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 Monday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal?
Did we do lots to get to this morning?
So Israeli has killed their own hostages as a broader war looms, huge backlash domestically in Israel over what exactly happened there, so we'll break that down for you. We also have Trump saying that immigrants are listening the blood of our nation. This coming as Nikki Haley is genuinely surging in the polls, at least in New Hampshire, So some very interesting development there. Ukraine resorting to some pretty outrageous tactics as manpower becomes a massive issue in that war.
John Fetterman says he is not a progressive funny, that's not what he was saying before when he was, you know, raising money and posturing and all this sort of stuff. So a lot to get into there, and also there
were things happening in a Senate hearing room. Yes, you just got to wait and find out on that one if you don't are And you know, I'm also taking a look at some new comments from bb Netanyahu admitting that the two state solution is never going to happen, at least from his perspective, if he has anything to do with it, and exposing many of the fairy tales that have been told about this resolution for a long time.
Yes, that's right.
And before we get to any of that, it is the holiday season. I've got I'll be having Christmas ties all this week as we head into it. We just did want to say, though, thank you to everybody who's been taking advantage. We've got our one year discount happening
right now for our annual membership breakingpoints dot com. If you can go ahead and sign up a year from now, we'll be in the midst of I'm sure what is going to be a very fun election, reconciliation or whatever process, whatever the hell is going to be playing out on Capitol Hill. So if you can help us prepare for the election season, you can take advantage of that breakingpoints dot com.
As I said, it's kind of crazy. We just really realized the Iowa caucuses are less than a month.
Yes, right, nuts wild It'll be a fun return the new year.
So yeah, lots of things coming up in the new year.
Yeah, go ahead and look forward to that.
Okay, let's go ahead and start with Israel, as Crystal alluded to, so over the weekend, news broke that three Israeli hostages were actually shot and killed by IDF soldiers in a very disturbing incident. This is ignited major protests inside of Israel, both by hostage families and others who are opposed to the war effort.
We can go ahead and play some of this.
What you're seeing here are live crowds in Tel Aviv that are protesting against the killing of these Israeli hostages. Has built up major domestic pressure on bb NET and YAH who to change the way that the war is prosecuted. Will get to the IDF their defense of the conduct of their forces in a little bit of a second. But it is igniting a major I think controversy around the rules of engagement about IDF conduct in the war.
We're going to take a listen here to a protester herself.
They said they do everything.
They say that the hostages is first day in the considerations, but it doesn't seem like this.
It doesn't look like this.
So what you could see there was that Israeli protester in English saying, it doesn't seem like the hostages are pre eminently being put you know, at the center of all this, and the circumstances of this killing are really disturbing. So let's go and put this up there on the screen. The preliminary IDEF report, and this is from Israeli media to be clear, says that the hostages were killed by soldiers waving white flags. One yelled for help in Hebrew.
Quote according to the report is really soldiers spotted a building in the area two days prior to the tragedy with the inscriptions SOS and help written in Hebrew on one of its walls. IDEA forces operating in the area marked the building as a possible trap and that they were eventually mistakenly killed. Now, in the description, a soldier who was stationed on one of the upper floors of a building, noticed that these three figures were quote holding
a stick with white fabric attached to it. The report states the soldier felt threatened and opened fire at these three. Two of the hostages were hit and fell to the ground. A third actually managed to escape into a nearby building. At the same time, as soldier reported to his commanding officer he had encountered enemy militants. The commander arrived at the scene while another idea squad was following the third hostage, who managed to find a hiding place inside the building.
The report says as a soldiers approached the building, they heard shouts in Hebrew asking for help. The hostage who was hiding inside the building came out and ran inside again. According to the soldiers, they then believed it was a Hamas terrorist attempting to lure them into a trap the building,
where they shot the hostage dead. When retrieving the bodies, they then noticed identifying marks that raised suspicions at the three where Israeli hostages who had somehow managed to evade their captors, and according to the report, in the area they spotted the words sos and help and we actually have some images of that we can put here up on the screen for people to take a look. This is some of the blood spatter from the killing of two of those hostages.
Guys.
Let's go to the next one because you can actually see the signs in question pretty you know, the universal Distress signal for SOS and it written in Hebrew asking for help. Raising some very disturbing questions, Crystal about the conduct of the IDF here, the trigger trigger happy nature of some of the troops in the area.
And also just a nightmare of urban combat in general.
I mean, you got here we covered just on our Thursday show about these ten IDF guys who got killed and were lured into a trap in an ambush, which was a whole nightmare of a situation in and of itself. But it does show you that these guys are on a hair tree or alert and they're basically just willing to kill anything that they can deem a terrorist.
Even in a trap type situation.
They're willing to just spray and pray and unfortunately result in the death here. But I think it does raise disturbing questions about the rules of engagement which the IDF maintains now that while the soldiers will not be punished, that they were in violation of the ROI, which doesn't make a lot of sense to me, so curious to your reaction, I.
Mean, it's pretty clear here that the only reason that there's any outcry over the killing of these three individuals is because they were Israeli.
Think about this situation. You have these.
Three hostages who knew that, you know, it was possible that they could be killed if they came out and presented themselves to the idyeah.
So what do they do.
They fashion a white flag that they can wave, They take their shirts off so that it's clear they are not suicide bombers, and none of this saves them. One of the reports talks about the reason why they even checked out to see, oh my gosh, are these actually Palestinians? Was one of them appeared white, and so they decided to go in and do a double check over who these people actually were, and that's how it was determined that these were hostages. But it makes it pretty plain
the IDF, at least operating especially in northern Gaza. Anyone that they see they are just assuming is you know, fair, fair game. A legitimate target and they're if they're asking questions, that's not coming until later. So it is an absolutely outrageous situation. And by the way, you know, this isn't far from the first time that the IDF has been accused of firing on individuals who are waving a white flag.
If there's a Human Rights Watch report, we can put this up on the screen that has some language, you know, an in depth report. But some of the cases that they analyzed here seven of the cases they said at least one person was waving an improvised white flag made from cloth or clothes, which international humanitarian law recognizes as a sign of truce or SURRENDERUS civilians are immune from
attack with or without a white flag. In these cases, they undoubtedly wave the flags to communicate they were not engaged in hostilities post no threat, reaffirming their civilian status.
They go on.
Two Israeli commanders have alleged that palistating fighters used white flags to shield themselves from attack, but without providing details to allow an investigation of the claims, such as daytime and place. One colonel told the media that his soldiers had seen Hamas fighters move between houses while holding white flags a second colonel said a soldiers had seen a Hamas fighter hide behind a woman with a white flag
and a group of children. It is impossible to understand what threat they thought these hostages posed when they clearly did not have suicide vests on. They could have used that as an excuse if they had shirts on, but their shirts were off and they're waving a white flag. What in the world did you think that the risk was here? And Saga, I think you are right to point out the fact that they're saying, oh, this was against the rules of engagement, but they're not punishing these soldiers.
They are not even really castigating them. I mean, all of the language that I've heard about them is oh, this is so understandable, and you know, it's very difficult situation. Again, what risk did they think? I think that these people, these hostages who had managed to escape from their captors and we're hoping that the IDF would help to rescue them. What threat did they actually think that they posed in this moment?
That's the issue.
I mean, look, people are trying to parse it. I think you have to look at these things on a case by case basis. So US hostages actually have been killed in previous hostage raids by Delta Force operators or Sealed Team six operators.
But the circumstances of that are very different.
That's when you're like raiding into a dark room where everything is off and they're usually held in captivity, and in a very different scenario. This is quite literally three of them managed to evade their captors, had signs saying SOS and help that were public and were basically lit up by these guys and don't even notice until later on, even including shouting for help in Hebrew. I mean, I guess the only slack we can cut is these guys are like probably like nineteen years old reservists.
They don't have a lot of training.
The fact is is that a lot of people probably do speak some Hebrew or rudiment enough. Hebrews was not necessarily something that you could cut out, but you know, the SOS flag at the very least, you should probably pause and just wait and see what's happening here, as long as you're maintaining some sort of distance.
This is not me saying this is us.
According to some people I've spoken to who have experienced in hostage rescue, and they were specifically castigating them based on these circumstances. They're like, it's not unheard of to have hostages killed in a hostage rescue mission, but this demonstrates just really a lack of discipline within the IDF itself.
Yes, one of the things that I want to mention here with regard to the protests and the domestic backlash. You know, BB has come out since this incident and said, quote, military pressure is essential both for returning the hostages and achieving victory over our enemies. That is the polar opposite of what many hostage families have been saying, which is common sense. You're bombing Gaza, You're shooting everything that moves there. Our family members are there, you are putting.
Them at risk. Now we know in this instance.
That it was Israeli fire that killed these three hostages. There are other hostages who have been confirmed dead at this point. Hamas is saying many of them died in Israeli bombings. We don't know the veracity of that, but it's certainly not preposterous to imagine, given what northern Gaza looks like at this point, that that's exactly what's happening. And so that's what these protests are about to say,
this is ridiculous. This idea that the longer you bomb the hell out of Gaza, that's safer our family members are, that's absurd. And so previously you had just to show you the way that this domestic pressure is being applied. Previously you had the net Yahoo administration refusing to go
back to Qatar to work on another hostage yeald. Now these family members, many of them, I don't know if it speaks for every single one of them, but many of them are saying, we want a deal that would exchange all of the palatating prisoners that we are keeping in exchange for all of the hostages. That's the deal that they have actually been pushing for for a long time.
So enough pressure is now being applied after this horrific, outrageous incident that the head of Masad has gone back to cut now to try to three start negotiations on some sort of a hostage release deal and potential additional ceasefire. So you can already see the way that this public pressure is changing the calculations of the net Yahoo government in real time.
Yeah, so that's the overall what we're saying.
