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Good morning and welcome to the Counterpoints and we how you doing.
I'm good. We've got a lot of news to get through today. Even though we're so close to the holidays, the news cycle just won't slow down.
It won't, it won't.
I did want to start out with one quick personal thing, which is apologies for this show getting out as late as it is. About two weeks ago, my wife was diagnosed with breast cancer. That might also explain I'm kind of losing my voice. At the same time, this will be our last show plus We're doing counterpoints Friday, Christmas in New Ye's breaks, so we'll see you guys again in January.
It's a you know, they've.
They've made extraordinary advances when it comes to the treatment of breast cancer, which and she's already getting the treatment, and we're very confident that this will be something that's just that we deal with in the past.
But I have to bear with us a little bit as we go through that.
Yeah, well, we're all pulling for you, guys. Ryan, You've got all your kids, a lot to worry about, and.
You know we've got speaking of Health and Human Services maransition. Ever, luckily there's going to be a very steady hand on the till. RFK Junior was on Capitol Hill yesterday meeting with senators. Looks like he actually might make it and become Secretary of Health Human Service.
We're going to talk about that.
A bunch of folks are in Doha trying to cinch up a ceasefire deal in Gaza. Saudi Arabia has gotten involved as well. We're going to talk about that over at drops O News. We kind of busted The New York Times relying on a hamas adjacent source to verify documents.
We talked to the source about those documents. He said, bro.
I told The New York Times, I have real doubts about whether those are authentic documents or not. And they just ran with it.
Anyway.
I hope he did say bro.
I don't think he said bro, but close enough. So we'll get we'll get into that AOC got crushed in her effort to become a chair or ranking member of oversight.
Luigi's getting charged as a terrorist. What else we got, Yeah.
He was indicted last night, So we have updates on that. Some interesting polling. That'll be uh, it'll be an interesting conversation topic. Maybe for everyone's holiday dinner. You can talk about this point.
I was.
I was coming out of GW Hospital on Monday.
I can't wait to see this.
I don't think we're ever going to see it. But I got stopped on the street by two reporters. So do you have a second to talk about the health insurance industry? They're doing man on the Street interviews with people in Washington, d C. They happened to running a round with British accentors. They said they're from Sky News. I'm like, sure, I'll do this, Yeah, but.
We won't spoil it in case they do, Eric, because what you.
Said was at the end they asked my name, I told him.
Amazing. Well, stay tuned see if that goes to air. We're going to do updates from well, actually there's a lot going on in Capitol Hill, so we will be talking a little bit about what happened with Alexandro Acasio Cortez and Connolly for the Oversight Committee. It sounds like I feel like we're usually talking about Republicans when we're talking about random parliamentary stuff, but this time it's den fun one.
Yeah.
Yeah, there's all kinds of parliamentary stuff randomly going on with Republicans right now as they look to keep the government funded. So we'll probably touch on that a bit as well. Ryan updates from Ukraine and updates from both Germany and Canada, where the leadership is in dire straits.
Center left is collapsing all over the world.
Yeah, that's a good way to put it. Macron as well, maybe we can talk about that too. He's facing some stiff troubles right ahead. But to return to Robert F. Kennedy Junior, let's start with his trip around Capitol Hill, which seems to be going very very well. I want to start with this mashup of clips so you can just get a little flavor of what's been happening over the last couple of days. As RFK Junior meets to discuss his confirmation with senators.
Here you go.
Can I follow up on Robert Kennedy. He's on the hill today, he's meeting with senators.
What do you say to people who are worried that his views on vaccines will translate into policies that will make their kids less safe.
No, I think he's going to be much less radical than you would think. I think he's got a very open mind, or I wouldn't have put him there. He's going to be very much less radical. But there are problems. I mean, we don't do as well as a lot of other nations, and those nations use nothing.
We trying to gain your peace support to lead the Deparminent of Health and Human Services is expected to be pressed on his views on vaccine.
Senator, you met with RFK Junior yesterday?
What was your takeaway?
Very impressive. I mean, here's a guy that wants to focus on health. It's called Health and Human Services. Health not sickness. So he wants to make us healthy is exactly what we are doing. I ran the biggest hospital company. I know, we've got to figure out how to get people healthy, and he's going to do I think he's going to do a great job with regard to vaccines. If you listen to what he says, he is pro vaccine.
What he wants is give you information so you can decide what you put into your body or your child's body.
Yeah.
That makes all the sense of the world to me. Yeah, I'm moreliation.
It's great to see you.
It was so appreciated to get away from guessing and do facts, do science, get behind the science and stay with it. Don't be guessing. And that's what a lot of these vaccines have done. They haven't been one hundred percent proven. If you look at the number of vaccines these young babies get over a short period of time, it's dozens and dozens of them, and he's totally against that. He wants to make sure that parents understand the good and the bad.
And the ugly.
So I also grabbed about fifteen minutes with Senator Tarberville after his meeting with RFK Junior. He said something similar but in a little bit more detail. He said he talked to RFK Junior about how he has a grandchild coming and he was saying, you know, there are all these the vaccine schedule, there are all of these vaccines and rfs, and you said to him, we only got three when we were kids. And that was a little bit from their conversation was like, it's basically you've just
had all of these. It was like polio, smallpox and something else that you've just been added up and added up. And so Taperville is using this line that he thinks r f K Junior is going to quote follow the science, and so a little bit of that from Rick Scott as well. Part of this is a sincere ideological conversion from people like Tuberville, who has been now questioning people about red dye forty. I mean, you just never saw this from Republicans, right, you know this better than I do.
I mean that it was there was this ideological and political difference to the business community to the business community, and it's there have been sincere ideological conversions. A lot of it is obviously political. Now let's actually skip ahead to a three because this is what Taperville told me. His first question was to rfk Junior. It was about abortion, he said, And this was going to be the big sticking point with Robert F. Kennedy Junior being confirmed by
Republican Senate. Josh Holly posted a thread last night saying that he got all of these concessions, which I think are very significant concessions. Whether you're like pro choice or pro life, these are significant concessions from someone who says that he's pro choice. Reinstating the Mexico City policy, That's what Josh Holly said. What is that you committed for foreign.
Funding, non initiated into the lingo of the abortion wars.
Taxpayer funding for abortion internationally and domestically is what he committed to Holly, Mexico City. Mexico City is foreign, right. Yeah. But he also said in the same post that he would end taxpayer funding for abortions domestically. Does that mean probably Planned Parenthood taxpayer.
Funding because currently Planned Parenthood doesn't use the money that gets from the Federgarment for abortion services.
But what he's saying is don't give them a penny period.
Perhaps, Yeah, I mean they don't specifically say that, but that's how I would That's how Republicans would interpret it, and I think other people already have interpreted that way. Reinstating the bar on titled ten funds going to organizations that promote abortions. So that's probably also a number one on Planned parent I'm not entirely sure about that. But he also said, and I think this is the most significant, that all of his deputies, according to Holly at HHS,
would be pro life. So that's basically Robert F. Kennedy Junior, man who says he is per choice, saying I will have a pro life Health and Human Services department.
Right, And then the problem there is that Planned Parenthood, as you know, does an enormous amount of healthcare services for low income women use who use them as because they can't get any services anywhere else. So he's saying he's all about health, but obviously those types of services are crucial to health, but he's just going to kind of capitulate on it in order to get in there. I guess nobody should have expected him to die on
like the altar of women's rights. That's not what RFK Junior was ever going to do.
His like Big Life's Mission is vaccines, you know, and pharma and food and yeah, I would imagine. I mean, he's always actually talked about this in the language of bodily autonomy, which is where it gets really tricky for him to now come out and talk about how he'll be running essentially a pro life HHS. The reason that it's worth going through this Hally thread is that this is enough that I think this will be enough to put him on a blidepath to confirmation with Senate Republicans.
This should satisfy them for the most part on the pro life issue, on the issue of abortion, like you're not. This is going to settle the pro life groups down. They're going to stop lobbying against him or chirping against him. And now his tough thing is going to be it we heard Trump address, It is going to be talking to like Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins about vaccines and
people who are even less moderate than them. Tuberville Scott said they've been satisfied in their conversations, but that's still a sticking point.
Yeah, my guess would be, and tell me if you think I'm right getting into the Republican mind that as long as he's good for them on abortion, they actually don't care about ahhs.
It's like it's like not a.
Top tier concern of theirs, Are they really Oh no, He's gonna run AHHS.
Into the ground.
So boy, that would be that would be so sad for Republicans if something like that happened.
What's funny is that I think they used to care about HHS to like protect business interests, right, you know what I mean? Like it was it was interesting.
That, Yeah, they're like, okay, they're they're they're adopting some of the crunchy, h like hippie vibes around.
Yeah, like what you would call like a raw milk.
Politics, Yeah exactly.
But Trump seems to like be nowhere near that. And so that's why you saw at the top of the segment there hit him saying like, no, he's not really into all that. So I think basically what they're trying to say is, Okay, he's going to be really good an abortion for us, and he's not actually going to do these things. He's not going to ban the vaccines. He's not gonna stop you from getting the vaccines. You might have out there ideas about it, but he's he's
not actually going to implement them. Yeah, which is kind of a funny, you know, way to kind of get yourself through.
