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Let's to get to you this morning. So our own Secretary of Defense is warning Israel of a quote strategic defeat in pretty blockbuster comments. We'll bring you that as well as updates out of the Gaza Strip. Rohnda Santis's campaign seems to be in total chaos. This comes as some key donor endorsements of Nikki Haley, which is sort of crucial on that side of the race. I guess
we'll break that down for you. We have also Dems in Florida acting like complete authoritarians, blocking Joe Biden's primary opponents from the ballot unilaterally. They are all speaking out so we'll bringing those details as well. George Santos expelled, gone but not forgotten, you might say, heart a movie is gonna come out about him as well, and he is threatening to spill the tea on all his colleagues.
So a lot that's interesting to get into there. We also have Mehdi Hassan his show at MSNBC being canceled and a lot of debate over what exactly is going on there. I'm taking a look at a blockbuster report on exactly how Israel is waging this war differently, by the way, than the way they have approached things in the past. Will break that down for you. We also have Scott Horton from the Libertarian Institute talking about the
Netanyahu doctrine. But before we get into any of that, we got a little bit of a discount for all of you folks.
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And then a hard turn. What's going on in God?
Yeah, so let's go ahead and give you the very latest coming out of the Gaza Strip. Put these images up on the screen, so as we brought to you this weekend, the temporary truth is over, the ceasefire has ended, and Israel is back to a massive bombing campaign. What you are looking at here is six residential towers in the southern Gaza Strip in Conunics that were all taken down by a massive bombing campaign. There you can see, you know, bodies being pulled from the rubble, children being
pulled from the rubble. The horror on the look of horror on children's faces here as they look at the destruction. This particular video is a twelve year old little girl named Alma who is trapped under rubble as well along with her parents, her grandparents, and her siblings, and she is asking her rescuers to rescue them first, to help them first. The very latest numbers that I saw is that in the renewed bombing campaign, seven hundred Palestinians were
killed in a matter of twenty four hours. So this is back and it is, you know, an all out assault as it was before, only the difference is now and we can put this up on the screen. So as you recall, in the early days of the war, the IDF told everyone to move south, you know, test telling them this was the place to go if you wanted to be safe. Well, they have now divided the entire Gaza Strip into thousands of these little compartmented neighborhoods.
And for those who are just listening, what we have up on the screen is this map that's been provided with all of these little tiny areas that have been designated, and they're effectively sending out messages of hey, if you're an area eighty eight moved to Area eighty nine, moved to Area two seventy, and it's caused mass chaos and confusion. This also comes, of course, after they have effectively destroyed all of the northern Gaza Strip. I mean, Gaza City
is completely uninhabitable. The majority of buildings there have been damaged or destroyed. The majority of any sort of civilian infrastructure, including hospital's, apartment buildings, et cetera, damaged or destroyed. Now they are expanding into the entirety of the Gaza strips. So listen, the south was never safe. They never completely
avoided bombing the southern part of the strip. They're massively ramping up that campaign as they claim that hamas leadership is predominantly in communist right now, one of the southern cities where people fled to when they were told this was the place to go for us.
What's happened over the last couple of days as both sides are claiming that each other violated the ceasefire, if not entirely clear whatever what the actual facts on the round are with that situation, but strategically things are expanding pretty significantly. So Marshall Cooslov actually was at the Reagan Defense form. He flagged this for me. He was like, this is definitely be good. Good for the show. Watched
witness this live. The Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin with honestly some extraordinary comments about the Israel campaign inside of Palestine, warning it is going to lead to a quote strategic defeat. Here's what he had to.
Say, that's kind of a fight. The center of gravity is the civilian population, and if you drive them into the arms of the enemy, you replace a technical victory with a strategic defeat. So I have repeatedly made clear to Israel's leaders that protecting Palestine and in civilians and ganza is both a moral responsibility and a strategic imperative.
So to translate that from military speaks strategy, the center of gravity, it's like a class of its term that a lot of people use in the military. The point is is just you want to focus in on what are you actually trying to achieve whenever you're waging military campaign. So the reason that he says here the center of gravity is a civilian population is because quote, if you drive them into the arms of the enemy, you replicate a tactical victory with a strategic defeat. This is almost
exactly tracks with the US campaign in Iraq. We had Shakanah, We defeated Saddam's military. It only took three and a half weeks. Admit, Bush flies on the aircraft care and it's mission accomplished. Oh wait, we have a massive insurgent war. The majority of our troops end up dying during the set insurgency and during the civil war. We have a
twenty year occupation and costs two year trillion dollars. We have ISIS and all the attendant problems, and basically with Lloyd Austin, who forged his entire career in SynCAM and more and was deeply involved in most of these campaigns as well as the US campaign against ISIS is basically watching the exact same thing replicate itself in Gaza. And so that's really I mean, I think his analysis is correct. I basically a co sign most of what he's saying.
I don't have a problem with going after Hamas. I just think that the way they're doing it and also bears out especially you're gonna be talking about in your monologue and the way, the actual tactical way that this is being done. We pair it with the strategic overall goal ritting the Gaza strip of Hamas. Even in the near term it seems like a nearly impossible task, especially with the way they're doing it, and the long.
Term is going to be very, very difficult.
We're probably gonna be covering that all throughout the week about Hamas' support and no inside of Gaza, but inside of the West Bank, with the day one after the.
Campaign and all that is going to look like.
But if you pair it with some of the broader problems, not only the way the Israel is conducting itself, the big fear that I think I've always had and tried to hold here is that the rest of the region is not going to stay silent as this all continues. And that's what happened yesterday. Let's put this up there on the screen. Commercial ships, including a US warship, were attacked by whofy drone in the Red Sea. Now, many of these commercial shipping vessels were not Israeli flagged, they
were US or UK flagged. The US missile destroyer that was actually in the area ended up shooting down three of the drones. But this comes crystal after there was already that hoothy hijacking is that is really anchor. I mean, this is one of the most vulnerable places in all of global shipping. Why we have so many US naval assets in the region, and these are in the immediate term, they're drones. But don't forget you know, this same guided missile destroyer has shot down what they say are missiles
that are being shot from Yemen all the way towards Israel. Now, no way to confirm whether or not it's that's true. But what we can't confirm is that they have kinetically engaged some of these hoothy assets. So just one of these things goes the wrong way, a US sailor gets killed on the high seas, it's.
We're living in a different world, that's a different game.
Yeah, So to start with that piece, I was reading from some shipping experts on Twitter, and as you say said, this particular area is really critical and you don't have to so far, they really haven't done any damage. You know, there hasn't been significant damage. No one has been killed. I don't think anyone has been injured. So you might say, okay, what's the big deal. Well, for these shipping, for these
massive you know, cargo ships. They have to be able to ensure their passage, and if you have any sort of danger in this area, then insurance rates skyrocket and then you either have them paying you know, massive rates of insurance or you have them having to reroute around this area, which makes the trip much much, much much longer. So it has a significant economic impact, even if they aren't really being that effective in doing any sort of damage. So that's on that piece, And of course it also
just shows listen the Houthis and Yemen. They aren't going quietly here. You still have husblah hanging out there. And the greater the toll on civilian life that is inflicted in the Gaza Strip, the more fraught things will be, and of course the more at risk our own trips in the area will be as well. Going back to the Secretary of Defense and his statement that you can replace a tactical victory with a strategic defeat by the type of war that they are waging on the civilian population,
this is clear common sense. I mean, I don't think that anyone could really deny this. I don't think that the Israeli government is so stupid as to think that.
This is not the case.
You can already see in the West Bank because of the toll that has been taken on civilian life. Guess what, you're radicalizing more people's support for Hamas is skyrocketing in the West Bank. You can only imagine what's happening within the Gaza Strip where you have such a massive toll on women and children and entire lives upended, the entire
northern part of the strip rendered uninhabitable. What do you think people's politics are going to be after that happens to them and their kids and their family members and everything they have ever known.
What do you think that is going to lead to?
So that is just.
Obvious common sense.
Now with regard to why he's saying this, do I think it's because they're you know, genuinely putting real pressure on the Israelis And you see all these like US media reports, all the Israelis are open to the criticism.
No, they're not.
There is no sign that they're changing their approach whatsoever, none at all. So what is this Number One? It's for us, It's for the domestic US population, It's for the you know liberals watching MSNBC and we all see look at the Biden administration. They're really trying. They're really trying. They're really good people, they're really trying. They're not just standing by and let this ethnic cleansing and genocide happen. They're actually trying to, you know, constrain the Israelies. That's
number one. And number two is so that after the fact, when this is ultimately a strategic defeat and a catastrophe for Israeli security, because you've just further radicalized and already radicalized popular and created even more militants, even more terrorists, so that they can say, look, we told you so, so they can have a sort of like ass covering moment. Those, in my view, are the two reasons for these comments
from the Secretary of Defense. But make no mistake about it, until and unless the US actually wants to use our bite, our dollars condition aid say no, we're not just going to send you whatever bunk or buster bombs you want, whatever you want it. No, we're not going to provide you blanket cover at the UN diplomatic cover throughout the world anymore. Until we do that, they are going to continue to prosecute this war in the exact same way
they have been prosecuting this war. And I have this in my monologue today, but I'll mention it now as well. The reason is because BB is on political fin ice, to say the least, and the population, the majority of them, some fifty eight percent, they think the IDF isn't being brutal enough. The percentage that thinks the IDF has gone too far one point eight percent of Jewish.
