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.
We rely on our premium subs to expand coverage, upgrade the studio ad staff, give you, guys, the best independent coverage that is possible. If you like what we're all about, it just means the absolute world to have your support. But enough with that, let's get to the show. Good morning, everybody, Happy Thursday. We have a great show for everyone today. What do we have, Crystal, Indeed we do.
We watched the third Republican debates so that you don't have to fold all the highlights you want to call them the We'll break it all down for you what it means, if it means anything at all.
Also, there are some polls coming out of.
How various viewers felt about the debate and who they thought quote unquote one, so we'll get into all of that. We also, of course have our eye continuing to watch closely the situation unfolding in Gaza. We've got some new comments both from Tony Blincoln laying out some us you might call them redlines, but our view the Biden administration's view of what the post war situation should look like.
Some new comments from John Kirby that are also very revealing and sort of shifting the goalpost in terms of initially Biden said no Israeli occupation of Gaza. Well they're changing their tune a little bit there, so we'll talk about that. We also have some incredible clips of Republican cope post Tuesday nights election results, which were by and large very good for Democrats and very bad for Republicans. We'll give you those and let's tell you a little
bit of what Sagar and I think of all of that. Also, Hillary Clinton popped up to make her case for Joe Biden why she still thinks that he is the best candidate in spite of.
Very low pulling.
And we have an interesting clip we wanted to break down for you between Glenn Greenwald and Tucker Carlson centering around freespeed with regard to.
The you know, Israel's war on Gaza.
So we will get into all of that, and also a little teaser for later today. We've got Vi vike Ramaswami joining us after the main show, so we'll be posting that as soon as.
We've got that writy for you.
Yes, that's right. Thank you so much for our premium subscribers you enable it, we will have avike. You guys will get it as soon as as soon as we can. We'll post it separately, both as a video and as a podcast, so stay tuned for that. It'll be fun. We'll get his initial reaction to the big scum moment that everybody is talking about. But let me not get too ahead of ourselves. Let's go ahead and start with
this quote unquote highlights of the debate. So we picked some of the best moments, or at least some of the more illustrative moments, because I know many of you didn't want to stay up past your bedtime and watch it. I don't blame you, you know. I certainly don't feel better or wiser for having done so, but.
Feel much worse actually for having done so.
One credit to the moderators is this is that they asked some of the more important questions at the top. And actually the very first one was to Governor Ron DeSantis of why should I support you and not Trump? What is your pitch to Trump voters? Here's what he had to say.
Now, if you look where we are now. It's a lot different than when we were in twenty sixteen. And Donald Trump's a lot different guy than he was in twenty sixteen. He owes it to you to be on this stage and explain why he should get another chance. He should explain why he didn't have Mexico pay for the border wall. He should explain why he racked up so much debt. He should explain why he didn't drain the swamp. And he said, Republicans, we're going to get
tired of winning. What we saw last night. I'm sick of Republicans losing in Florida. I showed how it's done one year ago.
Here.
We want a historic victory, including a massive landslide right here in Miami Dade County.
That's how we have to do it. So, Chris Well, I'm calling this the effective in the electable case. I think it is the best case. I also don't think there's any evidence that people care. Unfortunately, honestly, unfortunately for him, I wish politics work this way. You have a guy who flipped a purple state to a red state. You have a guy who actually ly quote unquote did what he said he would do that's part of the pitch is that the other guy didn't do so you're supposed
to put our records. But this is actual politics, and most people are not voting on that in fact at all. If anything, they're rejecting you simply because the other guy who you're critiquing, I think correctly in so many different ways, is just saying, like, what is he calling him? Rona sanctimonious and that's enough. So that's what loyalty, that's what
CULTI personality, and so much of this looks like. And that's part of why in much of our analysis we're like, can you really win a debate where everybody is losing by fifty points? Yeah? Hard to say.
Kyle and I were having this debate last night too, because he was very like, I think de Santas had the best night, and I was.
Like, yeah, sure, I yes, I mean, I'm sure if.
You want to say that, but what does that really mean in the grand scheme of things? But you know, on this Trump point in particular, I agree with you. I think it's the best possible case that he can make. I don't know that it's so much that Republican voters don't care about electability.
I think some of them definitely do.
But you know, they're looking at the same poles we're looking at of Trump beating Biden in five on a six swing states even according to the New York Times, and they're saying, hey, we're not that worried. Looks pretty good for our guy right now.
So there's that.
There's the fact that the attacks that have been made against Trump from this entire group of contenders have been few and far between. They've been a little lackluster, and when they have packed more punch, like recently, you had Asa Hutchinson and Chris Christy both trying to make the case to a Republican audience that like, listen, things may look okay for Trump now, but you look at the polls if he's actually not just indicted but found guilty,
and things look a lot different. And they didn't want to hear that at all. So the case that would actually make sense in terms of why Trump is a problem from an electability perspective, no one in the Republican Party. Very few people in the Republican Party actually want to hear that case made.
Now.
Maybe if you'd laid the groundwork for it from the beginning and you've been prosecuting the case relentlessly, or your attack dogs have been prosecuting the case relentlessly, maybe then they might, you know, start to get a little nervous about what this all might look like. But you can't this late in the game, come in and try to make that case and expect it to land on anything
the deaf hear. So I think that's the problem. The other thing saga that made this debate so weird to me, This was really one of the only mentions of Trump. I mean, he came up a few times, but he's the elephant hanging over all of this. And the fact that there were, you know, there were no questions about him,
the candidates weren't really bringing him up. It added to the sort of surreal nature of this of like what are we even really doing the religiousist debate even really about this sort of like existential question hanging over this third Republican debate, which I have to imagine once we get the ratings are going to be very low.
Oh absolutely, I mean there's no question about that. And it's one of those where I understand where they're coming from, because this is the impulse that I would want to have. I'd be like, man, we're going to get him on the issues, We're going to get him on the contract, and you can do that. But it's also basically negligent to ignor not acknowledge and spend a ton of time on the contender, the former president of the United States leading in every poll, and now your whole case against
him is, like you said, electability. He's beaten Biden five out of six poles. Why should anybody vote for you? Whenever both I like the guy, he makes me laugh, he delivered on what I wanted, which is driving liberals crazy,
and he might win. So you know, this is an irrelevant side show to that point, though, there was one big moment, and actually to the extent that there was a substance at all, kind of came during some of the contrasts on Israel, on Ukraine and on TikTok and so there was one particular moment where Vivek Ramaswami, who will be joining us later today on the show, called out Nikki Haley, calling her Dick Cheney with three inch heels, although there is some speculation that he may have included
Ron DeSantis in that moment as well. Here's what he had to say.
You have the likes of Nikki Haley, who stepped down from her time at the UN bankrupt or in debt was her family. Then she becomes a military contractor, she joins the board of Boeing and otherwise and is now a multi millionaire. So I think that that's wrong when Republicans do it or Democrats do it. That's the choice we face. Do you want a leader from a different generation who's going to put this country first? Or do you want Dick Cheney in three inch heels?
All right, we've got two of them on stage in the.
Slamdi we got two of them. I don't think it's fair to call Ron Dick Cheney in three inch heels. The heels is fine, It's just he can't be called dictator. Cheney is a pejorative. We should reserve only for the
biggest scum. Note that what I'm saying there. The thing is is that what that eventually led to with a Dick Cheney in three inch Hell's comment, which I thought was hilarious, is when Haley was given the chance to respond, she immediately calls for war with Iran and then is bolstered by her South Carolina colleague to also call for war with Iran. I am not exaggerating. We have the clips of the two in their response. Here's what they had to say.
That's first like to say, there's five inch heels and I don't wear them unless you can run on them.
We've got two of you on school.
Second thing that I will say is I wear heels. They're not for a fashion statement, They're for ammunition. What we need to be doing for Iraq and Syria is first of all, the idea that our men and women could be targeted. We need to understand this is Iran giving the green light telling them what to do, and we shouldn't be doing the tip for tat like what Joe Biden has done. We need to go and take out their infrastructure that they are using to make those strikes with so they can never do it again.
Iran responds to strength.
You punch them one, and you punch them.
Hard and they will back off.
But what we don't.
Need is Biden falling all over himself to get back in the Iran deal.
You have to strike in Iran if you want to make a difference. You cannot just continue to have strikes in Syria on warehouses. You actually have to cut off the head of the snake, and the head of the snake is Iran and not simply their proxies. In order for us to have a powerful response from America, we have to be in a position of strength as preside United States. My foreign policy is simple. You cannot negotiate with evil. You have to destroy it so.
