't matter that much if the polls are going at you know, five points in one direction or the other if you don't have a ground game. So this matters to the extent that it can give her a ground game to say this really already has that in some of these early states, especially in Iowa.

How did the Koch square.

The foreign policy question there is like do they they just don't like Trump so much?

They say that they're just.

They they'll take someone who one hundred and eighty degrees opposite of them when it comes to American adventurism abroad.

I think so this is a memo, they say in sharp contrast to recent elections that were dominated by the negative baggage of Donald Trump and in which good candidates lost races that should have been one Nicki Haley at the top of the ticket, with boost candidates.

Up and down the ballot.

Haley is quote the key independent and moderate voters that Trump has no chance to win. I think that means the key to independent, moderate voters the moment, we requires face to tested leader with governing judgment and policy experience to pull our nation back from the brink. The country is being ripped apart by extremes on both sides.

Which basically folks are saying that they're upset that they're extremes on both sides after spending the last three decades funding like extreme element of well.

I mean, it's kind of interesting because the ex.

They're all trying to find who did this, Like they're huge.

Yeah, they were huge Tea Party funders because the Tea Party the question was limited government, quote limited government, and so their hope was that you know, they don't think they got behind like a Christin O'Donnell, but you know, you can find any number of people. Their hope was that these sort of cultural conservatives would keep the social conservatism, the cultural conservatism, on the back burner, and would you know, they would be able to convince people, you know, to

Get those tax cuts.

They got those tax cuts in fact, by the House and the Senate in twenty seventeen the president. I don't know how much money they put into the presidential election, but they got.

Those tax cuts when Trump pays them.

Right, Yeah, they got those tax cuts in twenty seventeen.

So it depends.

I mean, they're pro business extremism, sure on other issues they are totally moderate. Which is why it's much more easy for DeSantis to come in now and say to try to drive a wedge because Nikki Haley has a coke endorsement, and I actually think running ads connecting Nikki Haley to the pro open Border's coke network is not helpful to her whatsoever.

In Iowa or New Hampshire.

And we also have a very bizarre debate coming up between two people who sort of are running for president. One of them is an official candidate for president, Ron DeSantis, who I think most people have forgotten is kind of still running, but he still.

Hasn't dropped out.

This is the next element.

The other one is Gavin Newsom, who is not an official candidate for president, but I think people kind of take his candidacy at this point more seriously than they take Ron desantiss On. On the other side, Newsom is not going to do anything unless some unless Biden either you know, fades out, decides he's not going to run at the last minute, or drops out. We have like

Well, an economist journalist.

You just saw that economist element on the screen, the presidential matchup that isn't referring to DeSantis and Newsom. Uh, They asked Newsome why people should watch this debate between a presidential candidate and a governor who is not currently running for anything. And he said, quote, I don't know they should and a doing this sentiment.

You know, it's supposed to on Thursday.

It has been scheduled before, and it has been mixed before, And it's obviously a kind of a question for the RNC two if you want your one of your presidential candidates participating in this sort of extracurricular debate in the middle of debate season. There's another debate obviously coming up next week with the sixth that's going to be in Tuscaloosa, the University of Alabama. So it's just a strange situation.

So if you want to see.

The clash between a spiritual progressive and I.

Think what he really channels is like the id of the Democratic resistance that wants to see kind of Republicans rhetorically punching the I agree, probably actually literally sometimes. Yeah, and so people loved his interview with Hannity where he really really gave it to Hannity. It doesn't matter like kind of what the response is in some of these debates.

I want these sort of ideas to clash in public as much as as humanly possible. And I've talked about this before, like the famous John Stewart moment where he told Tucker Carlson and Paul Bagala that Crossfire was like ruining America and everyone sort of clapped and cheered and said, this is exactly what we needed.

I've always disagreed with that.

I think that it's not helpful to push these conversations and to not be able to model public debate, even you know, among people who disagree with each other, hate each other, and even among people who get really theatrical with it and make it into a show. I mean, I think that's important for the public to see. I think it's important for people in politics to be able to do like even just going through the motions. I think it's important. And to see the clash of ideas I.

Think is important. So I'm glad that they're doing it.

But it's extremely weird, and I think it just speaks to the fact that Gavin Newsom knows that anything could happen to Joe Biden at any given moment. Ronda Santis knows that he knows the same thing could be true of Donald Trump, who is facing four indictments.