Israelies, I should say of Jewish Israelies.
One point eight percent of the Jewish Israeli population things the IDF has gone too far. This is when you have at the least a seventy percent civilian death rate, and probably much much higher than that. That's the rate of just women and children being massacred in this This is with the entirety of the Northern Gaza strip being wiped down. This is the state with a complete siege, with people starving and disease spreading. They think it hasn't
been brutal enough. So, with Netanyahu trying to save his political ass, those are the people that he's listening to and the most fringe, far right parts of his coalition who he's trying to keep in line. Does he care if the US is handwringing publicly or leaking to the Prosson.
No, he doesn't care.
All he would care about is if we actually used the material leverage that we have, which they show no interest in doing well.
I mean, I just have to go back to Darryl Cooper.
Something that he said is that, look, the day after nine to eleven, I didn't want to hear about nuance. And I think that's very understandable and from their perspective to Michael Tracy has talked about this, but you know, they're basically photos of one of those babies.
Who's being held by Hamas all over Israel.
I mean, if that's the level of the media environment there, you can both be nuanced in terms of like, I hate Nets Yahoo for what happened, but screw all of the people who did this. And that was let's also be real, that was the predominant sentiment here in America.
They wanted to bomb the crap out of Afghanistan. That was, if we had carpet bombed all of Afghanistan, the region where Bin Laden was and we'd killed one hundred thousand people, I don't think anybody in this country would have sniffed whatsoever.
Now you can understand that, but you can also understand that twenty thirty years later, you can look back on some of the decisions that were made in the heat of the moment and the whole We don't want the smoking gun to be mushroom clomn and be like, yeah, it was pretty stupid and we probably shouldn't fall for that next time.
So these really populous.
I get it, I absolutely do, especially in the context of how we responded and thought and felt. I think after nine to eleven, however, again, you know you're talking I think at the correct point about the US and what their overall posture on this is going to be.
At a certain point, I don't actually have a much of a problem with some of these comments because this buys us breathing room in the future when the Israelis are like, hey, can you guys come clean this up and do all this peace keeping, We're like, no, you built, you break it, you buy it.
You are the ones who are responsible.
When you have a massive insurgency on your hands five ten years from now and you block a piece process, It's like, that's your issue, man. We're not going to be going rolling our troops and humbies into the downtown Gaza City communists or any of the other So from that perspective, Crystal, I'm actually okay with the way that the secretary is saying it. Now, I don't disagree. I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing about conditioning eight and.
All that, but I honestly don't think it would make any difference.
The Israelis have plenty of munitions, they got plenty of bombs, they got firecar They're one of the world's most advanced militaries. Even if we didn't provide the bombs, we'd be dropping whatever they had. The US influence on this is both overstated and understated. Understated to the point of what you're saying is it doesn't necessarily match the rhetoric. But at the end of the day, like they don't need our money or our support at this point to wage war.
Now in nineteen eighty that's a different story, but at this point not really even.
Maybe not in the short term.
But there are famous quotes of Israeli prime ministers, may have even been nine yew basically saying the only people that matter it's the US. Yeah, the only president in the world, the only world leader whose opinion I have to care about is the US. So, yeah, would it be a devastating blow to Israel if we were to withhold our diplomatic cover, if we were to stop sending them the weapons that we've been sending them, stop sending them the billions of dollars in aid that we've been
sending them. Yeah, that would that would be a real blow. Now, could they continue for some time.
With this war?
Yeah, they have enough to continue for some time for this war. But let's not pretend like the US doesn't have leverage here that we can use. I also disagree with the idea that this is buying us some window to you know, after they do all of this damage in Gaza and we're actually going to get to this piece in a bed and are pushing us to, oh, we're we need these refugees resettled, and why don't you use your AID dollars to push these Arab countries around
the region to taking these refugees. That there is no indication to me that we're going to buck anything that Israel wants us to do, because there's no track record of that whatsoever, certainly not from the Biden administration and we have new reporting. Put this up on the screen from the intercept new comments from Bib. His goal for Gaza is to quote Thinn the population to a minimum. And by the way, little noticed fact here, but Ryan
Graham of course notices these things. The White House recently requested billions of dollars to support refugee resettlement from Ukraine and also from Gaza, just back in October. So let me give you a few of the details here about what Bib is up to. He has tasked his top advisor, Ron Dermer, the Minister of Strategic Confaris, with designing plans to quote Thinn the Palestinian population in the Gaza.
Strip to aim minimum.
According to a bombshell new report in an Israeli newspaper that was founded by the late Republican billionaire Sheldon Adelson, so this outlet is considered to be basically an official organ for Net and Yahoo. Ryan writes it reported that
the plan has two main elements. The first would use the pressure of the war and the humanitarian crisis being created by Israel's war to persuade Egypt to allow refugees to flow to other Arab countries, and the second would open up Sea routes so that Israel could quote allow a mass escape to European and African countries. Drmer who's originally from Miami's and Natnyah, who confident and was previously Israeli ambassador of the US enjoys close relations with many
members of Congress. Oh interesting, let's put this next peace up on the screen. US considers a plan to condition aid to regional to regional states Arab regional states based on resettlement. So this new initiative submitted to Congress calls for conditioning American aid to Arab countries on their willingness to receive refugees from Gaza and effectively assist in the ethnic cleansing that baby Natnya who is proposing here. The proposal was shown to key figures in the House and
Senate from both parties. Longtime lawmaker Representive Joe Wilson has even expressed open some court for it, while others who are privoted the details have so far kept a low profile, saying that publicly coming out in favor of the program could derail it. So they go on to say this is the way they frame it. They frame this pushing Palestinians forever on of these lands that they'd already been
forced into. They frame this in humanitarian terms, saying the only moral solution is to ensure that Egypt opens its borders and allows for the refugees to flee from the tyrant control of Hamas. They go on to say, Iraq and Yemen receive an approximate one billion dollars in US four and AD Turkey receives more than one hundred and fifty million. Each of these countries receive enough four and aid and have a large enough population and be able to accept refugees, adding up to less than one percent
of their population. And they even go so far as to have done the math on how many Palestinian residents of the Gaza Strip that they want to force into these different countries to quote unquote thin out the population. So apparently there is some bipartisan support here among our lawmakers to assist net Yahoo with this process.
Why I think this is just all fan fiction is that the Egyptians have already said, quote, we are prepared to sacrifice millions of lives to protect our land and to make sure that nobody is coming. I actually think this would start a general war in the Middle East.
There's no question in my mind that if they tried to expel millions of Palestinians or hundreds of thousands whatever to the various one parts of these regions they would it would simply collapse, and the populations themselves would not accept it. The Jordanian population, any of the Middle Eastern
populations of Saudi's would. I almost certainly have to do something just because of the way that they're trying to keep a cap right now on all the videos and all the stuff that's spreading throughout the Arab and the Islamic world. I think, really what's going to happen is that, and I think what they're really doing is an indiscriminate bombing campaign. They can think all they want till Kingdom come about, Oh, we're gonna get these people out of there.
It's just not going to happen from an international community perspective. So I'm not quite so sure to take it seriously, even if it might be their overall goal. I think there's the end state of this is pretty clear. Eventually they're going to come to a point where they're going to stop bombing. They're probably going to level the vast majority the infrastructure I think the vast majority of the
population will remain inside of Gaza. Actually, I don't think a large refugee settlement will come out of it, simply because the Egyptians control the only other border and they're not.
Going to let it happen.
And that's when you get to the old end state of insurgency of day. You know, that's when they're going to beg US and the EU to come in and peace keep Gaza City.
They're going to have to deal with whatever comes next.
I mean, obviously I'm saying hell no to all of that, including this, by the way, because it's outrageous and have a detrimental impact on overall US security. So they can want what they have, whatever they want, And I'm certain that there are elements of the Nettanahu cabinet, but I still fall crystal on the fact is is that they're trying to just punish the hell out of the population, and they're trying to kill or let's put it two ways.
Punishing the population is secondary aim number two. Killing Hamas is supposedly aim number one. They're willing to accomplish one and two at the same time, but just not really willing to care and pulling the trigger based on ten twenty percent type of intelligence, which I know you're talking quite a bit yeah in your monologue, but I still think there's a big difference between that and suppose it like ethnic cleansing and or words do mean.
It's very clear that their goal is ethnic cleansing.
Well, some very clear and its goal is ethnic cleansing.
Bab Netna, who's goal is ethnic cleansing? Now will they accomplish that goal? That depends on the US, that depends on the US, that depends on Egypt.
Is that their goal?
I don't think you can deny it at this point, like that is clearly their goal. Now we can quibble over whether or not it's a genocide. I think based on the international definition and based on Israeli scholars of a Holocaust who looked at it, I think it has. But you can certainly say if you don't like those words, you can certainly say indiscriminate killing of civilians. I'm breaking down this report from nine to seventy two magazine, but just to give.
You a preview of it.
You know, when we're talking about okay, their goal is to kill Hamas No their number one goal is to put a quote unquote shock into the civilian population and hope that they're going to somehow turn on Hamas.
