Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here, and we here at.
Breaking points, are already thinking of ways we can up our game for this critical election.
We rely on our premium subs to expand coverage, upgrade the studio ad staff, give you, guys, the best independent.
Coverage that is possible.
If you like what we're all about, it just means the absolute world to have your support. But enough with that, Let's get to the show.
All right, Good morning, and welcome to Counterpoints. We've got a great show today, don't we.
We sure do.
We have the new head of the Freedom Caucus here at the end of the show, Representative Bob Good of Virginian and we have lots of questions for him going into the new year about all the leverage they've got in Congress in the new year. Also, Donald Trump, we're going to start right away with the ruling out of Colorado last night.
He's off the ballot for now. Supreme Court's reviewing it.
I guess technically he's not until the Supreme Court review.
This is a huge case.
And we've got a packed show.
So there are a couple of things we didn't get a chance to put into the show that we wanted to make sure you guys knew about, first of all, huge news on the COVID origin front, which we've been tracking for years now.
Basically us right to know.
Emily Copp organization that we've had on the show multiple times got through the freedom of information. Actually a number of documents from the defuse grant. You just go look up their story, but basically what they found is that the folks who were trying EcoHealth Alliance was trying to get money to do risky work in Wuhan. Wrote into its word doc you know, let's not actually tell the Defense Department that we're going to be doing this risky work at a BSL two lab in Wuhan because they
will quote freak out. Now, they ended up not getting that money, but people believe, you know, they have not gotten money before and still been able to do the research. Is not as if not getting money means nobody can do any lab work. And so the level of deception has raised people's suspicion from you who were already fairly confident that Muhan was the source up to close to nine nine point nine nine percent certainty at this point.
Right, Yeah, and that's how pack of the show is. It's just a huge story. We wanted to make sure we mentioned that.
And one quick win for workers.
I don't know if you guys were following, there was there's been an almost two week long strike of UPS workers out at the kind of sorry DHL workers at the airport in Cincinnati, Kentucky, which is their main hub, and I interviewed some of these workers like a year ago from my podcast. They organized their union from scratch, you know, with the Teamsters, fought over a contract and then went on strike and won, like just an incredible victory.
This is the kind of thing that unions in the past would spend millions of dollars trying to organize and fail. Not only did the Organs union, they now have a tentative deal. Just an incredible win. We're looking at maybe twelve hundred fifteen hundred workers, but really sets the tone for the Teamsters after their big UPS.
Win sets the tone, confirms the tone of the labor movement for sure.
Absolutely.
We also have news out of Israel that we're going to get to right after we talk about the decision in the Trump Court case in Colorado. Ryan's coverage of Imran Khan and Pakistan is going to continue.
There's an update in the story.
The State Department is just very pleased to have Ryan at the briefing, so he got a question with Matt Miller about that and has updates to the story. Lots of names set to come out by January first.
From Jeffrey epis.
A lot of people.
Yeah, a lot of people.
I'm sweating right now, So we'll see if that actually happens. But that is news that we're going to get to. About two hundred names are set to be released from Epstein's files basically by January first. Tucker went in on Ron DeSantis. He was on Timpoole's show.
I understand this. Cannot catch a break?
Can't catch a Break's poor guy?
No, that's what well, let's start with Donald Trump Ryan, And this is a good point also to remind everyone subscribe to Breaking Points.
Make sure you have.
At your discount right, there's a holiday discount. But make sure also that you just subscribe in general so you can get the show early, get it to your inbox, and you can for counterpoints see the full show uninterrupted. So make sure to subscribe because we're going to have a lot to cover in the next.
Year, and we might do a Friday show.
We might, we might. We went to tease that like months ago, and.
We're thinking about it.
Here's our teaser. But let's get yes, yes, exactly.
Let's get to the Trump news though, Ryan, because the Colorado Supreme Court, this is from the Associated Press, they declared former President Donald Trump ineligible for the White House under the US Constitution's insurrection clause, so that's part of the fourteenth Amendment, and removed him from the presidential primary ballot. The AP continues to say that sets up a likely sh down in the nation's highest court to decide whether the front runner for the GOP nomination can remain in
the race. It is from section three of the fourteenth Amendment that it's a post Civil War insurrection clause.
That's what it sounds like, basically.
And they write, a majority of the court holds that Trump is disqualified from holding the office of president under section three of the fourteenth Amendment, and that was a four to three decision. It's about his role obviously on January sixth. Now, Trump, interestingly enough right has not been charged with insurrection. Jack Smith could have charged Donald Trump
with insurrection. He hasn't actually been charged with insurrection, but in the fourteenth Amendment, you can also be disqualified for aiding or giving comfort to anybody who's partaking in an insurrection. Again, though it's a strange circumstance for sure, and for to three in.
Colorado, because in the Civil War it was very clear if you participated in a rebellion or an insurrection, no mystery.
You were a uniform. You know, you fought that, you fought the Union.
And the fourteen Amendment had a provision that said that if two thirds of Congress, you know, did undid your disqualification, then you could come back into office. And that's how many, that's how so many Confederates were allowed back into Washington. Is that like, all right, fine, come on back, We'll let you back in. So yeah, my take on this is that, for one, liberals just keep looking for a manager, like they want somebody that they can call that's going to fix this situation.
That's so good.
Like in twenty sixteen, after he got elected, at first it was the faithless electors. They were going to they were going to find these members of the electoral College who they could persuade to just change their votes and because of Russia or because of whatever else, and they would elect Hillary Clinton that way. You know, afterwards there was you know, Bob Muller was the manager that they
were going to call in on this one. Now, now to me, if you want to use raw political hour, you use it like January sixth, that night, you know, after Pence certifies you impeach Trump, you get him out within in a week, and then President Pence at that point launches a DOJ investigation of him, locks him up, and then a President Biden pursues the prosecution.
Like you want to use political power, like.
Use it, don't half as it, don't half hass it, don't don't do this well. First they go after him over a paperwork thing with a payoff to Stormy Daniels. Then there's the classified documents thing, and then eventually this like Elliott nas Wannabee comes in with his with his you know, big case that doesn't even bring insurrection, right, like bring insurrection. Lock the guy up, and then disqualify him, like that's your option, or you beat him at the
ballot box. Like I think this middle ground where they're kind of letting him hang out for four years roam in the streets of Coral Gables or Palm Beach or wherever he is, and then with him ten points up in the polls, saying they're going to disqualify him, I think is kind of ugly, like just just beat him one way or the other, but not like this.
See that's interesting, Yeah, because Trump supporters are already drying parallels with Banana Republic's third world countries. They're using the term election interference, and I think, you know, actually, to your point, Ryan, there's there's something about this that gives them some real ammunition when they're having those making those arguments, because again, this is all happening in the shadow of Donald Trump running against Hillary Clinton James Comy deciding not
to go after Hillary Clinton. And I'm with you that, you know, and Krystal and I have talked about this before too, like lock them all up. But if you're not locking them all up, then definitely don't lock one up because that is going to fement another January six. I mean, there's that's exactly what led to January six. And that's not to say Donald Trump was blameless in any of that. Of course, we don't think that this is a quote in the AP article from a Notre
Dame law professor. He says, I think it may embolden other state courts or secretaries to act now that the bandage has been ripped off. This is a major threat to Trump's candidacy. And it is and you can tell that by some of the reactions from Trump World, because there are dozens of these cases in different courts that have been brought by mostly left of center legal groups that are kind of testing this Fourteenth Amendment case out
to see what they can do. An interesting way these cases have actually been pushed off in certain areas, certain places where they're being tried is that it doesn't mention presidents. It mentions elective officials can be taken off the ballot for engaging an insurrection.
Right, But it does say like if your civil officers election, like it's included within.
But yeah, I mean, you could make an argument.
And they have successfully in different case. I mean that's part of the problem with it.
I think it didn't contemplate.
The statute didn't contemplate that the president would lead the insurrection, because the president is the of the government that's being insurrected against. So it's the only time that somebody could do that would be during the lame duck session.
So it's a question of whether you're included as a quote officer of the United States, and that's the language it is, right, Well, you'd think, right, but then you're getting into the legalese over how it's been interpreted in the past and if that's what is hinging on whether or not Donald Trump is in the ballot and how many states. To your point, it's like a whole asset, the half assling where we're having legalese over whether or not this man who's leading the presidential race is allowed
to be in the ballot. Now he lost Colorado by double digits, by the way, so it's not Colorado that's the important question here.