But yeah, it's I mean, I think it'll probably work at this point, although Talverfilt told me he thinks that Democrats are essentially saving their biggest attacks on Robert F. Kennedy Junior until after the Holidays, when the confirmation process is really heating up and actually like people have to make the decision to vote yes or no.
So do you think he gets through as of right now?
I would say yes. I think there's just like the voters really really like Robert F. Kennedy Junior, republic The Republican base really likes Robert F. Kennedy Junior for whatever reason.
Yeah.
So I also think, just from a Democratic small D perspective, like if you win the White House and you run saying you're going to like bring a certain person into the White House, right all right, guy one, Yeah, he said he was going to put this guy in a job that's very similar to this, Like this is not a surprise.
Yeah, and people voted for him, so.
Go ahead, well and really quickly. This is a great transition to a two if we can go back to a great Christian PARENTI piece and compact about how RFK Junior could quote take on the CIA. Now, you can't do that from HHS. But the position you can do that from is a trusted Trump advisor, a literal member of his cabinet, which r F K Junior now is.
That's another thing I've been trying to sort of sniff out a little bit, is like, are you guys he just treating him as the crazy hippie uncle at the Thanksgiving table who you just start to like, you'll wink and at each other across the table while he's talking about whatever. No, he's actually very much in the inner circle. He has trusted and valued and so to that extent he could do a little bit of what PARENTI talks about here.
And the CIA links to the HHS are to AHHS are kind of interesting. So he and he writes at one point this is I thought it a really interesting passage parent he writes. Between twenty thirteen and twenty twenty, USAID, which is basically a CIA front, along with Anthony Fauci's NIAID, and the Defense Threat Reduction Agency of the US Department of Defense all gave millions of dollars to a New York based nonprofit called EcoHealth Alliance. We've reported about that
over and over run by doctor Peter Dajak. EcoHealth Alliance in turn funded gain a function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. In twenty fifteen, EcoHealth Alliance also pitched in q Tel, which is basically the CIA's private equity firm, for funding with a proposal called quote Identifying Predictable Patterns in Disease Emergence. We don't know the results of these proposals because in q Tel provides limited public information on
its investments and then parente rights. Though thoroughly documented, this set of facts is so insane that they make any person reiterating them sound insane by association. It's one of the kind of advantages that the CIA and the USAID and the Defense Department have had in the entire bioweapons space is that it just sounds completely nuts. And RFK Junior has written an entire book about this. Yes, the Truth about Wuhan, I think it's called or something about
Fauci something. Anyway, In any event, this is not a kind of hobby horse for him, like this is this this could.
Get interesting yeah, you have to.
Meanwhile, in the ndaastite, they shoveled a whole bunch more money towards gain a function research that's he headed towards passage this week.
Yes, and towards the Global Engagement Center that was funneling money towards basically websites that were recommending suppression of for example, the Federalists and the Daily Wire. So it's it's the DA is getting interesting. But Robert F. Kennedy Junior, and to your point about Parente's links from HHS, USA I D to Eco Health, then all of these like you, in order to actually change this have to basically know the ins ou It's like you need to do chapter
in verse in them while you're sleeping. And he can do that, which should be terrifying to the people who benefit from those fives.
And I don't think RFJ k Jr. Remotely has all the answers here. But I also know that we are a deeply unhealthy country. You can just travel around the country or look around, and you can tell you can just see it like we need help.
Like we're not in a good place.
And the corporate capture of our our food, our medicines is like obviously a huge problem. So if RFK Junior comes in as a wrecking ball just because he doesn't know how to rebuild, it doesn't mean that a little bit of creative destruction wouldn't be useful. Because whatever path we're on is not a.
Good one, right, Yeah, creative destruction.
The pollutants, the chemicals, the plastics, all all of it together is like we're we're on a suicide path.
Yeah, creative destructions, I think the best case scenario here.
So that's what people voted for.
So it's exactly what people Although Tuberville also told me he was satisfied by r f K juniors answers on climate, so that might not be so good for the country.
Left what did what did Tulverville hear?
I don't know. I wasn't there, Ryan, I just asked questions.
Rf K Junior is willing to give up on climate too, So actually I bet what. So here's how I bet RFK Junior finesses the climate issue with deniers like Tuberville. What I bet he said is that we over emphasize carbon yeah yeah, and that we don't emphasize enough the problems of plastics which come from carbon by the way, don't tell Tuberville that and all the other poisons in our that go into our bloodstream and our actual streams. And so he's not so rf Kju is not saying
climate is not a problem. He's saying that the a mono maniacal fixation just on climate misses the holistic problem facing the Earth. And I think Tuberville would hear that and be like, oh, he's he's with me. He doesn't care.
About he said, he agrees with me on climate.
Yeah, so you can watch, I guarantee you that's how that conversation went.
And tub it was like, yeah, well, don't tell anybody where the plastic comes from because it gets really sticky. Yeah, all right, Ryan, we're going to be talking about Haretz here. What have you got for us?
So, yeah, there's a bunch of reporting coming out of the Mid East that they're getting increasingly close to an actual ceasefire deal. I tend to think that they're exaggerating how close we are.
It's just my gut, and you know, following.
This probably closely that I suspect net Yahoo will continue to drag this out right until January nineteenth and reach a deal on like January twentieth. What Hamas has said publicly is that they are ready to make a deal today as long as Israel stops adding new conditions constantly.
So what so what is happening? As they narrow each.
Gap, then Israel will put in like kind of one more one more new thing, say oh, you do this like and then then it takes another couple of days. People gotta meet again, you gotta pass the paper back and forth.
Well we saw this by the way around. It was like late August around the DNC. We were in another cycle. I mean, this seems to be closer. Was saying.
I'm also was saying the exact same thing. The deal, we'll take the deal on the table. Biden put forward the public deal that that Israel's cabin had approved, what their war cabin had approved. Biden made it public. Hamas said, we'll take it, We're done, We're good.
This is it. We'll take it. And Israel kept saying no and just kind of moving the line.
So the current deal it's on the table includes huge concessions from Amas. The main concession that that includes is that Israeli troops would not have to withdraw immediately from Gaza.
Like that was that was a huge sticking point.
Originally AMAS was saying there's no ceasefire until you withdraw from Gods.
Now they're saying, fine, Israeli troops.
Can stay as long as there is some path for them leaving in the future, and during the pause and fighting, all the vulnerable and civilian hostages would be exchanged for several hundred Palestinian hostages and then then next you would move to a uh you know, talks towards a permanent ceasefire.
Saudi Arabia has gotten involved, saying that they would kind of find they would help to finance the reconstruction of Gaza while normalizing relations with Israel UH, and Saudi Arabia has dropped its demand that Israel recognized a Palestinian state and replaced that with a quote path toward a Palestinian state.
So, and this is all from we know these like broad contours from the Hartz report.
All right, Another and another reporting, some Maxios reporting. There's some reporting from Arabic outlets as well.
This is these from yesterday it broke. Yeah, these are the broad contours of the deal, and.
Think about that when you follow the news over the next several days with without a deal, Like I'd.
Love to be proven wrong.
I'd love that just as we walk out of the studio they announced that actually everybody has agreed to the ceasefire.
UH.
That yesterday in Gaza, there were celebrations in the streets at the news that a ceasefire deal was close, Like everybody wants this, But I think Yahu sees another six weeks or five weeks or so that he can kind of rain hell down upon Gaza.
Uh.
There are still hospitals left standing. Kamal Odd one hospital in northern Gaza UH, which has been subject to now more than a month of relentless assaults from Israel, leading to the killing of multiple doctors, nurses, their families. Yesterday, yesterday doctors were attacked in while they were operating, like through the windows. But the hospital is still operating. And I believe that Israel's attempting to completely ethnically cleanse northern
Gaza and needs to shut down all the hospitals. So I don't think that they'll reach a deal until they've completely shut down all of the hospitals.
So the Sun's very cynical, not quite. I mean this, I would be surprised to be honest, if Netnahu brokeer this deal and like agreed to the deal under Biden as opposed to under Trump, I think he obviously really well.
The reason that might happen under Biden is that that's kind of what Trump has been demanding. Like Trump has been saying that he wants this done by the time that he's in office, and he will then take credit for it, which fine, I don't like.
I don't care who takes credit for stuff.
He could do it on day one though, right, like he could well, which.
Is why he might.
That's why that's why I said it might be on January twentieth. Yeah, yeah, And speaking of credit, I don't defend Biden ever, but like he was getting dragged yesterday for saying that he had helped, you know, broker a deal at free to Hunt. You know, he got a hundred more than a hun and in fact, in November when there was a week long ceasefire, one hundred and
five hostages were released by AMAS. And you know, if you're going to say that Biden is facilitating the genocide, which I do say, and I do believe he also broke her that deal. So it's like I don't understand why people were getting upset on him. It actually, to me, makes it worse for him because it shows that was possible.
Like the only thing that has freed hostages at scale was a ceasefire like that, and the deal that we will eventually reach, probably on January twentieth, after after another several thousand people are killed violently and tens of thousands maybe more die of starvation or what disease and maount nutrition because like, you know, imagine going a year plus without access to reliable clean water medicine, Like even the healthiest people are gonna, you know, collapse under those circumstances.
The deal we'll eventually get was on the table a year ago. They didn't want it a year ago. They wanted to do what they did for the last year.