That's true. Everyone's just hanging out hoping.

And people are Yeah, people are desperate, desperate to find anything that just completely removes Donald Trump from the race, at least his name from the ballad, even though it's to loom heavily over the race. So that's where we are right now. Nobody likes the situation between the presidential matchups, and I really also don't think anybody likes the situation between Newsom and DeSantis. So that's but this is what we get.

The United States Senate is trying to find money for Ukraine, and to do so Emily, they're turning to immigration policy. Tell us what's going on with these negotiations.

Yeah, so again obviously when we were covering what happened with Kevin McCarthy and ended in the speakership of Mike Johnson. Again, he continues, we will bring you updates week by week on whether Mike Johnson continues to be a real person. He is, in fact a real person. We can confirm that as of this week. We'll bring you an update next week if that changes. But Mike Johnson is now in the situation of basically negotiating against the government shutdown.

Call it ladder, which is new.

You've never seen that in all your time covering congresson Imagine. Yeah,

How can we get a pathway deicizenship? And nobody else would.

Right, But will Republicans let a pathway decizenship for the DACA kids who are not really kids anymore.

Becomesties and forties now, yes, So all that is to.

Say Republicans think rightfully. It's pathetic that Democrats support the Biden administration's immigration policy, and a lot of this does need to go through Congress because the Biden administration is just acting with executive authority that can be reformed via Congress. And so they're saying, this is our demand, this is our bargaining chip, this is our uh, this is our condition for passing your omnibus budget deal to avoid a

Basically, right, And so Chris Murphy is the Democrat leading the negotiations on the Senate side. Murphy, though, his priority is Ukraine funding, right, And so you're hearing a lot of anger from folks, particularly Pablo Manricus has been reported has been reporting this on Capitol Hill saying that so the Hispanic senators are not happy having Chris Murphy kind of giving away the farm on immigration in order to get Ukraine money.

At the same time, though, you've got then.

The Republicans on the right in the House thinking that there's not enough in the Senate immigration provision.

So where is this going to head?

Yeah, I mean.

That's one of the big remaining questions. And actually we can put the element up, the next element up on the screen here. This is the Associated Press's coverage. Republicans want to pair security with aid, border security with aid for Ukraine. Here's why that makes the deal so tough.

Buy more four wheelers right for the border.

Yeah, exactly, exactly, And so that gives Biden a huge rhetorical win. He can say that he struck a deal with Republicans because you need a filibuster.

Proof majority in the Senate for this to pass.

Obviously, Republicans control the House, so you would obviously Democrats have a huge contingency in the House, but you would need a lot of Republicans. It would have to be a bipartisan deal in the House as well. So Biden can strike a deal with Republicans that lets him say

It's transparently obvious. That's what they're doing, right.

They want money for Ukraine.

They have to figure out a way that they can get Republicans to feel good about voting for it, and so go after immigrants a little tiny bit, right.

And this is again from the AP piece. They were saying Bind's emergency request to Congress included aid for Ukraine, Israel, and other US allies along with fourteen billion dollars bolster the immigration system and border security.

So again it's about the.

Israel emergency request too, And that was a huge sort of dust up with Jade Vance on the Senate side, who was specifically saying they're trying to tie Ukraine to Israel because they know that their support for Israel funding and that support for more and more money in Ukraine is really becoming difficult for them to sell back home.

Right, So they're just trying to find things that you can rope to Ukraine funding and kind of drag it through Congress. Already, you've got Heritage Action, When can put up this third element here? You've got Heritage Action right wing organization and saying HR two is the only solution

Yeah, and I want to read this article from the Hill just as of yesterday, they say no government funding bills are scheduled to hit the House floor this week, and their headline is actually GP faces ominous signs and effort to avoid January shutdown. Basically, so this is the emergency funding request. But it's all tied together because these are all different chips and they're all different pieces of

And this is all happening as we've gotten new revelations over the last few days that the negotiations that were taking place in Turkey between Ukraine and Russia in March of twenty two were actually as close to reaching a peace deal as some people suspected at the time. Later torpedoed basically, you know, by the US and buy the UK the famous Boris Johnson visit Kiev in which he pushed Selenski, you know, to not sign any truth agreement.