I wanted to highlight to a couple of other instances which I think really underscore the discipline issue within the IDF. One was actually an incident where the IDF themselves ended up having to apologize for their conduct. Let's go ahead and play some of this. What you are seeing here is actually a mosque in the city of Janine in Gaza, where you have IDEF soldiers on inside of a mosque, one of them taking the imam's position and using the
microphone to broadcast Hanukkah songs. The idea of that themselves specifically rebuked these soldiers. What you're watching here is actually was broadcast live on CNN Turk and an involved a journalist who had his hands up and was immediately basically beaten, thrown to the ground, put his knee placed on him by IDF soldiers who started, I mean, you know, even hitting him with the butt of their rifle. Has also been just general tiktoks and other things that are emerging
of a lot of Israeli soldiers broadcasting social media. I just saw another one this morning. We don't actually have a cut, which shows an Israeli soldier smoking hookah or shisha right next to a bunch of blindfolded hostages. The level of social media like discipline and all this is just, I mean, honestly outrageous compared to the way that US soldiers were often held to a very different standard and absolutely would have been punished in all of these incidents
that I mentioned. But what I think it highlights to me, Crystal, is exactly what we were trying to portray in our Thursday show, which unfortunately was really prescient, was that the discipline and near amateur nature now of a lot of the guys within the IDF and their conduct is doing them no favor and is very much igniting. I mean, they've had Abu grab level incidents, you know, almost every day now since that was broadcast.
That mosque one.
I mean, I don't think I can really characterize how incendiary it is for a IDA force to walk into a mosque, got their shoes on, taking me a mom's position, broadcasting from the call to prayer microphone honka songs.
That is that is not gonna.
I think engender any good will, probably, I could say. And the best way for you to understand how incindiar it was is not to listen to me is why the IDF themselves immediately after the incident, where like, these three guys have been taken off duty. This is we unequivocally condemned this, and they were even criticized by religious rabbis inside of Israel.
They're like, you cannot be doing this.
I mean, it adds an even more religious dimension to the conflict, which it seems opposite of what you want.
It seems like those dudes who are in the mosque got more punishment and approbrium directed than the one who murdered the hostages.
Good point.
And you know, listen, the IDF has told everyone to evacuate from northern Gaza, and you now have one point million Palestinians who have been forcibly displaced from Northern Gaza. And basically what they've said to people is if you stay, you will be a target. We are going to assume
that you were a target. So was it really against the rules of engagement when they just fired without asking questions on these three people that they saw, even though they're waving a white flag, even though they have their shirts off to prove that they have no suicide busts and that they're no threat to anyone. And certainly they were one hundred percent unarmed, so really against the rules
of engagement. Would there have been any concern whatsoever if these had been three Palestinian civilians to add to the body count now of over twenty thousand, somewhere around twenty five thousand who have been killed in Gaza at this point of course not, of course not. They're not even going to punish these guys for killing their own people. There is no interest in, you know, sparing the civilians who were caught up in all of them. So I
think it's a very I mean, it's humiliating. Puts a lot of pressure on Netanyahu to take a different approach.
To the hostages.
The hostages continue to be a very emotional issue in Israel, and we shouldn't hit ourselves like with regards to these protests that are happening right now. We saw the poll, sixty percent of the Israeli public things the IDF isn't going far enough. Only two percent, less than two percent actually said they've gone too far in terms of the damage that they have brought.
But this hostage situation.
Is the one thing that could apply domestic pressure to BB to take somewhat of a different course. And put at least the hostages lives first and foremost. So we'll see how this all plays ound.
We certainly will.
US policy makers have reignited their push to try and get the Israelis to change their course of action, although the Israelis certainly kind of threw it back in their face. Here you have the Defense Minister basically openly rebutting National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan on camera after a meeting in which Sullivan told them, you need to wrap up this war effort by the end or the major operation by the end.
Of the year.
Goalan openly in English in front of him. You can kind of see his soul leave his body, saying Yeah, that's not going to happen.
Take a listen.
So thank you for being side by side with us in this effort. The Hamas is a toe organization that built itself for a decade to fight is One, and they build infrastructure under the ground and on the ground, and it is not easy to destroy them. It will take and require a long period of time, it will last more than several months, but we will win and we will destroy them. So thank you once again for coming to Israel, for helping us and for supporting US.
Yeah, yeah, he said several months.
Like I said, you can literally see the life leave Jake Sullivan's body as he said that it also comes on the heels of Defense Minister Lloyd Austin. He arrived in Tel Aviv actually this morning. Let's go and put that up on the screen and have a little bit more that I can add to this. Austin quote returns to Israel with a tougher message and lessons learned. The Defense secretary is stressing the Biden administration's support for Israel,
but concerns about the rising Palestinian death toll. After he
stepped off the plane, his message was blunt. Mister Austin reiterated the strategic defeat that would leave the country less secure if it does not do more to protect civilians, and he is emphasizing early US efforts to target the Taliban and insurgents in Afghanistan in four and basically the cautionary tale that if you take your eye off the ball, you go to I mean, you can go to a variety of different ways that he will end up in a situation in the same way the US did with
having to do a surge in Iraq. In Afghanistan and eventually actually failing in both of those categories. So that's where the US officials are. They're kind of stuck between
a rock and a hard place. They really don't know how to reconcile President Biden's rhetoric and some of the rhetoric here in Washington, obviously the very strong Israel lobby, with the reality that all of America is now entering a phase where the Israel tax we're all about to pay in inflation is going to be near or equal to the Ukraine tax, and we're about to talk about that with global shipping.
But any last thoughts on this crystal from the US, Yeah, officials.
I mean the Floyd Austin It's a sick joke at this point. I really want to go back. Adam Johnson has actually been doing some of this and look at all of the times that they've Oh we're worried about civilians. Oh you need to wrap it up. Oh we need to know more about the day after. We're having hard
discussions behind the scenes, et cetera, et cetera. What a joke, Like they have literally not listened to you a single time, not once, and now you have even Joe Biden saying describing their bombing as indiscriminate, which, let's be clear, if the bombing is indiscriminate, which I think is pretty freaking
undeniable at this point, that's a war crime. So you're admitting that your ally, who you're pushing as hard as you possibly can to ship to bypass Congress to ship munitions, to pass fourteen billion dollars to give them whatever they want,
are committing war crimes. And all you can do is like legal a little of the press about how worried you are and how they need to wrap it up while they humiliate your officials in public and know that you are not going to say a word about it, and you are not going to do a thing about it.
That's the situation.
I mean, it's putting aside the immorality of it, the humiliation of the US, the entire country, and certainly the President that his wishes are apparently asserted with the Israeli's time after time, and they do not care. They spit in their face, literally have Jake Sullivan up there and just publicly humiliate him and force everyone to watch his soul leave his body. As you said, So when I see these articles now. I mean, it's just preposterous to me.
It is truly like sick comedy to watch these pieces come out again and again about how worried they are, et cetera, et cetera.
Well, let's se act to the next part here.
As I mentioned the Israel tax that I think we're all going to start paying, let's go and put this up there on the screen. The US is now considering striking the Yemeni group the Houthis, after repeated attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea. The Biden administration quotes
them four. They are increasingly concerned that the Houthis and their sponsors in Tehran are trying to undermine global maritime trade, both to under kept trade to Israel and to raise the cost of the US and his allies for supporting the israel States now eleven week war in Gaza against the Palestinian group Hamas. Already some global shipping lines are diverting their cargo traffic away from the Red Sea and the Suez Canal to routes circling the Horn of Africa.
The Suez crisis a two.
Point zero I guess that we are now in is genuinely extraordinary, so I wanted to highlight the statistic in particular, let's go and put this up there on the screen. Four out of the fives largest container shipping companies CMACGM, Hotpod, Lloyd Mart, MRSK and MSc have now paused or suspended their services in the Red Sea. Together, those four companies account for fifty three percent of the global container trade.
So the amount of container shipping traffic currently going through the Red Sea has gone down dramatically in the days since the war, and actually currently just this morning I saw the update forty six separate container ships are now diverting around the Cape of Good Hope rather than transiting the Red Sea, which is an extraordinary cost in the amount, in the amount of fuel that you have to pay, and obviously all of that is going to get transited
to American consumers and to really global consumers. This is significantly going to have an impact on the price of oil as well, so British Petroleum announcing this morning they will no longer transit through the US Canal and through the Red Sea. I mean that's almost ten percent of global supply. So all of this is going to have
significant upward pressure on prices. Just as we're already dealing with the quote unquote Ukraine tax from whatever is happening with our Western sanctions, and also out of the Black Sea Fleet, etc. This also comes on the heels and is a major challenge right now to the supremacy of the US Navy. So let's go and put this up there right now. The US and the British Navy now say that they have shot down fifteen attack drones just yesterday over the Red Sea. These suspected attack drones were
going after commercial shipping. It's important for us to note here the commercial shipping vessels that are being targeted are not just israelly, They are US flagged, British flagged, and all kinds of different nations. As I'd mentioned previously, the increase in these attack drones or quote unquote unmanned aerial systems that are being shot down, I think just really highlights to me and crystal the cost of asymmetric warfare.
Every missile that we are the BRIT's launch against these drones costs a million dollars, maybe a little bit more. And if you factor in oil, the price of the you know, the guys on the ship and all this other stuff. It's probably even more than that. Each one of these drones cost twenty five thousand dollars, So every single drone is costing Americans a million dollars in weaponry that we are used to shoot these things down, not to mention the immassive tax and.
Global shipping that is now happening.
And if this is going to be the status quo for the next several months, I don't think we can emphasize enough, Like Joe Biden, you can kiss your presidency goodbye in terms of not just a handling of the Israel crisis. Inflation will come roaring back, you know, to this extent that it has declined very small, you know,
in the last several months. So this is probably the single largest existential threat to global security and to the global economy that we've seen since Ukraine, largely because of the massive impact it's going to have on global inflation. I don't think we can talk about it really enough. And then I've said this to you before. You know, one of these just one of these missiles goes off target, one of these DROs D kills an American sailor or an American you know, an American flagged a crew member
to some type of Captain Phillips situation, takes hostage. I mean, you've we've all seen that movie before. It can literally pause the entire globe, it can change.