We can already see that that has failed.
I mean this is only increased You look at the West Bank has already only increased support for Hamas. It's only going to increase the comments from the Secretary of Defense radicalization and support for terror and violent resistance within the Gaza Strip. So in any case, it's important to keep an eye on what they actually want to accomplish, because these Babe is a savvy, savvy negotiator.
He is a savvy politician.
He thinks he can work over Joe Biden, who he says he's known for forty years and who is you know, aging and frail and doesn't have all his wits about him.
I mean that's obviously true, correct.
He thinks he can manipulate us public opinion, which he also has been very effective at doing as well.
So I don't think it's.
So preposterous to put it off the table that some version of his ideal plan could actually come to fruition. We also wanted to give you an update on a just unbelievable story coming out of Jerusalem, and the facts of the quote unquote only in democracy in the region. Let's put this up on the screen. This is disturbing. I just want you guys to know. So what you see here is and I'm going to give you the backstory in a moment. But this is in Jerusalem. Me
see this man kneeling on the ground, hands up. He's saying and Hebrew, please don't shoot me, please, please don't shoot me. And he is effectively summarily executed there and allowed to bleed out from his injuries and he dies. Now, let me tell you put this up on the screen. This is Demi Reader, who is an Israeli journalist, actually one of the co founders of that magazine nine seventy two that I just referenced.
So here's the backstory.
In twenty sixteen, Israeli soldier executed a wounded Palestinian militant point blank on camera. He became somewhat of a hero to the far right, and the execution of wounded suspects briefly became a wedge issue in Israeli society. Briefly because it's been long accepted, at least since the Second Intifada that even if someone used a butter knife to text soldiers they might also have a suicide veus and therefore
need to be finished off just in case. She says, makes no sense to me, and I don't know if it ever happened, but okay. Fastward to twenty twenty three. A major cheerleader of that Israeli soldier and a convicted terror supporter himself, Itamar Benkavie, is police minister. After October seventh, he randomly begins handing out weapons to civilians, ostensibly because you need a good guy with a gun, etc. Well, this pass Friday, and this gets to the video that
we just watched. Two Hamas paramilitaries shot up a bus stop in Jerusalem, killed three people, including.
A pregnant teacher.
The first guy to engage them is a local lawyer and former policeman. I should add durn Castleman, civilian who happens to be armed a good guy with a gun. He kills both gunmen, stops the attack before more people could be killed. Then, and this is the part that you guys just watched. IDF soldiers arrive Castleman. The hero realizes that he might be mistaken for one of the attackers, so he drops his handgun. He kneels on the road.
This is what you saw in that video. He lifts his t shirt to show he's got no suicide vest on. He asks them in perfect Hebrew not to shoot, explaining who he is. One of the soldiers, a settler with a self confessed extremist background, shoots him anyway in the abdomen on camera and walks off. So that man that you just saw killed on camera, executed on camera with his hands up, that was an Israeli Hiro who had stopped these gunmen who were massacring people. These Hamas gunmen
who are masacring people. When more security arrives, they assume castman was a gunman, so they let him bleed out.
He bleeds to death.
The settler soldier who executed him gives smug interviews, gets much kudos from other far right figures.
They later erase those tweets.
The army and police said they won't be investigating before you turning under pressure net and yaho, you're ready for this one. He chimes in and says, I support the policy of handing out weapons. Sometimes there's a price to pay, But say Lava, say lov.
That's what he said. In Arabic. So this Hebrew, sorry in Hebrew.
So this man darn Kaslman, true hero who was there, who stopped these Hamas militants, was executed by Israeli soldiers even as he was there kneeling the street. This is the reality of the quote unquote only democracy in the Middle East.
Well, I mean, I guess it happened in the West Bank, right, look the whole or sorry, it happened in Jerusalem. The problem is that with this entire thing is that it actually demonstrates all of the worst pressures that are on Neta Yahu. Because this showed you the settler who was provided with weapons under the BEng Giver policy. Then it also showed you that Netanyahu himself has a very hard time grappling with this. He didn't even call the family until yesterday Israeli military.
After there was a massive public reaction.
So after there was a huge public reaction saying hey, how can you do this, he put out a tweet and said you've all castleman is the hero of Israeli. Saved many lives. Today I spoke with his father. This a wonderful family. The entire nation mourns with them now
in terms of the investigation to itself. They don't know which way that they're supposed to because they initially were not supposed to have the police or the military even investigate this person, the settler, whether he should have had weapons or not, and what punishment this person will suffer.
You know, the original case he talks about. I remember covering a lot of that at the time, because if anyone's seen the video, it's crazy because basically there's a wounded guy on the ground and he's just walking around and despite no orders or any of that, he just shoots him in the head. There's no other way to
describe it. I've watched the video a dozen times, reported on a lot at the time because there was a big controversy around putting him through court martial and then his eventual trial, because in all Israel it was an open shutcase.
It's like, there's no way this is going to happen.
But he became a genuine hero and to the point where he, even by a decent segment of society, is celebrated today for what happened to him, and they're seen as a miscarriage of justice. The overall prosecution, the initial court martial it's split the IDF apart, and more importantly, it's split Israeli society apart. So that is what is downstream of a lot of the settler providing them guns.
And then also when it comes to this, I think it was a big rip between secular society settler society, and then the way that people inside Israel are looking at this because as I've explained here before, you know, a huge portion of Israeli population don't even serve in the military, and this is a retired policeman, had a gun on him, did the heroic thing at the time he kills He literally kills him. He's a trained police officer, and then does everything you're supposed to do. He's like, oh,
I'm in a chaotic situation. Drop the gun, put the hands up, show that I don't have a vest on because he knows. He's like, well, you know, a lot of them will shoot if they think you have a vest He did everything they were supposed to do.
Then he gets executed.
So that's a tragedy, and the person obviously involved should be at the very least, you know, fire from the job, removed from service, not celebrated. The fact though that it took days for the Prime Minister to have to respond to this. I think demonstrates to everyone very clearly what the pressures inside of Israel are on Netagnahu, not from the general population, from inside the coalition himself, because inside that coalition they don't want to talk about this at all.
It's a tragedy, se Lav, etc. And they want to move past it. It shows you who he's really really working for. And I think that is the single broken record, single biggest problem in the prosecution of this war is that you have the overall leader of the country with some of the worst pressures on him from a fringe element of society, which is not how you should be wanting to conduct a defensive operation, a war which is supposed to bring the entire country together. It's a nightmare
from a political strategic perspective. Inside is really society.
I think something will break eventually. I really do you.
Know one thing I want to say related to this, because I talked about, you know, the poll numbers of it's like fifty eight percent of Israeli society who thinks the IDF hasn't been brutal enough. Only one point eight percent is like, yeah, maybe they've gone too far. So you've a majority who want even more viciousness, even more brutality.
And I just want to make it really clear, like I don't think that Jewish Israelis are different than any other people on the planet, but I do think that when you have for so many decades, you've had this brutal military occupation of the West Bank, and you've had this brutal blockade of Gaza, and you know, there's Israel Is doing very well as a society, relatively wealthy society, people doing well living, you know, living good lives, all of that, and just over these borders, you know, in
effectively the same territory, territory that at this point is controlled by Israel, you have people who are living in these desperate conditions. I think that does something to a society. Again, I don't think that, you know, people are different in Palestine.
Versus Israel, versus here versus.
Anywhere else in the world. But when you live in that kind of a society, you know the level of dehumanization that you have to sort of internalize to justify this treatment of millions of people right across the border right there, You know that you could go and see with your own eyes. I do think it does something
to a society. And so you know, that's why you know, someone who if this had been a Palestinian who was unarmed and posing no threat to anyone and who was executed in the street, that settler who killed him would still be a hero. You know, they would still be bragging about it. It still would be broadly supported. And you know the number of Palestinians who are you know, rounded up and arrested and no charge is filed, and in this indefinite attention, this is not really controversial within
Israeli society. So I think that's where that's why the governments have for a long time now been increasingly right wing, increasingly right wing where they're very clear they don't want a two state solution. You know, they're doing everything they can to block the possibility of two state solution or openly openly talking about that. I think that's what happens over time when you have these conditions that are imposed on a population for so long.
I will take a turn in trying to explain it, which is and if you know, if they ever been there, it's not it's understandable. So just bear with me, most of the people the generation of today, that people were serving the IDF grandfather or grandparents of great grandparents, like we liquidated in the Holocaust or survived, we're lucky enough to survive. You are beaten into you from day one. The state of Israel exists, that will never happen again.
You have mandatory military service going back to basically the founding of the country. Your father's and or grandfathers fought in sixty seven and in the Yamkapor War where Israeli annihilation was absolutely on the table. So you have had two lessons in the span of one hundred years where you have learned, if we don't fight back with everything that we possibly have, they will wipe us off the face of the earth. And on top of that, you
now live with twenty years of war with Hamas. And look, I'm not saying that Hamas doesn't suffer more obviously in terms of casualties, but it's no picnic living in a country where you've got rockets coming down. You had to have iron dome, and everybody knows somebody who was affected either in that war. At the same time too, in modern society and what it's like to live in Israel.