It used to be a swing state. It's funny how.
Yeah, no Republicans won since two thousand and four.
But so all that is to say, this is going to likely inform how other people approach these cases going forward, and the Supreme Court is set to rule on this. So this ruling is immediately being reviewed by the Supreme Court. I believe it's actually not even technically valid, that it's not enacted until.
The right they're leaving them on the ballot until the Supreme Court weighs in.
Basically right on the last possible day. Right, it's like January fifth. They have to print their ballots on January fifth, so the Supreme Court has to weigh in by January fourth.
Right, Although if they do weigh in and they say they're going to give.
An answer, the Colorado Supreme Court says that they'll stay it until the Supreme Court makes an answer.
Let's get Donald Trump's response to this. It's no wonder crook at.
Joe Biden and the far left lunatics are desperate to stop us by any means necessary. They're willing to violate the US constitutions at levels never seen before in order to win this election. Joe Biden is a threat to democracy.
It's a threat.
They're weaponizing law enforcement for high level election interference because we're beating them so badly in the polls.
I mean, the point on undermining them a threat to democracy is a reasonable one. We're going to talk later
about the situation in Pakistan. I'm in the press room of the State Department, and you know, I want to hammer Matt Miller, the State Department spokesperson, about the fact that the US is claiming that they want free and fair elections in Pakistan, yet the leading opposition leader, former prime minister, the most popular politician in the country is in jail and being prosecuted by the military backed government.
It's much harder to make that land for liberals when they're like, yeah, so the US backed military back, right, So yeah, so so we're doing that with Trump, right, and we're democracy, so therefore that's fine. And so around the world, you're just going to have people being like, all right, well we were already you know, we already felt like we had a green light.
Now we've got a raging green light.
Yes, like, lock up whoever we want to be Like no, it's like, hey, nobody's above the law.
And if this is truly a domino that falls, then it does feel really like an is a third world country thing. And I mean, there's are Supreme Court right now. There's questions as to whether Clarence Thomas is going to have to recuse himself because obviously Ginny Thomas was involved in the protests and helping organize the protests, not the riot. Obviously, the protest turned into a riot on January sixth. But
that's a huge question going forward. The Supreme Court is I mean, you think we all know where the Supreme Court is going to land basically the Supreme Court, Yes, I would imagine that. Said, let's hear also this clip from Lord Ingram Show last night, which is actually really interesting as it pertains to this case and how it'll affect the future going forward.
Seeing what happened in Colorado tonight, law it makes me think, except we believe in democracy in Texas, maybe we should take Joe Biden off the ballot in Texas for allowing eight million people to cross the border since he's been president, disrupting our state.
So that's the tenant governor of Texas and Patrick and Ryan the question of whether this is a domino that starts falling that is going to be We've seen this like we've seen this how Republicans retaliated in the House of Representatives after Nancy Pelosi didn't let them pick who would sit on the January sixth committee. We've seen how Republicans have acted and said we need to now fight fire with fire. That's the sort of tactical approach going forward.
And if you don't do that, then you know, you're you're not on our team anymore. Basically, that's fighting fire with fire.
And speaking of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln was not on a single ballot in the South. So when you are so far apart that you're not even willing to put your opponents on the ballot, you've gotten to a place that's going to get violent. And that's what I mean by sorting things out democratically rather than using raw force, because there are two ways that you can solve political disagreements,
right through politics or through war. And so if you can't, if you can't do it through politics, you're going to you're going to end up getting war. But like I said, there is an exception. You pull a coup and you fail. Everybody understands that is a threat to democracy. You get locked up, But you have to do it right away.
You have to lock up.
You just you just cannot just let him sit there for four years and then Merrick Garland, you know, not wanting to do it, and then eventually like appointing a special counsel who then who then moves on it, like.
Who then moves on it while delaying a Hunter Biden case. I mean, it's just such a disaster.
If it's that serious, that's a threat, you got to move on it. So it was what a four to three ruling in the Colorado Supreme Court. Somebody flagged a really interesting point that all of the Ivy League appointees, they're all Democrats, but all of the Ivy League appointees voted to disqualify Trump and all the Denver Law School appointees voted to allow him on.
So that make of that what you will.
Let's move on to news out of the Middle East. Ryan, some big updates just yesterday. You actually drove some of the news yesterday. I think we have a clip of you in the State Department briefing right now that we can start with.
Yeah, this is actually I guess the question sets it up itself.
Yeah, so we can roll the clip in the State Department.
Pope Francis said recently. He said, quote, unarmed civilians are subjected to bombings and shootings, and this even happened inside the parish complex of the Holy Family, where there are no terrorists but families, children, sick and disabled people, nuns. Someone says it's terrorism, it's war. Yes, it's war, it's terrorism. Unquote,
So first, is the Pope wrong about this? And is the US concerned about its standing among the international community if the Pope is willing to describe what Israel is doing has terrorism.
So one of the things that we have made clear to Israel from the outset is that we do not want to see churches, mosques, schools, hospitals attacked. In the Secretary's last trip, he had a very candid conversation with the Israeli government about the importance of protecting those civilian sites and ensuring that they are on deconfliction deconfliction lists
so they are not targeted. I will say with respect to this particular incident that you raised, we raised this with directly with the Israeli government and ask tough questions about it, and we will continue to do so.
We're the answers, yeah, tough questions. It raises the question of how weak is the United States here?
If they're serious that they.
Genuinely don't want Israel bombing churches, mosque, schools, and hospitals, and Israel continues to target churches, schools, hospitals, and mosques, what does that say? Either So one of two things, right, like either of the US has no leverage over Israel and is like the weakest superpower that's ever existed.
Base of the Earth.
Public matter, they can't find the strings or it's actively supportive of it and just saying so otherwise in public.
This particular incident is a I mean, we have no answer to your point about them.
Your point to Matt Miller.
He's saying, you know, we've raised this issue and asked quote tough questions, and we'll continue to you know, keep you updated on it. I want to know what Israel told them, because this is a really continues to be a really strange situation that's starting to remind me of the Shrin Abu Aakla incident. Obviously tragedy a couple of
years ago. It was like a year and a half ago at this point where the Israeli government said we absolutely did not do this, or the IDEF said we absolutely did not do this.
They came out and.
Said, you know, this is not how we operate, and it eventually turned out.
That's what happened.
The evidence so far is suggesting that it is what happened. But typically when you get a flat denial from I'm not just talking about Israel, but any government. Just absolutely know that means go to the mac, go down the right right when you're going on the record, maybe you take seriously that denial as opposed to just like, oh, we'll review it whatever it is. Usually you take that
more seriously than you know. Someone brushing the question off the evidence here continues to suggest that a mother and a daughter were sniped basically when they left a church.
And according to the church officials there, one of the women was shot and killed the other women the other woman was trying to you know, bring her into safety inside the church and with then herself shot, and that seven other people were wounded who were then trying to
help those two women who were shot. They also say that AID is really Israeli tank shelled the church compound, blew up their generator so now that they're without power, and also destroyed a kind of side complex where fifty four disabled people were finding refuge and by destroyed by destroying the generator and their breathing machines and making them adding them to the two million displaced persons have put their their lives at very serious risk because they're the
kinds of people that cannot live without electricity and so Israel would it would try to claim, like they did with Shrina al Bookley, well this was Palestinians.
That shot at them, and we don't target journalists, and we don't target journalists or whatever.
In this case, the claim that like Hamas may have done this for some weird reason is undermined by the fact there's also like ideaf tanks there shelling the church because like Hamas doesn't have tanks.
Well didn't there wasn't the idea of initial response or somebody in the Israeli government's initial response was to say we were operating there against Amas. So they said, right they conceded right away that they were operating in the area against Moss Right, and.
So their public responses have been deplorable. So let's let's play a couple of those. Let's let's roll this one right here.
You heard our member of Parliament, Leila Miranda, her relatives, six of them targeted by Israeli miss snipers in a church compound in Gaza. What on earth is going on?
Well, that's the question too later, not to me.
I think that I can only say that we, as the Jewish people, I used to blood libels. So to hear that Israeli snipers are targeting women on purpose and not letting them leave the church is something that reminds them, usually the atmosphere in the Middle Ages before another holiday.
Do you say it's a lie, you say it didn't happen.
This is a flat lie, absolutely all right.
So that's one approach to say that, well, it's actually blood libel and anti Semitism.
Literally, to ask questions, to ask questions.