As you can see their crystal. She said, First of all, I don't understand this heels thing. You're gonna have to explain that I can't. First, why is it a pride point of pride to be able to run in heels? Is that like a thing? Second of all the ammunition I've been thinking about it, I went to sleep thinking about it. Mean, it was one of those things in miamient memory, being like what does this mean? And so much they tweeted it out. Nobody can decipher it. So you're the heels expert in it.
I think she should challenge Rodney Santas to raise in their five inch heels. The whole thing to me was perplexing, the not to guarantee do with this, But she also.
Like she had time to come up with her mind.
It's not like it was like immediately in the moment, and then I don't know why it's a point of pride that they're five inches seat of three inch number one, number two, I don't know why.
The running thing, I don't know.
And then on the their ammunition, they're not a fashion seme and their ammunition, I guess she's she was trying to go for like deadly, they're a weapon there.
Dead I don't know. I don't know.
It was.
It was bizarre, but on the war part, more substantive fasier. The number of wars that were advocated for last night was deeply disturbing. And I'm not the only one. And Coulter, who is making an appearance later in the show as well, who I don't normally favorably cite, but listen when she's right, she's right. She said, so far three of the five Republicans want to start wars against China, Russia, Syria, and Iran. These people are lunatics and I could not possibly agree
more with that. And that's before we even get to the war that they you know, also some of them
want to start with Mexico as well. So yeah, this has been the drum beat since the beginning of you know, the Hamas massacre in Israel and then the Israeli response, there has been this real war drum beating of we actively want to start his hostilities with a raw and that has been the critique of the Biden administration is basically like they're not going after Irun hard enough, They're not doing enough effectively to start World War three, and
I think, I mean, it's just completely insane. And I'm sure it lands with some segment of the Republican base, but even if you're pulling the Republican base on, like, hey, how do you feel about a broader war in the Middle East and our sons and daughters being sent over to fought and die, they're like, hell no. So it's
just amazing to me, Sager. I guess I shouldn't be surprised, but you know, there was an idea that like the neocons had kind of been checked after the failures in Iraq and the failures in Afghanistan and Trump coming on the scene and winning on this like, you know, pretending like he was always opposed the Iraq war thing, and really rebuking the Bushes over the direction of the war on terror. They never went away, they never changed their views.
They are still just as itching for war in all kinds of corners of the planet as they have always been, and it has never been a parent than it is right now in this moment.
Oh, I mean, they're blood thirsty psychopaths. Like, let's be super real about it. This is they have never seen a war they didn't want to get us into. It's a religious doctrine to them. And I really realize that because I'm like, look, these people are politicians at the end of the day, they're supposed to care about getting elected. But i mean, can you read a poll. The vast majority of Republicans at this point are against Ukraine aid.
Veak Ramaswami the only guy on the entire stage who's against aid to Ukraine, and the way Chris Christy and them talk about it, they've got like they're getting choked up over Ukraine and Kiev. And I'm like, wow, you really look. I know it's a trope and it's often trotted out, like caring more about for like other countries' borders than our own. In this case, it's actually real. They really do like it's a religious doctrine in terms of the fate of Ukraine. It's like they think that
Dounyetsk and la Hansk. They're like, this might as well be the border of Oklahoma or something like that. It's incredible to me, and you know that they believe it because there's no nothing politically advantageous to do so in terms of the polls now, in terms of but don't money. Yeah, well all that stuff comes from that's a whole other story.
Care a lot more about that. Often times that they do what the people actually want.
And that's what it really showed to me is you know, I couldn't help but come through and look you clip it if you want. Thankful for Trump. I was like, you know what, listen, the man has a lot of problems, but if that's the alternative to whatever the hell this mess is with this going on like these people, it is shocking to me. I mean, somebody even put it out and they're like, that was a great Republican debate performance from two thousand and four, and I was like, yeah,
that's true. I mean it's it's so it's basically the exact same line Dick cheneing three in chills is not really unfair. Those are all positions that he advocates for today and advocated for at the time. And how have we not learned from his own personal failure here.
I don't see Trump as being much different, even rhetorically at this point with regards to, you know, hawkishness on Iran and Ukraine now is like at a stalemate, and even the Biden administration is trying to come to some sort of deal. I don't really see him as being significant.
But he was against. He was against that didn't start a war with Iran. Sherry bomb Solimani.
He didn't.
He almost started working, okay, but he didn't.
But he was I mean, he pulled us out of the Iran du Leriy.
He was very hawkish towards Iran. I don't think you can deny it.
I am not going to deny it. I think rhetorically he was mixed. He had all the people who were under him off related the drone. He tried to get out of Syria. The people who were there would live and let him. Now, is it on him that he was too dumb to get lied to by General Manis? Yeah, I agree with you. He didn't get us out of Afghanistan.
He wanted to get US out of Afghanistan. I will take at least somebody who's incompetent and has a restraint or has at least like some instinct of restraint, than somebody who is both probably incompetent but also completely unrestrained in their rietoric. And I'm talking, of course, within the Republican Party. That's only the realm of which we can have the discussion. At the very least, I would say this, it's definitely better than whatever was this mess going on with Nicky Haley with regard.
To the specific flashpoint right now, which is this potential broader war in the Middle East. I see zero evidence that Trump would be better than any of the people that were on the stage, who were all like jockeying to be the most bloodthirsty and the most pro Israel
out of all of them. And you know, Trump gave netnyah who everything he wanted while he was in office, So again, I don't really see that he would be any different on foreign policy, and I think he would be Ryan said on Twitter, I think this is probably right. Like the difference between Democrats and Republicans on Israel right now is basically like Democrats will like handring about the genocide, and Republicans will just be like, yay, let's go for it.
So it's not like it's that much of a difference. But yeah, I don't I don't see Trump as being superior to any of the folks on stage. Really when it comes to foreign policies.
It's Israel main. Well, I really don't think this is fair. First, because he was against the Ukraine consensus really from day one. Now that said, like, look, defend saying that we should have firstie said that we should send Chinese planes in order to start a war with But then second eventually did come I think a month or two out he came out against in terms of sending weapons to Ukraine. So listen, I'm going to say, I think he's an
inconsistent I don't think he particularly cares. I think he was a bad president, and I don't think he was a good commander in chief because he didn't actually know what was going on underneath. Instinctually was against this. So for me, like on this stage, that's enough.
His whole thing was after so he and he still continues to this day to both critique Biden as not being like hawkish enough on Ukraine, but then also like not supporting the military aid. He's just going wherever he thinks the right. The politics of.
The moment are we listen well for now, especially where the politics are right now. I'm fine with that. But anyway, we'll say this debate, I'm sure we'll have it a lot whenever we have two different nominees. Let's go to the next part here in terms of the debate around campus anti semitism, how to respond and censorship. So there was an interesting and I actually want to get into this a little bit with fake whenever he joins the show.
But they calling out Ron DeSantis for banning the Students for Palestine oranization on the University of Florida campuses and then eventually leading to a big ideological schism over whether you should have free speech and free expression or shutting down these student groups. Here is what DeSantis had to say when he was challenged.
Joe Biden should have the Department of Justice on these college campuses and holding the universities accountable for civil rights violations when you should not have money going to these places. I already acted in Florida. We had a group of students for Justice of Palestine. They said they are common cause with Hamas they said, We're not just in solidarity.
This is what we are.
We deactivated them. We're not going to use Tate tax dollars to fund jihad, no way. And what is Biden doing? Not only is he not helping the Jewish students who are being persecuted, he is launching an initiative to combat so called Islamaphobia. No, it's the anti Semitism that's spiraling out of control.
So I was very intrigued by this exchange in terms of calling out for the DOJ and actually DeSantis use language has made my blood curl. He said. He said, these students don't feel safe on campus, and I was like, brother, we have now spent a decade successfully, in my opinion, you can tell me fighting against the language of safetyism and convincing the majority of the Republican Party that nobody is owed a write to quote unquote emotional safety whenever
it comes to issues. Now, physical safety is a different story, and I think everybody can agree with that. But in terms of the safe spaces, I mean, how much have we spent mocked correctly again, correctly mocking the idea of like emotional safetyism about safe spaces, about safe zones, about free speech and hate speech, and how they're oh they're supposed to be a difference, is not a difference, Just to be very clear about that in terms of what
looks like in First Amendment law. And then on a dime, he completely flips around and changes. So if anything, that just shows me who what DeSantis is really all about, especially given how can you talk such a big game about campuses and all that He just brought Ben sass believe is the chancellor of the University of Florida system again with the we're going to be all about free speech and all that and listen, cool, you know, but as long as these organizations aren't hurting anybody, well, it's
a free country. Like I don't understand why we can't just allow it to be. Look the dumb asses sign on to a letter, all right, I mean, you know, okay, look their names Republic. You know, if you want to go out against him, I wouldn't recommend it, but if you want to, you can. But if these people want to continue to do so, there's nothing particularly wrong with that. You could say it's a pr inter morally objectionable or whatever, but he's outright wanting to ban these places on campus.