And yeah, I mean, we can just kind of end with this quote from Mario Diaz Billart, so the Hill rights. As the funding fight drags on, Senior appropriators worried that the House GOP will be weak on footing, will be on weak footing and inner chamber negotiations if the Conference continues to struggle with clearing its conservative spending bills. Diaz Bilart says, my goal is to move the most conservative bills we can out of the House to put us

That's basically all you need to know.

There you go, Ryan, I don't know if you found this Black Friday stats, these.

Black Friday Yes I stuff going on here.

It really is interesting and I was actually specifically curious to hear your thoughts on it because it seems pretty troubling, and we have covered a couple of times, for example, credit card delinquency spiking. It was one of those really frightening indicators of where the economy could be going.

We got more of that just from Black Friday data.

You have some interesting contradictions in this economy. Most people who are experiencing it, who are in the economy, are telling posters that they feel like it's much worse than it has been in recent years. Yet we continue to keep getting data points, you know, suggesting that people are feeling good about it.

One of them.

You can put this up here Business Insider. Americans broke a record for spending on Black Friday and then, but it's just hiding a bigger problem for the economy now. Consumer spending is often looked at by economists as a gauge for how people are genuinely feeling about the economy. Two thousand and eight, two thousand and nine, twenty ten,

What do you make of those?

Yeah, I mean this is so the data is actually from Adobe, and there's this new I mean it's not entirely new. People have seen it for years, probably by now pay later function on light Way. Yeah, it's yeah, it's digital lightweight. So this is from Business Insider, they say. According to Adobe, which tracks online sales, online shopping on Black total nine point eight billion, which was actually up seven point eight percent from last year. That's kind of

Now.

According to Adobe, they say by now pay Later financing was up forty seven percent overall this Black Friday compared to last year in twenty twenty two, about ten percent of purchases on the day after Thanksgiving us buy now, pay later now. Obviously that could be because these options have gotten easier to use.

There's no question about it.

They're they're easier, they're quicker, they're more efficient. The sort of digital layaway has become much more seamless.

It's so much more fun to do it that way. You're like, oh, wait, I just have to pay one hundred dollars a month right for a little while TV. Right, that seems better than this. Yeah, you can get a nice you keep doing that and then boom, yes.

And that's so one of the interesting things is they said Black Friday spending may have been higher because spending.

Prior to Black Friday was lower.

Meaning people are looking specifically to shop deals because they feel like they need to shop deals. And obviously, you know Black Friday deals are great and cyber Monday deals are great, but it's definitely an indicator if that's shooting up and you have slower spending in the run up compared to other years, and then the spike both in credit card delinquencies and a spike to forty seven percent. I mean that efficiency alone does not explain.

It, right.

I think one of the best insights into what's going on in this economy comes from this new report by Lydia to pillis highlighted by Jeff Stein of the Washington Post. We can put up this element here for people who are just listening. It's what the economy looks like to Biden voters in swing states.

And I want to zero in on the breakdown of by age.

And so the question is, on the one hand, do you think the economy is excellent or good? On the other hand, do you think the economy is poor or only fair? People age eighteen to twenty nine, eleven percent of them call the economy excellent or good, while eighty nine percent on the other side saying it's.

Poor or only fair.

Almost unanimous from people eighteen to twenty nine, slightly slightly different for thirty to forty four. That's only nineteen percent versus eighty percent, So still overwhelmingly people under forty four consider the economy to suck. People sixty five and over meanwhile, say sixty two percent of them say that the economy is excellent or good. Thirty seven percent say it's bad.

If you look at the.

Who has purchased a new home in the last couple of years, the average agent, I think is fifty eight or something like that. The wealth exists at the top in an environment age top too, right, in an environment where you had interest rates crash in twenty twenty, A lot of people who own homes refinanced in twenty twenty down to three percent or less, and so they are now sitting on thirty year loans with basically free money for the next thirty years.

Interest rates are now then seven to eight percent range. So in order for.

Somebody to buy a house in twenty twenty three compared to twenty twenty for the exact same house at say five hundred thousand dollars, you can do them. But it's you might have to pay an extra thousand dollars a month, and it depends on the size of the house, the size of the mortgage. Each one of those points above three percent adds hundreds of dollars a month. And so you have all of these people who are under you know, and even forty five to sixty four, fifty seven percent of those.