Go ahead.
Well, I was gonna say, I mean, we should even take a look at Sirias. We have some video of Nisnahu and oh that's right.
So there's there's this there's this like kind of debate, Like there was some reporting that uh that man Yahu was on his way to Doha to like finalize this deal, and then they said no, he's not in.
They said no, he's not in Doha.
He was supposed to be in court, actually he got for his corruption trial, but he got he was allowed to like not show up for his corruption trial. And then they released video of where he actually is over the goal on heights.
He's addressing people in UH in Hebrew.
Here stunning visual. I mean, yeah, he's got his flat jacket.
On, his flat jacket, but what's he what's he wearing a flat jacket? Right, there's no like he's not remotely at any risk there. But he's standing basically a top Mount Herman, which Israel wants because it is basically the only way for Israelis to go skiing without having to fly somewhere, so within their own borders they could, so they can now have a ski resort.
The argument is it's a buffer und.
They're the buffer zone and the buffer zone and the buffer zone and the buffer zone and the buffer zone.
It's a ski resort.
And then they're gonna and there's and they say they're going to they say they're going to settle it and populate it as well.
They're going to double like double, and then some of the population in the area.
UH, the State Department will say it's a buffer zone and this is temporary, while Israel saying, actually, we're going to settle it and populate it.
So two different, two different lines coming from which is not unfamiliar at all because this is an administration on one hint says we support a two state solution, but we're supporting a war from a man who says there's no such thing as a two state solutions. Right along those lines, right.
Yeah, you have Israel being a little bit more open and honest about what they're doing, and the State Department just lying directly to our faces about that what we see and what they're saying is actually not what they're doing and saying it's like what's going on here? So no, so he was not in Doha reaching a ceasefire deal. He was working on the invasion and occupation of Syria, taking the opportunity of the Syrian people overthrowing a dictator to get a ski resort, call it a buffer zone.
Meanwhile, you guys at dropsite have a really interesting report about Hamas documents provided by Israel to the New York Times, and all of this goes to Iran as well, which is the mean, that's the central like fear of Americans. Here is the World War Three component. And now you have the New York Times. This is a great story.
You should just like, yeah, really fascinating and embarrassing.
For the New York Times story in Drop Sight by Jeremy Skahele and Shreef of Delcadus, we can put this up on the screen, we can put a link in there. But so basically to give you the gist of what's going on here. So twice now in the last couple months, the New York Times has run major bombshell stories citing Hamas documents that were found by Israel and then given to the New York Times. So that's the chain of custody,
alleged chain of custody of these documents. So when you're doing this reporting, what you need to do is figure out whether or not the documents that you're being given are authentic. One of the ways you can do that is by verifying that the source of the documents, it would have access to those documents leg and has it and doesn't have a.
Motivation to lie about them.
So, in other words, if a if a Hamas whistleblower, for instance, or an IDF whistleblower reaches out and you can confirm that that is who they are, and they hand over some documents to you. You start out with a threshold of Okay, these are probably authentic, but I'm going to need to cross reference some things. We're going to need to figure some other things out. Now, if Hamas came to you and said that they had discovered some IDF documents and then gave you those documents.
You start from a place of skepticism, yes, because they.
Are motivated to lie about them, and they don't they wouldn't really have access to them.
They say, well, it was during October seventh.
We were in the you know, we were in one of the military bases, and we made off with some hard drives, and here.
The documents that we got.
What you would then do is you would take those documents and you would give them to sources connected to the IDF, presumably former, because if you give them current, you know they're not gonna be able to do that unless they're quite trustworthy, and that those sources will then try to figure out, okay, here are some problems with these documents, or say, you know, these actually kind of look authentic.
There's other things you can do to try to authenticate them.
So New York Times gets these documents from Hamas, I mean allegedly from Hamas through Israel, and so they take it to a former Hamas guy. They take it to a Salah al Awada, that's who they name in their article as saying that they bear that they you know, bears almost to Hamas documents and that these are good enough you should go ahead and publish these documents.
That's that's who the Times cites.
So Jeremy Scahill calls the guy up and says, you know, can you what else can you tell me about these documents? This this sounds very interesting and you can you can read read the full story. He tells me, I didn't tell the New York Times these were authentic documents, and I'll.
Just read one portion of it.
Told Dropsite that The Times only shared one page out of thirty with him. After looking it over, he said. He told the Times reporter that there was a particular phrase in the document that he suspected was a translation and that the person who wrote it did not sound native in Arabic. I told him this looks translated. It doesn't look real. This phrase is out of context, it is not used, and its meaning is not clear. The phrase in question roughly translates in English as quote air
cover quote. I told him it might be translated from another language, that whomever wrote it translated it literally, but it is not used in the modern Arabic context unquote. And he also shared a voice note with Dropsite that he had sent to the reporter where he had raised these doubts. And he also shared the exchanges that they'd had.
So we know that this conversation happened because the time says it happened, like the time says, they talked to this guy and he shared with what he told them, And so.
Think about that.
So now imagine that you are a reporter. Hamas has handed you document is that they say are Hebrew documents from the IDF. You show it to a Hebrew speaker, and the Hebrew speaker tells you.
Who an Hebrew speaker used to be with the IDF.
Hebrew speaker says, this word actually looks like it was originally written in Arabic and translated into Hebrew.
This doesn't look right.
You could not then source that person as authenticating your documents what that person told you, is that you have fake documents. And how pathetic is it that Israel, which is in the Middle East doesn't have Arabic speakers to fabricate their documents.
It's like not even a good fabri Like they're.
Using Google Translate, like they're starting in Hebrew or English and then just having it translated into Arabic. And what happens when you do that is that your language doesn't sound authentic. And so that particular story was a claim. You remember, this bombshell was a claim that Iran was read in on October seventh and that Hamas wanted Irani and helped for October seventh.
Which is a hugely significant and which.
Was used as a pretext for the expansion of their assault on Iran. So it turns out, let's come just completely fake. So now fast forward to just a couple of days ago, they put out a new investigation that they said was from Hamas documents that Israel had obtained and given to the New York Times. This one, the document said basically it was Hamas saying, we love to hide our militants inside unra's schools and is our secret weapon.
To go after Israel. Like that's basically what they're saying.
This document says in that article, they say that they were not able to authenticate the documents, but they believed they were authentic because they bore similarities to previous documents that they had been able to authenticate. So they're clearly referring back to these Iran documents, which we now know were fabricated themselves.
So Israel is just concocting. And then what do they do? Bombed in two Unra.
Schools and killed more than sixty people, So like this is all premeditated. Like so they cook up these faked documents, they give them to the New York Times, they say these are Hamas documents, and then they use that article as pretexts. Then for some slaughter that they carry out.
They did get busted by Build, not by Build Build, and I believe it was Jewish Currents ran a piece based on quote unquote Hamas documents that said that Yayahsinwar was planning to escape to Egypt with a bunch of hostages that turned out to be demonstrably proven to be a hoax and a bunch of egg on Build's face, and like that's not in question, Like you don't need to take it from me that that was fake, but that happened before The New York Times is getting hoaxed here.
So the reason, I mean, there are many reasons, but one of the pieces of this puzzle that's so significant is obviously the Iran link. Because the New York Times, what in two thousand and two, two thousand and three, was relying on bad sourcing and that reporting was used over and over again to substantiate war.
Right.
It's a lesson that is very has very recently been learned, specifically specifically by the New York Times. And some of this you and I probably disagree on some of this, but some of it doesn't even need to be faked and exaggerated because we've talked before about how there's a genuine challenge for UNRA in Gaza to like disentangle itself from the government, which is de facto Hamas.
Right, like this, they have tens of thousands of employees.
Right right, yeah, And it just so all that is to say for The New York Times, I mean, Israel's another question.
And to the point, like most of those tens of thousands of employees are like teachers and those types of folks so just do some of them work, you know, on the side from us.
Yeah, like a handful with no doubt.
Yeah, it's a problem.
But what Israel had claimed that they had found much more sinister collaboration and then use that to slaughter a bunch of civilians and who are sheltering in these in these schools.
It's very very sloppy, I mean on the part of the New York Times and such a high stakes. Yeah.
I don't even know why.
I don't even know why Israel and New York Times bother. At this point, Israel has shown that it can slaughter endless amounts of Palestinians without any cover. They don't even need the New York Times to lie for them. Like, so if you're at the New York Times, you can stand down, like the world has given up. The world is just allowing this genocide to unfold. You want to go ahead and and your credibility in order to facilitate
more of the genocide. You go ahead and do it, but you don't actually have to anymore, Like nobody's going to stop them.
It's a I mean, this Jeremy just calling the calling the guy like.
He's like, can you prove that Yeah, here's voice memo, here's texts.
Yeah, it's such a set amazing.
So embarrassing.
Oh so we went to the New York Times for comment, and they responded by saying that they didn't answer any of the questions directly. They responded by saying that it was a rich story based on lots of different sources. Sure, so they talked to analysts and other people for other parts of the story. The headline, the lead, and the whole story are about these documents that you obtained, and you're not even going to stand up for those documents.
Right exactly. That's a cop outaresthetic.
They should be ashamed of themselves.