So clearly they've learned nothing, and I think he's viewed. I think he has been exposed completely, is full of it on this issue, which may make correctly I think called.
Him out for Vivic was the only person on the stage who had a divergent view on this issue. Everybody else, I mean, basically the whole Republican Party, with very few exceptions, has gone all in. They sound like the woke college kids who were like roundly mocked for their language about microaggressions and safe deism and the need for safe spaces, et cetera. And then you know, the minute it serves their political cause of the moment, they're all in on
the exact same language. And I'm not surprised because it has always been the case that even when they were at their height peak of like talking about this canceled culture and PC culture and all of this stuff, and you know, people being snowflakes, et cetera, they never would call out when people were getting canceled for a divergent view on Israel Palestine. They were always silent on this stuff.
So I always knew it was very one sided and that it was more about controlling speech and having their speech be uncensored than it was a truly principled take in favor of free speech on campus or anywhere else. And so so again I'm not surprised, but it's also just it is really something to see how quickly they flip on a dime and how much they just immediately adopt all the language of like the silliest parts of left lilf liberalism in service of their own political goals.
So yeah, it was it's wild to see it all laid out there, and I just don't it really is hard for me to wrap my head around how they don't see the blatant hypocrisy in it and don't at least try to message around it, or use some different language, or draw some different boundaries, some way of distinguishing themselves. But no, I mean, once again, absolutely nothing has been learned.
Oh yeah, I mean, I think the reason why you get away with it is very simple is that the right wing industrial complex is not built to be consistent. I mean, listen, neither is the democratic media organization, so it's not particularly unique. But when you live in an ideological bubble, it's just all about going with the team. There's no the terms of like external enforcement being like, hey,
you're being hypocritical. I bet it does not even pass his mind because it's within the donor bubble, and it's within the Daily Wire ecosystem. You've got like Ben Shapiro like probably cheering this on from the sideline. So if that's the ecosystem that you're swimming in, like, why do you need to be considered like you pay no price for being inconsistent? Right, And that's part of the problem with the race to the bottom around all of this, And you know, I guess that's a lot of reason
why we try and do what we do here. It's a good way of STA actually saying in check. So anyways, guys, that's the highlights, the low lights or whatever, if you will. As we said, we've got that clip with vivik Ramaswami. We're gonna be talking to him after the show wraps and we'll be posting that asap. Let's get to the next part here, the winners and the losers. Can there be such a thing as a win? It's a nice
meta question. Well we asked or not weedn't asked? The Daily Mail had a snappole, let's go and put this up there on the screen, please, They asked five hundred and forty four viewers immediately after the debate wrapped, who do you think won the debate? And interestingly enough, the viewing audience overwhelmingly going with Ron DeSantis. And I could see it, Crystal. He didn't have a bad moment, he
didn't get drawn into the mud quote unquote. You know, in terms of the whole Nikki Haley and Vivek Ramaswami thing, they had twenty nine percent a secondary, say Niki Haley.
That actually tracks for me, because the thing is is that if you are one of these people who is never Trump, that's gonna be what twenty maybe twenty percent, thirty percent or whatever at max within the Republican Party, then I think Nikki is a great candidate for you, Like, if you are someone who is against Trump for rhetorical reasons and on policy grounds, she's as good as it gets right whenever it comes to a return to like two thousand and four, to the Bush era. That's as
she basically embodies that in a candidate. It totally makes sense to me that she is coalescing as the anti Trump candidate, specifically with Dessant dislike in this very odd middle part of the reason why I think his candidacy doesn't truly have a lot of strength to it because there's not as much of a coherent case. So the top one of the top two slot it makes sense to me. Yeah, I mean, yeah, I don't know.
Well, let me dis react that. First of all, the poll they did was only Disanta s and Nikky Haley. They just wanted to see, like who was the top contender of those two because they've kind of, you know, separated themselves a little bit from the rest of the pack. So it's like, all right, who's the top Trump alternative. And I feel like Nikki's performance was I'm putting substance aside. We're just talking about theatric synoptics here and whatever. It's
very uneven. Yeah, I mean, even like her comeback about the heels, You're like, wait, what what what does that even mean? And it was all a little bit like that. There's another moment she clearly I mean she detests vivic almost. I mean there's like I think she has taken it, like the Amy versus Pete level animosity. I do believe
she has taken it to a whole other level. And so there's other moment where they're going back and forth about TikTok and Vek was trying to call her a hypocrite because her daughter's on TikTok and she is.
We can talk about that reasonable reason anyway.
But on the other hand, I can understand some other way you're reacting to your daughter being brought into this debate. But she said this thing, keep my daughter's name out of your voice.
Yeah, So I think she was trying to go for that violin of keep out of your mouth. Yeah.
And so that's kind of like typifies her whole thing was a little uneven, a little messy, not really sticking the landing. And then it also felt kind of tired because a lot of the same talking points that had worked for her previously, especially on abortion, she was rolling them all out again. So she didn't come across particularly well in this debate. And I mean to an extent that it matters at all. There was a chance she's had a lot of donor interests, a lot of media
interest before her. There was a chance she could really eclipse DeSantis as the top Trump alternative. And I think this debate makes it harder for her to be able.
To do that.
I think Ron hangs on bites fingertips to his number two slot that he typically has in most of the polls, and so you know, from that perspective, I guess it maybe matters. But yeah, Ron DeSantis lives to fight another day as the top Trump alternative. Nikki Haley probably stays more or less static, and the race just basically stays where it is, which is great for Trump.
Yeah, absolutely, it's great for Trump. When we were talking about speaking time and all that, this is one of those it's a good metrics sometimes. Let's gohea and put this up there on the screen in terms of who spoke the most. So Tim Scott clocked in eighteen minutes
and fifty five seconds. I was telling you before it only makes sense to me because he takes so goddamn long to finish a sentence, and because the moderators you were saying, actually have a soft spot form and we're allowing him to talk over now Hailey Ramaswami, that tracks completely. You got seventeen fifty and seventeen minutes and twenty seven seconds those two because they were battling it out and
they were both trying to lob attacks. Not only we had each other, but at DeSantis, it makes sense Desanta is coming in at sixteen thirty six. Again, I don't think he came through scathed. I don't think he came through unscathed.
I don't know.
It's just the entire thing. Again, it just seems like a little bit farcicle. Whenever you have Trump, who was doing a rally in Hilea in Florida and which was dominating in terms of actual like enthusiasm with Republicans. Chris Christy, the fifth man on the stage, got sixteen minutes and fifteen seconds. I don't think anybody had to particularly breakthrough moment. I don't think anybody had, you know, particularly great moment or any of that. Let's go to the next one. Please.
Here on the screen, here you could see the actual like subjects that were discussed. There was like abortion, economy, Ukraine, fence and all China. This doesn't make one hundred percent sense because they didn't combine Israel with the anti semitism conversation. There was a decent amount, but I thought this one was a useful one who was attacked the most, and it was Nikki Haley DeSantis in Ramaswami almost really almost as a tie in terms of the attacks, with Haley
slightly edging them out. Nobody had the nobody had the what just wanted to waste the time of attacking Tim Scott and Chris Christy. I got to say, and I'm curious what you think?
Uh huh.
I think Christy is the biggest disappointment of this whole side. He's had three moments to redo his twenty sixteen magic. What happened to this guy? You know what I mean? He he had I know, like some vigor I think about. I was like, where did the right hand come? Where did it go? Man? Did you get old?
Like?
What is it?
Yes, he'd be something on the debate stage, you know, of all of them. I have always respected his talent. And the other thing that's weird to me is not only did he have some of those moments in twenty sixteen, but he also has had some of those moments in this campaign, not on.
The debate stage.
You know, he'll like go on Newsmax and fight with Eric Bowling or he just had that I was talking about earlier speaking to a Republican group and like jousting with the audience about Trump's electability and telling them, listen, you may not want to.
Hear it, but this is reality.
And it's again. I don't think it would like elevate him in terms of his pulling, but it's at least an interesting moment. He's just so flat in these debates and I don't really understand it. I don't know where his feistiness. You know, back in New Jersey he came to prominence. Republicans fell in love with him because he'd do these town halls and like fight with union teachers and stuff.
That was his whole thing. So I don't know what happened there.