The entire picture.
Well, I was really struck by a quote that they had in that semaphore piece from Lieutenant General Michael Nagatuho, oversaw US Special Operations Forces in the Middle East during the Obama administration. He said, there's something close to an undeclared war between Iran and the US when it comes to the attacks and the reprisals that are going on outside of Israel. That's a very important aspect of this. And just to back up for a second to give a little bit like top top layer of history with
regard to the Huthis. I mean, the Huthi's more or less control half of Yemen than including the capital city. They're backed by Iran. So there's been like this proxy civil war going on in Yemen for years now, the Sunni backed government, backed by Saudi Arabia and by the way, backed by US, and they've kind of come to this uneasy stalemate right now or truce. There's talks of a potential partition plan. So the Huthis are in charge of
a good bit of Yemen. You know, in the US perspective, we sort of pretend like they are these still rebel group, but they do control the capital city and they do have significant weapons that has been provided by a RUN. Now from their perspective, and why they have eagerly engaged in these attacks is because you know, now that there's
a bit of a shaky truce. Their domestic political situation in Yemen is a little bit shaky, and the one thing that rallies everybody together is support for the Palestinian costs. For them, it's a win win situation because not only do they get to you know, show themselves as being pro Palestinian and anti Israel with these attacks and with these threats that are being made on the Red Sea, they also get to please their benefit factors a RUN and try to keep them on their side. And for them,
let's say that you know, the US intervenes aggressively. Now there are active talks that I think it's very likely to occur that the US will strike Yemen directly strike some of their you know, weapons and missile systems and silos directly. That would only inhore to their benefit as well, that they're seen as being taken on directly by you know, the big bad guy, the United States of America. So that's why for them this is an lose situation. It
benefits them tremendously. And with just a little bit of you know, drone warfare and boarding these ships and threats being issued, they have managed to completely upend shipping around the world. And it's very difficult to overstate what a tremendous impact this is already having. So twelve percent of global trade by volume normally flows through this area, perhaps
thirty percent of global container traffic. In addition to the added cost of having to go all the way around Africa, you also have skyrocketing insurance costs which also add to you know, obviously the cost of shipping goods.
So you've got fears of.
A broader escalation, as Sager was laying out, fears of drawing US more directly into conflict with Iran, which you know, nobody I think wants, I hope nobody wants.
Actually I'm wrong about that. There are a bunch of people, there are a.
Bunch of politicians who want that, but in terms of the American people. Nobody wants that. And then you also have thematic economic impact that they are able to exact extract with very minimal, very minimal efforts.
Here, Yeah, it's not good. And also just again to highlight how much this is costing American taxpayers.
It's going to put this up there on the screen.
There are three separate now US destroyers that have entered the Mediterranean Sea by the Strait of Gibraltar, the USS Laboon, the USS Delbert Black, and the USS the Sullivans, all in the span of just six days, all of them being dispatched specifically for a new joint mission that we're currently running with the Brits to try to protect global
traffic in the Red Sea. But even with this power projection on the commercial to try and protect the commercial fleet, a lot of companies and insurance really this is a game of insurance and we all learned this during the hostage Somali crisis, where you know, during the Captain Phillips saying they're like, wait, why don't you just pay to have like mercenaries on your ships to protect them.
They're like, honestly, it's just cheaper to pay the ransom.
Well, what we're learning here is that you only start to take action like this until the insurance companies give you the green light such that you are allowed and you can pass these on through contracts a law. It's very complicated in terms of international shipping and maritime law. But eventually it just comes to a point where the risk becomes so high that it's made at a company wide level that everybody's willing to eat that cost, and that of course means that you get passed on to
the consumer. But the significant toll right now on the US Navy I don't think can be overstated. I mean, we've already got two Terra strike groups in the region, then we moved there previously. Now we've got multiple US destroyers that are on their way here. This is a full blown, you know, international shipping crisis, even if nobody wants to name it as such, and we are really
on the prespice of something. I would also add Crystal in terms of striking the hoo Thies, we would not necessarily pay the price there, although we probably pay some, but the Hoothis have demonstrated capability to target riod if they want to, And then yeah, I can you can all tell me what America is going to do if Saudi Arabia finds itself in some sort of missile war with the Hoothis, which they have in the past used
Patriot missile defense defense systems. I just saw this morning the United Arab Emirates is heavily pressuring the United States to militarily target the Hoho They so there's pressure building to in the Gulf to try and have some sort of military campaign which could easily spiral oticamy.
Yeah, I'll don't forget that.
One possible idea that's been floated is to use armed escorts for all of these ships traversing this strait, and apparently we use these in the nineteen eighties during the so called tanker war between Iran and Iraq. But it would require a huge number of warships to be committed to this effort. So that's why there's major hesitation in
doing that. So, you know, and there's a larger conversation to be had at a different point about the massive economic toll that is being taken on Israel, not only through the fact that you know, they have all these reservists called up people are basically you know, during the war. They're basically all tourism has stopped, all like normal activity
has stopped. Huge hit to the economy, and the economy has been become very dependent on foreign direct invest Well, that was already dropping off a cliff because of the Netnyahu judicial like takeover situation, and that is expected to drop even further than you add to this that it's specifically I mean, they have targeted other ships, but they're specifically saying they're targeting any ships that are going.
To Israeli ports or that are Israeli flagged.
So huge impact on them in particular in terms of shipping. And you know, that's another massive cost of them of this war.
Absolutely.
All right, let's talk a little bit about what's going on in the Republican Party. So Donald Trump giving a rally recently and reiterating some outrageous rhetoric that he had used before with regard to immigrants.
Let's take a listen.
They're poisoning the blood of our country.
That's what they've done.
They poisoned mental institutions and prisons all over the world, not just in South America, not just the three or four countries that we think about.
But all over the world.
They're coming into our country from Africa, from Asia, all over the world. They're pouring into our country. Nobody's even looking at them. They just come in. The crime is going to be tremendous. The terrorism is going to be, terrorism is going to be and then we built a tremendous piece of the.
Wall, so poisoning the blood of America there. He had said this in an interview previously. I mean, this is obviously just some like out and out Nazi type rhetoric and sober to me, it seems like, you know, the immigration thing has always been what he has used number one to you know, both rally his base trigger the Libs, which is what a lot of his political power comes from. Some of the old rhetoric which seems mild frankly in comparison to this. It doesn't hit the way that he
used to. So he's got up the ante and just go like full Nazi in terms of the way he's described.
I think Trump is a genius in terms of getting people to set the conversation.
I mean, we're covering it here now. This was you pointed this out to me.
I actually missed this entire news cycle, but I went back and checked, and it was dominating every single one of the Sunday shows. The reason why I honestly think it wins on a strategic ground is that he's leaning by double digits on immigration. Anytime you're talking about immigration, you're highlighting border policy. For Republicans, they've got probably the biggest lead over Biden that they have in the entire thing.
So for him, I mean, as long as you can center immigration I think at the front, and you can get people to talk about you and to draw contrasts with Biden, I think it's an overall win for you.
I'm not going to defend what.
He said necessarily, but I do think look throughout history, what do we show when we have uncontrolled net migration that we have like right now effectively uncontrolled with the US border and with probably the highest level of form born population in modern American history, You're going to have some major ethnic strife, especially when you've got economic problems
like we have right now. And it would not it's not a shocker to meet that something like this is going to hit with a lot of people who want to vote for him in the first place. It goes back to some of the original appeals of the twenty fifteen campaigns. So yeah, I mean, do I think it was a smart thing to say, Like, no, not necessarily, but from.
A strategic ground.
I think in that way, getting people to talk about it and to just like highlight his border policy versus Biden at a net level, it probably works for him.
Policy versus Biden is not all that different at this point. But we'll talk about that a little bit more when we get to the bill that they're working to push through, which would include the border piece and Ukraine and Israel.
That's if it's signed though, right even then, that's basically just a return to the twenty twenty even.
Many of but even many of the policies that Biden has instituted. I mean, he's you know, remain in Mexico. He has been holdovers since the Trump era that Democrats you know, opposed then but suddenly went quiet when it was Joe Biden. So a lot of the border policy frankly isn't all that different.
But he was dragged kicking and screaming two years back to remain in Mexico. The asylum process is still very different. There's some eight million illegal immigrants have entered this country probably since Biden took office. So I mean from that perspective, I mean, if you look at someone like Trump, that's just that's a massive winning issue. Like the American people do not support most of what's I mean, we seen.
Are definitely concerned about emigration, and they should by the way, I agree with you, I think they should be. I don't think that we should have you know, I think people deserve to have a controlled and orderly process at the border. I think that you know, the fact that there's been a failure to deal to with this massive backlog in terms of asylum cases is just a catastrophe and an utter failure of governance. We'll talk about that
more in a minute. In terms of the politics of this, I'm not so convinced because the big problem with Trump is this sense of extremism, and you know that comes out in concert over abortion. It comes out and concert over January sixth, and most Americans are not looking at the immigration issue in this type of just like out and out Nazi, they're poisoning the blood of America way. They want law and order, they want basic security, they want it to be an orderly process. And so the
more that he uses this sort of rhetoric. I do think that it can serve as a reminder of like, oh, yeah, that's what it was like when this guy was president of the United States, and you know what, this was not great and it was very chaos.
It's possible, I don't know. I also wonder though, if so much of this is just baked in. I mean, for example, using the word nazi, I would would just say, like, how many times have people called Trump a Nazi? Like at a certain point, the words like lose meaning, It's like, what does it mean? And so even if he were to say something which is quote unquote nazi asque like if but if it's just going to roll off, most people are like, yeah, whatever, I've heard it a million
times before that Colin Trump and Nazi again. I see it's the Washington Posts. You don't pick up on the edge. Nobody is, nobody has heard for them. This is the first time that someone's gonna be like, oh my god, Trump is a Nazi. It's like this type of criticism is just it's like calling Bernie a socialist and defund the police. Anybody who supports him or is even on the everybody's heard it a million times before, so at a certain point, like, I just don't think some of this criticism is.