You can't even go inside of a shopping mall without getting wanded for a suicide vest because they had I think over a thousand attacks that happen inside of Israel, suicide bombing style attacks, blowing up buses, public infrastructure, all that type of thing before they eventually built the wall with Kazo. So you know, that's not that hard to
That's actually not that hard to understand. Why you get to a mindset of where that's predominant inside of your society and the total separation seems necessary because it's an us er them mentality. And let's be real too, a lot of the Palestinians they would kill them if they had the chance and if they had the means and so, and they've shown that throughout decades now of bordering both Gaza and Hamasa.
I understand it completely.
I'm not saying I'm not saying I like it or I'm even justifying it.
But it's a.
Different set of circumstances than we live here in the West, just completely and utterly different. And it's one of those where you know, when you're saying in Crystal, I think the dehumanization all that that is just inherent to what it's like to live in an active war zone, and what it's like to also have a generation at war today, your father's generation at war, grandfather, and to have and know and have the knowledge and probably ninety percent of
your descendant or ancestors were liquidated by the Nazis. That's just a deep cultural imprint that's not going to go away, I think for a long time.
And they spend all their time in society.
They don't let you forget that either when you're in school, whenever you're coming up. It's a part of the culture which is I think goes to the very core of what it means to be Israel, even if you are a Sephardic Jew or any of that. It's beaten into you that over the you know, the two thousand years of persecution, the Pelgrams, a large portion of Israeli societies. Also Russian suffered horribly under the Soviet Union, under this
are before that. So I think culturally I understand it completely. I'm not trying to justify it. I'm just like you have to try and put yourself in the mind of what it is like to live in that state for the last seventy five eighty years and also to suffer, you know, a society wide level terror bombings which America would never tolerate even ten percent of what Israel has had to go through.
To the number one song in Israel right now, is this like rap song that calls for annihilating everyone in assassinating specific celebrities who have supported the Palestinian cause.
Yeah, that's the state of the society.
And part of what I have found so wrenching and sickening and disturbing, because again I don't I don't think Israeli Jews are any different than other people around the world. Is how quick there is a justification of things that should be moral atrocities that should be completely morally off the table, certainly among a nation that considers itself, you know, develop part of the first World democracy quote unquote, et cetera.
And that's what to me is so disturbing. And you know, every basically group of people who justifies these sorts of horse and atrocities against their fellow human beings, they all have that sense of it's us or them.
They all have that sense of like we're the victims.
I mean, you know, Nazi Germany same thing, like the sense of victimization and it's us or them and we're under threat, et cetera, et cetera. Like that is the feeling that is used to justify absolute horse and so to watch that unfold in real time has been, you know,
has been absolutely stunning. There was a journalist who posted this long threat I don't know if you saw it on Twitter about like I want you to understand that when you are posting pictures of dead Palestinians like I don't care, I do not care at all, posting this publicly again a journalist in Israeli journalists posting this publicly, and so that to me has been one of the things that has been so shocking to watch unfold is how quickly and how quickly even people here in the
US who haven't experienced all this trauma and don't have that you know, general like generational wound and aren't experiencing the suicide attacks and the you know, sirens going off and the you know, quote unquote rocket fires, et cetera, who are also like, yeah, justifying the annihilate them all, wipe them out, et cetera, et cetera. So, yeah, it's disturbing I guess that's all I can say.
I understand, I understand where you're coming from. I think, you know, we should all just try and put ourselves in the minds of both of these people.
I'm not I can put it from a Palestine perspective too. I mean, it's crazy. Darryl Cooper, I think, does the best job of that.
He's like, look, we tried everything you know going this in our lifetimes and our grandfather's lifetimes.
I've met plisy excuse me, I.
Met housing people who still have the key to their house that that was taken away from them in nineteen forty eight. Yeah, and that gets passed down even though that woman's mom is dead, it was passed down to the mom. They still have that key mounted above their door. So don't forget to that too.
You know.
On the other side, they remember, and they remembers deep. It goes into the kids, it goes into their grandkids. So these are these things don't heal easily. Let's move on to domestic politics. There's absolute craziness going on here with Paul Ryan, with Ron De Santis and Nicki Haley. But I think the major story of this is the absolute downfall of Ron de Santis, not necessarily in the polls,
although some of that too. But amongst the donor set, who have done the hardest pivot of all time, they're going all in on Nicki Haley after her Star Debate performance. The best examplified by this is Paul Ryan, the leader the donor class, hero himself, coming on CNBC identified as an investor, Okay to go ahead and endorse Haley.
Here's what he had to say.
Do not discount the Americans for Prosperity endorsement of Nicki Haley two days ago.
That's actually a really big deal.
The reason that that's.
Really big deal is you could say that Ron DeSantis's big advantage over Nikki Hally was his ground game in Iowa, which is impressive. Americans Prosperity has an extremely impressive ground game. This is the COC Networks ground game. They just gave that to Nicki Haley. So not only does that level her up in Iowa with Monte Santas, that gives her a ground game in all these other states, and the calendar place to her advantage. So I'm not saying I'm
all for Nicki Haley. I'm for beating Donald Trump. I'm for any Republican who can beat Donald Trump, but I think if you had to pick a growth stock, I think Nicky's the growth stock. And the fact that she got this endorsement I think matters a lot. So the question is, since more than about half Republicans do not want Donald Trump to be our nominee, I'm among those half, can someone consolidate the sporting time to win? And the question, I think, I think that's that's possible.
I think that's possible, is it.
He's got sixty six percent in the Bulls though against the other candidates he's.
I'm not saying this is going to happen, but I think it's still plausible because things can still happen.
She's got a lot of momentum.
If one person can quickly consolidate the non Trump field, then they'll have thirty percent. Okay, yeah, that math checks out. This is the Iowa fan fiction is driving me crazy, and somehow people like Paul Ryan, Ron DeSantis, and now the Coke Network have seemingly bought into this. Put this up there. I know Ryan and Emily cover this, but it's still very important. Way in on, the Coke Network endorsed Nicky Hayley to push the GOP past Trump. This
is significant for two reasons. Obviously, the Coke network has boatloads of money. They have some of the biggest consultant infrastructure in all of Washington. They've got Americans for prosperity, they have super packs, they got five oh one c threes, five fours that they're all throwing behind her. They've got polling ad buys, all these things. This is potentially hundreds of millions of dollars that she's now added.
To her war test.
Now, the big question for them is around what are you trying to do Iowa? It seems to be the consolidation dream. What people seem to forget Crystal about twenty twenty twenty sixteen, Donald Trump didn't win Iowa. He didn't even get second in Iowa. He got third in Iowa. You know what did happen?
Though?
He won New Hampshire, Then he won South Carolina, Then he won the majority of the states on Super Tuesday, and he won Florida, and he won Shall I go on the point is that Iowa itself is actually not all that indicative of anything. The only reason that this myth persists is really because of.
The Obama campaign.
When Obama winning Iowa was genuinely impactful because it showed to a lot of black voters in the Democratic Party. No, no, no, like white people actually would vote for this guy. Therefore, we now have permission, which is why he went on to win South Carolina. He ended up cleaning up it, basically wrapped up the majority of it on Super Tuesday. But Hillary also did very well in New Hampshire the next time. The thing is where Trump is. It's about
the states that come afterwards. And for all the media, you know, tension and all of that, no one is going I'll put it right here. I'll eat a sock again if I have to. Nobody will beat.
Donald Trump in the state of New Hampshire. Period.
It is Trump Country, has been since twenty sixteen. The idea and the polling, a lot of this stuff bears it out. And the problem too, is that these donors are trying to play pick me with all of these different candidates like DeSantis or any of the Tim Scott or any of these others when they're facing a structural problem of the voters don't like them. Put this up there too, because this is a part of this, the DeSantis campaign is a complete free fall. Their big money
the super pac has completely imploded. The new chief executive has been fired, a new one has run brought on. Several of the major strategists who work for the organization called Never Back Down have either been fired or have left.
They appear to be.
Running out of money on a pretty long timescale, and their majority of their support, which was told to them from the beginning. If you'll recall crystal Ken Griffin, the billionaire, was like, I'll give him as much money as he needs, and then the first line of trouble, He's like, no, no, no, I didn't mean it like this. And there's how many of those are out there. The campaign itself is now blaming its own superpack. If we can put this Politico
tear sheet up there, because this is hilarious. They are now blaming their own super pack for leaking against them and for bad television advertising. They wrote in a memo to their donors that Never Back Down and their field organization all that is not up to snuff, and that they are leaking about their own problems whenever it comes to polling, that their TV advertising didn't end up.
Helping them out.
I mean, this is not the sign of a healthy overall organization, and it just shows you how quickly I think that these establishment folks can move from one to another, which at the end of the day is a complete fantasy. As you know. At least get credit to that CNBC anchor who was like, he's got sixty six percent of the vote, what are you talking about?
Yeah, there's a basic math problem here. I just pulled up the National Republican primary polling.
We're going to show you the IOW in New Hampshire in.