It was interesting to me on that graphic we had about who was taking the most attack, Vivek was definitely like number one or close to number one in all three debates. He was the one who was most consistently the center of attention throughout all of these debates.
And you know, the first time.
We really felt like, oh, this is going to be good for him because he's in there, he's mixing it up, he's unafraid. He's really you know, fearless and forceful and grabbing everybody's attention. But it didn't wear well with voters. Actually, I mean, it's kind of awkward to ask him about but I actually do want to kind of ask him
about this when we have him on today. So now when I see him again the center of attention, and this like really nasty back and forth between him and Nikki Haley where she called him scum, and the moderators didn't even give him a chance to respond to that. I don't know, maybe they didn't hear it because it
was a little bit off. But that was the other thing I noticed in the speaking time is the moderators really seem to favor Tim Scott Nikki Haley, and they were always looking for a way to like, Nikki, do you want to respond to what was said about you? But then when she literally calls Vavek scum, which is that's another level of nasty, that's like Trump level of nastiness, you know, and then they did there's no like, hey, Vivek,
you want to say anything to that. So anyway, my big takeaway is you've got all of these second rate politicians, sorry, tearing each other to shreds in a debate that is diminishing, Yes for all of them, Yes, it can only benefit Trump, it can only bend it, like there is only one person who could No matter really what happened to that debate, there was only one person who could win it. So at this point, it's hard to say anything other than
it was a loss for everybody on that stage. You know, they all I don't even think any of them are jockeying really for vice president at this point. I don't even know if I'm even really jockeying for an administration position at this point. I don't even know what the point of these things are really, Given that Trump was absent and he wasn't mentioned, They're not really taking that many shots at him, and so it just seems kind of pointless, waste of time.
Yeah, unfortunately, I think you're probably right, although it should be different. Trump did have a rally, as I mentioned, am I saying that correctly? Probably not the Floridans can get out of me. I don't know. Good hileah, heileah, whatever the hell it is, whatever you guys call it. Down there, he had a rally. Sarah Sanders was there, the current governor of Arkansas's former press secretary. She endorsed him fully on the stage here's what happened.
Biden and the Left have failed over and over again, and they know it, and you know it, and it is time for a change. That is why tonight I am so proud to endorse my former boss, my friend, and everybody's favorite President Donald J.
Trump.
Sarah Sanders back at the podium where I remember her, just to endorse Trump, although she's got some other podium is Shue.
He and I were talking a little bit about that podium. If it ever elevates to the national level, maybe we'll talk about it. The details are genuinely kind of funny. The issue I think here is DeSantis.
He had this big endorsement come in into this debate, which we didn't even really mention. He got the freaking Iowa governor to endorse him. I mean, once upon a time that was it. You're done, You're gonna win the Iowa caucuses. I mean, that's awesome. In the Trump era, it barely rates, especially with Israel pala sign. And the reason why this was significant is Sanders, even though she worked for him behind the scenes, Trump has been on her for a long time. He's like, you need to
endorse me, you need to endorse me. She wasn't doing it. She was holding out because maybe she was going to endorse DeSantis. I mean, they're part of the RGA, the Republican Governors Association. They probably gotten to know each other all that stuff. And you know, she's a younger person too, and even though she worked for him, she can maybe
she wanted to see where the party goes. The fact that she's willing to endorse him on the stage in Florida, De Santa's home state, I mean, that's the biggest middle finger you got, right, like in terms of saying who I'm with and what I'm doing. So they did it for a reason, just to roll it out. They did it in the same state, same home state for these two men, and guess who had a ton of people. They're chanting his name at one point, even in the
debate states they were chanting Trump. That's how potent this man is. Wow, Yeah, that's how he is. That is wild.
Yeah, I mean it is interesting.
You might think if you're just watching on the surface level, like, oh, of course Sarah Huckby Sanders, like she worked for him, of course she's going to endorse him. But there's a reason why she held out this long as you said through the RGA. Also, I mean Asa Hutchinson, who she has to know well, you know, for the state of Arkansas was running as well, and so maybe out of a little bit of respect for him, she held back.
So it is one of those you take note because you can just see everyone now is accepting, all right, this is inevitable. I better make my peace with it. I better like get in good with this political machine because this man might be president of the United States again. So let me go ahead and jump on board while this is still while that's still possible to do, which is part of why it was surprising actually that Kim Reynolds, the governor of Iowa, decided to endorse DeSantis now because
it's so clear he's going to lose. It was like, maybe this maybe would have helped him or at least give him a positive news cycle early on.
How the writing is so on the wall. There's no drama around this whatsoever.
I think it's an abortion thing. Actually, I think she probably took it very personally, as I understand she's quite religious, and there's.
A lot of religious rights, very ideological.
Yeah, so basically Trump attacked her and DeSantis right for signing the similar bit in a six week bill. What did he call it cruel or something like that? And so I think, you know, just reading the tea leaves based on people I've spoken to and stuff, that a lot of it is ideological in terms of where her base of support comes from. I mean, I was on a Maga state in terms of its traditional Republican coalition. People there like Trump, but they've been Republicans there for
a long time. They you know, they voted for Michelle Oh no, so for Rick Santorum. Yeah, And at one point Bachmann was leading, was doing well there, that type of candidate, and all the exactly also.
Did it well there. Yeah, So I think I think that's right. Yeah, I just you know, there is I guess the biggest surprise of both the Democratic and the Republican primaries is there really is no surprise.
There's very little drama. Things can change, you never know, anything can happen one of these dudes. Look, they're both old.
You never know if they're helping to hold that or whatever. Right, who knows. But at this point it looks like most of the drama is going to come in the general election. And that's something we've been talking a lot about, is the fact that RFK continues to pull. You know that New York Times poll, Ryan and Emily covered it yesterday that we noted we started pulling out the cross tabs and going, wait a second, they did pull RFK, and he is beating them among young voters in all of
these swing states. He's clocking what was it, twenty four percent overall in these swing states. I mean that is a massive percentage. So there is going to be a lot of drama and intrigue going into the general election. I just don't know if we're going to have any real drama or suspense around who the major party not.
No, I think you're right, and you've actually you were the per first person flag it around RFK, and I think it's a huge story. This is only a personal anecdote. But I posted, you know whatever, the tweet on Instagram and I was like, oh, this is just interesting. It's one of the most viral things I posted in a long time. And look, it's the smallest ample size, but I was just like, oh, that's but it's not the
only pis showing exactly. It's just like, oh interesting in terms of the support, like all the people sharing it being RFK, and I had all these rfk people who were sharing on there and got thousands and thousands of shares. Again, I have a good sense sometimes of like what the media is not covering and then what is like a real organic phenomenon. And I'm telling you, I think that man's support is very real and without fail, almost none of it has to do with vaccines or any of
this other stuff. It's I hate hate Joe Biden, Donald Trump. I am doing this purely as a support to say screw you to the both party system, to the GOP and the Democratic establishment. And he's a Kennedy It's like every single time and without fail. And I think that. And then also if you combine some of this hardcore support around the vaccine issue and all that, I mean, he's just some of most organized people on the planet.
So you put that together, like real organized, die hard folks with you know this sentiment which is probably the most widespread one of the country. Seventy eighty ninety percent of people can say they're not satisfied with the current system. And I think you're you're really signing yourself up for a big story. So we'll continue to watch it, and we're working on our folks group right now to get an RF focus group.
I am very interested, and there's been very little reporting or analysis of like, Okay, we're guessing about who his base is, and that a lot of it has to do with just discussed with these two candidates, and his name is Kennedy, right, and doesn't go a lot deeper than that, although there is certainly a group of people for whom they know everything about him and they are affirmatively on board with everything he stands for. But I think the level of his support mostly comes from that,
just like he's a Kennedy. I like the name and screw these two guys, but we.
Don't really know that.
And so I really want to talk to some of his supporters and hear from them directly about what it is that they see in him, and also see how solid that support is, because that's the other big question with the third party candidate. Typically the polls really fall off for them as you get closer your election nay, and people kind of realize, like, all right, it's really going to be one of these two dudes, So let me just suck it up and pick them or stay home.
Or whatever.
A lot of his support comes from people who don't vote a lot, so are they as committed to him, you know, sufficiently committed to him to actually show up. There's a lot of questions about what's going on, none of which has been explored in the press at this point. So that's something we're definitely going to continue to dig
into as things progress. And he could very even if he doesn't get twenty percent of the vote, if he gets ten percent, that still could be the deciding factor depending on who he takes from and how this all shakes out. So anyway, something to continue to watch. We have our eye on what is unfolding in Gaza with
Israel's war on Gaza, as we brought you previously. So the one thing that Biden has said kind of consistently from the beginning is it would be a quote big mistake if Israel was to reoccupy Gaza after this war. We brought you earlier in the week that Netanyahu went on one of the Sunday shows here in America and said, we will occupy Gaza.