Going to work for him.
I think immigration is such a net winning issue for Republicans that anything he could say is probably gonna be.
Good for him.
I mean, that is possible that just by putting the issue front and center and forcing conversation about it, that he wins. I think that is an entirely possible situation. I also think it's entirely possible that people here, I mean, this is very antithetical to the idea and the concept the ideal of America, right that when people hear these type of comments, which even like Fox and Friends had
to cover. I mean, this was wall to wall in terms of the coverage, and I would say understandably so that people remember some of the things that they really didn't like about him, because keep in mind, like this is not a popular man. The overwhelming majority of Americans do not like this dude. Okay, they're not giving him the benefit of the doubt, right, they are not in
love with the idea of another Trump presidency. Yet because he has been out of the news cycles, he's not dominating the news cycles the way that he used to. There's been a little bit of like a fuzzy memory with regard to what he really is like and what it was really like to have him as president of the United States. So from that perspective, I'm not sure that it really serves us interesting.
I just I honestly don't know. I will wait and see. I have seen.
Look everyone thinks, for example, I always talk about this Charlottesville.
Everyone's like, oh my god, Charlottesville. Guess what.
Charlottesville wasn't even close to the lowest level of Trump's presidency. The lowest approval rating that ever got was not anything to do with Charlottesville.
Was the Tax Cuts of Jobs.
Act the day that had passed, and it aligned with appeals to what was it, repeal and replace Obamacare. Those were probably the two single most unpopular things Trump ever did as president.
So in terms of I don't know.
Honestly, I don't know, especially because the immigration situation today is still so net.
Different than twenty twenty.
The sheer amount of illegal mass migration the foreign born population is a higher level than ever before. I mean, look, I don't think it's a secret. I strongly support reduced illegal and illegal immigration now.
At this point, and I would put it to you this way.
I think one of the eras that rhymes with current America most is the nineteen twenties, like the turmoil of the post World war, the crumbling of the international system, America's trying to figure out what it is, depressions and you know, wild spikes and the economy all of that.
One of the things I think that really helped with calming down politics was that we had in immigration policy where effectively restricted it for forty some years to allow so basically an assimilation of migration that was similar levels of foreign born population, and things just chilled out for a little bit before we eventually returned to the nineteen sixty five consensus. Is something Ryhan slam Is written about in his book I forget the exact title right now.
I do recommend people go and read it, and I think that Trump is responding to exact Now. Listen, we got lucky because we had much more responsible politicians who were in charge at that time. But that ethos if you want to go back and look, there's a reason the KKK and all these organizations surged in popularity sometime around that time period, and it's not a secret in terms of how it could have gone in a very different direction.
It's also not I mean, there's no doubt that economic stress and a lot of cynical politicians will take that out on immigrants and use them as gafegoats all the time. It's also not a secret that during that same period, when you talk about politics chilling out, that we had the new Deal, that we had, you know, a basic
social safety net. I agree, we had the middle class growing, so we had people feeling a lot more secure in their economic fe future, and that also is part of what made politics quote unquote chill out.
So how this plays. The other thing that I point to.
Is that we've had multiple elections now where Republicans try to put immigration front and center, where.
You have had very large.
Populations of you know, of undocumented immigrants coming to the country, where people are saying this is a big concern for them. Hasn't worked because there are other issues that they are also very concerned about, and in particular, abortion has become incredibly central. But even in that midterm election with Trump, remember the whole migrant caravan thing, and this was really front and side.
That actually helps a lot of republics.
That helped in red states, yes, where it was possible that you know, Democrats were going to be able to pull off upsets in some red states, but it did not help overall. Overall, you had a very good election cycle for Democrats. So for people who are you know, with Trump and they're you know, all in on this issue and this is the primary focus, does it hurt him with them?
No?
Absolutely not With the general public, I think it is much more mixense.
It would be my case for why I think it's gonna help Trump, and no matter what he says, I think it would is that the migrant situation now is so different and it's not. Honestly, the most genius policy of the Red States came up with is ship them to New York and ship them to Chicago and to all the other sanctuaryy Look at the rhetoric coming from Eric Adams. He's like pleading on his hands and knees for money from the federal government because of the New
York City Right to shelter. And I can tell you from what I understand, New York politics behind the scenes is exploding over the migrant issue. You've got motels and other things in places like Rochester which are overrun. You've got Chicago with the same I believe the mayor of Chicago said something similar as well. California always has been a complete mess on this issue. But the more that the Red states continue that policy, I actually think it
could could invite some sort of pushback. Although you know, you tease this, if they do some sort of border deal, things could change. The reason I don't is that the Dems are holding strong on a parole issue where they will not either have remained in Mexico or they're allowing you know, my so called you know, asylum migrants what I would say, economic migrants to be paroled into the general public and to have work permits for years to come.
On that issue, If they're going to hold strong on that, that doesn't that doesn't necessarily change the overall picture. So with so many of these blue states, crystal, with so many millions of people who have now been trucked in, you know, from from California or from Texas, from all these other places, I do think that could change this calculus.
I don't New York in particular, well, I don't think in terms of where the politics on immigration are I don't think there's any doubt that they've shifted hard to right.
I don't think there's any doubt about that.
I mean, you can look at the way Biden talked about immigration in his presidential campaign, and you can look at the policies that he's apparently open to now, which are a lot of Trump type policies that you know, let's we'll save.
This a little bit.
We'll get into it a little bit more and always talk about John Fatterman and the way that you know, he may be emblement of the way that.
This has shifted hard right.
But let's talk a little bit more about the presidential election landscape and the question over whether this type of rhetoric and approach from Trump and him saying be a retribution and be dictator on day one, etc. Is a net positive or net negative for him. You have Obama now worried that Biden may not be able to get reelected.
Put this up on the screen.
So this was I think the Wall Street Journal actually picked this up, but the Daily Mail sort of noticed it and ran with the headline, Barack Obama thinks Joe Biden could lose the White House next year. With President's polls continuing to tank, his worries over his age and cost of living crisis persist, with Donald Trump edging ahead, and the polls and concerns about the President's age, immigration,
Israel policy, and economic plan denting confidence. Person described by The Wall Street Journal as being familiar with Obama's thinking said the former president was troubled. Obama knows this is going to be a close race, the source said, and feels that Democrats very well could lose the.
Twenty twenty four or election.
Any worries the alternative is pretty dangerous for democracy. You would have to be an idiot at this point to not be worried that Joe Biden could lose now.
In fairness to Obama, I think.
He has always doubted Joe Biden and his political abilities. That's why he was so late to endorse back in twenty twenty. You know, he waited to see if there was anyone else, who other than Bernie, who might make a run at it, and then at the very last minute intervene to try to, you know, get things to fall into place, and successfully did so for Joe Biden.
There is all that reporting about the sort of frictions and tension between Obama and Biden during the Obama administration, where you know, Obama's this like hyper intellectuals, smarty pants type of guy, and he looked down on Joe Biden as being sort of inferior to him from that perspective. So in some ways those dynamics are not new. But Obama still has a lot of sway in the Democratic Party. And I'm not just talking about with base voters who still love him, but with the party elite. He has
been the ultimate like kingmaker and chess player. So the fact that he's concerned at this point is noteworthy. But of course, does that mean they're going to, like, you know, have an open Democratic primary process to try to pick a better candidate.
Doesn't look like it. Yeah, absolutely, it does not look like that at all.
So I am very skeptical of Joe Biden's presidency obviously for a lot of these reasons, and also just just to highlight some of the things we were talking about, let's go and put this up there on the screen. Polling wise, in every single swing state, Trump is now currently leading on average forty seven to forty two in Arizona, forty six to forty two, Georgia, forty nine to forty three, Michigan forty six forty two, Nevada forty seven forty four.
North Carolina's out swing state. I don't know why they put them in.
I know that Pennsylvania forty six to forty four, Wisconsin forty five, forty one.
What is it? Didn't Obama win North Carolina by like a hair in two thousand and we have a one sent It hasn't been one.
Yeah, So let's just everybody, let's resign that to some crazy separate politics, at least in the interim.
This is bad news.
With the average at forty seven forty two and the individual state by state polling, the only thing Biden could hope for is a massive twenty twenty two style miss that underestimates abortion, which I am not ruling out, but that's a hell of a lot to bet on to try and win the presidency.
Yeah, good luck, it sure is.
And one of the things that comes out in this poll is a lot of the falloff for Joe Biden in recent weeks is among Democratic core constituencies, so among
black voters, support has dropped since October. Among young voters between the ages of eighteen and thirty, four, there has been a huge drop off in disappointment over the failure to actually execute on a widespread student loan forgiveness program, and of course on his handling of the Israel War and the unconditional support for Israel, which is dramatically at odds with young people and very energizing for a lot of young people who just feel this is way too
far for them to you know, not to say they're going to vote for Donald Trump, but they may vote for Cornell West, they may vote for Jill Stein, they may just not vote at all because they don't want to feel like they are supporting someone who is enabling a genocide, which I think is a very reasonable position to hold. So not only has he lost the trust of a lot of swing voters, but he has lost the trust of a lot of key constituencies that need to turn up in droves in order to help him
defeat Donald Trump. So not a good landscape for him at this point. A little bit of movement actually on the Republican primary side, Nikki Haley surging in a New Hampshire poll will show you those numbers in a second, but it was an interesting moment. She was on one of the Sunday Shows, she was getting pressed over why she's very, you know, kind of tapid or timid about criticizing the guy who continues to be the overwhelming front runner in the race, Donald Trump.
Let's take a listen to that.