They they they feel like they have total impunity because the Washington Post, Lost Angelis, Times, Wall Street Journal, all these other outlets that used to be major competitors of theirs have all withered, and so the New York Times now just stands alone, and so they're just completely unchecked except by people within their newsroom and by independent media at this point.
But the editors there will they even hold a meeting about this.
Oh hey, by the way, guys, we turns out we got hoaxed and ran two major stories based on documents that were fabricated, and dozens of people were killed, many of them were burned to death as a result of and on the predicate of these articles that we published and got. Should we meet about this and try to not have this happen again, because it's because even if
you don't care about all the death, it's embarrassing. But because they have so much impunity because they have no competitors at this point, that's interesting point because not even have a meeting about this.
In prior eras the Washington Post would have loved to run your drops and would light them up and they would have been calling the source. Yeah, if they had more like if if they had more resources, and absolutely yea and more like I mean right now, they're really just not even competing with the time, so it's not necessarily even the thought like, oh, let's spend some of our reporters time calling up one of their sources.
But yeah, and there's also it's a kind of colonialism where it's like you can actually just say whatever you want about Hamas and Hamas documents, just say it, and nobody's nobody's gonna like raise an issue with it.
Let's move on to the indictment of Luigi Mangione. He was indicted last night. We put C one up on the screen. He was indicted for first degree murder, obviously in the death of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson. That is according to the Manhattan District Attorney's office. So that's a step towards actually getting He's facing two counts we
should add a second degree murder. One of it is killing as a crime of terrorism, two for second degree criminal possession of a weapon, three counts of third degree criminal possession of a weapon, one count for fourth degree possession of a weapon, and one count of second degree possession of a forged instrument. So he's facing all kinds of charges. This one obviously is the headline charge, but
it also comes amidst discussion about an Emerson poll. This is C two we should put up on the screen here, Ryan, did you see this Emerson poll where a majority of voters think the actions of the killer of the United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson are unacceptable. Seventeen percent find the actions acceptable, while sixteen percent are unsure. Now, interestingly, the pollster says while sixty eight percent of voters overall reject the killer's actions. Younger voters and Democrats are more split.
Forty one percent of voters aged eighteen through twenty nine find the killer's actions acceptable. But to clear the breakdown of that is, twenty four percent of those eighteen to twenty nine year old said it was somewhat acceptable. Seventeen percent said it was completely acceptable. And when you combine both of them, that's where you get the forty one percent thinking that it was acceptable, even though some of
them just said somewhat. And media I covered this as you just saw on the screen as a quote stunning poll, I don't know that it's that stunning, Ryan, what do you think?
Well?
Also, one detailed I think we should let the viewers know is that this murder happened on December fourth, which is the day that we were recording Counterpoints here in the studio. And if you remember, there was a kid named Luigi Mangione who came by and was in the control room from about six am until about I think we did a Counterpoints Friday recording afterwards, so that went
till eleven or eleven thirty. It might be a different Luigi Manjean, but from seeing him seemed like the same guy seeing Baltimore.
We talked.
I remember we talked about Gilman and his prep school kid. He talked about how he'd never been to New York, didn't have any plans on going to New York.
Yeah, he can't even ride a bike.
Actually, from what I he couldn't ride a bike. You would never ride a city bike because you do.
People don't know.
This sates McDonald's.
You love to talk about bikes.
I do, like, yeah, we had a long conversation about bikes. Curly hair.
Anyway, So the terror, by the way, I'm curious for your taking the terror charges. Yeah, I've seen I've seen people make a but I think it is a fair point. Like, hey, wait a minute, January sixth, guys, they were they were trying to terrorize all sorts of people. They don't get charged with that. Lots of people don't get charged with terror. On the other hand, you know, if that wasn't Luigi who was here in the control room, I think it was,
but it wasn't. Whoever was guilty of this has said that, like the goal was to sow terror, like.
It's in the paragraph manifesto.
When when when Lennon and Rose Pierre used the word terror. They don't use it pejoratively.
Yeah, their goal.
Is to terror Please please don't charge me with terrorism.
Yeah, not not saying that he did it, but if he did, the goal was to terrorize. So yeah, so that like the pearl clutching around the terrorism charges to me is like, well, look man, if you're going to do this stuff like this, that's what you're doing, right.
And Migngioni is pleading not guilty. Right, he says this is not what happened, and which which is very interesting.
He was here in the control room.
Yeah, but it continues to be very interesting because this is the there's a manifesto that is being pinned to him, and maybe it is him. It seems likelier that doesn't fit. It seems likely not that it is, but but we've seen set up, so it's not impossible that there are I mean really though, like he's pleading not guilty. The
whole situation is extremely bizarre. He's able to get he shoots a guy in cold blood in Manhattan during the day and just gets away for days, just blends into the crowd in town and is able to actually get out of state to Pennsylvania and isn't caught for days Like that, I think of itself is pretty strange. That continues to me to be the weirdest part of all of this.
I would like to know the real story on how they caught him, because you know, when whatever like this feels like one of those stitched together, you know, cover stories for how they caught him, because where in fact, they were using surveillance technologies that are, to put it generously,
maybe on the constitutional edge of being allowed. And so what will often happen if you use those types of authorities to solve a crime or to catch somebody, You then figure out a way that you could have done it legitimately, and you pull that together, or maybe they really are completely incompetent and just you know, somebody you know saw him at the McDonald's and made a phone call.
Speculation is that he's going to plead not guilty by insanity, which is obviously a different you know, that's very different than saying I flat out didn't do it.
Not guilty by insanity. Like right, there's two. Basically, you're trying to get the jury to get You're trying to give the jury a reason to acquit you even though they know you did it, And the one would be I wasn't there, it wasn't me.
This is all planted, and it's like, like you said, it's getting hard.
Yeah, it's pretty hard. There's a lot of footage.
Yeah, because they could subpoena our cameras here and find that actually Luigi wasn't here. But then the second one would be to say he was insane, and then the jury can be like, yeah, he was temporarily insane, right, and that doesn't mean we condone it. We mean it was an active insanity, but it means we're going to let him go now.
And then they give him a gun charge or something.
Right, well, he has charges, so they.
Feel like they've still said there have to be some consequences here, but not necessarily life in prison.
Right.
I think that's my guess of where the strategy goes. Yeah, so are you surprised at the forty one to forty youth that's twenty nine and under say that by forty one to forty now it's Emerson.
They're like it's a.
Thousand percon pole, right, But anyway, well, I'm saying that's not I mean, yes, I'm sure polsters would look at me and be like a thousand people that's statistically stated, bobble bar.
It is. But if you're a bad polster, you can get whatever you want out of that.
Well, when you're down in the seventeen percent, you can find seventeen percent of Americans who say just about everything like it's it's usually around twenty percent.
You can say in a poll it's somewhat acceptable.
It's forty one combined with the seventeen so somewhat.
That's somewhat and definitely acceptable.
Completely acceptable, right, Yeah, So all that is to say, I.
Think it's a tough one because people have complicated views about this. I think they're like, it's wrong to commit murder. I wouldn't commit murder. I wouldn't urge anybody to commit murder.
What do I think about this? Kind of rather than not say so, where do you.
Where do you come down? Like how do you pull that right? Sentiment, which I think is pretty widely held.
And by the way, we should be clear that we don't exactly know how man Joni is exactly going to plead Again, the speculation is not guilty by reason of insanity. It does look like all the indications are not guilty. That he that's his case is going to be, is not guilty, but how exactly he makes that plea is a different question. Now back to this, there's two different
things here. I mean, if you're asking the question of somewhat acceptable versus completely acceptable, to your point, the complicated feelings about acceptability are going to come in. And that's where it seems like, I.
Guess that falls under somewhat acceptable.
But that's the thing, right, Like there's somewhat unacceptable. There's a totally different question as to whether it's acceptable to talk about Thompson's corruption in the aftermath of his death. And I feel like it's very easy to conflate those two things, especially if you're just like responding quickly to a pole. And so I think some of it from that. And there's all of this like hysteria over people getting zoomers,
getting like mangioni tattoos. They're doing it because everyone's going to their fainting couch and acting as though healthcare executives are beyond criticism. And it just strikes me as such a like when somebody take an example of a combine, what do we do after something like that we talk about bullying, we talk about why it's not okay to bully people because it makes people snap. It doesn't mean it's okay. Nobody's saying it's okay for people to snap.
Like we are adults and can hold multiple views at the same time that are not inconsistent. Like two things can be true that the more you create a climate that pushes people to extremism and makes them miserable, makes them angry, the more likely you are to get situations like this. It doesn't justify it, it doesn't make it right. And so I think the way the question is worded is in that direction. And I think the reason that so many people are acting out and like ironically sometimes
not ironically, like embracing MANGIONI. It's not the way that I'm reacting to any of this, But the reason is because there's now so much hysteria that's like weirdly defending the healthcare industry and acting like he was just a guy who was trying to do.
His best diving deeper into the pull. The other interesting number is this somewhat unacceptable because yes, it's somebody who you know, shot a guy in the back in on sixth Avenue, and to get people off of totally unacceptable, which is where everybody starts with that act, and move them even to somewhat unacceptable. Is you know that's something
that that's some gray area for young people. That was an extra seven percent, So that takes it to forty forty eight percent, which leaves only one in three people under twenty nine saying that it was completely unacceptable. So two thirds of young people confronted with, hey, this somebody walked up and shot somebody in the back in broad daylight?