Say the economy is poor.

Yeah, so everyone under sixty four thinks the economy stinks.

And I think it's an expectations versus reality, like mean come to life, because we have an expectation that the American dream is attainable to everyone. Upward mobility is attainable to everyone. And the very specific rungs of that ladder are a college education and then home ownership, and home ownership comes with you look at reasons people feel like they're not getting married, home ownership is actually listed as one of them. Student loans are actually listed as among

Feel more comfortable people say.

Now, this is from the Business Insider article that eighty three percent of respondents studies have found pay off their buy now, Pay later programs on time, although, as they note, seventeen.

Percent do not.

And I think that also shifts the worst the economy gets, or I would expect it to shift, they write, compounding the problems that people tend to spend more when using buy now, pay later programs, suggesting overconfidence in what they can afford. A second research paper from the Social Science Research Network found that consumers spent twenty percent more when buy now, Pay Later was offered, especially on retail items.

So combine that with.

The fact that you're seeing a car and credit card loan delinquencies spike in recent months, not homeowner loans, which is so interesting to the point that you made, because the people who are buying homes right now are not in any it's a very different financial situation. The economy is so uneven. I shouldn't say they're not under any financial duress, but it's a completely different bubble. Basically like economic bubble that people live in.

And so if.

You're able to buy a home right now, you're probably also not experiencing the economy in the same way that other people are, where we're seeing delinquencies and spiking.

It's actually really troubling time, I think.

Yeah, and the one thing homeowners are facing is increases in property taxes because of reappraisals, because you've got this situation where you when you have home values rising, but you're not going to sell your home because nobody can buy it. But then you end up paying higher property taxes as a result of that. Everybody's getting squeezed. The economy is kind of broken. The housing market is like

Yeah, no, it's I mean, it's on that note, I think it's also just going back to expectations versus reality. The economy is broken, broken compared to what people understood the sort of social contract in America to be. So it's broken in a lot of different ways that you have these variables totally out of whack compared to where they used to be. But that also creates a situation where people say, I'm paying my taxes. I'm paying a lot of money in taxes, especially depending on where you live,

So what the hell do you expect people to do? Of course, they're using buy now, pay later.

All right.

Well, up next, we're going to be joined by Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz selling in a new book called Unwoke, something about cultural Marxism.

We're going to maybe find out what that is.

It's how to defeat Ryan Grimm's Cultural Mark good Luck. It's actually a book about how we can take the Lenin book off the shelf.

Ever never happening.

I like how he's lit up by the red As you pointed out the Christmas read nobody loved Christmas.

Like Vladimir Lenin.

You had Lenin staring at Cruz. Excellent.

All right, we'll see you after this.

What we're joined now by Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, who's also the author of the new book. It's called Unwoke, How to Defeat Cultural Marxism in America. You can see it up on your screen right now. Senator Cruz, thank you so much for joining.

Us here in counterpoints.

It's great to be with you. Thank you for having me.

All right, so I want to start with a question that you've probably heard from critics. You were on Bill Maher recently on the Left over the course of the last couple of months. The book is called Unwoke again, as we just mentioned, and I'm curious, for example, when Elon Musk banned from the River to the Sea on Twitter, is that an example or what do you say to critics who would argue that's an example of conservative wokeness? Do you support banning that from Twitter?

Look, I don't support banning really anything. I believe in free speech, and I think that there's a real difference. It's one of the things I talked about in the book between the left and the right. The approach of the radical left, the approach of the cultural Marxist is to use power and force and coercion to silence voices they disagree with. And by and large, conservatives, we're not looking to silence the left. I don't want to see Bernie,

The taking of these institutions back, though sometimes seems to people like reverse cancel culture. Like my former colleague Glenn Greenwald has been a you know, kind of a has become this kind of big supporter of the rights, free speech kind of advocacy over the last several years.

And I'm sure you've seen him.