We will likely occupy.
Gaza indefinitely until we figure out the security situation that seems to have caused a shift in way that the administration is framing their recommendations here and their expectations for Gaza. So this isn't going to play you a response from John Kirby, who's the ANC spokesperson. And also then on the other side of that, we have Netanyahu's original comments just for reference.
Let's take a listen the.
Secreary state of these comments today.
Also, we came to a transition.
Period after this conflict.
Could you expand on that and explain what does a transition through re right to the s administration.
I think he was referring to this idea, and it came up yesterday were Prime mister n Yah who talked about an indefinite period where they would be on the ground. I think he was referring to the idea the fact that in the immediate aftermath of conflict, it's it's certainly plausible that for at least some period of time Israeli defense forces are still going to be in Gaza to
manage the immediate aftermath and the security situation. But that nothing's changed about our view that that shouldn't be the long term solution, that it shouldn't be about idea of reoccupation of Gaza as a long term governance solution.
Who should govern Gaza when this is over?
Those who don't want to continue the way of Hamas and certainly is not the I think Israel will for an indefinite period, we'll have the overall security responsibility, because we've seen what happens when we don't have it. When we don't have that security responsibility, what we have is the eruption of Hamas terror on a scale that we couldn't imagine.
So you can see the shift there, Sager. Originally it was this would be a big mistake. Reoccupation would be a big mistake. To now John Kirby going, well, I mean for some period of time maybe, Yeah, we actually are okay with it.
Get and flashback to the Coalitional Provisional Authority and we were only supposed to be there for a year or so. Rumsfeldt said we were going to get out. L Paul Bremmer is going to roll in. He worked for Kissinger. What could go wrong? Right, he was one of the best, the best, and the brightest. Oh only took twenty years or so, and we're still dealing with the problems that were there. So yeah, it's all happening. It's all happening again.
And even if you listen to the words very carefully of Anthony blinkn around what he says here, they are leaving themselves a lot of room for what occupation is. They can't have occupation, but then they said they might have some occupation. And he had some comments here that we're at the g seven. Let's take a listen to that.
The only way to ensure that this crisis never happens again is to begin setting the conditions for durable peace and security, and to frame our diplomatic efforts now with that in mind. The United States believes key elements should include no forcible displacement of Palestinians from Gaza, not now, not after the war. No use of Gaza as a platform for terrorism or other violent attacks. No reoccupation of Gaza after the conflict ends. No attempt to blockade or
besiege Gaza. No reduction in the territory of Gaza. We must also short, no terrorist threats can emanate from the West Bank. We must also work on the affirmative elopments.
To get to a sustained peace.
These must include the Palestinian people's voices and aspirations at the center of post crisis governance in Gaza. It must include Palestinian led governance and Gaza unified with the West Bank under the Palestinian authority. And it must include a sustained mechanism for reconstruction in Gaza and a pathway to Israelis and Palestinians living side by side in states of their own with equal measures.
So the US government previously saying, you know, no red lines in terms of what Israel can do, that's really the messaging that matters here. Now he's trying to say, oh, we don't want any forcible displacement now, not after the work. You can look at the videos yourself. Forcible displacement of probably more than a million people has already happened, So too late.
For that one.
No use of Gaza as a platform for terrorism, of course, everyone supports that.
No reoccupation of Gaza.
Okay, well, maybe respond to what mister Natanyahu just said to blockade or besieged Gaza. Also, I don't know where you've been, buddy, about what reality in Gaza has looked
like for quite a long time. So in any case, to me, the shows just again Sagar the level of weakness from the US as long as there is no willingness to use the you know, leverage that we have at our disposal in terms of the huge amount of aid that we have provided to Israel and are continuing to provide to Israel, and the fourteen billion dollars that we're planning to send. These all constitute effectively empty words.
And the Natanyahu government has already shown they're going to do whatever it is that they want.
The real problem I'm beginning to see is to compare this, you know, there's gonna be a lot of oracknology. Sorry, the most recent Middle Eastern occupation around this Ahmed Chalabi type gambit. They're like, we're going to put the Palestinian authority in charge. The Palestinian authority has barely any legitimacy left in the West Bank, that's right, not alone, let alone in Gaza. I mean they people have now lived apart for seventeen years. Also, these people are old as hell.
They're viewed as corrupt and in the pocket of the West because they have no legitimacy. Now, look, maybe they could have something if they were you know, put in some sort of quasi government, and they could affirmatively deliver on a two state solution. But I mean, come on, who actually believes that that is going to happen. So then who's going to have actual governing authority? And look
at what's happening right now in the West Bank. The Palestinian authority is viewed as impotent and weak because they can't keep their own people safe from Israeli settlersself ken the Netsunahu government with a straight base claim there will be no settlers or at all inside of Gaza. At the same time, I mean, what about Israeli soldiers. Think about the incendiary nature of that one. Two years, three years out of providing the security situation on the streets
and them trying to claim that they are legitimate. That is why the Iraqis turned against the people that we put in charge in the first place, because they were viewed as a tool of the West and not able to stand up to us and not looking out for their best interests or their security. So mean, I just see,
this is a nightmare situation. And part of the problem too is if we put if we install the PA with international authority and all of this, and the population turns against them, the exact same thing that happened in Iraq is going to happen. We're going to see a full blown secretarian war like we did in two thousand and five, the war between Fatah and Hamas. We're gonna see it times fifty at this point because Iran and all the other proxies are going to back up Hamas
to retry and regain control of the government. The Israelis are gonna get caught in the middle of it if they're doing the security situation, and worse, they want us to come in and occupy Gaza. Don't forget that little plan. American peacekeepers and French keepers, our guys getting blown up in the middle of all this. So I say hell no to this whole plan. This is part of the problem. You know. This is regime change. Like, let's just all be honest about it. This is straight up regime change.
And I hate the regime in Gaza too, don't get me wrong, But you know, if you're gonna go in, you're gonna roll them. You better have a good plan for day two, and I don't see one right now.
Let's say, and you all know I think this is magical thinking. Let's say you're able to eradicate Herbass whatever that even actually means.
What kind of.
A political group do you think is going to organically rise to power in Gaza, given the you know, blockade, given the fact that something like a third of northern Gaza has already been destroyed, given the radicalization, the increased radicalization that is going on, with the.
Brutality of the Israeli.
Response, what sort of political project do you think is going to have appeal and legitimacy in such a situation, given what these people have suffered through. So that's number one, number two on the Palestinian authority. I mean, it's not just that they're seen as in the pocket of the West like that's that's real. That perception is real because they cooperate with the Israeli occupation forces in the West Bank.
And you know, it's commonly accepted within the West Bank that actually when you see the Palestinian Authority their police officers pull back, you better run and hide, because that means they're basically making way for the IDF to come through in some sort of a rate. That's the level
of cooperation collaboration that is ongoing there. And you have you know, I mean, you've had over I think one hundred and fifty people in the West Bank killed since October seventh, and that isn't That is indicative of the way that the PA doesn't do anything to keep them safe, so they feel completely on their own. So, yeah, the PA has no legitimacy in the West Bank, it has no legitimacy in Gaza.
And the idea that you're going to.
Somehow the US and Israel are going to bestow them with legitimacy the Palestinian people like, give me a break, it makes no sense, which is exactly why you know, I think it's so likely that Israel is going to continue to try to pursue what has been laid out in that you know, Israeli government memo of what we really want is to push them all, all of the Palestinians out of Gaza into Egypt and make that the only possibility that will really work, and force it on
Egypt and force it on the US. And it may seem like a long shot now and maybe it doesn't ultimately happen, but we already know from reporting that's what they're actually pushing behind the scenes, and you can you know, like that's part of the net Nahu's Lacud party and his right wing coalitional partners.
That has been part of their longtime goals. So it's no.
Surprise that that's what they would be pushing for. But it also when you have the impossibility and impracticality of every other possible situation and a gaza that you know, the parking lot memes coming to Fruition, they're going to say, well, what else can we do?
What else is possible?
I don't know. I listen in terms of at least pushing them out. That means war. The Egyptian's already told us that, and so we should listen to them. They take this stuff very serious, and the people inside Goswel are going to take it seriously too. If it becomes a fight right now, it's a fight with Hamas. If it becomes a fight for being able to stay well, I think a lot of those people are going to take up arms. Again. It's the exact same thing playbook
in Iraq. It's not difficult to see it. It literally happened in all of our living memory. In fact, Nantayah who encouraged us to go into a rock, he said we would be greeted, you know, with the open arms, and he got to see firsthand how all that worked out. Anyway, maybe you should listen.