Is that completely unacceptable?
Two out of three were not willing to say that was completely unacceptable. So even though only forty one so it's actually kind of a higher number.
Yes, And I do get why people are I get why, you know, they're people who the types of people who introduce themselves to that happy hours is like classical liberals are disturbed by these numbers, And I get why, like
normal people are disturbed by these numbers. They are like, yes, that's it speaks to the problem of the healthcare system, and it speaks to the problem of like the deep, deep anger and sense of unjust like unjustness and just misery that people are experiencing, and this is like cathartic. So yes, it's disturbing because the system in order to operate, in order to in order to let's say, exact justice peacefully and through the classically liberal process, you have to
have buy in. And what you're losing is public buy in. And you can't just blame the public for that. You have to also blame the top for that. Right. Just to lash out at the public is the exact wrong way to go about it. And it's only going to make things worse if you're just lashing out of the public.
And I feel bad for TikTok.
Just as they thought they were maybe going to get some salvation from the from the coming band, all of a sudden, all these young people are in now celebrating Luigi. So TikTok is like they're starting to take it out of app stores. Right, It's like like the ban is coming, like it's like a month away or something like that. And so there's but there's still time to stave it off. Donald Trump, at his press conference this week hinted that there might be some daylight there.
Let's let's roll Trump here.
C Three, How do you plan to stop the ban on.
TikTok next month, we'll take a look at TikTok. You know, I have a warm spot in my heart for TikTok because I won youth by thirty four points. There are those that say that TikTok has something to do with it. Now, Joe Rogan did and some of the other people that were recommended by my son Barony, who have any new names?
I said, who is that?
Tell me who's that dead?
You gotta be kidding. I can't believe you don't know.
And I did those interviews and it was actually sort of cute. Do you want to know the truth? So I have a little bit of a warm spot in my heart. I'll be honest.
I love how transparent Trump is, the transactional nature.
Of his support for someone else.
We've always known that that the only litmus test for Trump, whether he likes you is if you like him. Yes, Kim Jong un does like TikTok, young people Muslims in America.
Doesn't matter if you like him, he likes you, by the way, not to be the actually guy.
He did not win the youth vote by thirty four points for in his circle, which does that leave him alone?
Fifty two forty six to ask.
But hey, if he wants to think, if he wants to think that young people supported him by thirty four points and he wants to then govern based on what young people want for this country, then Donald Trump, you won young people by thirty four points. I actually actually don't believe anybody who tells you otherwise.
One of the funny things is when we were talking with our friend Luigi in the control room on December fourth, he said that Trump won ninety percent of the youth vote, but we didn't. We never checked it out. Yeah, but it could be true.
And Luigi said that he really separates Trump from the rest of the oligarchs.
Right now, by starting this bit, you have probably gotten.
Us in so much trouble. I didn't start the bit. People would probably know that.
I'm just referencing memes on like Facebook and elsewhere, all these people saying like, I just wanted to talk about this cool December fourth morning I had with my friend Luigi down in San Antonio. We got coffee, we did the little little walk on the river there.
You brought the bit here. Yeah, you'll have to accept that plan.
That's fair enough.
In any event, the I think TikTok has a chance of surviving. For this reason. The deep State had wanted to ban TikTok for a very long time because they don't control it. China's got influence over there, and they don't like having like they're in the US news media. They want US news media to be the sovereign domain of our corporate overlords, not our Chinese overlords. But they could never get any any traction with that belief until
after October seventh. After October seventh, people were able to see people in Gaza who they connected with in a parasocial way being slaughtered on a daily basis, and it turned the public who was getting their news from TikTok uh.
Off of the off of the genocide.
Like it convinced them that what they were being told in the in the sanitized version of the news did not comport with what was actually happening on the ground. That's when they were able to get bipartisan buy in to pass the legislation to force a sale, which they're saying they won't sell it, so therefore they will shut
it down. I think now that they basically are successful in their genocide, and nobody's going to stop them, that the main thrust behind the ban is kind of gone, so maybe they'll give it a reprieve.
What do you what do you think?
I don't know. I mean, the just wait until we start talking more about China and the drones, right, Republican, Republican and Democrats.
Like that is there is right And Michael McCall is saying.
Michael m news that was news last night. He said it was like Chinese technology or likely Chinese drones, which I don't know why he's saying that without you know, the it's just we've.
Heard already told the Iranian drone.
We were told there were Iranians from Jeff.
Andrew, Transportation Secretary, a Transportation Committee member, which yeah, like get out.
Of here with your Yeah. I don't know who told credential.
He said someone told him that.
He said, I'm on.
He said, I'm on the committee, and I talked to people, talk to people in the business.
You know, he's talking to some drone company owner.
So when Paul came out and said that last night, my spidery senses went up.
I mean, maybe now this has come from the intelligence A side exactly.
Yeah, maybe, but I just I think your point about control is really important, and.
I actually I commented, I said, he doesn't know.
I like my I have a very unpopular take on this. I've said that TikTok should be banned for a long time, but not for any of these reasons. And the TikTok bill is such a disaster, like it was just a I didn't support any of that because it was complete deep state overreach.
I think I think all social media should be banned for people under like sixteen or something close.
So because it's a collective action problem.
As a parent, I'm completely failing when it comes to my kids in social media.
Kids can't parents can't do it alone.
So I think that the deal, the grand bargain that we should strike with China and trum Trump is already talking about US and China together can do great things for the world.
So here should be the deal.
We will allow TikTok to continue, but Chairman, she gets to regulate our children's social media consumption.
In China.
It's like you get one hour on Friday, one hour on Saturday, and they just that includes video games.
But you know, they just pump government propaganda into the because it's a totally.
Different it's only hours. If it's fine.
You want your kids getting us government propaganda.
If it's only for an hour on Friday and Saturday.
It's like top gun two clips.
Yeah, whatever, fine.
So I would I look at China's regulation of social media for their kids and I'm so jealous.
Mm hmmmmm, Like they've they've they've got that under control.
So so so if we can outsource that to she, then we'll let TikTok keep going.
Ryan, I've been excited over the last couple of days to get your take on what went down in the back rooms of the Democratic House Caucus when Jerry Connolly just snatched defeat from the draws of victory victory for himself, defeat argument for the Democratic Party when he took chairmanship of the House Oversight or ranking member of the House Oversight Committee, from Alexandra Okazio Cortez, who wanted the job.
Yeah.
So the backstory here is Jamie Raskin was had this position as top Democrat on Oversight Committee.
He moved over to take the top.
Spot on the Judiciary Committee, which is kind of higher ranking spot he had.
He and he and AOC are very close.
He had made AOC the vice chair, which is a kind of position that he made up, but came with a real authority on the committee, an ability to learn operation of it and how to get things how to get things done, and how to do you know, oversight both towards you know, the law enforcement directions, the PENA direction, but also using the committee as a platform for you know, creating political controversis controversy and narratives and videos and you
know what you know, which is like ninety nine percent of Congress's job at this point.
Well, and Jim Jordan used it very effectively as well. When you're in the minority, you still have a lot of power if you're on oversight because you're just driving different investigative narratives.
Yeah, and so if the if the vote were just up to the Oversight Committee, Democrats there, they're mostly all AOC allies. When that overwhelmingly goes to the Steering Committee, which is a kind of secretive leadership situation, It was where you know that like she never had a shot there, but then you can challenge it and take it to the entire caucus and we can put up the results
of that caucus vote, which just happened. She lost one thirty one to eighty four, so later later today, but it'll air on Friday Thursday.
If you're a premium I will be interviewing.
Greg Gasar Cottrissman from Texas, who is the new chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. The Progressive Caucus has, blask him, ninety five members one hundred something like that. It has more than eighty four, so in other words, so these are secret ballots, by the way, so nobody knows how people voted.
AOC didn't even win the.
Entire Progressive Caucus. That shows but and she's close with a decent number of people who are not in the Progressive Caucus. So actually, so Connolly, did you know fairly well creeping into the CPC?
So how that's I think is probably very well.
And we'll talk to Kazar about this.
The Progressive Caucus for many Democrats is a branding exercise.
Two. Just tell people back at home that they're progressive.
Which is the opposite of the Freedom Caucus, which actually like pretty rigorously enforces.
Right, and they kicked out Mario Taylor Green even yeah, right, Yeah.
There have been some efforts by a Parilla Giapaul to tighten to tighten kind of conditions for getting in, you have to support two thirds of the things that you know that they you know, complicated litmus tests, but a lot of room for letting people walk. And on the one hand, like there are there are circumstances like Matt cart Wright, who lost rip was Scranton progressive who kept winning this Trump district.
And progressive would say, okay, look, there are going to.
Be some things he's not with us on because he represents this kind of rural Pennsylvania district.
But he's for Medicare for all, he's for the Green New Days, like he's for.
All this stuff, and he's a populist Democrat that he's the kind we want. That's a good argument, but a lot of other Democrats use that argument to smuggle in
a lot of corporate behavior. What really happened here, though, was predictable from the very beginning, and that is that AOC ousted Joe Crowley came in a way that is unacceptable to her colleagues, came unforgivable and unforgivable, came in with other people who had unforgivable views when it came to Israel and Palestine, where she did to leave me all on Omar and then proceeded to continue to endorse some primary challenges to sitting Democrats, not as many as
the left would like, not as early as the organizations would like, but far more than was acceptable two incumbent democrats. The acceptable number of primary challenges for incumbent Democrats is zero, with the asterisk being it's okay, if you want a primary Corey Bush, Jamal Bowman and Omar reshoot it to leave those those kinds of incumbent Democrats, you can you can challenge those, and that's not actually a threat to the Democratic Party.