A minute, But there has not been a poll. I don't know when every single poll in here has Trump over fifty percent. So even if you do, in some fantasy world consolidate all of the other voters, that still doesn't add up to a victory. So okay, you know it is. I mean, I'm just watching with amusement at the whole run a Santas Nicki Haley thing, because the
Coke Network endorsing Nikki Haley. I mean that must have just been brutal for Ron because he really he was running his campaign in this unusual way of relying on that super pack much more extensively than campaigns you usually do, and that's because you can take in these unlimited contributions. So he felt like, Okay, I've got these few billionaires who say they're all in for me Ken Griffin and co. And so I can take it unlimited funds there. And yeah, they don't get us good ad rates and I don't
have drug control, et cetera. But since we can get so much money there, that's the way to go. And now you can see that strategy as the donors are fleeing him and they're instead I mean, they have no loyalty. They're picking Nikki for whatever reason. She's the flavor of the moment, and Ron is kind of underwhelmed and underperformed and doesn't seem like he's got the juice. And so
now he's left in this really dire situation. My sense is basically that if he doesn't win Iowa, he's going to drop out, and he could possibly drop out even before that. But I think what's going to happen if I had to make prediction he drops out after Iowa. There are some big, you know, effort to unify behind Nikki and try to make her the anti trump, like the one to beat trump Et cetera, et cetera.
But it's already way too late.
It's already way too late for that to have any prayer of succeeding.
Yeah, oh no, you are absolutely correct on that. And actually some of that comes through from the DeSantis campaign itself in a more recent interview with Meet the Press that happened just on Sunday, where he's like, we are going to win Iowa. And when you start making benchmarks like that, I think, like you're right, Crystal, which is they're laying it so that they can make that case to the donors, this is what we're going to happen.
But then it puts you in a precarious situation where they can rug pull you almost immediately whoever is left if you don't end up winning a stake.
Let's take a listen to what he.
Said, Well, let's talk about the stakes on caucus night. If you don't come in at least second, would you then drop out of the race?
How critical is Iowa?
Well, we're gonna win the caucus. We were doing everything that we need to do it.
But what if you don't.
If I said from the.
Beginning, we are we are, We're gonna win we're gonna win the We're gonna win the caucus.
Bottom line is Iowa, do or die for you, Governor.
We're gonna win Iowa. I think it's gonna help propel us to the nomination, but I think we'll have a lot of work that we'll have to do beyond that. I don't think you'd take anything for granted, and I do I do recognize that there have been people that have wanted who have not gone on to win the nomination. I think this year is a little bit different.
This year is a little bit different.
Mm.
Yeah, anytime you have to say that qualifier, it's no boy. Oh, let's put this up there, just in in case wondering about what Iowa actually looks like. Here we have our own custom graphic from the Real Clear Politics average.
Oh look at that.
Donald Trump at forty seven percent currently in the Iowa Republican caucus.
He barely is even campaigning there.
Ron DeSantis, who let's remember this, has the endorsement of the sitting governor of the state, is only at seventeen percent. NICKI Haley at fourteen, Tim Scott at six, Vivike Ramaswami at five percent, forty seven I mean, you just can't. It could barely compete with that in any other normal race that the media is covering. This is a complete open and shutcase. Now, to be clear, I'm not saying
you should cancel or anything like that. I support it, but you can't say with a straight face that you're going to win Iowa. Let's take a little bit of turn over to New Hampshire, where the Nicky Haley dream is currently going on.
Oh Trump forty.
Five percent, Nicki Haley nineteen, Chris Christy eleven, Ron DeSantis eight, Vivike Ramaswama Hale. To be fair, Christoferssy always did particularly well in New Hampshire. He had a big moment there in twenty sixteen. It's definitely because of proximity and all these other things. It's definitely more favor to somebody like him and to Nicki Haley as well.
Also, Independence vote in New Hampshire, so independent vote in New Hampshire it can be a little bit different.
That said forty five percent, like you're not getting over that hump. And also if you factor in a media bump whenever you win like you do in Iowa and quick secession, you have something like New Hampshire. Come, what is that really going to account for in a multi field scenario. It did not work for Ted Cruz, who won the Iowa caucuses in twenty sixteen. He got the media bump that you hope to get from actually winning didn't matter. Marco got second, same thing, It didn't matter.
Jeb Bush, I believe, came in fifth, maybe six in New Hampshire. It just demonstrates that money, all of that, even winning Iowa the bump whenever you're going against someone like Trump who has such a loved is such a beloved figure in the Republican Party, and now after he's already won the presidency, it's just an impossible task. It probably always was. And if I could go back, I'm not sure DeSantis should have run ever in the first place.
Although there's a whole shoot your shot, there's a shoot your shot argument I think that you should always make.
But I don't know. I think this is irreparably hard, is his ploy?
Yeah?
I mean, I just also feel like DeSantis just doesn't have just doesn't have it, whatever it is, it just doesn't have it. And so whether it was this time that he was going to lose or next time, when he's going to lose to like Don Junior or whoever comes next, or Ted Careers or whoever. I think is probably just not in the cards for him. The other big issue among many that they have is DeSantis and
Nicki Haley and everybody else. They don't actually want to go directly at Trump that much and his policy or like you know, say, certainly the things that are obvious that were problems with him, like January sixth, they don't want to talk about that. And so the best argument has always been about electability. But who could believe at this point that Donald Trump's not electable? Think Donald Trump is probably electable.
I don't like it, but I think.
It probably is.
When you look at Joe Biden as approval rating, the fact young people are abandoning him in droves, and you know, Arab Americans and Muslim Americans and the economy is trash and all of these things, and he's you know, super old and can barely formulate a sentence, then yeah, I think Donald Trump probably can beat that guy. So to argue at this point, oh, there's no way Trump can win, and I'm the winner. And if you want to defeat
Joe Biden you got to go with me. I just don't think that that is a compelling point at this point whatsoever.
Yeah, we were going to cover this last week.
But Sean Trendy at Real Clear Politics, who's one of my favorite election analysts, he wrote a piece called not only can Trump win right now? He is the favorite to win, and that describes it as a Republican best set to win the election since George W. Bush in two thousand and four, which the last time a Republican won the popular vote in this country. So people should really let these circumstances sink in now. It's a long time till election day. All of that, you know, eleven
months ago. But as where things stand right now, I would hell of a lot be rather Trump not only the primary in the election as opposed to Joe Biden or any of the other people he's running against.
You know who else needs to have that sink in from them is the Democratic Party?
Saga?
Oh, well that's not because that's a perfect turn to where we are right now. In an inexplicable and yet totally explicable move, the Florida Democratic Party has now officially put Joe Biden on the ballot in Florida, canceling their primary and effectively making it so that there will be no democracy in the state of Florida for Democrats. Put this please up there on the screen so you can see them chanting four more years. The thing is is that they changed it before there was ever going to
be a primary. So let's put this please up there on the screen. I love the political headline here, Florida Democrats plan to cancel presidential primary, enraging Dean Phillips campaign. Not just Dean phillips campaign, as we will show you, but I love.
How they only mentioned him when he's not even the leading Democratic whatever contender.
Anyway, let's move past what they are doing, and Nikki Freed, the chair of the Florida Democratic Party, says that the party is quote followed its standard process and says that it is dismayed now by Dean Phillips's conspiratorial and inappropriate comments comparing the state of Florida to an Iranian regime as part of his knee jerk reaction to long established procedures.
This comes to the delegation selection plan that they basically sped through the Democratic Convention, where through bureaucratic means they just canceled the presidential primary completely.
Here is what Dean Phillips had to say about that.
Hey, everybody, what happened in Florida yesterday is a tragedy and a travesty. The Florida Democratic Party decided, just a handful of people decided to disenfranchise millions of Democratic voters in Florida by saying We're not going to have a presidential primary. I'm running for president. There are others running for president as Democrats, and this is the kind of stuff that happens in Tehran, not in Tallahassee. We've got
to do something about this. I've been a lifelong Democrat, you know, that supported our party since I was in my twenties, been a member of Congress for three terms, and was a member of House Democratic leadership. I've never seen something so absurd, so disenfranchising, and so suppressive of Democratic voters.
I mean, I think he's right, Crystal, and unlike political will mention, some of the other candidates who are in the race, Jake Huger and Marian Williamson also sounded off. They had a press conference on the subject. Here's what they had to say.
Mary Ann's at twelve percent, she would be what tied with DeSantis, above Nikki Haley. She would be second among the Republicans, let alone the fact that she's second among Democrats on which planet is not? Is that not a valid candidate? It's so absurd, it's kafka esque. Oh, a person polling higher than almost any challenger on the Republican or Democratic side doesn't exist.
It's worth noting as well, there's one person who could put an end to all this craziness, and that's President Biden. President Biden should simply make a phone call, say this isn't right, make sure it's changed.
And it would be.
Such a great point. If I was a president, I'd be like, Oh, Marianne and Deina running against me, great, no problem, let's hear it out.
It is hurting the Democratic Party and the chances for twenty twenty four that they are acting this way. Jank, Deine and I are not hurting the Democratic chances in twenty twenty four.
They are.
Yeah, I mean, she's obviously right, and all the candidates should be outraged at this crystal. And yet I think this barely dented mainstream coverage.
Yeah, and the only reason a dented at all is because of jan Phillips, and so that's why I'm glad he's in the race, because you have this like centristy member of Congress, you know, has the right credentials for the media to pay attention to and whatever helps to
elevate the just brazen undemocratic nature of this process. And of course it goes without saying the irony and the hypocrisy of a democratic party that claims to be quote unquote saving democracy by literally canceling democracy in the state of Florida is quite something. And I think Jenk's comment there that is cough, gas, like that's the best word you could possibly use for this.