You don't want me to either love him or hate it all, I ask respond to a New Hampshire voter. So I did, and I responded to him in every way, And what I said to them was anti Trumpers want me to hate him, pro Trumpers want me.
To love him.
But this is where I stand. There are things I agree with the President on. I had a good working relationship with him. There are things I don't agree. I don't agree with the fact that, yes, we had a good economy while he was there, but he put US eight trillion dollars in debt that our kids are never going to forgive us for. I don't agree with how he handles national security. He focused on trade with China,
but he did nothing about the fentanyl flow. He did nothing about the fact that fentyl has killed so many of our Americans. I don't think you should praise HESBLA. I don't think you should criticize netnyahu Win Israel's down on our knees. I don't think you should congratulate the Chinese Communist Party on their seventieth anniversary, and.
He talks about annihilating his enemies and using the criminal justice system to do so, what do you think of that?
You guys are exhausting. You're exhausting in your obsession with him. The thing is, the normal people aren't obsessed with Trump like you guys are. The normal people care about the fact that they can't afford things, They feel like their freedoms are being taken away. They think government's too big. I know y'all want to talk about every single word
he says and every single tweet he does. That's exactly why we need a new generational leader, because people don't want to hear about every word a person says or every tweet. They want to know how you fought for them that day, and they want to know how their life is.
Going to be different.
And life would be a whole lot different if the media would stop this obsession with Trump.
I mean, I was just asking you about his central campaign theme, which is I want you know, I am your retribution. And he's winning in the polls. That's why I'm asked, Well, it's you know, I'm asking about the leading candidate the year.
He does everything he can not to talk about issues.
It almost asks like he wasn't there, right, He doesn't want to talk about building the wall and securing the southern border because he didn't do it.
What do you think of that?
And by the way, that's a governor you knew of New Hampshire who's endors Sninky.
I thought it was ridiculous.
It's like you guys are upst with him, like, yeah, because he's beating your ass by fifty points in the overall GOP primary.
Maybe you should be more obsessed. You should be more.
Obsessed with Actually, I mean, look, like you said at the same time, she's actually not doing so badly in New Hampshire. We can put that up there on the screen. Our graphics team did a great job with this. You can see here in New Hampshire that Trump is currently at forty four, Nikki Haley at twenty nine, DeSantis at eleven, Christia ten, Ramaswami at five, Hutchison at one. I didn't even know he's there, was still running obviously, but that does show you that look and it makes sense Trump.
If there is a anti Trump constituency, it is broken up amongst all these little candidates. Nikki, I actually think is the best case for an anti Trump candidate, because that's around where it should sit. Twenty nine percent people who are Neil Khan in traditional you know, honestly, just
like the old school Mitt Romney style boomers. That's around where the support would look like between twenty and forty especially in a state like New Hampshire, which has got people like Jeane Shaheen who represent them, but the overwhelming or at least plurality in this case our Trump asked or Trump's style with Destantas and Ramaswami support in them.
I would also say there's a lot of talk right now Chris sol like, oh, Christy should drop out and throw all of the support to Nicki Haley and then maybe she could beat Trump. In New Hampshire. We've seen consistently that the second choice for a lot of these candidates.
Is also Trump.
There's no evidence to support that the vast majority of the support would go there.
Although Christy best case, I was going to say, with Chris Christy, I would think that you would have the best possibility of most of his support flowing to probably Nikki Haley. And you know, we could look at polling and see who the top second choice for.
His for his voters is.
But you know, New Hampshire is very different from a lot of the other states. For one thing, you know, they do have this sort of like muttered independent streak. For another thing, actually independence can vote in this primary, and many of them probably will since there isn't that much of a contest on the Democratic side, because the Democrats have decided not to really have much of a contest on the demok side. So that's part of why
she's doing well in this state. And one of the things that was interesting in this CBS poll is they pulled Iowa and they pulled New Hampshire, and the picture is very different.
In Iowa.
The fact that Nikki has been perceived as a sort of like moderate on Trump is a major downfall for her there. It's a major impediment for her there. The fact that she's tried to moderate some on abortion has been a major impediment for her in Iowa. Those are things that are all boosting her in New Hampshire. These are two very different populations. A couple other things that I just thought were interesting in terms of her potential upside. If I'm going to try to make the case for
Nicki Haley here in New Hampshire. So she actually tied Trump when they asked who is prepared to be president? She and Trump had the top numbers. I think they both had like fifty seven percent or something like that. But she did well on that metric and matched him. She was described fifty five percent described her as likable. She was top on that quality over DeSantis was at thirty seven. Trump was at thirty six. So people said
they liked her, they felt like she was prepared. You had fifty one percent, so a majority saying that she was reasonable quote versus six percent for Trump. Trump had the edge though when it came to being seen as a strong leader and being the most electable. That one was really interesting to me because you know, it's not what the polls reflect. The polls reflect that Trump is
in good position to beat Joe Biden. But actually some of the poles that have come out have shown Nikki Haley with even more of an edge over Joe Biden because she doesn't come with a lot of the Trump baggage and isn't saying things like, you know, immigrants are poisoning the blood of the nation.
Yeah, but.
The Republican primary electorate sees Trump overwhelmingly as the candidate to beat Joe Biden. They think he's the guy who has the best shot at it. So, you know, to the extent that that was ever one of the big concerns for a Republican electorate in one of the cases that Ron De Santis, for example, was making, it seems that seems to have not worked out for them.
No, certainly.
And also you know, on the Disanta side, the implosion of his tire operation is really something to behold. I mean, I still honestly can't believe it with the resignation of the never Back Down chairman Jeff Rowe, who ran ted Cruz's campaign Crystal and who really engineered a lot.
Of the Iowa win, he's resigning.
And we've also remember we had the stories that we played here previously about DeSantis in open war with his own super pack, Like their inability to get donors to have a tight like run an actual tight ship, have a robust campaign infrastructure is really like a catastrophic complosion, which is Jeb level I think for what's coming.
Yeah, it's wild said since the day before Thanksgiving, I think, did we put this up on the screen that we've got the element the pro Desanta super pac which is called Never Back Down, which, by the way, they were going to try to run their campaign different and basically Never back Down was going to be the campaign.
Most of the money was going to reside.
There are a lot of the strategy was going to come from there, even things like paying for on the ground organized. They had this like, oh, we're going to revolutionize the way campaigns are operated and funded, et cetera.
That has not worked out.
So since Thanksgiving you had the resignation of one chief executive, resignation of one board chairman, the firing of a second chief executive along with two other top officials, and now you have the late night quitting of Jeff Row. All
have come after massive infighting and finger pointing. As mister DeSantis has slipped in the polls RO put down statement on x formally Twitter that said I can't believe it ended this way, And you know this came after some internal recriminations, etc. But you know, this is what happens when you're losing people place blame, they point fingers, they get angry.
At each other, they throw each other under the bus.
And so the fact that there is turmoil in the Rhonda Santis super Pac world, I think it's just emblematic of how his campaign is going overall.
I think you are absolutely right.
At the same time, let's turn to Ukraine' some really disturbing stories that are coming out, really the truth beginning to emerge about Ukraine's manpower problems. Let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen by genuinely courageous reporter Thomas gibbons Neff, who's previously been banned by Ukraine
from reporting about the realities on the ground. Gibbonsneff here Crystal reports a full fledged quote people snatching campaign by Ukrainian recruiters to use to fill the ranks of conscription and recruitment depots.
So here's what he writes. Quote recruiters have.
Confiscated passports, taken people from their jobs, and at least one case, tried to send mentally disabled person to military training. According to lawyers, activists, and Ukrainian men who have been subjected to coercive tactics, there are now videos of soldiers shoving people into cars, holding men against their will in recruiting centers that are surfacing with increasing frequency on social media. We had some, but we didn't feel confident enough in
their veracity to play them. But at the very least, a lot of these videos are going viral inside of Ukraine, and it highlights the intense manpower problems that they have. I would combine this story with one that I brought in my monologue on Thursday about Ukraine, Zelenski admitting to the US Congress that to continue the war effort, he's likely going to have to expand conscription to men over
the age of forty years old. And in one case they actually describe here a fifty eight year old taxi driver who quote feared retribution, said the recruiters showed up, took his passport, returned it only after he showed up for his medical screening. He's describing it as quote lawlessness. So what they're doing is they take your passport away. You can't if you want to retrieve your passport, you have to go to the recruitment depot and they make
you sign the papers for force conscription. And in many small towns across Ukraine. Many of the people who have been forcibly conscripted have unfortunately died on the front line already after only several months in the military, which is having a chilling effect because a lot of people don't want to serve.
So you have two problems.
One, six hundred and some thousand Ukrainian prime age males have fled the country.
They don't want to fight period.
Everybody left basically subject to being kidnapped by the government and thrown you into conscription, which at this point I think manpower is their single biggest problem. You will and I were discussing, want to float a credit to our
friend Yegor who flagged this for us. There's a report coming out from the deputy of the ruling servant of the People Party that said that Ukraine is preparing for general mobilization, including a bill proposing to mobilize women to serve in defense enterprises and voluntarily to serve at the front under contract, I mean voluntarily doing a lot of work there.
Yeah, and they've already required women who have certain skills, in particular in the medical profession and pharmaceutical to register for conscription. So this would be you know, potentially expanding that and there are a lot of you know, there's obviously a lot of very domestic concern over what that's going to mean.
They previously close the borders.