To ask the question about it. Yeah.
And here's the other approach, believe it or not, perhaps even worse than that one.
Why is it necessary it is reported to start shooting, having snipers outside of church.
I don't I saw the reports this morning the church.
There are no churches in Gaza, so I'm not quite sure where the report is.
There's a Catholic church in there isn't there that is. Unfortunately there are no Christians because they were dry driven driven out.
By respectfully, there are Christians because I spoke to an MP yesterday who has family members in the church who are Christians.
Well, I don't know what happened.
I don't know who was attacked.
I didn't see the report.
Oh, didn't see the report. If people missed that started out, Yeah, I saw that report. There's no Christians. Oh no, sorry, I didn't see the report. She's the mayor, the deputy mayor of Jerusalem who goes on TV a decent amount. If we're going to be lied to, can we get some better liars, like don't contradict yourself within a span of thirty two seconds.
But there's another interesting dynamic unfolding here.
In both of those clips, the presenter spoke with probably the same MP in Britain who has Christian family, who was there, yes, and so heard directly from the family members.
The family members told the MP.
The MP told the presenter this is a chain of trust, so that when they are then confronting Israeli officials, like you're lying to me because I have heard from people that I trust that that X happened.
And you know, there are.
Something like one thousand, five hundred slightly fewer kind of quote unuote registered Christians gods, which is it's bizarre, and it raises questions about what Israel's doing with gods and when there are registered Christians, like why are they? Why is there a list and why is there a registry
that Israel has access to? But setting that aside the rest for the most part of Muslims and don't have the same connections you know, with American presenters or British presenters, and so then aren't able to kind of get their story out in the same way video evidence has been substituting, you know, for that direct kind of trust.
That people have.
But you can see that it's basically impossible for Israel to confront people when they have the trust of the people that are witnessing these crimes. What did you make of of this really unimpressive kind of response there.
Yeah, I mean, firstly, I think it is to your
point you use the word deplorable. Listen, I get the sensitivities on behalf of israelis right now, but to immediately pivot to blood libel when people are asking questions about a mother and a daughter being sniped outside of a church, and not unreasonable questions, by the way, people with reasonable questions that are on the ground, that are hearing things from for example, an MP, a member of Parliament who said church officials right literally the Vatican's news website, and like, listen,
I'm not Catholic. I don't put a whole lot of credence and what this pope says. You might be shocked to learn.
Catholic Church does not have the best record throughout history. But yes, right on the question of whether or not Catholics were massacred inside their church, I'm lean in their direction.
So they have this mother and daughter this, and again you have an MP saying that this based on family that's in the area, that this what happened. You have a Vatican saying that this is what happened. You have the Israelis saying a couple of different things about what might have actually happened. You cannot immediately pivot to. That's bigotry for asking questions.
You can't.
And the Deputy Mayor of Jerusalem is absolutely correct that there are very few Christians. She said no, she said there's no churches and guys though there's no Christians and gods.
She's trying to make a point.
And it's true that the Christian population has been decimated, the historic Christian population there has been decimated. There are some beautiful, very old Christian churches in that area that were actually hit. One of the very first places to be hit actually in the war was.
Justin Imasha's relatives were killed.
Right, absolutely, And so it's true, like two thirds of the Christian population of gods that has basically been like fled or killed in recent years. So there are about a thousand left. A thousand does not know. That's a lot, a lot of people. And that's you know, like tight knit church can unities so prepared for Christmas, prepared for Christmas, and they have mishandled like this is this is a
really really bad strategy pr strategy on their behalf. And that's not even to get into whatever military strategy may have led to this, because again, like we don't have all the answers. I eagerly await Matt Miller, you know, being pressed and giving us the answers. He says he's asked tough questions and that the State Department has asked tough questions.
I'm eager to hear that.
Because this sort of tension between Israel saying precision and then Israel saying parking lot, the precision in parking lot tension is really like obviously a huge question.
Yeah, and the whole we would never do such a thing defense doesn't fly today because of what happened with the three Israeli hostages just days ago, where the IDF we know, use snipers to kill three men Israeli men who have their shirts off the show.
They have no explosives, and we're.
Waving a white flag because we know that as a as a fact, and so this like we would never do such a thing using snipers, doesn't land. I think that is what is now driving Israel kind of back to the negotiating table. If we can put up this, uh, this axio scoop. So Israel offers Hamas one week pause, it's minimum one week pause could be extended in fighting
as part of a new hostage deal. So Israel had been demanding in warsaw It in talks that have been mediated by Cutter, that the only way that they're going to agree to a ceasefire is if Hamas lays down all of its arms and turns over you know, all of its all of its top officials. And Hamas is like, well that's not We're not gonna We're not gonna do that.
Uh.
And the last.
Hostage deal broke down, Hamas was claiming that Israel wasn't abiding by it. Israel claimed that Hamas stopped, you know, releasing hostages said all of the remaining women that they had in their captivity were IDF soldiers and so therefore they didn't fit under the kind of rubric of the deal that they were going to release kind of women
and children and the elderly. So this this new deal that's being worked out now, would see what's some sixty or so hostages released, people who are you know, women, children, sick, you know, like elderly, otherwise facing serious health complications, and you know, some of those could be IDF I suppose, because they don't really specify.
And in exchange, Israel would release some.
Palestinians who were convicted of like significant offenses who are themselves in you know, facing like dire health complications or old age. And so that's the that's the current deal being discussed right now. Do you think do you think we're going to see something over the next couple days that starts to see more hostages released.
Yeah, I think we will, especially because to your point, there's a lot of pressure right now on Yahoo met again with families of hostages yesterday and had to cap the number of families that I think fifteen, and there was a lot of discontent actually about people being left off the list and the hostages themselves. We were just talking about the sort of precision versus parking lot. Dynamic have spoken to that and have said you were bombing us. Hostages that have been returned have said.
We were being bombed.
You say, you know what you're doing, but we constantly felt like we were under threat of death basically. So that's obviously huge pressures. That puts huge pressures on Netnyahuo's government to bring hostages home. And obviously that's no surprise that there's pressure on him to bring the hostages home, but it's more and more, more and more pressure that as you can need to wage this campaign, we also need the progress in terms of there's still eight Americans
being held hostage. It's crazy, I think how the hostages have gotten lost in the conversations about this war that like this is basically the number one bargaining chip that Hamas sort of disgustingly used during its invasion its incursion on October seventh, was the hostages. And these are people who are just languishing in tunnels and horrifying situations that could lead to their death at the hands of their own military, their own government. As we saw with three
people last week and eight Americans. I mean, it just it feels like it gets lost in those headlines every single day that eight Americans among many other hostages are still being held in these terrible conditions, and that's the top objective. It should absolutely be the top objective every single day so that we can come to the table and get closer to peace.
So there's just a ton of pressure i think on in Yahoo to make.
These deals yeah now, and there's pressure from the other side to keep the war going.
So if people remember back in.
The very early stages of this war, Finance Minister Besilo Smochurch, who's one of them like leading like hard right figures in the cabinet, in a cabinet meeting said, and this quote has become notorious, he said, we have to be cruel now and not to think too much about the hostages over much. We have to be cruel now and not to think too much about the hostages in Gaza.
It's time for action, and there has been. And Ben Givier at the time of the last pause said, you know, if you don't start this war up again, I'm going to bring the government down.
So there's this pressure on the other side.
It is not lost on the far right inside the cabinet that a lot of these hostages have been peace
activists in the past. These are kind of internal political adversaries of the of the far right government in Israel, and as they've been getting released, they have been potent critics of that government, and so so for people like Smotrich, they're like their mission is to just completely level Gaza, and the hostages who are whose mission is not, whose missage is to survive and get out, but also have are among the kind of remaining faction in Israel that
have a real kind of solidarity with with kind of peace activists around the world trying to like resolve this conflict in a peaceful way rather than violently. They're they're not helpful when they get out on the public stage and you and you've seen a lot of damaging meetings with net Yahoo rallies that the that the released hostages have been able to have the families of the hostages calling on net Yahoo to stop the bombing and let them out.
And it's impossible to imagine coming to a peace, to using peace to come to some type of settlement with Hamas but the big question going forward is does anything that's happened that does anything that's happening right now in Gaza make is really safer in the near term. And that's a completely reasonable point to raise. But Yahoo's under pressure from to your point, from Smotric and Ben Gevier
right now in those factions of his government. He's under pressure from the United States government in a different direction. That's saying, you know, we would our preference is that this is this invasion is drawn down by the new year, and these are all I think variables that will contribute to not just a seven day pause, but potentially something longer in the interest of getting hostages back and shifting to something that is much clearly more of a precision operation in Gaza, right Yeah.