So, as we've been discussing, you know, the Israeli ground defensive is preceding a pace on. What we can tell is that they're you know, really working their way into Gaza City and sort of encircling that city. Obviously, first of all, a lot of journalists have been killed in Gaza who lived there, so very hard to get reports out from the ground. They've had these communications blockouts, blackouts. Foreign journalists are only allowed in with the express permission of.
The ideas and security review of their footage.
Security review and but yeah, before anything gets posted, the Israeli military gets to take a look and decide what is allowed in and what is allowed out. However, there was a report that came out that seemed pretty solid from a Channel four news just to give you a sense of what it even.
Looks like in Gaza.
Inside the city.
Yeah, inside got the city, and it is pretty stunning to behold. Let's take a look at a little bit of that.
The war ravaged outskirts of embattled Gaza City, an apocalyptic landscape now firmly under the control of Israeli soldiers. We're here with members of Infantry Division eight to eight. The most intense fighting of this bloody conflict is beginning now in the heart of this city, under the watch of Israeli soldiers. Desperate Gazan civilians, whole families, some holding white flags, are fleeing their homes for the south. One man drags
and elderly women along in a chair. Soldiers call out in Hebrew in case some of the two hundred and forty Israeli hostages are being smuggled out too. Footage filmed on the Salahidian Road by Andalestinian journalists gives you a true sense of scale. They're young, there are old, clutching whatever's left of their lives. Across Gaza. One and a half million people, three quarters of the population have been displaced from their homes. This is the hell they're running from,
fleeing south. There's no guarantee of safety. This hospital in carn units where many have fled to.
So three quarters of the population already displaced. And you can see there, I mean, the city's rubble like, so much of it has already been destroyed. Of course, these people think they're never going to be able to go home. For many of them, there is no more home there to go back to. It's rubble, it's destroyed. So I mean that's just a little glimpse of the horror that is unfolding for more than two million people who are there on the ground.
Yeah, so he actually clarified also, he actually said, while we are clear our report was not censored or subject even to editorial approval, we would never agree to that. Only the pictures from the military visits were subject to security review e g. To prevent maps or certain specific parts of a military vehicle. So secunder CARMANI I thought he did a fantastic job of actually laying it out there.
And yeah, I mean, look, we're getting to the point where it's becoming very clear that we are entering the next phase of the campaign, because as you guys could see there, prior to this, it's just bombing and tanks. We're rolling, we're isolating, we're getting making sure we're cutting off we're trying to get as many civilians out. Now, these guys were out on the ground. You saw how they're outside. They're all doing security. They're forming a perimeter
around that rubble. They're trying to see if there's a stronghold in there, and there's a bunch of tunnels that are underneath. Now we're getting into the hand to hand combat, and now we need to start looking at the casualty numbers very closely, because this is one IDF casualties if they ever are going to start spiking. Now we're about to play you a video. We're going to play some of this, and let's be very clear this was straight
up released by Hamas where not. This is not an endorsement or any of that because we lack journalistic footage. This is the footage they are putting out of them their fighters engage in hand to hand combat or in you know, small arms fire RPGs and all these other things, trying to take out Israeli tanks, just to give people a sense of what the actual battle looks like. We just saw from the Israeli side. We're playing it here. You could see here you've got Israeli tanks that are
in the middle of the city. This is all being zoomed in. The Isis used to edit and their stuff all like this. Part of the reason is that they try to cut only the you know, the most exciting parts quote unquote where they're heroic looking, and they also edit it. It's just watching this, it's getting total flashbacks
to ISIS. Isis also used to cut it this way in order to entice younger guys to come and join them and try to make it look as much as call of duty as possible, and that's basically what they're doing here. But you can see they're zooming in, they're highlighting tanks, they're showing them, you know, trying to take them out. Nobody knows whether how many have been taken
out or not. You could see they're inflicting some damage, but like who knows, you know how much these these are pretty well armored and well supplied in terms of the Israeli military. The only point being that where now at that turning point where we're going to start to see a lot more casualties, both on the Hama side and on the Israeli side, where when you've got to
come in, you've got to clear rubble. When you're rolling tanks down the street and you're coming in too, you know, you've got two p huge things of rubble here, and you've got all these positions where somebody can take a shot at you and then maybe you've guys got you've got guys outside of the tank, we're behind you and all that. And this is nic this is World War Two.
We saw this type of combat Stalingrod, you know, mo Soul, so many of these different places, and this is where I think things can get start to get really gnarly, especially when you consider that you've got this massive three
hundred mile tunnel network which is underneath that. So the Israeli still have not they have not released a lot of the data, and I think one of the reasons they're taking to keep such a tight control is I think some I think we are some of the battles that are happening on the ground there which we're not able to see. Our vish brutal stuff is happening there between these fighters and between the Israelis.
Yeah, yeah, I mean it's easy for a modern military like Israel to go in and carpet bomb. It's easy to roll in with tanks, and even when tanks are fired on like, they are so well armored that it's very difficult to you know, very difficult to take out one of these tanks, especially given the types of weapons that Humas has access to, so you know all of
those things, you're unlikely to take significant casualties. It's when you actually have to get out and do this sort of like direct hand to hand commet that things really change. There was one piece that really caught my attention with regards to the hostages that Humas is still holding.
Here.
Put this up on the screen from the New York Times.
It shows you that there is a real tension between the Israeli ground offensive and the goal of bringing these hostages back safe and sound. So apparently of this reporting, Israel and Hamas actually almost had a deal to free roughly fifty hostages. This was focused on the civilian hostages. A number of the hostages are also Israeli military. Indirect talks mediated by Katar snagged after Israel's ground invasion of Gaza on October twenty seventh.
They have resumed, but hopes for a quick.
Release have faded so effectively, they, according to this report, were very close to securing this deal for the release of fifty hostages. But when they started in earnest the ground defensive on October seventh, and it.
Was like, all right, well, the deal's off.
You have a statement here from Israel's Defense minister in response to this report, Yoev Galant says there will be no pause without the return of hostages and missing persons. The only way of saving the hostages is if Israel continues its ground operation. You know, that's what they want to say to try to erase what is a very clear tension between the goal of getting these hostages back safe and sound and the goal of just like destruction
of Gaza City. There's another piece here, though, saga that really jumped down at me, which it's incredible to me that this isn't more of a subject of reporting, but somewhere buried, like the eighth paragraph of this report, they say, so far, the negotiations have only focused on releasing civilian hostages.
According to these officials. As I was just saying, the Israeli soldiers held in Gaza may eventually be part of a separate track of negotiations, possibly to be exchanged for hundreds of Palestinian women and miners who are held without
charge in Israeli prisons. And it's astonishing to me that, first of all, I don't know how they're not called hostages when there are women and miners who are held without charge in Israeli prisons, and how this isn't a subject of more conversation that this is going on on the Israeli side. So they're saying, potentially some future deal may trade the Israeli soldiers for these women and children who are being held by the hundreds without charges in Israeli prisons.
Yeah, we don't even know much about them. There's some speculation they might have been guest workers, people who are coming across Israeli as acclaiming that they were involved in October seven. So who knows. But yes, you are right. And part of the reason why that they're separating off those IDF soldiers is that Israeli society and I think, you know, even the rules of war and others are very distinguishing between people who are straight up civilian into
people in uniform. I'm not justifying them taking hostage, but you know, POW is very different status, internationally protected Red Cross all of that. I don't know if AMAS is abiding by all of those by the way, I hope that they are. They probably are not, But even in terms of negotiation at the Israeli government, they're looking at it differently let's go to the next part here, just because this is also important and I thought the Financial
Times has been doing really good work here. We can put up their piece exactly about the military briefing in the battle for Gaza City, highlighting some of the things that I was talking about exactly. As you can see in their map for those who are watching, you can see where the damaged areas are the most, and you can also see where the damaged areas are viewed so
that there is a total circle around Gadza City. The problem for Gaza City and for where a lot of those tunnels are, is that they have not actually inflicted all that much damage outside of the outskirts, so inside the city where the majority not only of the population was, but also where the tunnel network, the main infrastructure and all that. It appears they it might have held off Crystal because there's hostages there. They might have held off
for who knows variety of reasons. But that's where a lot of the battle is about to be going into. And they quote some military experts here in the story and they say the IDF is getting dragged into urban fighting in a packed, dense city. Below that you have these tunnel systems that profer every advantage to defense. They are going to encounter layers upon layers of complexity. It
is very tough, and they have not even started. They point to the fact that this really is a reversion now to straight up guerrilla warfare urban tactics, quote unquote, back to guerrilla one on one. You've got hostages, you've got these two hundred and forty people. RPGs are one of the weapons that they're going to have to contend the most with. It's something that Hamas has an untold amount that they've been able to supply themselves a stockpile over the years. And really what they say is this
is the preview. Infantry will be required to leave their armored vehicles maintained roadblocks trying to protect themselves from Hamas. The Financial Times has reported last week. Dozens of building have already been destroyed by air strikes. Hamas has been denied using some of their staging areas and all of that by the Israelis at least so far, but enough of the infrastructure remains that it's going to be a
hellish fight. They also point crystal exactly to what you were talking about with those tanks and where they have some particular vulnerability to RPGs, and where the Hamas fighters will be aiming towards. So if you want like a real, just straight up like military tactical briefing, I do recommend reading this. It does point out some of the IDF advantages.