And that has remained for military aged men, so a lot of women wondering if that is going to follow for them as well. This story is heartbreaking about the quote unquote people snatchers, and what comes out is not only have you had you know, devastating losses and casualties high numbers, so that obviously there's a loss of men, so there's a need to recruit more men and bring in more men. There's also because of that and because
the war's not going well. It was one thing in the beginning, people wanted to sign up for the cause. There was a huge surge in recruitment because people wanted to be part of a winning war effort. Now the Zelenski you know, propaganda efforts have sort of faltered. They can see the distance between how things are actually going and how it's been portrayed to them, so that has dampened enthusiasm for getting involved in this. And the other
piece is massive corruption. So people who are wealthy they pay off their recruiters and recruiters go to a doctor. This is all reported out in this piece. They go to a doctor, They'll get them to write up a
medical exemption and boom, you're good to go. So they have a quote here from one Key based lawyer who's been representing some of the individuals who been wrongly or who are saying they were wrongly drafted, said, it's a war for poor people because those anybody who doesn't have the means to pay, those are the ones who are being snatched up and sent to the front lines. So it is, it is truly heartbreaking.
And you know, we're.
About to talk about the AID situation, and I just I think that our approach to this has been disgusting because we've given them enough weapons to give them hope, We've given them enough to basically like stay in and fight to the last man. And yet you know we have we blocked piece at the beginning. You know, we are now likely to suspend AID altogether. I don't even know what you do at this point, because Russia has no interest in doing any sort of deal at this
point because they're in such a strong position. So I'm just thoroughly disgusted by our political class. I'm thoroughly disgusted by our media class, by the fact that you couldn't even have these discussions until right now, and they're they are in a horrific situation.
At the moment.
Yeah, let's highlight some of that. So let's put this up there and again. These are the voices of Ukrainian marines and soldiers from the front line who are saying on the record that they are quote, engaged in a suicide mission on the Denipro River, And one I really want to read is about this is that quote. For two months, the Marine Corps has been spearheading in as Salt across the river in the southern region of Kursan to recapture territory. The operation is the latest in the
flagging counter offensive. Soldiers and marines who have taken part in this river crossing describe it as brutalizing and futile. Waves of Ukrainian troops struck down on the river banks or in the water before they even reach the other side.
Conditions are so difficult.
Half dozen men involved in the fighting said in the interviews there is nowhere to dig in that there are, and including bodies that are rotting in the mud. And in the river for a period of now two months, dead marines that have just been laying there because they're unable to be retrieved from intense shelling. That is straight
out of Passiondale and of the First World War. I've even visited some of these places, some of their graveyards, where you'll go there and there's just graves randomly scattered in a field, and I was like, what's going on here, And they're like, oh, this was a mud pit, and we don't even know who died here because we didn't reclaim until nine months later, so we just put up a bunch of crosses. That's what we're dealing with here
now inside of Ukraine. And really what they talk about is that in this case, they specifically went on the record because they said that Zelenski and other defense officials quote recently suggested that marines have gained a foothold on the eastern bank. These marines say, quote, there are no positions. There is no such thing as an observation post or position. It is impossible to gain a foothold there. It is impossible to move equipment there. It is not even a
fight for survival. It is a suicide mission.
Period.
I mean, this is a commander who put on the record to the New York Times here for one reason, he wants to stop the and I can guarantee you he's probably only going to face retribution as a result of this, when all he's trying to do is save himself and all of his men who are being brutally killed, you know, in this defensive and this is the reality. Now you've got the manpower problems on top of the tactics and the way that they want to fight. This is what they want us to try and continue to fund.
And it's just so obvious that it is not only not going to work, but at the very best, you are just bleeding the poorest people who can't afford to bribe their way out of getting into the draft. And now like mentally disabled people who have an actual medical exemption and are still being forced into conscription. I made the reference last time, like the Hitler Volkstrom policy of calling up like really old men and thirteen year old boys to defend the fatherland.
They're not that far away from that right now. They're really not.
And this religious highlights too, where they're asking for more ammunitions, artillery and weapons to just continue to fight this way. So let's put this up there on the screen. This is about really two weeks of reality for Zelenski. Number one, his visit to Washington, where you know, he did not get the aid that he wanted. It's possible they may
still get more. But there also was in a fifty billion dollar appropriation from the European Union which was rejected by Hungary, which stopped some of the flow of future aid to Ukraine. There's a splintering in international and global support now in economics support, and it just again raises a question of like what are you even going to use the money for to continue this to what possible benefit is this to your country and to our country?
Zero?
Yeah, I'm there are no good solutions. I think that's the bottom line answer. And all I can keep thinking
is when you're in a whole stop digging. You know, if we continue this policy of like dribbling out aid to enable them to you know, send their young men, and now there are older men and now potentially they're women to fight and die in the trenches with basically no hope of being able to secure a victory, Like you're only going to end up in an even worse position down the road for any sort of a negotiated settlement.
So it's an utter disaster.
With regard to Zelenski's trip at the White House, they say Biden was forced to downgrade the US's pledge from supporting Kiev for as long as it takes to supplying the country with weapons as long as we can.
And keep in mind, let's say they get this package through.
You know, Republicans are eager enough to get their border deal, and everybody apparently is eager enough to get their Israel money, and so Ukraine gets another tranch of funding.
What then?
What then?
You've got a presidential election around the corner where it looks damn well likely that Donald Trump could be coming back to the White House. And if you think that he's going to continue this, I think that's.
Very very unlikely.
So it's nothing but grim scenarios and grim possibilities from here on out with Ukraine.
Yeah, absolutely, it's nothing looks good in terms of what their future is. We also highlighted to the Russian response where they currently are probably less likely to pursue a deal in terms of what Putin and all of them said because they're like, listen, what.
Are you guys going to do?
And it's a geopolitical reality where the current cope that I see is, oh, if we've just given them the planes and all this stuff in the first place, and they would have won and we would never have been in this position.
I actually don't think that's true at all.
They've been incompetent in all of their employed use of Western style tactics and technology on the battlefield, which is why they're throwing guys into a river and making them die like it's World War One. That's what they know how to do, and that's fine. But in a world where constraints exist for our a to Ukraine like F sixteens and long range missiles, where it could spark a broader war, then this was the inevitable outcome, which is why peace deal itself was always the best policy.
April twenty twenty two.
Now you've got who knows, maybe half a million dead, nobody knows what the real number is, or at least dead and wounded inside of Ukraine. You've got diminishing manpower, you've got basically zero industry of their own, and the Kremlin is revved up for war production and they don't care at all. So honestly, the worst case Mario was actually more likely I think today than ever before.
Yeah, I mean on the other side, like, I actually do have more sympathy now though for that idea of Hey, if we're gonna block them from doing a peace deal early on, you better give them everything you can to give them at least a fighting chance of actually securing some kind of a meaningful gain and meaningful victory. They had momentum at the beginning. The Russians were a chaotic, disastrous mess. They hadn't been able to spin up their war production. You know, everything was going awry in the
field for them. Now they have become a much more effective fighting force at this point, and they've been able to spin up their industrial domestic production.
So I agree with you, Sager. Do I think it would have worked.
Probably not, but in a lot of In one sense, we've really ended up with like the worst of all worlds for them, because we've bled them out and given them no possibility of any sort of victory.
Now.
Obviously, the reason we opposed the other approach of going all in was because of the very real risk of a broader war between two nuclear arms superpower, which was a risk that I always found wholly unacceptable. Is why I post that position from the jump. But I do think that the people who were like, we got to go all in with them if we were going to block the peace deal, you know what, that was the like correct moral and strategic position to take at that point.
Yeah, I totally agree, And it's obvious. Now, however, will they change their tune? No, they certainly.
Want all right, So let's talk a little bit about our friend, Senator John Fetterman, your friend what was not my friend anymore?
So put this up on the screen.
Senator Fetterman, who has become very aggressively pro Israel, like one of the most pro Israel members of the Senate, just gave an interview in which he also broke with the left on immigration, and he told NBC News quote unquote, I am not a progressive.
Really. It's very interesting because that is not.
At all what you've been saying for the entirety of your political career since you burst on the scene in Pennsylvania where you wrapped yourselves yourself when it was convenient in Bernie Sanders and endorsed him in twenty sixteen and called yourself, you know, progressive routinely, especially when you're asking for money.
I'll give you some of those examples in a moment.
But even on an immigration piece, this is a total one point eighty from the way that he campaigned, and noteworthy because his own wife is actually an undocumented immigrant from Brazil. Here's one of the campaign ads that he ran when he was sounding a very different note on the topic.
Take a listen.
I'm proud of my wife, Jizelle's origin story, and I'm so grateful for the sacrifices that her mother made all those years ago to come to this country looking for a better life, because if they didn't, I wouldn't have the incredible family that I have now and the partner that I have in Gizelle. The Statue of Liberty says, send us your poor, huddled masses, and as long as we remain true to that original sentiment, America will continue
to grow and prosper because immigration makes America America. We diminish ourselves and are never more Unamerican when we eliminate citizenship for those that just simply want to contribute and be a part of our great country.
So, like I said, very different from the tone he is striking now on immigration. And this is all, of course, in the context of this potential aid bill, which absurdly ties together Israel, Ukraine and tougher border enforcement policies. Fetterman signaling to NBC News that he is very open even to the toughest of those increased enforcement border policies, which is really different from the way he campaigned and what he said in the past on this issue.
Yeah.
Well, we especially have to highlight and this is part of why I get annoyed about the conflation of immigrant and we don't apply the proper rhetoric here. She was an a legal immigrant now I guess she was brought here by her mother whenever she was a child, but is a direct recipient of an amnesty policy from the Bush administration, gaining her green card in two thousand and four, becoming a US citizen eventually in two thousand and nine. So that is why I think his comments are especially
noteworthy because he's not talking about immigration. He's talking specifically about illegal immigration, of which his wife literally was the beneficiary of said policy, and he's changing his tune. I have no problem with that, because that's the policy that I support. I don't even think his wife should be allowed to have citizenship, but that's the secondary question because
it's done now. But I think it does highlight Crystal for your point about something that I personally hate, which is taking advantage of political constituencies when convenient and then turning upon a dime. And with this guy, he was a Bernie Sanders like progressive type person when it was convenient and he was running against Connor Lamb, and I mean, you remember that the Democratic establishment was totally pro Lamb.