And then the numbers that are being circulated among humanitarian relief activists, So I'm at Cohn, who's done work there, humanitarian relief activists you know, sent to me they're twenty six thousand, six hundred and sixty seven killed and missing. Because they're almost twenty thousand killed who've arrived in hospitals.
But Gaza is rubble, and underneath that rubble, you know, could be six six seven thousand bodies, or more like we're and we're talking about you know, eight thousand children, fourteen thousand women and children, three, you know, ninety, how many journalists at this point, almost one hundred journalists, ninety schools and universities completely destroyed, one hundred and twelve mosques completely destroyed, two hundred mosques partially destroyed, three churches targeted
and destroyed. Two million people roughly this this point displaced well.
And that's why it's difficult for our government, for the Israeli government to say it is not our goal to target churches, hospitals, or we've made it very clear to the Israeli government that we don't want them targeting churches and hospitals, but then at the same time to make the case, which is true by the way, that these are centers of military operation, that you know, these are places where people are conducting military operations. Guys, Gaza is small,
it's compact, it's highly concentrated. So of course there's overlap in these cases. And that's where I think it gets difficult to continue to say one thing and to have
the sort of warplay out in the court of public opinion. Ryan, you were in the We just mentioned in the previous block that you were at the State Department briefing and you've got more than one question, and you started to ask about Pakistan as well, which you've been covering fantastically with your colleague Martaza Hussein Hussein at the Intercept, and you have.
More to this story.
People updated on this wild story that's unfolding in Pakistan.
So people may remember back in August, Merchanz and I reported on a a what's called a cipher basically a diplomatic cable uh but that that arrived in Islamabad, was sent from Washington by the Pakistan's ambassador there, which described a meeting that took place just after the Ukrainian the Russian invasion of Ukraine, in which the United States States Department official told Pakistan that Imran Khan, the current Prime minister uh you know, basically had to go because of
his neutrality aggressive neutrality was their phrase in the war between Russia and Ukraine, and that if Imran Khan was ousted in a vote of no confidence, that quote unquote, all would be forgiven between the United States and Pakistan and we want its manufacture weapons, we would and later it turns out that Pakistan then began producing an enormous amount of you know, low grade shells for for the
conflict in Ukraine. He was ousted as part of as part of this no confidence vote that was encouraged by the State Department. And so now what we can report is that and you can put this element up here. Just a couple of days after our story, the Foreign Office asked the is SI, which is basically Pakistan's CIA, that if the release of a cipher publicly has happened in our in our story, would compromise their encryption system, you know, whether it would enable what's called a plain
text attack. Basically a plaintext attack would be like in a Rosetta Stone type thing, like you've got the encrypted version over here, and then you've got the plain text version here. You put them next to each other, and you can say, oh, this is we can now crack their encryption. And so the NSA or Russia or China or whoever can now bust into Pakistan's encryption system.
So they have since jailed Imran Khan.
They claimed that he was the source of this leak, or they vaguely insinuate that he was a source.
He absolutely was not the source. We know who the source was, was not him.
But the main thrust of their charge is that it was a damaging leak to Pakistan's national security because it enabled this encryption undermining. The document that we obtained from the ISI is a response to the Foreign Office which asked the question is our system undermind and the answer was unequivocally no. It's very rare that you get this
firm of a rejection. And what they say is that you would need more plain text that then could be even stored in all of the storage that exists around the country, and also you would need like the key, and there are a lot of other technical reasons.
They said.
The system is built with the expectation that sometimes the plain text of a document will leak and that the adversary will have both the plain text and the encrypted text. And so this is the thrust of im Ron Khan's the case against im Ron Khan, and the ISI knows
it to be completely false. Yet the trial is ongoing anyway. Meanwhile, the Pakistani media is being completely banned from discussing the trial like it's not only is it being held in secret, but they're not supposed to even talk about it, and so his party did something interesting on Sunday. They held a virtual rally and they used AI to take notes that he had sent from prison and produced a speech using his using AI to create his voice.
They actually did a good.
Job, like unlike the kind of well Indian intelligence that we played a little while ago, oh during Martiniziz, trying to pretend like come on, you can't do's voices.
It was so bad. So they did a good They did a really good job.
Very few people were able to attend, though, because the Pakistani government, in preparation for the rally, the virtual rally throttled the entire country's Internet. Social took down, basically took down social media and the internet made it impossible for people to get on.
Now.
I know some people kind of used VPNs and otherwise kind.
Of got around it.
But they shut down the Internet so that they could block the opposition party from having a rally, a virtual rally, rally, a rally that has to be virtual because he's in jail on trumped up charges. That gets us to the State Department, which has repeatedly insisted that there need to be free and fair elections. So I asked do these conditions count under that? So here, let's play this interaction between me and Matt Miller.
Yesterday and on Pakistan.
I want to read you a Voice of America headline that they headlined the story Pakistan restricts Internet access amid rare opposition online rally.
That's a recent article.
There was a virtual rally held by the opposition party because the opposition party leader is in jail. And I'm wondering if the throttling of the internet amid an online rally makes a mockery of the many assert of the many times you've encouraged Pakistan to hold free and fair upcoming elections. Are they free and fair if even a virtual rally with the opposition leader in prison is being throttled nationally online.
So I cannot speak to the specific report you're referring to because I'm not familiar with those underlying details. But we have always made clear that we think access to the Internet is an important component in a free society and will continue to make that clear as a general proposition for Pakistan and every other country.
In the world.
We Munir was just here. The Army chief was that raised with him.
I didn't see any public comments made by State Department, and why was he meeting with civilians rather than only military.
So I'm not going to get into private diplomatic conversations, but I will say we engage number of times with military leaders from other countries, just as military leaders from the United States engage with civilian officials for other countries.
It's not in any way unusual.
I like how he was like, we don't know anything about that Voice of America stuff.
Voice of America.
Let's put that up here.
And I used Voice of America for a reason. You know, this is the uh you know, basically this is the government run propaganda arm and so Voice of America reporting that Pakistan restricts internet access mid Rare opposition online rally.
Uh So this.
Like like I like, I asked there the army chief, Assif Munir.
It's not just a random.
Kind of military official. You know, he's he's the guy who is understood to have orchestrated, you know, im run Kan's removal and is the the power behind the fake you know, civilian throne that that is that is remaining. And a lot of people in Pakistan were kind of stunned to see him meeting with civilian officials over here, because that that grants him the kind of gravitas of a civilian leader. They if you are trying to stand up for democracy, he would say no, like the military
should be meeting with the military. And by allowing him to meet with Blincoln and allowing him to meet with top civilian officials only then kind of validates all the crackdown that's going on. It says that you're kind of recognizing this as legitimate. And the fact that they were willing to take down the Internet to stop an opposition rally while the Army chief was here in the United States shows that they feel pretty confident that they have
full US backing for this crackdown. And so the US is going to basically annihilate democracy in Pakistan to a country of two hundred and fifty million people, which is going to leave no real mechanism to work out the country's internal contradictions. And the US better know what it's doing, what breaking this, breaking these eggs.
I was gonna say, right, yeah, at least we're aiding the dissolution of yes. And you know, it reminds me we had we had a conversation about New reporting on Patrisa La Mumba and the what happened in the Congo in the mid of the middle of the twentieth century. And you mentioned earlier in the show that it's getting hard for the United States to look at countries like Pakistan and talk about their elected democratic representatives with a
straight face. And obviously you know that's there have been contradictions in our public and private sort of dealings with similar issues for decades. But you mentioned earlier in the show that we were talking about the Supreme Court ruling in Colorado, the Colorado State Supreme Court ruling for three against Donald Trump, which is now going to the Supreme Court here in DC.
I could really see.
Like this same scenario playing out here. And the big pic your takeaway for me is that the CIA and the American sort of intelligence apparatus the State Department, are getting so much more comfortable doing what they used to do in private in public with like less shame to
all of it. That like it's almost as a point to boast about when you do this stuff, like when you take down Donald Trump's Twitter account after being pressured by you know, people in the public and private sectors, like in Ron Khan gets his virtual raty rally throttled in Pakistan, Donald Trump gets his whole Twitter account throttled. For years, it's sort of just like this control mentality. Everyone's getting more comfortable and almost in fact proud and pressured to exercise those powers.