Because so in the state of Florida, just.
To get into some of the nitty gritty of this, in the state of Florida, under state law, it's left up to the party socide who gets put on the ballot.
Now that already to me is like there should be some sort of like a formal process outside of the parties that you know, you get this money, put signature is on the petition or whatever, like it is in many states, but there are other states that also have it in their law that basically the party decides, and in those instances in other states, they looked, okay, who's eligible. You know, some of them said, okay, jenk he's not you know, he's not a natural born citizen, so he's
not going to be on the ballot. But they looked at it and they just put okay, these are the contenders, They're the ones that have filed, were putting them on the ballot. In Florida, they really did an end run here. Dean Phillips says. They were reaching out to the Florida Democrats, Okay, what's your process, how do we get on the ballot, et cetera. They were supposed to submit their list of
approve candidates on I think last Thursday. They did it before then, on November first, and just put Biden on there, didn't give anyone a heads up about how this was all going to go down, and just completely canceled the primary in the.
State of Florida.
It's it's truly outrageous and exposes how, you know, how hollow the Democratic Party's words about how much they care about democracy ultimately are.
It's preposterous.
And again at a time when they claim Donald Trump is this you know, threat to democracy, which I accept after January six, I think that's accurate. I think he is a genuine threat to democracy and that everything's on the line, and this is existential, et cetera, et cetera. But you're doing everything to guarantee that this profoundly weakened candidate in Joe Biden, is the only guy that anyone has an opportunity to vote for. The Other thing I was thinking about soccer is like Biden is way ahead.
You know, Marian's at like twelve percent, like Jank said. Dean Phillips is at like eight percent. You know, Jinks at like one or two percent in the polls that he's been put on at this point.
So you got a really, really large lead here.
But I think they feel that their position is precarious, and whether it is or not, it's hard to say, but they're looking at the polls, the fact that so many Democratic voters are very anxious about Joe Biden, how many Democratic voters are very upset with Joe Biden, how many Democratic voters.
Really hate his policy on Israel.
His policy on Israel is more popular with Republicans than it is with Democrats, And they feel a sense of vulnerability whether that is actually real or not, and so they're worried that, you know, somebody could catch fire in this moment and really take off and make a run at it, even though you know, from the outside you look at it and it seems like he's got this thing sewing up.
Yeah, I think you're right. I mean, it's so obvious.
Whenever look they are trying to rate they are they are not trying. They are rigging it completely for Biden's benefit. In a certain sense, though, Crystal, I think that is probably a good thing because they can own the decision one hundred percent should he eventually lose to Trump, and then maybe they will have a total reorganization and re examination of their priorities. Although that already did happen and none of that ended up happening, right.
Instead, they just blamed Bernie Sanders in Russia and whatever.
I wonder we'll get to blame this time. Well, I mean, you can't blame him.
You can't blame primary people this time, because this time around they didn't even get to run against him for real.
There wasn't blame the third party candidates.
That's true.
They'll blame our RFK.
Jill Stein Cornell West That's who they'll that's how they'll blame this down.
This general election is going to be wild.
I mean, the primaries are like very anti democratic and there's not much drama on the Republican side either, But the general election is going to be really wild. If you have RFK, if you've got Cornell, Jill Stein, Joe Manton or whoever, this is going to be a different landscape I think than we've ever seen before. And it could be, uh, you know, it could be kind of total chaos in terms of who actually comes down on top and whether anyone's able to get to undred seventy electoral votes.
It's going to be really Yeah, we've been reading about tingent elections here to prepare. If anybody's interested, go and google that term before we tell you all about it. Okay, let's go and move on to George Santos. Santos, who will always be Congressman in our Hearts, was officially expelled
from the House of Representatives after the ethics report. America's congressman delivered an ethics report from the House of Representatives that accused him of using campaign funds for a variety of persono talks, reasons only fans Botos and Onomens being the most egregious examples, but many, many, many others can be broad and lying about his background, deceiving the voters of the district from New York that he eventually ended up representing. Here was the final votally against him.
The yea's are three hundred eleven, the nays are one hundred and fourteen, with two recorded as present, two thirds voting in the affirmative. The resolution is adopted under Clause five D of Rule twenty. The cheer announces to the House that, in light of the expulsion of the gentleman from New York, mister sand To's, the whole number of the House is now four hundred and thirty four.
That makes George Santos the sixth person ever to be expelled from the House of Representatives. Interestingly enough, he is the only congressman to ever be expelled from the House of Representatives who was not actually convicted of a crime, which is what the justification of many of the people who voted to save Santos said is.
They were like, look, he hasn't actually been convicted of this.
Matt Gates, who also has an ethics complaint, against him regarding some of shenanigans going on with the girls and potential hookers down in the state of Florida. Is actually well the one who really made that point, because I believe a report is coming I got against him.
Although he to.
Be very he was exonerated, you know, by the Department or not exonerated. He was at the very least not prosecuted by the Department of Justice. So he's tried to say, like, look, just because you have a bad ethics complaint against you, doesn't mean that if you're unless you're convicted, then really that's the only case where you should be expelled. Santos though, as we had previously shown, people is going out with a bang almost certainly is with the police up there
on the screen. So Santo says he will now be filing official complaints. Let's go and keep these up there. He says, Monday, I will be filing an official complaint with the Office of Congressional Ethics against a New York congresswoman regarding her questionable stock trading since joining the Ways and Means Committee. He says the same thing about Mike Lawler, who was one of those people who have campaigned against
mister Santos in the Republican Party. He says, Congressman Lawler owns portions of Checkmate strategies and he uses the same firm he is the beneficiary of to pay for services related to his campaign. Says it is yeah, I mean it,
says of Rayla Lota. He says it has been raised in local media that the congressman obtained his ID attending Hofstra in day school while he was supposed to be working at the board of his Board of Elections, sorry at the JD, attending the attending Hofstra in day school when he was supposed to be working at the Board
of Elections. And then on Congressman Menendez, saying, while Congressman Menendez has not been invoked by the diligent investigation of the DJ into his father, there remains a question.
Of what he did know and when did he know it.
Basically, he's being a troll on all these but it does hit home a point of this.
What is Santos really guilty of.
Santos is guilty of just taking it a little bit too far outside of the officialdom. As he points out, like with Congressman Mike Lawler, there are all kinds of legal ways to be totally corrupt. And I'm not saying Lawler himself is corrupt. It's about a system where you can work for a firm. You're allowed to work part time for a law firm which can get business, which literally has business before the House of Representatives, and you
can still do that when you're an elected representative. As he also points out, whenever it comes to campaign funds, I remember seeing reports that it was Eric Canter, the guy who lost here in Virginia, who was the House He had spent more on steak at a high quality stake restaurant here in Washington, DC than his primary opponent had spent in the primary race against him, Which is only just to show people like, if you're on campaign business, they can pay for a hell a lot of steak
and alcohol that people are all consuming. As long as you're talking about they pay for your travel, they can pay for your else to travel, they can pay for your spouse's clothes. I mean, as long as you file, you know, dot the eyes and cross the t's and file the requisite paperwork and all that, you can get away with a lot.
Of sketchy stuff.
Whenever it comes to campaign finance, of course, sandals took it to a whole other level, committing outright fraud and also also spending you know, items on personal spending money on personal items that have nothing to do with campaign business.
But to me, it's only a step or so.
Removed from a lot of the legalized corruption that already exists in the.
Electoral His fraud and his lies were of like uh tacky, yeah, exactly, and also very repeated.
And undeniable nature.
I saw there was another Republican congressman who was accusing him of like stealing their credit card, yeah, and his mom, and charging wasn't his mom or his mom? Oh yeah, and charging campaign max ount campaign contributions to it. And then we know from this report allegedly that he was then using those campaign contributions as his own personal piggy bank. So you know, I mean, that makes it pretty hard
to deny that. The repeated lies, the fact that it was everything, the fact that it was you know, things he didn't even need to lie about, every single thing that came out of his mouth.
Even his name is in doubt, like his.
You know, is whether or not he's really gay, as in dever, memory's married to a woman, like, everything about this man is up for debate and nothing is as it seems, which is part of what I'm just so fascinated by him because I can't. I just I'm not wired like that, you know. I don't know if I guilty conscience or what. But the fact that he could just anything that he thought this person wanted to hear in the moment. He would tell them, you know, oh
you were a volleybaster. I played volleyball. Oh you went to this college. I went to that college. What you know, Oh, you're looking for like a token gay conservative who doesn't, let you know, is critical of trans rice.
I'll be that guy.
Like, I'll be that guy, no problem, let me lean into that. Oh you're looking for, you know, someone to speak.
At your Jewish event. I'm Jewish. Sure I'll speak at your event.
It's wild to me, and and I guess that many other people are also interested in such character because there's a movie.
That's going to be made about him. Put this up on the screen.
The meteoric political rise of George Santos and the web of fabulous tales that was built on are getting a movie treatment. HBO Films is optioned the rights to a new book Mark Tusano.
Maybe I'm going to go with the Fabulous.