They've got drones, they've got air power. Obviously, they have artillery, but a lot of that starts to go away whenever you get real close, you've got close enough to your enemy that you can actually see them. And that's unfortunately where I think we're headed right now.
They have a little bit of the military strategy here that Israel plans to employ to try to limit their casualties. They say their aim will not be to fight street by street, as US led forces did in Fallujah during the Second Rock War. Instead, its plan is to clear up pockets of territory use them as basis for urban raids. Results will be a series of small battles and skirmishes for different sections of the territory. They go on and say the aim for each raid is to gather fresh
intelligence on Hamas and its military infrastructure. Israeli forces will then withdraw and call in air strikes, then those will lead to more raids in an iterative process. I also thought this was interesting eyebrow raising. Israeli military has shifted the focus away from targeting the high ranking HAMAS planners behind October seventh to include mid level level field lieutenants
leading the fight against Israeli troops. They say this would significantly undermine Hamas's capabilities to carry out counter attacks.
So I thought that was kind.
Of interesting anyway. Yeah, I agree, we are going to continue to see some of this evolve, and I think some of the tactical analysis and all that going in is a preview of how some of the worst has still yet to come. Especially, you know, the Israelis really need to start girding themselves for this death toll. It's going to start to go up. There's just no way around it if you're going to go ahead and fight this way.
Yeah. And to bring it back around to the hostage piece, like these hostages are many of them likely held in Gaza City and very much at risk.
Ye.
So there's also you know, much of the Israeli population. Yeah, And I'm just talking about the polls that we've seen coming out of Israel is very little concern for Palestinian civilian life coming out of the Israeli public at this point. There is a lot of concern for the hostages and bringing them back safe and sound.
So, you know, if you.
Have a lot of hostages who are also you know, quote unquote collateral damage in this fighting, and you already see that they you know, they sort of blew up a hostage deal that they had in hand to move forward with this ground offensive. That can also be very difficult politically for net Yahoo within his own populace.
Yes, that's right.
Let's move on to a little bit of the reaction to Tuesday's election night results, just as a brief recap. I mean, basically, Democrats kind of romped everywhere. They were able to hold on to the state Senate in Virginia and also win the House of Delegates in Virginia. You know, the pro choice position on that abortion abortion ballot initiative in Ohio succeeded. The legalizing weed in Ohio also succeeded by a large margin.
My friend joyed the smell.
In Kentucky, Andy Basheer, who is Democratic governor. He is an incumbent by many metrics, the most popular Democratic governor in the entire country defeated by a pretty sizable margin Daniel Cameron, who was a Mitch McConnell acolyte and the current Attorney general.
So that was a big win.
And there were some others around the country Pennsylvania state Supreme Court seat as well, But in general, just over big picture, big night for Democrats in spite of, of course, people feeling bad about the economy and really not being super psyched about Joe Biden. So that is the context in which Republicans had you come in and try to make sense of these results, come up with some reason why this happened, and explain away what was once again
a bad and very disappointing night for them. Let's start with We've got Rick Santorum here on Newsmax giving his assessment of the problems with this election night.
Result of Sigal isn't that you put.
Very sexy things like abortion in marijuana on the ballot and a lot of young people come out and vote. It was a secret sauce for disaster in Ohio. I don't know what they were thinking, but that's why I thank goodness that most of the states in this country don't allow you to put everything on the ballot, because pure democracies are not the way to run a country. So you're but Democrats are trying to scare women into thinking Republicans don't want to abortion legal under any circumstances.
So we've also got Hannity there, Democrats trying to scare people, and a Thingian Republicans are against abortion under any circumstance was really in the Republican party platform. So it's not without any justification. And of course Democrats are going to do what they can because this issue has proven to be very potent. But I really enjoyed Rick Santorum there. First of all, his framing of abortion as being a very sexy thing on the ballot was entertaining to me.
But the big piece there was him being very upset about voters having a direct say, which goes counter to the Republican narrative over many years in favor of overturning Roe versus Way. The line was always let's return it to the states, Let's let voters decide.
What they think the rules should be.
Now that voters in every single ballot initiative that has had to do with abortion, voters have chosen the pro choice side. Now that that has happened, suddenly they're not so keen on voters deciding anyone.
It's not so foolish.
Yeah.
I mean, by the way, I actually agree with a lot of the states thing. I've been like, yeah, that's great, okay, yeah, let people decide if they want to. And it's obvious, it was always obvious, has been from day one. That's a dramatically unpopular position in all but maybe six states, you know, in the entire country. The rest of it
really relies on state legislature control. And I think over time, the vast majority of red states will roll this back because of referendums like these, and a lot of voters are weaponized it not even weaponizing using the current political process, referendums in others in order to enshrine, like in the case of Ohio, a literal constitutional right to be able
to have an abortion. And I mean, my personal favorite I think on all of this is all of the pro life activists just grappling with the fact that this is so dramatically unpopular and bad for Republicans that they have to come up with scapegoats. This is my personal
favorite example. Let's go and put this up there on the screen, Matt Walsh, He says, before you tell me the pro life message is a political loser, answer me this how many Republican candidates fought back hard and effectively on the issue, actively went after the left ran ads attacking their opponent for supporting the dismemberment of fully developed infants, and actually countered the left's pro abortion narrative with a
strong and affirmative pro life narrative. It seems to me the pro life message is being blamed in races where the pro life message was never even articulated. I am calling this real. Pro life has never been tried. As we would accurately make fun of some of the annoying communists that you meet when you're like nineteen years old, and yeah, that's what this is. It's like, no, dude.
It turns out that when the vast majority, and this is a big structural problem, the majority of the GOP commentariat and professional class is dramatically more Catholic and evangelical in a capital are like religious sense than the average Republican voter. Now, listen, a lot of Republican voters are religious. Don't get me wrong. A lot of them do go to church, but a full one third of the people
who voted for Trump are straight up pro choice. And actually, the Trump coalition itself is built on the backs of secular, non college educated whites who are not religious, who explicitly don't give a shit about gay marriage and on abortion. And they're like, yeah, it's icky, but you know, if you force me to choose, I'm gonna go ahead and choose the pro choice side. So it's not that you know, even this fifteen week thing. I keep saying everyone, these
people remind me of defund the police activists. It's like, well, if you parse the polling, the majority of people support fifteen weeks. And I'm like, hey man, you lose on the fifteen week convo because the fact that you're even talking about abortion and you're on the side of some people who genuinely do want to ban it. You're done. That's a coalitional problem at a very basic level. The other side just wants to return to the status quo. That's it.
Now.
Yeah, you might be right in California or Blue States or whatever, they've got different abortion laws, but like in Virginia, we're not talking about California. We're talking about Virginia. In Virginia, you've got a blue state already, a Biden plus eight or whatever. Everybody trying to parse all of this, oh, maybe a fifteen week ban or any of that, And you're always pointing this out, and I think you're right.
The fifteen week ban has become less popular since the whole Row versus way was struck down because people just when you're trying to change the consensus, people don't want that. And if anything, really, what I think the pro life people are going to find out is we're going to end up with more legal abortion in shrine and law post Row than we probably did pre Row. So I mean, congratulations, I guess it'd certainly return it to the democratic process.