And I think it'll be fair to say, maybe Air Towan in competition that in Ron Khan be the most popular Muslim elected official in the world, and to have him jailed during the Israel Gaza war, I think is unfortunate for the public debate, because you know, he'd be a real voice that the world would be listening to on this question. But let's turn to one hundred and seventy sad sacks who may have their names released as
part of the ongoing Jeffrey Epstein legal situation. This is kind of exciting that a judge ruling that she's going to unseal the names of one hundred and seventy people associated with Epstein. She's giving them, fortunately two weeks to appeal this individually, so we might not get them when we expect it, because I would imagine if somebody's name is on this list, they're going to try to take the opportunity to appeal that keep their name hidden.
So what do we got here?
Right?
So, more than one hundred and seventy people than New York Post says, with ties to Jeffrey Epstein, including ex employee Ease and victims, are in store for an uncomfortable starts the new year. Now let's put a pin in that question about victims, because we're not just talking about potential ex employees. Their names are set to be drudged up in a trove of court documents to be unsealed
in the coming weeks. The Post ads Manhattan Federal Judge Loretta Presca on Monday ordered the release of the long sealed documents in a sense settled defamation lawsuit that Epstein, accuser of Virginia Giffrey, brought against the convicted pedophiles Madam Gillen Maxwell back in twenty fifteen.
So this is one of the Geffray cases.
Under the ruling, dozens of individuals who have been previously referred to as Jane Does or John Does and various court filings linked to the suit will likely be identified publicly when the materials tied to them are unsealed in full. So the judge has given them, as Ryan said, fourteen days to appeal the decision according to the order that was released early this week, So that would put us in early January, sometime around like January first. Actually basically
have a Mary Christminas everyone. Several people who are likely to be idd in the unsealed papers have previously spoken out in media interviews about their working relationships with the convicted pedal file or how they were abused by him over.
The year over the years, according to the ruling.
So but that's saying, is there some of this is already going to be public, and remember also that some of this could be victims. So as tempting as it is to kind of do a victory lap and you know, have you know, some optimism that people will be at least brought to public attention going forward. They do have two weeks to appeal, and some of them again may be victims. So that's not a sort of pleasant situation
for a lot of people going forward. And this is a defray defamation suit, and that's where the impetus for actually releasing some of these names comes in. When you're litigating the question of defamation, you can understand why that would be relevant now. Ryan Representative Tim Burchett went on newsbacks and actually made an interesting point that I saw described in media as a quote conspiracy theory about members of Congress.
Conspious.
I mean, I'm open to any conspiracy theory around what is clearly a conspiracy.
Right, So let's hear the theories.
Yes, let's play this clip.
What you see in so many times, my dear friend Marshall Blackburn, I thought she was snub That's why I got involved with it. She can handle her own. But when the Democrat controlled the Senate did that, I went to Chairman Comer in the Republican controlled House and I said.
We need to fix this. This is wrong.
And too many of my colleagues, I'm afraid or compromise in this area for whatever reason, somebody's whispered in their ear said, hey, you don't want something to come out on something else, you better keep your mouth shut on this.
And that's exactly what they've done. And it continues to go.
Whether it's the honeypot with the Russians used to use or something worse, I don't know, but it's clearly you see that up and down the line, you see good conservatives vote for liberal policies, and frankly you see some liberals occasionally that will vote for something else. So obviously the Congress has been compromised, and this continues on through the White House, through the Justice Department. It's a the trash can is very deep. It's it's not it not a swamp, it's an open sewer.
That's right, So go ahead, Well, I was just going to say, notice there, he's actually also pointing out that Democrats will vote for conservative things, meaning conservatives are pressuring Democrats over Epstein compromises. Basically that this is blackmail that's used not just in one direction, exactly in both directions.
And so if you're thinking about how crazy that conspiracy theory might be, think about the things that we do know, Like, it seems pretty well confirmed that Epstein was some type of intelligence asset. We know for certain all kinds of like wild sex stuff was going on in his like on his plane, in his in his mansion in Manhattan, on his island. We also know for certain that he the whole place was wired up like camera, his audio everywhere. Put those three things together, you already can draw some
reasonable conclusions. We also know that the that the FBI after his arrest, walked out of his mansion with CDs that were in a safe that had name of famous person and eight and then age of girl like on the CD like that was reported at the time those CDs were never Where are those CDs?
Like?
Presumably that who is yes, exactly where are they? Like?
That is an enormous number of investigative leads if this was on the up and up and somebody was actually following this, because that seems like Epstein's blackmail that he had on the entire world, which now would be in the hands of whoever walked out of that mansion with with that blackmail. The fact that we haven't seen those a single one of those prosecutions, single investigation into those really leaves what Burchette is saying as like the most logical explanation at this point.
It's a conspiracy.
Better give me a better explanation.
It would be a conspiracy theory to suggest that members of Congress are somehow not compromised in the Epstein investigation. And what he's saying, by the way, wasn't just that members of Congress might have been on the Lolita Express or had relationships with Jeffrey Epstein.
No, what he's saying is.
That they have powerful people that maybe are donors, that maybe are in their ear, that maybe are other members of Congress or in the intelligence community that pressure them to take certain decisions. And he was referring to Marshall
Blackburn who actually tried to subpoena the estate. She was using this in a kind of tit for tat with Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alita Alito, who Dick Durbin and other people in judiciary were trying to pressure for more information about their different potential conflict of interest and all of that.
Marshall Blackburn said, Okay.
We're going to subpoena Jeffrey Epstein flaight logs that goes nowhere. And that's what Burchett is referencing. And it is interesting because again, you could subpoena the estate of Jeffrey Epstein for the flight logs, for that information in a number of different ways. You could Congress if they wanted to know more information about Jeffrey Epstein, and they had consensus on wanting to know more information about what was going on with Jeffrey Epstein, they would they could use these
mechanisms they're choosing not to. And Burchet's point, it would again, it would be a conspiracy to suggest that what he's saying is untrue.
And his point was not, if you listen carefully to what he was saying, His point was not that every member of Congress is caught up in the Epstein scandal. What he was saying is that people have come to them and said, you've got your own skeletons in the closet, and so if you go here, other people are going to go there.
And so let's just leave it all alone.
Yeah, don't touch it.
Let's keep those skeletons there, keep those skeletons, and we'll just keep it moving forward.
Right, Well, I'll be happy if nobody picks up this scab. And so with these one hundred and seventy names set to come.
We should ask represent him Good about that later today.
I think, Birch, it's a Freedom Caucus guy.
I think, yeah, which is absurd that we don't know who's in the Freedom Comcast. We cannot let Good leave without a list.
I asked right about the bar the door right.
It was on.
Federalist Radio Hour this week, and I asked them about the differences between the squad, like the squad has we actually know who's in the squad. That's a completely different thing with the Freedom Caucus guards their membership very secretly.
Masonic Caucus over here, get.
Out of here.
Their Masonic lodge used to be a Chrtier coast since shuttered Mexican restaurant corners of like first and see, but the.
Fourteen days between Monday and when.
These names are set to be released, I think, to Burchett's point, Ryan, and to the point you made at the very beginning of this segment, we'll see, We'll see what happens with these one hundred and seventy names. I think obviously important to remember that victims are among the potential names that would be exposed revealed in this defamation lawsuit.
And they should obviously have the opportunity and not have like it should be up to them whether or not they want their names to come forward.
The dudes on that list, not so much.
Let's mention them all. As Bethany Frankel would say.
There you go, mention it all.
He loves the.
Tucker Carlson was on Tim Poole's podcast this week and had a very tough, brutal criticism really for Ron DeSantis over I mean, in general, it was a criticism of DeSantis is kind of online army of defenders, and then became a criticism of DeSantis's Ukraine policy.
Let's roll the clip.
You really get the sense that Ron DeSantis, who I liked as governor, Uh, the people who represent him online are the nastiest, the stupidest and the most zero sum people I've ever seen in my life. And I don't think that reflects him. But it's like, this is kind of small ball. And by the way, these purported conservatives, Ron DeSantis changed his view and I like him, Okay, I think he's been a good governor.
I just want to be clear about that.
I know him personally, I like him. But his donor, Ken Griffin, told him to change his view in Ukraine from it's a regional conflict we shouldn't get involved into, it's a super important thing. We should send more money. One donor got him to change his view, and all these so called conservatives are supporting that like it's the most important thing ever. Like who are these people and what is their problem?