You're still you can still be a team player.
Although even there, it's like you didn't have a whole lot of Democrats openly going against Jamal Bowman and Corey Bush for for that reason that there's there's this, uh come, there's this like Omerta within this within the within the house, which is again.
It is so so different and we'll talk about this a little bit, but it is so different from the Republicans, which basically are I say this not pejoratively like a circus, like they air their stuff out.
Which they should good, good for them. And so in my book, the squad.
I interviewed a lot of AOC's staff members who who said that very early twenty nineteen, this was a fundamental question facing her as she came into office. Would she try to get along with her colleagues well and move up the ranks of the Democratic Party, build power that way,
and then use that power for good. Or is she a constant insurgent who uses her platform in the House to build a national movement and just understands that the House is not the place where she's going to exercise her power, but that the House is actually a defanged institution anyway, and that there's more power culturally and politically at being a national figure.
And her staff.
Who were on the other side of this argument, disagreed with the idea of kind of playing by the rules and moving up to the ranks, said, it's actually not even a choice for you. There is nothing that you can do to shrink yourself down small enough that they will ever forgive you for what you did.
And I was last night, I was pulled.
I wanted to pull up one quote because I think it's quite prescient from Corbyn. Trent, if you remember, that was her Tennessee communications director who had a fun Southern drawl. It was always kind of discordant and fun to hear him, like representing the Bronx congresswoman. But so he like so at one point and so this is from the book,
he said Trump Trent Corbin. Trent said he would often warn Ocasio Cortez that, because of the way she had burst onto the scene and because of the threat she represented to others, her hope of being accepted as a member in good standing would always be frustrated. Quote disarming will not make them happy, he said. Even if she left politics and became merely an influencer or an MSNBC talking head, he argued, they'd still hunt her until the
end of time, he said. Quote The funny thing is it still wouldn't prove to her that.
It won't work.
I just have to get a little smaller so nobody thinks I'm a threat. Okay, sorry again, guys, Sorry again for all this trouble. And so she tried that that root of sorry for all his trouble. But like, look out, look how prepared I am at the Oversight committee hearings. Look how look how much good I do for the party. Yep, I've gone to Nevada, which we won. Ye, I helped Jackie Rosen win in Nevada. You sent you sent me to Pennsylvania with Puerto Rican population.
I'm popular on TikTok, Like these oversight hearings are going viral on TikTok.
Young people. Yeah, absolutely love me.
It's it is their hook into the Democratic Party. And she kept believing that the Democratic Party cared about any of that, that the Democratic Party cared about winning or doing good things.
That was that's her fundamental like disconnect.
If you see these members of Congress as just individual power seeking politicians rather than people who are engaged in a collective fight to make the world a better place, then you're going to analyze the situation.
Right.
So it's by having too much faith in her colleagues that she and you found a good post from her Republican friend.
Yeah, let's put the next element up, and as we do, I just want to say, like, I think it's true, they care about themselves winning, right like Nancy Pelosi cares about they care about power among their friends like Joe Crowley. That's why you want Joe Crowley to win.
Not necessarily ironically, she was even fine to see Joe Crowley lose because he was going to challenge you, speaker, but she just didn't like the idea that broadly speaking, you're going to challenge Democrats, the block.
Of establishment right who are loyal to her. So Tim Burchett, who I believe is Freedom Caucus, but they're like fight club, You're not You're not allowed to know. Some of them will say freedom Caucus, like we know some of them are. But I'm happy for us because the Democrats don't realize that in their youth circle, she is a Rocks. That's what Tim Burchett, a Republican, said of Connolly defeating Alexandra
Ocazio Cortez. And there's also David Sirota posted after this happened Today's reminder that no change agent will be able to quote nice their way to power inside the Democratic Party. Power will have to be ripped away from the establishment. They're not going to give it away in exchange for
good manners or being a team player. When I read that, I just think that is so accurate because it reminds me of the exact dynamics that happened with John Baynor and who was going up against John Baynor, Mark Meadows and Jim Jordan and ultimately Mark Medows and Jim Jordan. They were not interested in playing nice at all, that was clear. They thought they the establishment had sort of
thought that they snuffed out the tea Party. Donald Trump came along and Democrats Nancy Pelosi, you're going to get a Donald Trump if you are elevating Connolly over Alexandra Ocazio Cortez and Amos's. He was just trying to tell them that She's trying to say, you have to listen to the populists, but at some point you just have to go completely. You have to go completely, like outside the structures of power because they don't care.
Right because even from a cynical perspective, Democrats, even for their own individual advancement, should actually have sided with it. Aoc here because there was reporting that she was telling Democrats that she was going to stop endorsing challenges to incumbents if you give her the ranking, if you give her the ranking seat, you have brought her fully within the tent, and she's going to then stop. You know, you have them completely pulled her in, so she's no
longer a threat to you. But they hate her and what she represents so much that even if she completely surrenders it.
It's not enough for them. So the only question will be.
Does she respond to this by saying, well, Pelosi was my prob and once she's gone, I'll be okay because Pelosi organized behind the scenes.
And if I just keep showing.
My colleagues that I care about the party and I care about making the world a better place, that that I am a that I'm a good person to have on the team, that they will eventually welcome me in. So that's and maybe she can just outlive them all, Like she's young enough and they're old definitely will like So that's one option, Like they all just actually die. And then she's in her fifties and there's all these people in their thirties and forties who kind of came
up in politics admiring her. That that's one. That's one path, m H. The other is to say, they're never going to.
Accept me, they're never going to accept her, and.
I'm going to build my power base as the leader of a movement, which was the kind of Bernie Sanders wing of the party, was Elizabeth Warren wing before that.
Now I'm going to.
Make it the AOC wing and then that's going to be my power base. Yes, like that's that's not option. That's in front of her, and we'll get to see where it goes.
She knows that voter sentiments are way closer to her than they are to Nancy Pelosi, the base of the party, and so what she should realize is that maybe she I mean, I don't know. It sounds like she doesn't realize this. But the House Freedom Caucus operated as a block. It said, we are taking the Tea Party sentiments because we recognize there what is popular with our voters, and we are going to we are going to vote in lockstep. They're losing their ability to do that. We should report
right here. The House and Senate released a fifteen hundred page NDAA, or basically, it's a it would fund the government. The government will shut down on Friday at midnight if a bill is not passed to continue funding the government. And Mike Johnson has put out a bill in order
to hit the seventy two hour review rule. It's kind of funny how he's being hampered by the concessions that Kevin McCarthy made to people like Mike Johnson, and then more broadly to the Freedom Caucus specifically to become Speaker, which was putting Conservatives on the Rules Committee. So that's trip Roy Thomas Massey who are now thwarting the parliamentary procedure of how Johnson ends up getting this build to
fund the government through. So that's just an amusing little takeaway that only happened because the Freedom CAC is operated as a block. That is, if the if the Squad, if there was something between the Squad and the Congressional Progressive Caucus that's like a middle size between Squad, which is too small to operate as a block, and the CPC, which is like too sprawling to be in lockstep on progressive priorities, they would be so powerful.
Well, it was headed in that direction, and in twenty twenty two a ton of them got nuked by APAC and DMFI.
So it was a real The Squad was growing.
Yeah, yeah, I mean like it's you can't, you can't.
Which is they don't want you final chapters in that book.
Even if it's smart for them to put you in the club, they don't want you in the club. They don't want you in there.
Yeah, so good luck, and they're never gonna.
Yeah, and by the way, changing and reforming the entire system, this entire Mike Johnson, who was Freedom Caucus adjacent, he wasn't in the Freedom Caucus, but he talked like a lot of them. He's now putting an omnibus out that is full of pork that Republicans said they would not do, and he's forcing them to vote on it. He's probably going to have to work with Democrats. So is it?
You know, have anti establishment Republicans changed the system through the Freedom Caucus and through saying screw John Bayner were working outside of the halls of power. No, but they're getting closer and at the very least they've set the standard that this is not acceptable and Democrats don't have anything like that.
Right now, moving over to Ukraine, stunning footage emerging out of Moscow and published simultaneously in a bunch of Ukrainian television networks. So we don't have to wonder about, you know, how the footage had taken or what happened here, we can roll this vo here.
So this is this is the moment.
That General igor Kirolov, who's basically in charge of Russia's nuclear Protection Force, is walking out of his There you see it, walking out of his walking out of a building in Boom.
And if you're listening to it, yeah, you just see snow covering snow and debris covering the camera all of a sudden.
Yeah.
And so this is happening as as Zelenski is huddling with with European leaders doing everything he can to try to get as much support in place for his war effort as possible before Trump takes office. But meanwhile things are collapsing politically around him. Not you know, not only is Trump coming into office in Washington, you have Trudeau on his way out. We're gonna talk about that in
a moment. Trudeau on his way out in Canada. Canada has been one of the really top you know, Western supporters of the Ukrainian war effort, and I think has the third largest population of Ukrainians in the world, including
including Ukraine. And you have the German Chancellor Schulz on his way out, uh which is and he's probably going to be replaced by the you know, the was the Christian Democratic Union whatever they call that center right party over it in Germany, which is which has actively been saying that they want to reduce support for the Ukraine war effort. You've got Macrone in trouble in France, and so the writing is clearly on the wall when it comes to.