Recently, he's been extremely disappointed with the way that the right has responded to the Israel Palestine fine catastrophe. He wrote, for instance, conservatives pushing this safety rhetoric which isn't due to violence, but words should either apologize to the minority groups they mocked all these years, or realize they're suddenly endorsing such flamed victim narratives because a group they like

So look, I think free speech is the right approach, and I support free speech for everyone. I support it for radicals, I supported for leftists who hate me. I support free speech for Hamas. Now I also support killing the terrorists so they can have free speech while they're in the grave. But if you engage in acts of terrorism, I emphatically support Israel's right to defend itself at a

Do you distinguish between opposition to Zionism and anti Semitism or do you believe that those are the I think.

I think anti Zionism is anti Semitism.

What do you I mean, what do you say to so many different Jewish groups who are who are who say that anti they are anti Zionists.

So the ones that are our radical leftist organizations that look, there are fifty some odd Muslim nations on the face of the planet, there's one Jewish nation in the state of Israel. The modern state of Israel was formed coming out of World War II, coming out of the wake of the Holocaust, and it was formed on the premise that never again means never again, that we would not allow six million Jews to be exterminated by genocidal, racist maniacs.

Of Jews, as I'm sure you know though in Lekun's platform it says, you know, from the river to the sea, there will only be Israeli sovereignty. Are they suggesting genocide of all Palestinians?

Of course not exactly.

So if they're If they're not, why is the other suggesting genocide?

Because that's what Hamas supports. You know, I started yesterday morning.

That's just restating it.

Like about hold on, let me say yesterday morning, I started the day by watching a forty six minute video of the actual atrocities that Hamas committed, and about fifty senators watched it. You know, as you guys know, I do a podcast every week. It's called Verdict with Ted Cruz. I do it Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Today's podcast is all about that video, because yesterday morning and right about this time, I sat in a room and I watched

Intercepted the k and we've heard of this one.

And he calls his dad first of all, and he's says, Dad, I killed ten of them with my bare hands. And he's like so proud, and he's celebrating ten I killed ten, And he said, I want to talk to mom. Can I talk to mom?

Yeah?

And his mom gets on and he says, I killed ten Jews. I murdered them with my bare hands, and she begins crying with joy the twisted hate. Can you imagine calling your mother in celebration that you just murdered ten people and you're no proud of it and your mother is proud of you for doing it.

And I know Emily wants to get a question, but on this point real briefing, whenever we've had critics of Israelan, we've kind of insisted that they condemned that, because while we disagree with a lot on the show, we also try to find kind of moral common ground and we can all agree that those types of atrocities need to be fully condemned. And with that in mind, we're going to read to you a couple of things that we've been hearing from the Israeli government. We've had Defense Minister Galant.

That's how it'll end.

Israeli Heritage Minister I'mahailai, who said a nuclear bomb is quote one of the possibilities. A Finance minister Bezil Smochrich. We need sterile zones in the West Bank. Israeli President Isaac Herzog. It's an entire nation out there that is responsible. This rhetoric about civilians not aware, not involved, it's absolutely not true. They could have risen up, they could have

Would you join us in condemning that as well.

So I condemn nothing that the Israeli government is doing. I stand with the people of Israel. And let me explain there is a qualitative difference. The Israeli government does not target civilians. They target military targets. The Israeli government has stated they're targeting.

Then if they're so, they're actually not that they are, then they are targeting.

No, they're exceptionally good at so. So for example, a couple of weeks ago, we had stories all over the world that Israel bombed a hospital in Gosen, killed five hundred Palestinians. Now it turns out that was a blatant lie. It was Hamas propaganda and if you break down literally every element of the story was a lie. So number one, Israel doesn't target hospitals Israeli.

Why has so many hospitals been targeted.

Because they haven't, because it's fault. Let's actually look at the facts. So Israel uses precision, precision guided munitions, they don't target hospitals. What ended up we discovered was the case it was the hospital. It was not an Israeli missile that took it out. It was a rocket from it actually wasn't as it was Palestinian Islamic Jahad. And you got to understand the terror rist in Gaza. They fire thousands of rockets. They have no guidance systems on them,

But the IDF said, our focus is on damage, not on presistent.

Weeks damage to hamas to terrorists.

And I they have said, they keep saying that what they're doing is what they're intending to do and here in the United States, but.

That's simply not true. They are targeting the jar no, My focus is on damage, good damage Hamas. I want to utterly eliminate Hamas. And I'll tell you something Israel does. For example, so why are their Palestinian civilian casualties? The reason is because Hamas uses human shields. Hamas wants Palestinians killed. Look you look at the Hamas headquarters. It's in the basement of a hospital. They put it in the basement of a hospital.