Like?
What is going on with them? First of all, do we have a name for them. How about the d Hive.
That's so bad?
The dhive? No tell us about these these DeSantis. The dhive like who are like Twitter is good enough at like bifurcating ecosystems that I don't actually encounter a lot of the d Hive, Yes, but I am aware of their existence. I can faintly hear their buzzing.
I'm rejecting d just right away. There's I will not play ball with that, but I.
Will say it has been a really big point of contention actually on in conservative circles that DeSantis has this hardened kind of Twitter army.
Ronnie Bros.
Okay, there we go, Ronnie Bros.
That is capital v O very online and in ways that there's a similar kind of parallel in Trump circles and the very online Trump army and the very online DeSantis army get just engaged in these silly and often trivial and irrelevant and often sort of I would say detached, you kind of they're out of the in bubbles, basically in a Twitter bubble over these these silly fights. Sometimes you see them arguing over just like random personal beefs
that go back a year in Twitter relationships. And it's not surprising at all that Tucker would say that, because that's something you can even from people who are favorable to DeSantis privately, is that the online presence is grading and it sort of is dragged into the mud in the same way the Trump online army drags into the mud. And that's supposed to be different with the Santas blah
blah blah. His point though about he's clearly talking about Ken Griffin when it comes to Desantas on Ukraine and what happened in the spring, is that Desanta's at one point had referred to what's happening in Ukraine as a quote territorial dispute. Now, this ruffled the feathers of people like Ken Griffin, who, according to The New York Times,
met with Desantas and expressed his displeasure. Now, Ken Griffin gave some five million dollars to DeSantis's reelection campaign, just like a couple of years ago the editorial one, Yeah, the convnatorial re election campaign a couple of years ago. He has not given a dime that I'm aware of, at least in this cycle.
And that's before we started taping.
Ryan.
You made a great point, like, let's all live like a billionaire who doesn't even have to give money to the shift someone.
Much money, people are going to meet with you and change their positions just based on the potential that you could spend right.
And he has since seems to cool on DeSantis, as many people on Wall Street seem to have cooled on DeSantis over And I think this is very interesting cultural issues. I know we've actually talked about this before that you know, for the billionaires, that's sort of the bottom line, like they will go to the mat for low taxes and less regulation. But once you start actually pushing like conservative cultural priorities, different questions. So that's what we've seen with
people like Ken Griffin. Now, whether Ken Griffin's meeting with Ron DeSantis actually made him take back he said some stuff about the territorial dispute things.
When he got beaten up kind of broadly, so it could have been some of that pressure.
Yeah, And I think actually, when I was looking at the timeline, I don't necessarily know that that adds up. It's possible that there was something that Ken Griffin and Tucker could be referring to somebody that's not publicly available that Ken Griffin did have a call with Rhndostantis right away after he said that in Rhondostantis came out and clarified the territorial dispute comics, that is what happened, But we don't know that kN Griffin had anything to do
with that. Presumably there are a lot of donors that might be upset by that. Even though it is at this point at least very clearly a territorial dispute, it's not the sort of civilizational dispute that the an Apple bombs of the world would have, you say. And that's sort of where Tucker is taking issue with Destantus on Ukraine.
But I mean, I don't think Disantris is entirely objectionable in Ukraine, unless your objection is that you just don't know how he would treat the conflict as president, right, Is he going to be McCarthy esque and say no blank check or is he going to be McConnell esque
when he gets into office. I actually don't know that that's something we can know about any Republican politician at this point, because the pressures ones you get into office here in DC from the Pentagon and lobbyists the military industrial complex are so strong.
And I did see the kind of sort of real into this.
I saw him getting beaten up last night on conservative Twitter for being very slow with a statement about Trump.
Getting booted off the Colorado ballot.
You know you Vivec immediately comes out and says, we should all withdraw our names from the Colorado ballot if they're going to try to do this, you know, and you've got this anticipation like what is what is the santis going to say?
How's he going to respond to this?
And it seemed like he was just kind of waiting to see how it would it would play out, which seems to be part of the kind of cautiousness and politician inginess that people are get that people are starting to sense from him in a way that undermines, you know, what people want with this kind of trumpy just like spit it out and say the lunatic left, Biden Marxists are trying to like, you know, put all their people and put all their opponents in prison or whatever.
Yeah, and we can put this next element up on the screen, this is the national RCPA average poll. I was thinking about this yesterday, so I went and looked at the RCP average over time, and it's kind of ridiculous even to be talking about Trump versus DeSantis on Ukraine in the primary, because Donald Trump is absolutely crushing Rondo Santis.
In Avery state. The only path forward.
I mean, if you're listening to this and not watching it on your screen, there's just a yawning gap that starts looks.
Like a crocodile.
Yeah, it does look like your crocodile. It starts around March.
And remember that's about when Rondo Santis is announcing his campaign late spring, and it has been going in the wrong direction for Rond Deo Santis ever since, and up for Donald Trump in the national pulling average ever since.
Let's put Iowa up on the screen.
This is the next element, pushing sixty three right nationally to like twenty for everybody else.
Or less, just double double double digits, just not even close nationally, and not even close to the point where you could do a Buddah Judge Ami Klobish thing and consolidate behind another candidate. Now in a state like Iowa and New Hampshire in theory, in theory, you could try to do that. Donald Trump is just above fifty percent,
but just above fifty percent is a huge margin. It means he's up by thirty two an average in the RCP polling average, he's up by thirty two points to DeSantis, who, according to these polls, has sort of been steadily climbing, but steadily climbing to a point that is still lower than where he was early in his campaign around June. Nikki Halius or steadily climbing too, but below DeSantis.
This is New Hampshire. You see Donald Trump just.
A one point on Iowa before we go that people have to remember if it's correct me if I'm wrong, But in the democratic causes, if you don't get fifteen percent, you have to then in a precinct, your supporters then have to go vote for somebody else or not vote at all. So you've got a ton of people that are under fifteen percent there, as vivek Ramaswami's people, for instance, would then they'd all walk across the gym and go join with Trump's people.
Yeah, half of you.
Know, a lot of these other people would are probably their second choice is Trump, which then pushes him, you know, well into the sixties seventies, right.
The Nikki Haley people aren't crossing over to yeah.
Right, but so the DeSantis people, you know, half of them might cross over totally.
Yeah, one hundred percent, And.
Even though as much as they hate each other online like the actual supporters.
Right, Yeah, it's again, that's it's totally detached from the reality of how it's sort of not on Twitter. People are experiencing this in most of the countries, not on.
Twitter at least you were staying in New Hampshire.
Yeah, so New Hampshire, you' seen Niki Helly kind of closing the gap a little bit.
This is in South Carolina.
You also see Trump's margin he's at He's up by twenty nine point six points. He was up at different points according to these pulling averages.
Thirty five, thirty four. So maybe that's maybe that's dipping a little bit.
There isn't a ton of good pulling out of South Carolina yet. But the bottom line is even Nikki Haley climbing above DeSantis in New Hampshire, and even Trump dipping by a couple of points in South Carolina still has him up by thirty points.
This is not a race, and that's her home state, so what more can she.
Do is her home state, unless the polling is dramatically off, which is something the Vake Ramaswami told me that on Federal Austradio Hour last week that he thinks the polling is very off in Iowa.
It seems plausible giving the House he's.
Only at five, and he's like, I'm feeling good.
But if the polling is really off, maybe he's at fifteen, maybe he's actually at fifteen, maybe he's actually hit twenty. The bottom line is Donald Trump is still the clear favorite, to the point where if this were anybody else, we would say this is not a race at all. This primary is a laughing stock. And so that's all that is to say. This sort of tit for tat DeSantis versus Trump has some interesting, kind of.
Broad ideological.
Relevancy for the conservative movement as they're kind of trying to figure out where they go. But in terms of this primary, the material reality, this is.
Not a competition right now, Yeah, all.
Right, Well, we're going to transition into an interview now with the leader of the Freedom Caucus, Representative Bob Good. He allowed to admit that that he's the leader of the Freedom Coxs.
Yes, because the ed you can ask about that. So we'll be back with Representative Good right after this.
We're excited to be joined now by Representative Bob Good of Virginia, who was recently elected as the leader of the Freedom Caucus, which has a huge amount of leverage obviously going into the new year as the House resumes its business in the new year.
So Congressman, thank you so much for joining us.
Great to be with you, Thanks for having me.