The book is called The Fabulous, The lying, hustling, grifting, stealing and very American legend of George Santos, which was published on November twenty, twenty twenty three. He has sort of a uniquely American character, as like uniquely American like con artist Charlatan's Nakohil salesman, the fake it till you make it all the way to becoming a member of Congress. There's some Trump esque qualities here, but Santos doesn't quite have the uh, the talent to pull off what Trump has beneving.
He doesn't have the Riz.
Crystal Riz, by the way, is the Oxford Dictionaries word of the year. Oh really, so I will be incorporating it more. Thank you to the gen zs for popularizing it.
But I agree with you.
I mean, Santos is actually not just an American character. He's a throwback to some of the original House of Representative members and during a totally rigged process and the way the snake oil and all that. What do you think the modern West in the American economy was built on? In the Gilded age and all at that time. So in many ways he reminds me of that. I'm sad to see him go, but we will. Of course, he's
not gonna go out with a bang. We just saw a report that came across that no television networks are hiring George Santos unfortunately. Honestly for us, I would love to see it go at it now that he's totally unchanged.
Maybe we'll have him here on the show's being.
Yeah, fair enough. I'm gonna send him an invite.
I'm gonna send him my god, if I can.
That'd be fun.
All right, Just tell me by yourself, mister Devalder. We'll start there. What's your actual name? Who are you and what are you alleging? So anyway, it's gonna be fun.
Indeed.
All right, so you brought up TV news. We got some TV news updates here. MSNBC major shakeup of their weekend lineup, including the cancelation of Medi Hassan show. Let's put this up on the screen. He confirmed it in a tweet. Yes, the Mehdi Hassan Show has ended on Peacock that's their streaming service, and we'll be ending on MSNBC. Next month, still a few weeks left. Thank you all for watching over the past three years. Going forward, I will serve as guest anchor across prime shows and beyond
and as an on air political analyst. Goes on to say, thanks for the impouring of love and support, Thanks of course to my team. Humbled and appreciative. Not going anywhere, and you'll hear from me lots in twenty twenty four. Interesting, so, Mehdi is one of three Muslim anchors at MSNBC who have come in for quite a bit of scrutiny and criticism because of their descent in Israel's war on Gaza. We reported this, you know, this happened a while ago at the beginning of the war. Put this up on
the screen from semaphore. All three of those Muslim hosts were sidelined one after another, after the ADL had criticized them and after they had again expressed sort of dissenting views on the Israeli war on Gaza. MSNBC, they say, has quietly taken three of their Muslim broadcasters out of the anchor chair since Hamas's attack on Israel last Saturday,
amid America's wave of sympathy for Israeli terror victims. And it also comes immediately after Mehdi did an interview with a NETNYA Who spokesperson that listen if you guys aren't familiar with him, he's kind of famous for being a really aggressive questioner grilling people in power. He's got done
famous interviews with like John Bolton, et cetera. And so he had one of those interviews with a NETNA Who spokesperson that we actually covered here because it revealed a few new details about what happened and unfolded on October seventh. In particular, here's a little bit of a taste of that.
Have you seen one picture of a single did Kamas terrorist in the fighting in Gaza?
Not one? Is that.
US can control Kamas can control the information question?
And you said you would be brief.
I have haven't.
You're right, but I have seen lots of children with my own lying eyes being pulled from the.
Robber because the pictures come.
US wants you to see exactly there also people.
Your government has killed.
You accept that right, you've killed children? Or do you deny?
No?
I do not.
I don't. I don't. First of all, you don't know how those people died those two.
Wow.
First of all, we.
Don't want to see as you do.
Okay, say I agree with you.
I agree with you.
We shouldn't blindly believe anything Hamas says. But why should we believe what your government says either. Your military spokesman on Monday pointed to an Arabic document in the basement of a Gaza hospital and claimed it was a guardian list on which every terrorist writes his name.
But that was false.
It was just a calendar with the days of the week on it. Your colleague in the Prime Minister's Office, Orphia Gendelman, posted behind the scenes footage from a Lebanese short film and claimed it was Palestinians in Gaza faking their own injuries. That tweet is still up a week later. That is endless disinformation from your government, is it not?
So?
Now?
These clips frequently went viral on Twitter. But his show, like many other AMAZONBC shows, was not getting you know, exceptionally high ratings, was not doing all that well in the ratings. And so that's what Amasamy c is basically saying,
is it's ratings issue. It's a cost cutting issue. I'll tell you you know what I'm hearing from people is you know, the descent on Israel is part of the picture, but the bigger picture is that he's also very like aggressive on social media in a way that is uncomfortable for NBC executives as well. So do I think that they're sending a bit of a message by canceling Medi's show and you know, so publicly demoting him. Yes, do I think it's like a variety of factors that went into this.
Yeah, that's probably true.
I think that is true. I will not cry for Mehdi Hawson. I think he is a complete blowhard. He was a rush a Kate fanatic whenever he's on his various shows, COVID freak whenever it came to going against the lab leak theory and all this. I will quote again from my good friend zed Jalani, having worked with Mehdi, this is a pattern. He learns very little about a topic,
goes one hundred percent full throttle with no nuance. He plays to a partisan crowd and frequently makes elementary errors like claiming that black people cannot vote.
Enjoy.
Now that said, I don't support him being canceled for his views on Israel and Gaza My biggest problem that comes from Mehdi is exactly this is he is a fundamentalist in everything that he believes.
Now.
Is he a talented interviewer, Yes, But there's also a very famous clip that people can go in can watch of him talking about his at that time fundamentalist Islamic views and how he viewed other people. Has he evolved or not. I have no idea, but it just is demonstrative of the way he carries himself in public. And what comes and hits for me was a video here that he did with Matt tayev on the Twitter files where he attempted to go after him. Let's take a listen your.
Own words, Matt, you crossed that line and must castle.
The hilarity of this coming from MSNBC, which did nothing but vomit up fake Russia Gates stories that came straight from the FBI for six consecutive years that you guys still haven't apologized for.
In that period.
So I've got nothing to apologize. I'm asking you your words.
So Christal as I understand it, I'm on, how do you say it? Amen?
Amen?
Will continue to be on the air. He will, I think he still have a prominent role with the network. I think he's a far more responsible person whenever it comes to this conflict.
And I understand.
Look, you can think he's done a good job on Gaza and all of that, but he is not a person that I would want on my side, even in terms of debating and holding up the record of the Biden Administration's pushed some of the most ridiculous propaganda.
So I don't know.
This is not somebody who I think should be spoken up for as some sort of like paragon of being truly independent I think on Gaza and on Israel specifically. Yes, it's an issue where he may be quote unquote courageous whenever it comes to his colleagues, although I guess the only fair rebuttal is that he's no worse than many of his other msls.
Well, here's the thing is, are we better off with Mehdi Hassan on MSNBC or not? And I think undoubtedly the aspect of the job of interviewing powerful people and actually challenging them he is very good at. He is very good at and I do think that that is a major part of the reason and the fact that those clips of him pushing power for people go viral on Twitter is a major part of the reason that he's main canceled. And it's not just on Israel and
Palestein I went back. I actually just googled like many grills on YouTube because that's his thing.
Ye.
He grilled John Bolton on Iraq and on war crimes. He grilled the US American US ambassador on hypocrisy with regards to war crimes in Yemen. He grilled Cedric Richmond a biden aid on healthcare failures. He grilled Bernie on build back better. He stood up for Julian A. Sane, very unusual in the cable news landscape. He pressed Koreean Jean Pierre over Biden miministration failures. He pressed one of
those Lincoln Project ghules about their failures as well. He criticized identity politics of hiring Lloyd Austin as the Secretary of Defense after he had served on the Raytheon as a board member.
So I'm not saying I agree with many on everything.
Lennie and I have had plenty of differences and have many disagreements that he would attest to as well. But is he being fired because he's bad at the job. No, he's being fired because of the part of the job that he's actually good at, and also because he's apparently
not boring enough on Twitter. Now they're using Amen, who I have known for a long time and respect very much as a journalist, and especially in Israel and Palestine, where he has a depth of knowledge, they're using him to basically be like, see, it's not about the fact.
That he's Muslim.
But you don't think that people get the message about how loud and aggressive you're allowed to be, how far out of line you're allowed to step, especially when you're not a Rachel Maddow or you're not like their number one star or ratings skeetter. People are definitely getting that message loud and clear. And you know, it also isn't lost on me that you had that adl dude go on Morning Joe and accuse him and Aimin and Alan Belchi of like hamas talking points in this absolutely arrangeous thing.
So I think that they felt like they needed to do something to appease people who were accusing them of being like Hammas propagandist.
I think I think that's fair.
I guess it's just you know what I think the fundamental difference is is that he is somebody who assumes the absolute worst faith of every single person who does not agree with him.
That's a gist that has not been my experience because many US disagree with me on Twitter and said it in an actually very respectful way of but especially it was on you know, this fraught thing about like, you know, economic, what was the thing that people economic insecurity that this was part of electing Trump. And he very much disagreed with that. He was like, no, it's the racism. And I'm like, listen, it's complex and you can't look at it economics and say and that's a very fraught issue.
And he disagreed with me very respectfully without attacking my personal character.