This is certainly the first time the pro choice side has really been on offense and consistently winning in quite a long time. I mean, most of the story of my political adulthood has been more and more abortion rights being rolled back state after state after state, and now this is the first time things are really going in the opposite direction. To the point on fifteen weeks in Virginia and Matt Walsh being like, oh, you need to lean into it harder that was Glen Youngkin's yea, he
tried like his pack was pushing it. They were pushing their candidates to lean into this fifteen week abortion message, thinking like, Okay, this is we've done the polling, we've done the focus grouping, this is the place where we might be able to find a consensus. So let's just lean into it and actually talk about abortion, not be
afraid of it, et cetera, et cetera. But the thing is when you've got a party that, again their national platform says we want to get rid of abortion, and you have these Republican legislators who are like, oh, I want restrictions, but that's it. No further than I promise, pinky promise, no further than fifteen weeks. Like voters, of course,
are not really going to believe you. And so I think, you know, the Virginia one, I don't want to overread it as being one hundred percent about abortion, because I don't think that it is. I think it's also just somewhat of a reversion to the mean of where Virginia is. Virginia is dominated by the Northern Virginia suburbs. They've become
increasingly you know, liberal and War Blue. Over time, there were key battles fought in places like Laden County, which are kind of exurban, which Glenn Youngkin had done well in when we were talking about COVID school closures and things like that, that suburban moms where I think justifiably very upset about. But it's a different landscape now. So in any case, I think they tried the Matt Walsh approached actually in Virginia, and you can see what the results are.
Listen. Ohio is as an even better example. It was straight up, up or down. People campaigned hard against you know. Actually, Jadie Vance put out a very thoughtful threat I thought for from the pro life perspective, where he's like, we got, we straight up lost, and here's what it's going to look now. Personally. Listen, he's a friend of mine. I don't agree with him really on the issue at all. I think as a political loser straight up, but you know he's a religious guy. So good luck to you
in terms of trying to win on the issue. Let's put the next one up there. We've got a couple of examples of cope that we still have to continue to show you. Daniel Cameron lost this is from Trump. Even though he endorsed Daniel Cameron, he came out and he disavowed him, and he blamed it all on Mitch McConnell. Even though Crystal. In Daniel Cameron's last ad he literally ran as a pro Trump guy. He was like, I'm
endorsed by Trump, I'm all about Trump, Trump Trump. The very last three second spot he had was all about how Trump loved him. And now Trump immediately comes out stabs him in the back. Yeah, the moment that he lost, he's like, no, no, it's not my fault, it's Mitch's fault.
And he's celebrating that the Republican Republican governor of Mississippi was able to hang on by the skin of his teeth. Or shows you what a bad night it was were Republicans. Just as a reminder, just days before election Day, Trump had posted on true Social Wow, Daniel Cameron of Kentucky has made a huge search now that they see my strong endorsement and the fact that he's not really a McConnell guy.
He puts in quotes.
They only try to label him that because he comes from the great state of Kentucky. Anyway, go Daniel great future for you in your state. You will bring it to new levels of success and I will help you. So that was like, literally, I think, three days before election day and then immediately is like, it's because he's a McConnell guy. It's Mitch McConnell's. It's because what abu here. It's certainly not my fault.
It's all on me anyway, So it was some fun. Cope, let me.
Let me just because I'm obsessed with Kentucky, I have to say one thing about this. So putting abortion aside, which actually the fact that Andy Basher in the state of Kentucky is religious and conservative as that state is, ran a campaign on abortion rights in Kentucky tells you something about this issue. But the other thing that really jumped out from you know, his results, which he outperformed even his first run for governor, which was against a
very unpopular Republican incumbent, Matt Bevin. And so he was able to outperform if you look at the numbers, the places where he did the best and outperformed the most had been really hard hit.
By natural disasters.
There was a lot of flooding in eastern Kentucky, and then there were tornadoes and storms in western Kentucky and Andy Basher, who has a very famous last name in the state as well, which helps in Kentucky, and you know, it's a small state and people feel connected to the Basher name, etc.
But he really made a point of showing up.
In these areas that were hard hit by natural disasters, and it seems that that was really rewarded by voters. So there's also a real argument to be made here just in favor of being on the ground, paying attention to what your constituents are actually going through, staying focused on what you might call bread and butter, life and death issues that are immediate and locality specific, and that's how he was able to overcome overwhelming Republican tilt in
the state at this point. So I think that piece is interesting as well.
Absolutely, let's move on to the free speech part. We wanted to be able to include some of this in our show. There was an interesting moment between Tucker Carlson and Glenn Greenwald on Tucker's new show on x or Twitter formerly known as Twitter, about the censorship that is currently going on against the pro Palestinian movement here in the United States. Here's what they both had to say.
What's so terrifying to me, though, is that the right, the American political right, which really was to this kind of weird transformation that's happened over the past dozen years, has become the lone defenders of the First Amendment. They've abandoned that in the last month, like instantly. So I think you could say, you know, I strongly support Israel, I strongly dislike.
A moss I'm rooting.
Maybe I think we should commit troops to the region. I mean, whatever, you can have any.
View you want.
However, American citizens have a right to express their opinion, period and that supersedes any other event in any other country. It's like, that's a core right. And I don't hear many conservatives saying that, and so you sort of wonder, like, if they're not defending it, who will.
I mean, there are people who have built their careers, Tucker over the last five six years standing up and saying we can't have cancel culture, we can't have censorship. College students aren't entitled to feelings of safety. We don't censor in order to protect people from views.
They find threatening.
Mocking the notion that minority groups are vulnerable and we have to censor in order to protect them. Turn on a dime and now become the leading voice of saying because American Jews feeling safe, that's valid in a way that say claim is from black people or LGBTs or Latinos aren't valid.
And because of that we need to censor. Show me the lie.
Yeah, he is right.
I'm glad to hear Tucker on that. It's a tragedy that's not getting mainline to the Fox News boomers and they're getting Jesse Waters instead. I can't even imagine what the hell is going on over there. But it does show you a massive split, you know, in the conservative movement right now where for you know, And I think Glenn's point is so important. It's what I was talking about in our a block. When you adopt the language
of safetyism, you immediately fail. And it's because it goes into the framework of like you deserve, like complete emotional certitude and not to be able to be challenged. As Tucker said, if you're an American citizen, you can say anything that you want and should be protected by the law.
We should go out of our way, even the abhorence this is what the beauty the ACLU case is that even the speech we find the worst, the most objectionable out you know, outside the bounds of polite conversation, many standard deviations away straight up Nazis, we still protect it because the precedent itself is so important and unfortunately, actually, really what we've done is we are emboldening these campus apparatics because now they can be like, well, you wanted
us to, You called us in to protect against the Hamas people.
So next time there's some George Floyd bs, we're gonna do whatever we want. Whenever it comes to censoring somebody or driving them off campus or posting their photo like this is a person who didn't sign on, they didn't put up the black square. You know how far away are we from that it already happened.
And you know, I mean college kids. That's one case the opportunity.
But the piece that is more disturbing is where the nexus of censorship and state power come into play. Absolutely, and so when you have you know, Rhonda Santa sound there, like the DOJ needs to investigate and actively going after these student groups. And also this really gross conflation of I do not deny that there are people that are out there that are saying atrocious, directly anti Semitic things. I think it's disgusting. I think it needs to stop
directly advocating or celebrating Hamas and the atrocities on October seventh. Disgusting, right, But there's also this conflation of anyone that has a critique of US government policy or Israeli government policy as being an anti semi or being in collaboration or celebration of Hamas. And that's wrong and it's disgusting, and it's something that Biden administration is engaged in as well. I mean, they called calls for a ceasefire a position held by
two thirds of Americans. They called that position repugnant. They likened people who are attending pro Palestinian protests, all of them, not just like the fringe extremists, to the neo Nazis that marched in Charlottesville. It's insane and this is happening all over them. I mean, Republicans have gone all in. You just have to listen to the debate last night
aside from Vivaigue to hear that sort of language. Although he also goes pretty far in terms of condemning everybody who has any sort of a dison interview on this as well. He just doesn't want them to be censored or like arrested or whatever. But to go back to what is going to continue to be a consistent theme. Have we learned nothing after the War on Terror? Have we learned nothing after our failed response to nine to eleven?
Have we learned nothing about how dangerous it was to give the state so much power of surveillance, so much power of censorship, and say and justify it all.
In the name of national security.
I mean, that's effectively what we're doing here all over again, and giving them all the tools that they could possibly need. And do you think it's just going to be used against the people you don't happen to like, No, never stays in that one lane. The tools they acquired in the War on Terror have been used against many different ideological groups. They have been consistently expanded over time, and we're just handing them even more power to weaponize those very same tools.
I think you are absolutely correct. That's a great place to end it. We really appreciate all of you. We're just on the time crunch because we got Vivig Ramaswami, but we'll be posting that later, as we said earliest. For our premium subscribers, it's going to be posted a separate interview and a separate podcast, so you could check your feed in a little bit. We're excited, we're about to go do it, so we'll see you later