They only came to him after they saw how much he won in the prime and really after he won his election that they were able to reconcile themselves. But now it's like his change completely on a dime. I honestly, I don't know what to make of his thing. I personally just think like it's obvious that the money played a huge role here on the Israel side, based on
Ryan's book. On the immigration side too. I think he's trying to save his ass, like Eric Adams and all these other Democrats because Pennsylvania is a you know, Pennsylvania is not a red state per se, but it's a swing state.
It's certain state.
But he does need to.
I mean, he has pissed off progressives so much, especially on Israel. I have to say the immigration comments are new, but that's certainly going to piss.
People off as well. That he does actually have to worry.
I think about a primary challenge in the state of Pennsylvania and on the immigration front. Like it's a long time before he has to face reelection, so to be making this hard pivot right now, it really is a head scratcher. And just to give you some of the proof, because there are a lot of people put this up on the screen who were like, hey, this individual says, funny, he was a progressive when he was asking me for my effing money and posted a bunch of examples. I mean,
these were not hard to find. He's retweeting. His tweeting is Bernie's support. Retweet if you're standing with these progressive champions, he says, with a picture of Bernie, a picture of him. Progressive rhetoric is great, but progressive results are one hundred, he tweeted. He tweeted, also, we have started a progressive movement here in Pennsylvania. So gee, I wonder John Fetterman, where people got the idea that you were a progressive with consistently progressive principles.
Now what the hell happened here?
I don't know.
I mean, did the Strokes chake something loose? Possible? But I think you're right Zager that the best indication we have is what happened with Israel. He made an incredibly politically cynical and expedient decision with regard to Israel policy.
Ryan Grimm reported it out. Basically, he saw that a pack money in a pack affiliated money was coming into these democratic primary races aggressively on the side of anyone who had any dissenting word on Israel and Palestine, and so he went to them himself and was like, Okay, here's my position. Is this good enough? They're like, no, you need to make this change, in this change.
In this change.
She's like, okay, done, here's where it is. And he ran with that, and it has now aggressively leaned into that. So I have to think this is all cynical political maneuvering. Is it intelligent cynical political maneuvering? That part is not so clear to me, because, like I said that, there, you know, there is a sizable progressive movement, organized movement
in the state of Pennsylvania. And I do think that he is becoming like Kirsten Cinema or Joe Manchin level of hated by plenty of progressives in the Democratic base, especially among young people. So you know, it's not just the general election that I think he would ultimately have to worry about here if he continues in this direction, but just the political cynicism here and the denying that the posturing like you never presented yourself as a progressive.
If you've had a genuine evolution, you want to explain how you came there. Okay, fine, Like I may still believe that it's political, but at least you can acknowledge.
That this is a shift.
But he's just pretending like, oh, this is who I've always been, and it's complete non sense.
Yeah, I mean, I think it's personally. Listen, I tried to tell you guys the dressing thing. It wasn't about the connecting to the people. He's a narcissist and it's all about egoism. Viere just I would just say, I mean Cinema and Fetterman, the two worst dresses, Yeah, are the two biggest narcissists.
Two most cynical political operators. And you know, if you're happy with his positions now on this like, he is going to just go wherever it is most politically convenient for him, Wherever the campaign donations are the richest, that's where he's going to position. And that's what we saw with Cinema as an example here. But yeah, it's it's pretty wild to watch this all unfolding in real time.
Tried to tell you, all right, let's move on to the I don't even know how to set this up.
Let's just put it this way.
There is a Senate staffer who was engaged in some pretty crazy conduct.
Let's go and put this up there on the screen.
So my old colleagues, my old friend Henry Roger, reports this story. This is definitely not safe for work though, for everybody who's watching. Senate Stafford has taught filming a graphic gay sex tape in a Senate hearing room, posing both in amateur pornography images that he distributed on Instagram and amongst a group chat of fellow gay staffers on Capitol Hill, in addition to posting video of himself engaged in a gay sexual act while he was while he.
Was in the Senate hearing room.
Now, this hearing room is the Senate Judiciary Room, of which he actually worked for Senator Ben Carden and had access to this room as a high level staffer, largely because this is open previously to things like Sonya Sotomayor's hearing room, the James Comy testimony, and it's also one
that he posted about on his private Instagram. Anyway, this was I was telling our editorial team the number of people who have sent me a gay pornography of this gentleman, please stop, because my phone is now full of gay porn of this man.
And I don't want to see this man's ass ever. Again.
I've seen so much of it now at this point, and largely it was people who worked with him on Capitol Hill and they were like, you got to put this out there. I'm like, I'm sorry, enough has been done at this point. What I find personally humorous is this gentleman's defense of himself.
Let's put this up there on the screen. His name is Aiden.
I'm going to go with Mace Kruzepski. Anyway, Here's what he says on LinkedIn, which is also amazing. This has been a difficult time for me, as I have been attacked for who I love to pursue a political attend right. While some of my actions in the past have shown poor judgment, some I love my job would never.
Disrespect my workplace.
Any attempts to characterize my actions otherwise are fabricated, and I will be exploring what legal options are available to me in these matters. As for accusations regarding Congressman Max Miller, I have never seen the congressman had no opportunity to cause, yell or confront an.
So there was a dual controversy.
So the other part of the controversy was that aiden this staffer was a staffer who yelled at a congressman Free Palestine, who was a pro Israel congressman. They had named him anonymously, but nobody knows who was actually him, Max Miller has Max Miller has not confirmed that it was him. At this point, I have no idea. I mean, he rejects it. Nobody else seems to have any information of the contrary. Well, we certainly do have information to
is how this gentleman was conducting himself very openly. What I find astounding about this guy is that this was not a single incident. As I said, I've got plenty of examples right here that have been going on for months, and it was out in the open, I mean, posting on his Instagram and even sharing like with dozens of fellow Capitol Hill Capitol Hill staffers.
But other things happening in the Capitol or yeah.
I mean, look, I mean, I've got some photos here on this firstime.
I meant the funniest one.
I'm just gonnay, there's no allegation behind This is him in the Senate.
I could literally have it. Here is of.
Him in his Senate in the Senate shower being like in the work shower, waiting for you, Lindsey Graham.
Which is kind of pretty wild.
There's a couple others that I have obtained which show him like with members of Congress, like staring at his fingers, being like, I want to lick his luscious fingers when the guy.
I swear this is all real. This is in the workplace.
I don't personally care about anything he's doing in his personal life.
All of us of wild photos from that too.
Just the ones that I'm willing to talk about here are all the Capital you know, posting a lot of stuff and actually apparently was told Crystal behind the scenes, bro, you need to calm down. After he was after he was promoted in Senator Card's office, because his social media was like a widespread, like a known thing amongst a lot of his coworkers. NBC News putting this out here. Let's put this up there. Also, their headline is so ridiculous.
Put this up there. Senate staff are alleged by concerned Yeah, it's not alleged. Okay, we've got the video to have had sex. And hearing room is no longer employed. So Senator Cardin's office just says this aiden is no longer employed by the US Senate after the Daily Caller publish it. Just ludicrous that they wouldn't be able to just confirm it. And last, but not least, here, Madison Cawthorne, who once alleged Coke Field orgies happening on Capitol Hill, tweets this
out quote. I told you, and look, he was right. He was certainly right.
So that's where that's where we're at.
He should he should have named more names. Uh yeah, that's all. I got this this ge just so everyone knows, Yeah, George George. Of course he's waited and he went after He's like, you're not being fired because you're gay, So you can fire because you fuck somebody in the set a hearing room and you put it out on the
social media, which is certainly something. Also from what I understand, Christ is this last thing, the alleged top is actually a former employee of the German government, So there's there's even an international spying.
Oh god, great.
Great. In some ways, the wildest part to me is.
The statement he yeah, I think I think you're right.
It's like people are attacking me for who I love.
Dude, Come on, I mean, yeah, if it was if it was heterosexual sexture, people.
Would also care about this.
If it was a woman, I mean, can you imagine the level of like slutshaming perhaps appropriagious.
So there's no on it.
This was so put the identity piece aside.
Yeah, there were a lot of jokes being made about like this is probably the most awesome thing that's happened in the Senate hearing room and in some time or like at least someone's deriving some joy from the things that are.
Happening in the sun room.
So I guess there is a bit of a point there, but I don't know. It's just when I see characters like this, you know, like George Santosis of the World, where he's just so brazen in his lies and just over and I'm like, you're so brazen with this. I can't wrap my head around it. It's that's the part of it to me that's fascinating and interesting.
Call me a boomer.
I don't really know why you have to talk about your sex live period with all your coworkers. And look, if you want to post it on your social media, I mean that's fine, but like, look, I don't think people understand this too. When you're young. He's what like twenty four, twenty five something like that. He's something like that On Capitol Hill, it's a social network. You all go out drinking together, like everybody knows each other and
all of this. And this was a well known secret ammarently amongst all of his coworkers, such that his bosses had to talk to him whenever he got promoted and they're like, you need to tone down some of the stuff you're pos like, for example, talking about how you want to lick the fingers of a fellow congressman, which.
Is crazy in the Senate cafeteria, literally in the Senate cafeteria, you know the shower photos. Also also ran a Twitter account without a space blurred purely of just like sexually suggestive, evocative photos that was open to the public up until this entire thing. So there's a there's an insane narcissism going on in the minds of this individual.
And I would just say they just think, I don't.
Know, it's never going to come out, that was never going to apply to them.
I think that, yeah, you.
Get away with it once and you're just like addicted to that thrill.
I think it's a culture of narcissm.
Yeah, I think it's a culture of narcissism where they just think you can use identity politics to shield yourself from any inevitable like criticism, and in the reality is is that you're just engaging in like really disgusting behavior.
It really almost seems public addictive behavior.
I agree.
Yeah, I think I honestly think there's something wrong with him, like on a mental level, and not having anything to do with is gay, just like this crazy amount of exhibitionism and clearly like indulging it and forcing your coworkers to.