I want to start with that first question. I mean, we still have the one person motion to vacate.
That rule is still in place, which is obviously a huge piece of leverage that the Freedom Caucus has over Mike Johnson. You know that you were certainly part of how that was used against former Speaker Kevin McCarthy.
Going forward, What is the red.
Line for the Freedom Caucus on Ukraine with Mike Johnson? Have you are you in conversation, are you in contact with Mike Johnson? And what is the red line for you on Ukraine on the border as Mike Johnson negotiates with House Democrats and Mitch McConnell on the Senate side.
Well, if I may, just since you mentioned the motion of ak you know that's something that's been in place for the better part of two hundred years, going back to the Thomas Jefferson days, until Nancy Pelosi changed it when we were able to negotiate or leverage support for the speaker for a new House rules package, a new Republican Conference rules package that would restore regular order and
empower individual members instead of the elites controlling it. Part of that was to restore that accountability measure that a speaker serves with the pleasure of two and eighteen members. So frankly, that is restored to empower all members to hold the speaker accountable.
Even the minority can.
Try to utilize that, and every speaker serves again the pleasure of two and eighteen members.
You know, one would hope that we would never reach a point where we'd have to do that again.
But I will just point out I think we're in unprecedented times as a country. We've never had this level of debt. We've never had this level of a monthly deficit. We've never had our credit downgraded twice like it has been this past year. We've never had the debt to GDP. We've got forty year high inflation, twenty year high interest rates. Then you've got the border invasion. I mean, we've never had a president intentionally harmed the country the way this
president is with facilitating this border invasion. You've got unprecedented trampling on our constitutional freedoms and liberties with vices, surveillance. There's so many crises, the weakening of our military, the war on American energy, affordable reliable energy, the climate, environmentalism, and extremism. So like no time before, must we stand up and deliver for the American people and validate the faith and trust take place to us when they gave us the majority a year ago, and so far we
fail to do that. That's why some of us are well and do whatever it takes and try to bring transformational change to Congress. That said, you asked specifically about Ukraine. Yes, we're in regular contact with the Speaker, and certainly I've had conversations with him and interact with him to a greater degree since I was elected as the incoming chairman
of the Freedom Caucus. But his position is and I think will remain, and we're certainly encouraging him to that effect, that Ukraine is dead on arrival.
Support for Ukraine is dead on arrival in.
The House, until if, and when the Senate passes HR two our outstanding, strong border security build the House past months ago, and the President signs it into law. And not until we have that done and we begin to see measurable metrics demonstrated performance on securing our border. Would we even talk about support for Ukraine. And if that was to even be considered, it must be paid for, which is not, which is unpreprecedented. We don't pay for
supplementals in this town. It must be paid for an offset. It must have accountability, transparency, It must have a strategy attached to it for a defined limit to US involvement. All of those things to even be considered. I'm unlikely to support it irrespective of those things. But it can't be brought to the floor of the House. We can't trade our border security in a phony way, a phony version that comes out of the Senate that pretends to
secure the border. We already have the good legislation. The Senate must sign it. Lets pass it, rather than it must sign it. It must become law. It must be enforced and by a lawless administration who to this point is breaking our laws and purposely facilitating this border of asion that is doing irreparable harm to the country.
So is that emotion would you move to vacate Mike Johnson if he plays ball with McConnell and Democrats on Ukraine over the border.
Well, similar quick answers. We're not trying to obviously vacate our speaker. I believe he's a conservative. I believe he's an honest guy. I believe that he loves the country. I believe that he wants to do the right thing. That said, this is not personal. It wasn't personal with the previous speaker. It's not personal with this speaker. This
is performance based. And I will just note that I got asked for months from January to September about motion to vacate with the previous speaker, and I said, Hey, we're focused on trying to bring change. We're trying to advance conservative policy. We're trying to influence the conference to stand up and deliver for the American people. We're not just willfully excuse me, flippantly or cavalierly just flowing around wretch to motion to vacate.
I didn't talk about that until we got to the point when it happened.
I didn't talk about that, certainly, and that's not an inference that that we're in the same place. That's the current speaker inherited a very difficult situation. There's a reason why we have a new speaker and we put him in the fourth quarter when we're down thirty five nothing and we've lost ten games in a row. That's the Republican Party that's failed to deliver for the American people.
That's fail to show the demonstrated willingness to fight and to draw and enforce red lines that we're going to again. We're going to stand and fight for the American people instead of caving and surrendering as we have done for the last thirty years, I would suggest.
So that's what we're working, is to.
Try to help the Speaker to get the Conference to stand behind him and be willing to have a fight overfunding this government and cutting spending year over year, to be willing to have a fight to reform visas or veillance so we don't continue to trample on the constitutional freedoms and rights over the American citizens that continue to have a fight or be willing to have a fight
to secure the border. What are we willing to do or what are we prepared to do to achieve that, and then to continue to fight to keep Israel aid as a standalone package that's paid for, that that that isn't hijacked utilized, you know, to hijack support for Israel and tying it to Ukraine. Again, we will not consider aid to Ukraine until this border is secure, not talked about being secure, not promised to be secure, but actually
is secure. So that's where we are trying to influence the right things and trying to work with our speaker when he's right and encourage him to do the right things, but then the challenge him when he's wrong when we don't think he's doing the right thing.
And I think that the.
Demonstration of that as we were adamantly opposed to Continuing Resolution that passed, we're adamantly opposed to the NDAA that didn't have the good policy reforms in it and was negotiated secretly in the back room between House and Senate leadership instead of a true conference committee and worse, attached the Viso Surveillance Extension without the necessary reforms to protect Americans.
We do want to get into that that fis an extension in a moment, But I'm curious, why does Israel AID deserve kind of a clean up or down vote whereas Ukraine AID ought to get tied to HR two.
What's the what's the difference there? It feels like we're talking war in peace. Each ought to get an upper down vote.
Yeah, great question, And I would just point out that what's one of the many things that's wrong with Washington is that you you try to avoid tough too often. We try to avoid tough votes and protect members from taking controversial votes and being on record for what they stand for or against. So you package things together that aren't necessarily related. So in other words, it's like, okay, it's like the farm bill. The farm bill is seventy five percent a welfare bill. But you know what, we
don't don't vote against farmers. You got to vote for the welfare package. Or if you're a Democrat who wants the welfare package, then we sort of use that and to get you to vote for the farmers instead of having both of them separated and stand alone on their own merits or lack thereop so we can reform and improve both of those instead of putting them together.
Same thing with Okay, Ukraine.
Aid has nothing to do with Israel, age to do with humanitarian assistance for Hamas, or nothing to do with Taiwan, or nothing to do with disaster. Really, this one hundred and ten billion dollar package that the President and the Senate want us to pass together. So the Speaker was right,
and we certainly encourage him to do that. Surely have to become a speaker, because the American people and the Congress overwhelmingly support aid to our what I consider one of our top two or three allies in the world, Israel, and for a number of reasons, Americans and the Congress overwhelmingly supports that. So let's consider Israel Israeli aid without controversy in and of itself on its own merits, and it passed with every Republican I think is at one
in the House and twelve Democrats. It was paid for by cutting Biden's Irs expansion. Because Israel is not bankrupt as a country. They are not fiscally unstable like we are as a country. They don't have thirty four trillion national debt, so we ought not to borrow from our kids and our grandkids. We can pay for it by reducing Biden's IRS expansion, which is breaking the mold of borrowing more and exacerbating our debt situation for US supplemental which is by by designers, never paid for.
It, but real quick.
Though, doesn't that increase the deficit to cut back on tax enforcement?
No, it doesn't, because you've got again Biden's trying to spend eighty billion dollars to hire eighty seven thousand new IRS agents to go after, harass, intimidate, threaten regular income Americans who are audited at five times.
That stuff works. People are right there.
The reason people, the American people don't need a more oppressive, more powerful IRS going after them, especially when the IRS has been demonstrated, like many of our federal agencies, to be political in its nature on who it goes after and who it doesn't. And again, we're bankrupt, so don't we can't afford an expansion of the IRS. American people aren't paying too much in taxes. The government is spending
far too much. We've got a spending problem. We don't have a revenue problem in this country.