Western support for this war effort.
Meanwhile, you know, Ukraine is running out of Ukrainians to throw into the trenches here, while the Russian economy, in the Ukrainian economy is in complete collapse as as any economy would be facing this these circumstances and just completely propped up by NATO financing. Whereas Russia's economy is, you know, it's not completely booming off the walls, but they're doing well. Putin is facing no political backlash to speak of it. It's not as if his position is threatened. His his goals,
you know, continue to remain achievable. So, uh look looking like a complete mess. And you know, Trump just the other day calling for an immediate ceasefire in Ukraine. The a sign of what I think is some desperation comes from a.
Recent tweeted video. We can put this is put this up as just a vo.
This is related to this charge by Western allies that North Korea is has surged a bunch of like special forces operatives into you know to support the Russian cause. A couple of weeks ago, I repeated that on this show because I thought it was just a fact, Like I thought it was like a publicly known fact and that North Korea was like that North Korea wasn't denying it, nobody was denying it.
I was like, this is this is what we're doing.
Uh it turns out no, Like uh, it turns out that this is an argument that Ukraine and Ukraine supporters in the US have been making.
In order to try to gin up support for the war effort.
Like I and it seems it was like, wait a minute, that that's what this is.
Are you saying that the claims are exaggerated or that.
It may not even be true, Like, so, there's there's no evidence that North Koreans are actually fighting in Russia
other than these claims that are being made. And so what we showed you there was z Lensky tweeting that the reason that there's no that they have been able to provide zero evidence that there are North Koreans participating in this this assault is that Russia has been deleting all the videos and that they've been burning the faces of the Korean troops who've been killed so that Ukraine can't then get the bodies and prove to the world that this claim they made about North Korean's being there.
And I don't know if if you believe that, I don't know what to tell you, like that, if that's that's where you are at this point, you're saying that they're burning their faces and they and so they put up.
A little bit of video that purports to show.
Something along those lines, and it's like, I don't know, man, it's just so. And the reason I repeated on the show is like I just I just thought it was true. I just thought, like, oh, North Korea is sending some troops because Russia asked them to do that.
Okay, fine, like we should end this war.
But the source of this has been kind of NATO sources saying that North Korea is doing this, therefore we need to, you know, ramp up more funding for this war, which is like, that's how far removed I am from the the propaganda here, because it's like I don't even see how that's a persuasive argument, Like I don't even get the right idea that that's a persuasive argument, Like you're to me, your position on whether or not this war should continue shouldn't be changed, whether or not there's
some North Korean special forces involved.
Well, it's actually I think the opposite. I think that's what's interesting about this line, which is they think they're convinced that what this means is we need to give people will people will respond to this and say, oh my gosh, yes, please send all of the money to Ukraine, and let's continue this war. Let's defeat Putin. He is now engaging. This is like access of evil. I think
that's what they assume. People interpreted as yes, yeah, whereas a lot of people look at there like you're kidding me. There's another nuclear power involved, Like stop, is so out of touch. The New York Times reported yesterday on a general US general who's Air Force Major General pat Ryder. The Pentagon's booksmen told Rapperts on Monday that the North Koreans had entered combat last week in Kursk, and they assessed that North Korean soldiers have engaged in combat and
have indications they have separate casualties, both killed and wounded. Reportedly, I think they think it's around thirty casualties, something like that The New York Times, to something we talked about earlier in the show, said those claims could not be independently verify.
Because they're burning their faces, Like, are you kidding me? And then look, if North Korea is sending troops to Russia, like, it's not as if I believe that North Korea has some like morality that would prevent it from allowing its special forces to become mercenaries for Russia. Sure, they'd be fine to do that, but we need a little evidence,
and this like claims could not be corroborated. That's one thing when you go and say your claims could not be corroborated because Russia is destroying video evidence and burning the faces of the Korean soldiers, That's what I'm like, Hold on a second, that makes no sense.
I mean, in North Korea's mom isn't entirely surprising, but.
It wouldn't be I mean, sure, like, but if they're not involved, we shouldn't say.
That they are definitely not definitely mean.
And look, maybe maybe I'm totally wrong.
There's some and the and the US military is uh, you know, telling the truth for once, but we need we need some evidence and and the excuse for their not being evidence really cannot be that the Russians are burning the faces of the people.
Killed, which is in those words, how do you do what?
Come on, how do you do that? They're all walking around with gas cans. I just find that and you still would have the rest of the person even if we burn their face.
Oh, faces burned. You can't tell who this.
Is right or right, like uniforms and or other things.
I don't know. Maybe we're stupid as they think they are. You think they are, they think they are.
Speaking of stupid people. This is a good transition to Justin Trudeau's smart. Dude, nailed it.
He's smart. You can say what you want about Is you think he's smart? Oh yeah? When yeah, things kind of a bimbo or something.
Yeah, you think he is like a sort of snowy Gavin Newsom.
Yeah he's read books. He's read. I bet he's read books.
He's read like gone girl.
Oh, by the way, I do have to like I totally face planted during that interview that we did with Guy Stewart, the Syrian.
Who went to fight in Syria.
I was making fun of our audience for not reading and told everybody that they should go read. Ah, I thought I was saying for Whom the Bell Oh yeah, that was so I'm blaming guy since he's not here. So Guy was saying that there's this character in the book that keeps talking about manyana, which is there's a
similar phrase in Kurdish. That's from for Whom the Bell Tolls. Right, Obviously people say manyana in uh in George Orwell's book Homage to Catalonia, But it's much more of a thing in for Whom the Bell tollsa Manyana.
Which is by Ernest Hemingway. It is a great book.
Ah, but I've conflated al much to Catalonia and Ernest and and from the Bell Tolls while making fun of young people for not reading it is utterly embarrassing.
So it's quite all right.
I mean, none of us caught it. There's three of us here, and none of us caught it. The audience caught it right.
Away, though of course they did well write audience, but actually they didn't catch that.
They're like, no, dude, that's by George Orwell.
The actual own would have been, no dude, that's for whom the Bell tolls.
That's the act.
Because I said it was an American right who went to fighting Spain. George Orwell is not an American.
No, so you had that part right, Yeah, just a lot of jumbled you know. It's if people are easy to confuse, it's fair.
Yeah, you guys tried to four hours of shows straight.
Well, exactly, this is we're about to talk here about the German chancellor, Justin Trudeau.
Exactly did you catch that one? Good one?
So, not a good one at all, but Justin Trudeau has Justin Trudeau is facing very serious calls for his resignation, very serious calls for his resignation. We could put first
element up on the screens from the BBC. His finance minister quit, resigned And this is as the BBC puts it in the headline, all coming amidst a quote spat over Trump threat, the Trump threat obviously being the tariffs, and his finance minister resigned, she said, because he's prioritizing political gimmicks, meaning he flew down to mar A Lago and sort of made nice with Donald Trump and then the two have exchanged barbs ever since. Because Trudeau realized
that his own party was furious about that. And so this is a significant threat to his party, significant threat to his leadership. Ryan, how do you think this is going to shake out for Trudeau?
I will say, to give Trump credit, it is funny when he calls him Governor Trudeau, oh, and calls the great State of Canada like that's good stuff. So he asked Christian Friedland to step down as Minister of Finance and take a different cabinet position. She said no, and then she timed her her vicious resignation letter for maximum political damage to him. Basically, what her argument is is that you know the game is on, like Trump is coming for us. This is an existential threat. It's twenty
five percent tariff. Canada needs to be put aside all of our different differences and completely unite against Trump right now, the same way that they did say when they were renegotiating NAFTA that you know, we need to collectively fight for this because this is going to set our path.
For you know, a generation or more.
And she's saying we need to harbor as many of our resources and financial resources as we can in order to be ready for the trade war. That they believe that they should have to try to back Trump down from these tariffs, because like Trump's predicate here is kind of ridiculous. He's saying that he's going to slap these twenty five percent tariffs on Canada because it's it's borders insecure.
Come on, it's not would.
Seriously, you're you're like the Trump base really wants a wall all the way across the northern Canada, like northern US and southern Canada.
Really that's what that's what we're gonna do.
Come on, Also, if it's a state, if it's just another state and he's the governor, we don't have walls between our states, so that makes any sense.
And so not yet.
Freelan's argument was, look, we can win this if we stand up to him, because he's not really serious about US.
He's he's he'd rather take on China and Europe and Mexico.
He's willing to negotiate too.
I mean, also, they need like we the USMC we need their wood. They're oil like like we need. There are imports from Canada maple syrup because it's not getting cold enough of Vermont. Uh, there are imports that we need from Canada. That putting a giant tariff on it's not gonna do anything for domestic manufacturing up New York. New England is making as much maple syrup as it can. Like, putting a tariff on Canadian maple syrup is just gonna let them charge us more.
I'm gonna be honest. I like the cheap maple syrup that ourf K Junior is probably about to ban. I don't even know.