Why but they didn't find it there.

They put it there because they want Palestinian mothers, children killed. They put missiles in kindergartens. And the reason is it's part of my podcast. I did an entire podcast that I that was entitled CNN is Hamas's Air Force, So is MSNBC, so is ABC, And I went through about a dozen stories where the corporate media just repeated Hamas propaganda and look, Hamas is not strong enough to defeat Israel, but they're counting on the useful idiots in the media

And so on that note, Because we have to wrap a hot conflict now in the Middle East again, is it time to endorse Donald Trump?

Negotiator of the Abraham Courts.

Look, I will say, President Trump, we had peace in the Middle East, and Joe Biden inherited peace and prosperity, and he utterly screwed it up. We went from peace and prosperity. We now have two wars. We have the biggest war in Europe since World War Two. We have the worst war in the Middle East. In over fifty years. And it's because having a weak and ineffective commander in chief is a train wreck. It doesn't work. And so listen, we're wrapping up. But I do want to encourage your viewers.

Cultural Marxism will triumph if we don't.

That's exactly right, And don't let Ryan win. And let me give you one one more example, which is buy one for your kids or your grandkids, because they need to understand the poison that that they're being indoctrinated for. And I wrote this book. I wrote this book for the same reason I do the podcast that we've got to engage in the battle of ideas, we've got to engage in substance and and and this book is designed to empower you to fight back, to take these institutions back.

Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, thank you so much.

Told you have to wrap. Welcome to come back again. I look forward to that.

Thanks so much.

All right, that was Senator Ted Cruz.

And the book is this Squad AOC and the Hope of a Political Revolution both that's actually it's actually my book which is out next week.

Yes, consummate sales, but.

It's right, he's on here to move those books.

But if you buy mine instead, we can knock him off the best seller list.

Wouldn't that be fun?

That was one of the conversations that I have been waiting for. So we had this interview schedule for a couple of weeks ago. We had to cancel his book tour. The book tours are crazy, which you know obviously you've done it before. But that was actually one of the best I think clashes of both sides that I have seen in public debate throughout this entire uh, this entire conflict. And he was on a really tight schedule, so you know, it was it was sort of we were navigating that

To your back and forth. I thought that was actually very helpful.

Yeah, I didn't didn't mean the bigfoot it, but he just throws out so much different stuff, and we were being told he had to run. If people are like, why need you, you know, respond to every single thing, he said, that's.

Why, because we could do an hour with him music.

Yeah, and hopefully he'll come back for longer.

Yeah, we appreciate him being here.

We certainly what did you make of a he said, there is absolutely nothing Israel could do that he would condemn.

I think when you read and the damage precision thing, again, it was a great question because that's not saying damage hamas precision, because if you were saying precision too, you would be seeing precision in reference to hamas.

So that doesn't make sense to me.

I think those questions, I think those points are extremely problematic.

I do think it's unhelpful.

As we talked about Thomas Massey, Republican from Kentucky saying earlier today to complaint anti conflaint, anti Zionism, and anti Semitism.

So yeah, I mean I.

Thought that was like a very useful At the same time, I mean, I think condemning Hamas and demanding Hamas release the hostages unconditionally is entirely recent.

Sure do it, Yeah, release the hostages.

By the way, we just appreciate everyone who subscribes. If you subscribe to the premium version of Breaking Points, you get this whole show early. You get the video totally uncut, and you know we don't just get the clips, you get the whole full show, so outros just like this one. But you also help make interviews like the one that we just did possible. Having some of the most powerful senators sit down for interviews with new media just a

Yeah.

And his book was called Unwoke, something about cultural Marxism, and you heard him perfect holiday present.

Present, but not as perfect right as a squad out on December fifth.

That's right, get it.

Do it so many times. I can do it.

That's what it's coming out. See you guys.

I actually will be out of studio because I'll be in Los Angeles next week, so i'll be remote for the show next week, but I will see you guys from there. I'll actually be out at Hassan Piker's for his stream, so be sure to tune in for that. I'm sure that's going to be a lot of fun.

Do you even know how to play video games?

I mean I did in the nineties. There you go, all right, I still play like Mario Kart.

We'll find out. Tune in next week.