So one thing I wanted to ask about is the comments Merger Taylor Green made to CNN. And the only reason I'm asking about it is because, again, just to emphasize, the Freedom corcass has a huge amount of leverage going forward in the new year, in the new Congress, and you know, from the perspective of a conservative, well, we'll
hopefully be calling some shots going forward. And Marjorie Taylor Green is claiming that your chairmanship, your impending chairmanship of Freedom Caucus is hurting fundraising, that your endorsement of Desantus over Donald Trump has hurt unity in the Freedom Caucus, et cetera, et cetera going forward.
Is there any truth to any of that?
And is it true that that sort of Trump Destantus divide and potential fundraising issues are hurting the Freedom Caucus's ability to sort of work together as one unit that's able to call shots kind of cohesively with all the leverage that it has in the new year and a very slim margin of a majority in the House and the motion of vacate back in place.
That's a long question. Then let me take stab at it. Martin Keyler.
Green has demonstrated that she'll say anything to smear or attack or lie about those who she has a personal bandetta or a grievance against Marjorie Tayler. Green showed herself to be the fraud that she is when she unconditionally supported the former Speaker a year ago, and then of course she got lots of blowback against her because she had positioned herself as a brand of somehow anti establishment
and a change agent in Washington. Then she unconditionally supported the former speaker that was obviously very unpopular with her base. She then smeared and lied against a slide against those of us who were fighting to change or to prevent the former Speaker from getting elected back in January. She was then subsequently kicked out of the Freedom Caucus because of her behavior. So she knows very little about the
Freedom Caucus. She is an island to herself now. She was kind of a useful idiot at the hands of this former speaker back in January to try to help him become speaker. Now she's kind of isolated herself. She has no support among the membership, and so she lies and smears and attacks others.
The Freedom Caucus board overwhelmingly elected me as chairman. The general membership overwhelmingly elected me as chairman.
We as a Freedom considered, continue to fight for the conservative principles that the Republican Party is supposed to stand upon. We are the anchor the conservative conscience of the Republican majority in the House. We're willing to challenge our own leadership when we're wrong because we don't work for them.
We work for our constituents and those who elected us.
Did she have any support inside the Freedom Caucus during that debate? I don't quite know how the Freedom Caucus internal stuff works, but was there anybody that.
Was like, no, she's great.
I won't get into the eternal dynamics of it.
I'll just say that there was an overwhelming decision to remove her from the Freedom Caucus.
And uh, and I guess she's got an Actra grind as a result of that.
Going back to the FIZA fight that you talked about earlier, there was some hope that there would be a kind of Progressive Caucus Freedom Caucus alignment on this issue that would be able to kind of roll back some of
these surveillance authorities. You guys seem to get steamrolled at the very end, and as the NDAA was going through the House, I think you needed what one hundred and forty six votes to be able to stop it from getting the two thirds majority go through to kind of force the spymasters back to the table to negotiate the surveillance authorities. Guys fell short by a couple dozen votes.
What went wrong?
And what can the Progressive Freedom Caucus coalition, if it exists, do differently when this fight comes back in the spring.
Well, the American people don't want FAISA extended without the reforms to protect them. We can't have warrantless searches of US citizens where you don't have to go before a judge with probable cause and get permission, if you will, validation for the reason to surveil or spy upon US citizens. So they want us to reform five. So they don't
want it extended without that. It was terribly disappointing that we would do that, that we would attach it to the NDAA, the National Defense Authorization Act, which didn't have the policy changes that we had voted for in the House last summer. Frankly, UH extended the the Biden, Pelosi Schumer vision.
For the military. UH, and it was it was NDYA that that we overwhelmingly rejected.
From a freedom calling standpoint, it received four to one support from Democrats, two to one support by Republicans, and so it ultimately passed. But I think it was a mistake, and I think it was a mistake to extend Vaissa surveillance.
It's extended until April.
We'll have another crack at that to bring reforms into place early in the new year, and I certainly hope that we will do that.
And we talked about Israel and it's funding for Israel earlier in this interview, and I wanted to ask you why why it is? I'm curious just from from from the left, it seems like the America first kind of movement that has really surged over the last several years and has influenced the way that the right has kind of interacted with Ukraine funding and support for the Ukraine War doesn't seem to translate when it comes to Israel, like what why why is that?
Well? Israel has long been a historic ally of the United States, certainly in the what seventy five or years since Israel became a nation in nineteen forty eight. Israel's a key allies, the only true democracy in the Middle East. It is surrounded by nations who want to destroy it and push it into the sea. Israel has every right to defend itself to whatever it's necessary defend its national sovereignty.
It's a key US ally and again it's overwhelming support in the Congress and among the country, and so I believe, similar to the United Kingdom, it's one of our true few, real genuine allies that stand with us through thick and ben and we all to stand with Israel.
Yet yesterday, and we played this clip earlier in the show, I was at the State Department briefing and I asked the State Department spokesp Uson Matt Miller about comments made by the Pope just recently where he was talking about the IDF attack on the Catholic church in Gaza and he described it as its terrorism. And I'm curious, from your perspective, what does it say about kind of the the the US role on the international stage, and it's its alliance with Israel, which you've said, one of our
one of our closest allies. If even the Pope is willing to describe, uh, you know what we are supporting in Gaza as as terrorism or one incident. Yeah, that that that incident and is there a point at which members of the Freedom Caucus start to say, you know, this.
Is actually harming our national interests.
Well, I didn't see those comments, and I'm not familiar what you're referring to a specifically's relations to the pope. However, I believe that Israel does its best, the best that it can in a wartime situation, to protect civilian casualties and to protect innocent victims.
There is a willing, there's a reason why they were willing.
To have that pause, temporary pause in operations to try to from a humanitarian standpoint. But they're dealing with an enemy that has said they do not have the right to exist, and is willing to kill children, to burn children alive, to rape and kill women, to kill senior citizens, to put people in ovens, to cut off their heads. This is an unbelievable evil that they have to defeat.
And frankly, that's an evil that's willing to use schools and mosques and churches and hospitals and so forth to shield their military operations, to use their own citizens, Palestinian citizens, individuals as shields against what they're doing. And so Israel's in a tough situation obviously, but Israel needs to do whatever is necessary to defend itself and prevent something like this that happened on October seventh happening again in their country.
I have one more question, sort of from a broader thirty thousand.
Foot view, why is it You know, you've seen a lot of this up close, and I know a lot of average Republican voters who are outside of Washington, d C. Maybe in your district in Virginia, who look at what happens in Washington, who look at what happened with the NDAA, which was just shameful but also shameful in that it was so typical of the way.
Business works here in DC.
Why is it that so many elected Republicans in DC vote against their voters. Why is it that they are so willing over and over again to sort of put their priorities, the priorities of the lobbyists of special interests, above what their constituents say they want, and then they get to DC and do something contrary to that. You've seen it up close. What's their sort of perspective on why that happens?
There's an interesting dynamic in DC and in Washington, and I just say. In elections, generally Democrats will run as moderates and then when they get into office they vote as radical leftist communists and lockstep.
I mean, there's no difference.
Between the vote like Brian, there's no difference.
Between the way AOC votes, for example, and those Democrats who claim to be moderates, find me the daylight between them on anything substantive in Congress and their nine to nine percent a lockstep. Republicans tend to run as conservatives, but then they get to DC and they often behave as moderates. It's a very different dynamic, and it is contempt for seemingly the voters, the grassroots, the base, those who elect them. They get to Washington sort of that
we know best mentality. You don't understand how Washington works. And Republicans seem to think that the way to the majority and the way to winning in Washington is to moderate, to work with Democrats, to compromise. But they don't run on that.
But that's what they do.
And you've got about a third of Republicans in the House, I would submit, who are willing to fight for genuine conservative principles to do what they said they would do. To buck their party leadership when it's wrong on something like the NDAA and the FAISA extension. But unfortunately got about two thirds who are willing to do what leadership says to kind of just be a team player no matter what the play call is, who really don't want to limit government or cut spending or make the tough
choices or do the things that they run on. And unfortunately that's reflected and that certainly makes it difficult for the American people to trust us with leadership with the majority, with the ability to govern if we don't deliver on the things that we said we would do.
Representative Good you have been so generous with your time. We went long because it was so interesting, but we thank you so much for coming and talking to us a little bit about hfc's plans for the new year, and we hope to talk to you again soon.
Thank you, Thank you great to be with you.
All Right, that does it for us on today's edition of Counterpoints. We certainly hope everybody has a very merry Christmas, a happy new Year. We'll see you back here in January. Don't forget to subscribe, get a premium subscription. Maybe it's a holiday gift to yourself.
There you go.
You earned it all right.
We'll see you all soon.