Yeah, where it's impacting your whole limit. I mean, that's like the telltale sign of like some sort of addiction issue. Is it's you know, you're not able to confine it to the appropriate spaces in your life.
Look, you know, honestly, I wish him the best. I hope he gets to help the Indians and all that. You hurry, if we learn from this, and I hope every other Capitol Hill staffer, you guys should learn too, if it will eventually come out. If you're going to conduct yourself this way, Crystal, what are you taking a look at?
Well?
Americans have for years been fed a pack of lies about Israel and Palestine. These lies enabled successive administrations of both parties to offer nothing but unconditional support for Israel and nothing but unrestrained contempt for Palestinians. American presidents stood meekly by as Israeli governments blatantly violated international law.
Year after year.
Israel aggressively expanded settlements in the West Bank, imposed a brutal blockade of Gaza, aided settler violence, passed apartheid style laws, and used a vast bureaucracy to put in the near of legality on seizures of Palestinine homes and land. Our support for this criminal and inhumane status quo was enabled by an elaborate mythology surrounding the so called two state solution. Now,
there are a number of components to this myth. First that Palestinians have received muti to puld generous offers of statehood and have unreasonably rejected them. Second, that the Israeli government would love nothing more than to come to some sort of a two state peaceful resolution, but have no quote partner for peace. Every part of all of that
is a lie. Fortunately, this mythology is actually crumbling in real time, killed by friendly fire, you might say, as Netanyahu himself has announced, not only will he do everything in his power to block a Palestinian state forever, but that he is proud to have been a primary impediment
to the dream of a peaceful settlement. In a press conference last week, he said the following quote, You and your journalist friends have been blaming me for almost thirty years for putting the brakes on the Oslo Accords and preventing the Palestinian state.
That's true.
I'm proud that I prevented the establishment of a Palestinian state, because today everybody understands what that Palestinian state could have been, now that we've seen the little Palestinian state in Gaza. Now, this, of course, is a transparent bit of blame shifting from BB.
He would absurdly have you believe that those who supported the Oslo process were to blame for October seventh, rather than him, the dude who promised you could keep Palestinians locking in cage forever with zero consequence, who cynically built up Hamas as a Machiavelian means to an end of blocking Palestinian statehood, whose administration was so distracted by his own corruption scandals and pandering to extreme settlers that they
completely ignored the October seventh planning that was happening right in front of their faces. But I rather appreciate Bbe's comments here, nonetheless, because they are the beginning of the end of our national delusions about the two state solution.
Now.
Literally, no one should be surprised that BB is bragging about blocking Palestinian state. This has been his entire political program in Race on Deetra for decades. But such comments and naked admissions rarely make it into the US press. They're said in Hebrew from Israeli domestic audience, and American politicians just pretend they didn't hear them, or they pretend that BB is some outlier, a fringe political character inconsistent
with mainstream as Raeli politics. This is all false. In fact, Nanyahu gives himself far too much credit as the sole bulwark against a Palestinian state. In fact, the various Israeli prime ministers differ not in their opposition to an actual Palestinian state, but in their tactics for permanently blocking one. So first, it's simple enough to demonstrate that opposition of Palestinian statehood has been a permanent feature of Israeli politics,
no matter the prime minister may be. Most illustrative is this chart. Under every Israeli prime minister, moderate liberal or right wing, from lionized hero Yitzak Rabin to the odious net Yahoo, year after year, a legal settlement building continued and the settler population exploded.
Now, why you might ask, is this the key fact?
Because the entire purpose of these settlements is to block a Palestinian state. Don't ask me, ask the settlers themselves. One of their activist leaders was recently interviewed by Isaac Chottner, and she explained it very plainly. Quote, the world, especially in the United States, thinks there is an option for a Palestinian state, and if we continue to build communities, then we block the option for a Palestinian state. We want to close the option for a Palestinian state, and
the world wants to leave the option open. It's a very simple thing to understand, and she's right, it is indeed a very simple.
Thing to understand.
The consistent commitment to settlements under every single Israeli government exposes the lie that Viba's somehow an outlier in his opposition. Now here's another key fact in understanding the consistent opposition of Palestinian statehood. Let's allow Professor Norman Finkelstein to lay this one out.
Every year, every single year, the United Nations General Assembly passes a resolution quote peaceful.
Settlement of the Palestine question. And every year it lays out the terms, which I just describe. The terms of the settlement are anchored, embedded in international law. Every year, the vote is the whole world, which is to say, approximately one hundred and ninety countries on one site embracing.
Those terms, including the Palestinian representative organizations, and on the other side it's usually the United States, Israel, and several South Sea islands the Marshall Islands allow to volu Hanga on the other side.
So next time you hear someone lazily parrot the mantra that Israelis have no quote partner for peace on the Palestinian side, you might challenge them on whether Palestinian extremists have really been the primary impediment to peace when the UN record here that Norm Finkelstein lays out is extraordinarily cut and dry, and just wait until they find out what the Lukud party charter has to say about from the River to the Sea.
But you might say, what about Oslo, what about Camp David.
Weren't Palestinian's offered statehood through the Clinton negotiations. Weren't some Israeli prime ministers genuinely committed to this process?
The answer is yes, some were committed.
To Oslo, but unfortunately Oslo was never meant to achieve full statehood. Even the venerated Prime Minister Yitzak Rabin assassinated by a Jewish extremist over Oslo, probably the most committed to this process of any prime minister, even he admitted he never envisioned a full Palestinian state. Interestingly, current BB senior advisor Mark Regev just explained this to Pierce Morgan.
Take a listen.
It's cut Rubbin, the prime minister of Israel who wanted to make peace with the Battlestinians, who was the prime minister of the time of the signing of the Oslo Accords. He gave a speech and he was very clear. He said that the Palestinians will have less than a state. Jitzch Krabin, said, the man who was shot for his efforts to move forward on the peace process. He said that the future Palestinian areas will have to be demilitarized.
He said, the Jordan Valley, that area on the eastern edge of the Palestinian territories would have to remain under Israeli control. The idea that a Parastonian area will have to be demilitarized in any future settlement, that's common sense.
Another important moment of honesty there.
So what does he mean by less than a state or state minus as Netnyahu has called it. Well, Palestinian American activist and intellectual Edward Side laid out in a famous piece what that is meant In opposing OSLO. He argued that, far from a process to achieve statehood, OSLO and vision placing is really security needs above actual Palestinian statehood and autonomy in perpetuity. This led Side famously to write, let us call the agreement by its real name, instrument
of Palestinian surrender, a Palestinian Versailles. So actual statehood was never on the table, but something short of that was, and plenty of Palestinians did support trying to achieve that negotiated settlement, which brings us to the supposed conclusion of the Oslo taiale. As routinely recited by American politicians and media outlets. In their telling, Bill Clinton came tantalizingly close to a peace deal in two thousand Camp David, only to see Yasser Arafat walk away from a generous offer
over the smallest of differences. At this point, you should be unsurprised to learn that this narrative is also nothing but invented ass covering to serve the Israelis and their
American benefactors. So start with the deal was very lopsided, far from the generous offer that it's routinely presented to have been required extreme concessions from the Palestinians, including security demands which would have divided the West Bank into three cantons, effectively continuing some of the worst parts of the Israeli occupation, creating not a state but a series of bantu stands with no control over airspace, no military, no control over
their own borders with Egypt and Jordan. Even one of the top Israeli negotiators, Shlomo Benami, later admitted if I were a Palestinian, I would have rejected Camp David as well. What's more, far from Airfat walking away, negotiations actually continued. Formal negotiations continued at Taba until right wing Israeli governments were elected to kill the process entirely, and the rest, at least for our purposes today, is history. So to
sum up, the deal was far from generous. Airfat had some good reasons to walk away, but he actually didn't, and it was the Israelis who put the final nail in the coffin of Ozla, with help from extremists. Let's be clear on both sides, but don't take my word for it as our own. Ryan Grim has been pointing out the right wing hawk is the big new Brazinski said Joe Scarborough straight in spectacular fashion on the Camp David fairy tale many years ago.
Take a listen.
You can't blame what is happening in Israel right now on the Bush ad minutes.
Yes you can.
You can't.
Well, let's go back to two thousand, doctor Brazinski. I both know Bill Clinton gave Arafat and the Palestinians everything you know, you hey could.
It was a stunningly superficial knowledge of what went on that it's almost embarrassing to listen to you. If you were to look more closely what happened in the Clinton MCEE Camp David discussions, you would know that we have just said is absolutely wrong. There were all sorts of provisions and catches to the so called proposal, and it wasn't rejected. The negotiations went on in Taba, and then there were elections in Israel and Charon came in and everything got aborted.
Now, listen, I think it'd be fair to look at this history and say, even so, given what we know today, Arafat should have just taken what was on the table in two thousand, because it's got to be better than the horror, pain and bloodshed that we are witnessing.
Very possible.
I think it's also fair to point out the Palestinian violence in the second anti fatt in particular, is what helped you turn the Israeli public away from those politicians promising a settlement and toward those openly advocating for brutality, leading to a parade of maniacs ca dominating in this Netnakh government, complete with overt genocidal psychos. But I think you can also see, when you look at all of the facts, there were legitimate reasons for Palestinans to oppose
OSLO in its entirety. It wasn't just extremists been on genocide who found the framework unacceptable and sought to undermine it. Now, in some ways, this past is irrelevant, since the thing that really matters is what happens next. But if there's one thing that's clear to me watching this conflict unfold, is that the lies of the past, the narratives that color our understanding of this current moment, are the most
potent weapon enabling the atrocities that are unfolding today. So let's take a cue from Phoebe and drop all the fakery. Biden can say two state solution as much as he wants, Israelis do not want one, So what now?
And Sager as.
Usual And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at Breakingpoints dot com. We've got a great show for everybody tomorrow. Tune in otherwise we'll see you all then.
Keep keep.
Shop shut, Keep, keep shop shot, keep don't keep