One of my daughters like that. I'm like, we stop it, right, stuff, Come on?
So the opposition reader's.
Same with the timber and the like oil and natural resource. It's like, what's the point of a tariff on that?
Well? But here's I actually think to your point about whether Trudeau is smart or stupid, I sort of think he's handling this in a smarter way than raging against Trump's quote economic nationalism, which is what really did in her resignation of that too.
Here, yeah, this is her. This is about her resigning, right.
And I mean, there's Trump is the one thing. The one way that you don't get a deal with Donald Trump is by going full like elite, knocking him and treating him like he's dirt. All of that. It's like a really bad way to get something in your country's interest from the incoming president. They can't prevent Donald Trump becoming the president of the United States. They have to work with Donald Trump. And we saw him negotiate a lot with AMLO, with USMCA, like they can get a
good deal out of Donald Trump. And I think that's why Trudeau, to your point about maybe him being smart, maybe he is the winter Gavin Newsom flew down to mar A Lago and tried to actually work something out. Now, was it a little embarrassingly that's the right word. Sycophantic? Maybe it might have been. I'm sure that's what caused
a lot of ripples in Canadian politics. Probably wasn't a different way that he could have done it, although I don't know if Trump would have allowed it to be done a different way with that that photo op at the dinner table. But Donald Trump is the president. Like it's as simple as that. You have to work with the incoming president. And Trudeau's popularity according to BBC in June of this year, it was at twenty eight percent. Twenty eight percent.
Canada is overstate, is welcome. I mean he's been there forever.
The vibes have shifted. There was a great piece recently about how Trudeau and Obama like the center left. As we were talking about Loui, we'll be talking about Schulzen McCrone. In this block. The center left had its moment where it was riding high and felt really good and it looked like Trudeau was the future and Trudeau would be like the uh. He was the setting the tone for the future of Canada and it was I think this was in a peace spot on Angela Merkel and her
new book, and that has collapsed. That vision of the future is completely collapsed, and it's one that the sort of Davo set was really optimistic about because it meant they had control. And that moment has totally faded from West from politics, to say the very least. So his opposition, the opposition leader in this case, who's the last name. I can't say Pierre, I never can say it. But
he is a very formidable opponent. He has a robust presence online, support from American Conservatives now goes viral a lot.
But he hid like a barn Burner speech and whatever their Congress.
Is, yeah whatever, it's well, there are states, so.
They don't know their state legislature.
He if you haven't seen the video of him like munching on an apple while just destroying a reporter. I highly recommend looking that one up. But he is his support from American conservatives, but more importantly, all of that stems from him just being very articulates. He makes his case really well. He's a good ambassador for his ideas. Canada's next federal election, according to BBC, must be held in October, at the very latest he's calling for. Opposition
party is calling for earlier elections. Trudeau is facing calls from his own party to resign. It is just a complete mess. And maybe, as that political headline suggested, the chaos is good for Canada because they need something other than Trudeau.
And so if we can put up F three here, this is an interesting wrinkle here amid all this collapse, their their dollar is crashing. That has interesting implications for Trump's attempt to do a trade war. So when you're when your dollar crashes, when or when your currency crashes, then your exports are cheaper.
So that what this.
Means is Canadian products that get exported into let's say into the United States, we can buy them cheaper.
Trump then.
Has his tariffs kind of defect m So the goal of a tariff is to basically raise the price of something for domestic consumers, which then encourages domestic production of that thing. Like we said, when it comes to Canada, some of that's ridiculous because maple syrup would et cetera.
But whatever.
But setting that aside, it just means that if your currency collapses by twenty five percent and then then you come in with a twenty five percent tariff, we actually have to come in with now closer to like a thirty five percent tariff because because of math.
In order just to get it back to where you were originally.
So all the jaw bwoning between Trump and Trudeau, which is driving down their dollar actually makes it then harder for Trump to do what he's trying to do with his with his tariffs, because currently it's doing the reverse.
It's it's like a reverse tariff now over in Germany.
So we're subsidizing their exports right now and over it through Trump's mouth.
In Germany, Chancellor Olaf Schultz has lost a bout of confidence in the fallout from that is continuing as well in the Parliament. So this really ryan to your point about the center left. My Crone right now is struggling with the center left coalition that he he cobbled together, the weirdest coalition that we sort of covered a lot when it was happening, but in this case with Schultz, kind of interesting. That's happening during Angola Merkel's book tour.
By the way, I think that's not great timing, or maybe it is great timing, but maybe it's gonna help her sell books. But as MPR report, Schultz's practice three party coalition government collapsed in really November when the Chancellor fired his finance minister. Sound familiar and in dispute over how to revitalize Germany's stagnant economy. Where does this go?
So yeah, and so this is heavily Ukraine related in the sense that you know, he wanted to bust through.
You know, Germany loves its death as.
The Controls loves its Russian oil.
The love well, they love the Russian oil.
But yes, they they It's just the German culture just hates to spend beyond what it believes or its means. But he wanted to do so for the ongoing Ukraine War, and his his coalition collapsed basically as as a result of that.
His coalition is with the Green Party too, though it.
Is interesting in the Greens have been very militaristic too. The reason that he has this bizarre coalition is that the far right, the far far right party is picking up now like fifteen twelve to fifteen percent of the parliament and nobody will form a coalition with the.
Far far right. Good for them.
Germany has a troubled history when it comes to the far right, the far right, and so that leaves then less of the parliament to form a coalition. It makes it very hard for anybody to have a majority government that can actually do anything.
And it's going to get especially interesting next time.
Because the AfD, the far right party, is expected to grow to maybe twenty percent well.
And it's a vicious cycle because the less or the more that you have right stagnant center left merely mounts.
They can't deliver any thing right.
The more exactly, the more powerful AfD gets, and the more fuel you're adding to the fire. So it's I mean, they're in like the exact definition of a pickle right.
And it looks like the far left might be able to barrel its way into the parliament too through people have probably been following her. Sarah wagonnecked, this like kind of firebrand leftist who wagen wagen necked whenever, this firebrand leftist who like East Germans, joined the Communist Party and back in back when there was still an East East Germany.
She's like you, yeah, there you go, Bernie, except she.
Has gone hardcore anti immigrants.
Not uncommon in Europe, but she is.
But she's kept all the other left wing stuff but become like super German nativist. And it's a it's an interesting test for that kind of politics, which are being upended now by Syria, by Syria, because so many Syrians are just like they're like, yeah, we literally you thought we were lying, like we literally are refugees.
We would rather be in Syria.
Now that we can go back to Syria, We're going to go back to Syria.
But a lot of them have been there ten years.
Have built businesses and have built roots, and so the summer, you know, significant number are going to stay. So it'll you know, if she barrels in with you know, ten to fifteen percent. AfD's got twenty percent, it's pretty you'd have to have basically every other every other party would have to team up together to form a government. But those parties don't agree with each other, so functionally, what do you do? Right, Well, I guess we'll find out.
Donald Trump enters office once again at a very precarious time in geopolitical history.
Yeah, I mean you're upscrewed. As Socger likes to say, Europe is just completely screwed.
Yes, yes, well, And that's why I think breaking points works is because it's a good example of how the US may be a better position to not follow in the failed path of Europe, and that's failures.
On the left right, we really kind of the grass is always greener on the other side, and like over here, left end right. I think both kind of love the parliamentary system because it allows you to vote your conscience and support Let's say, if you're on the right, you know, whichever flavor of right you like, you vote for them, and then they get a little piece of the parliament.
So it means you don't have to you know, if you're on the left and you don't but you don't like Joe Biden, you vote for the Bernie Party right, or you vote where there's some technocratic like left Warrant Party and there's and then there's the whatever Biden is.
In AOC said in Europe she would never.
Been the same papiness, and that's correct, she would not be.
We saw that play out this week, so we we kind of fine for that. On the other hand, it has its problems, a huge stagnant which we're seeing.
I mean, we feel like we're stagnant. We can't pass anything through in Congress. But what gets worse is when you have the seesaw effect, you're changing a lot and nothing's really changing, Like policies just swing back and forth.
We pass all our stuff in December of after elections.
Yeah right, yeah, that's that's the way we do things, so vot.
Voters don't get to say anymore. Yeah.
Yeah, Well, Ryan, we're all we're all pulling for you to close the loop on the beginning of the show, and I'm just amazed at and your family how are able to keep going and bring us to the news.
Yeah.
Well, we'll look back on this. It will be a thing that happened. Absolutely, that's the that's the hope.
Absolutely, we will be back with one more show before the new year. Because Ryan booked a great guest, a huge guest.
Chairman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, Greg Gasar, incoming chairman from Austin.
Texas, and we will that's a Friday show, So we're gonna sit down with him for a good long conversation about a lot of what we discussed without having a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus here to kind of talk about the future and UH tactics and strategy and recent news as well. So that'll be fascinating, Ryan, especially on the custom the government government shutdown by the way, so lots of talk about with Greg Asar. Tune in
on Friday for that Breaking Points dot Com. If you want to get a premium membership, you get to access to Counterpoints Friday shows early. You get to watch them on Thursday night, which when we have a lawmaker is cool because you actually get access to breaking news. There you go, all right, Breakingpoints dot Com. We will be back here Friday with more and we'll see you after the holiday break with more Counterpoints see then. Yeah,