That has been my experience with the opposite, where I basically had to mute him because he constantly blew up me and zed for exactly actually on the same topic. So I think his orientation on whether you're a fellow liberal or like a fellow traveler or somebody who's opposed to him, and especially the type of what I perceive is identity politics and Islamism that he likes to justify and push here in America that stuff drives me absolutely.
Give me an example.
I mean the video that he is that the video that shows him virally Okay, who cares?
From how long?
He's never opposi No, So it has nothing to do with it.
This is about the character, about the person who we are disagreeing with. I Actually, I'm pretty sure the disagreement him and I had was even before he was on MSNBC. But my point that remains here is about the way that I think that he has approached most of his detractors, including people like Zed who actually also had to block him. So look, maybe all of this is a little bit too personal, but some of what Glenn Greenwell is brought up, let's go and put this up there, please up on
the screen is and he makes this point. I think what you're saying MSNBC anonymously is denying that Mehdi's criticism of Israel had anything to do with his firing, insisting instead that it was due to.
His almost invisible ratings.
And Mehdi will not say Go to the next part, And this is where I'm curious what you think he says. It could be anything one would expect a journalist to provide. The explanation. But I guess Mehdi doesn't want to anger the corporate bosses, so he is staying quiet and then surmises that people would self respect would quit. So what is it like in this situation having worked inside the beast? Where like, what are the strictures that he would have around him? Where it like what is his non compete?
Look at what is he allowed to do? What is he allowed to say?
I mean, he definitely if he was going to speak out and quit right now, he would definitely have at the very least illegal fight on his hands. Okay, So it's not just about like I mean, listen, I think it's very difficult to stay if he's indeed been canceled for effectively doing his job. Well, I do think that that is a difficult thing. I do think Meddi. You know, he was at the Intercept, then he moved over to AMSNBC.
I think he wants to be in mainstream press and so that may factor into his decision making too.
I don't know, but but.
Yeah, I think it's they put you in a bind to make it so that it is very difficult to.
Speak out against them.
If you left, you'd have this long non compete, or you couldn't do anything for some period of time, or like I say, you have this huge legal battle on your hands, and you know, Tucker basically told Fox News to shove it. But Tucker also has a lot more money, is a lot more famous.
I support Meddi going independent, I think is noncompetes or bs even if I don't like the guy. I think it's crazy that if he was canceled for this particular reason, but it also is a little bit of nature of the beast in terms of when you're working for this organization.
You know, what I would say is, ironically, I actually think that Mehdi would do a lot better independent, no question, because totally right the things he's doing at MSMBC, like MSNBC, audience is not all uninterested in holding Biden officials to a calendar standing up for Juliana Sange, So in that way, he may have been an awkward fit there, just based on this sort of small sycophantic audience that they've cultivated.
And his clips do routinely go viral online, so he's sort of better at that game than he is necessarily at the cable news game. So I think if he did step out on his own. I think he could be successful.
I think that maybe the reason why is, as you said, he's famous for interviews.
But Karine Jean Pierre is not going.
On independent use that's right, That's exactly right.
Or the Israeli president, it's not going. It's not gonna happen.
So if he wants to remain famous for his interviews and all that, it is going to be tough. But I mean, I guess that just comes down to the nature of the beast for what he's doing. This, by the way, is why Cable was flawed and also inherently bad model.
Yes, Bristol, what are you taking a look at?
Well, we may never again see a headline that so perfectly encapsulates the US policy toward Israel's total war on Gaza. US sends Israel two thousand pound bunker buster bombs for Gaza war. After sending massive bombs artillery shells. US also
urges Israel to limit civilian casualties. What a sick joke this all is at this point leaking to the US press how concerned you are about civilian deaths while expediting shipments of the very weapons that Israel is used to slaughter innocence on a scale that we have not seen from a developed country in modern history. Every day, practically every hour, we learn of some new fresh whore. Here
is one of the very latest. A journalist allowed into a hospital that had been forcibly evacuated by the IDF makes the most grizzly of discoveries. Four premature babies in a state of unimaginable decay, their bodies eaten by worms and mulled by stray dogs, after doctors were forced to evacuate that facility. Now, the nurse responsible for their care described the wrenching decision to leave them behind. In an interview with The Washington Post. He said, quote, I felt
like I was leaving my own children behind. That nurse took the baby he considered to be the strongest and most able to survive without oxygen with him when they were all forced to flee. That baby was then taken to Al Shiva Hospital, which was rated mere days later. Now, I want you to understand these atrocities and the many others we've witnessed in Israel's assault on Gaza.
They are not normal.
They are not the unavoidable cost of war. These babies and the other untold thousands of innocents who have died are not collateral damage, tensional targets, and a new expos by nine seventy two magazine lays out the exact strategy that lies behind what can only be called a campaign of all out terror. In this war, civilians and civilian infrastructure of things like hospitals are targeted directly with the explicit goal of shocking the population, and in a dystopian
flourish AI is being used to accelerate the carnage. Here is that piece from nine to seven to two, a mass assassination factory inside Israel's calculated bombing of Gaza. Now when you look at today's videos of children buried under rubble, entire residential neighborhoods destroyed, lifeless bodies of babies in the arms of grief stricken parents, keep these words in mind from one of nine seven to two sources quote, nothing
happens by accident. When a three year old girl is killed in home in Gaza, it's because someone in the army decided it was not a.
Big deal for her to be killed.
Israel's periodic wars on Gaza have never been the beacon of humanitarian war fighting that Israel's presented to the world, but some of the minimal guardrails that did prevent mass civilian death have been lifted in this current assault. This is evident in Israel's overwhelming focus on two types of targets, private residences and so called power targets, which are things like hospitals, apartment buildings, infrastructure, and other key centers of
civil society. During the first five days of this war, half of the targets that were bombs were quote unquote power targets, and the goal of this bombing campaign was not to eradicate Hamas, as Israel has claimed. Instead, the goal was to quote create a shock that, among other things, will reverberate powerfully and lead civilians to put pressure on Hamas as. One source put it to nine seven to two.
Another source explained that the buildings only needed the most remote connection to Hamas or Islamic Jihad to be targeted for complete destruction. Quote if they would tell the whole world that the Islamic Jihad offices on the tenth floor are not important as a target, but that its existence is a justification to bring down the entire high with the aim of pressuring civilian families who live in it
in order to put pressure on terrorist organizations. This would itself be seen as terrorism, so they do not say it. In other words, terror is the explicit goal here. It's the very same goal, by the way as Hamas on October seventh, except in this instance it's terror by a supposedly civilized nation state, armed to the teeth by the world's superpower, and given diplomatic cover with zero red lines. The attacks on these power targets have also stood out
for our unprecedented scale of civilian death. According to nine seven to two. In prior wars, civilians were more consistently warned ahead of bombings. The IDF would leaflet, they would send messages. They would use a quote unquote roof knock to warn the building was about to be attacked. They would use drones then to even monitor civilian departures to make sure people were living leaving. Not so in this war, where many buildings have been bombed with no warning and
with hundreds of civilians still inside. Another major focus of Israel's bombing campaign has been the private residences of low level Hamas operatives. As one source who was unhappy with this practice said quote. In the majority of cases, military activity is not conducted from these targeted homes. I remember thinking that it was like if Palestinian militants would bomb all the private residences of our families when Israeli soldiers
go back to sleep at home on the weekend. The blanket assault on these private homes, where many families were still located, has been aided by a new AI tool which uses algorithms to produce targets. According to the Guardian, this has dramatically accelerated the IDs target generating capability from fifty per year to one hundred per day.
Quote.
MOSS members who don't really mean anything live in homes across Gaza, so they mark the home and bomb the house and kill everyone there. Taken together, these reports thoroughly demong the already preposterous idea that Israel was surgically targeting Hamas No. Idaspokesperson Daniel Hagari was closer to the truth when he said this quote. The emphasis is on damage,
not on accuracy. These are the tactics that the US government is meekly protesting as the bombing campaign now moves to the south, where most of Gaza's two point two million.
Residents have been forced to flee.
Already hundreds of Palestinian has been killed in that renewed assault. If this bombing of six residential high rises and communists is any indication, the focus on destroying power targets to terrorize the entire population remains firmly in place. And the truth is, the Israeli government can't be so stupid as to think that any of this is actually in the
long term security interests of Israel. To think that massacring children by the thousands is going to lead the palastating population to turn on Hamas, It will not lead the population to turn on Hamas. It will certainly lead some of the population to turn into Hamas or to embrace
other groups advocating violent armed resistance. No, the real goal is to put on a show for the Jewish Israeli public, fifty eight percent of whom do not believe the idea has been brutal enough, and only one point eight percent of whom believe that they have gone too far. The real goal is a last ditch attempt by Bibi to stay in power by showing just what a monster he can be, to satisfy a monstrous public appetite for death
and destruction. As one source explained to nine seven two, there is a feeling that senior officials in the army are aware of their failure in October seventh, and they are busy with the question of how to provide the Israeli public with an image of victory that will salvage their reputation. Apparently, that sought after image of victory is that of decomposing babies left to suffocate and starve in a power target also known as a hospital.
Real tough guys, and so soccer.
These are the details, and if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at Breakingpoints dot com.
I wanted to talk a little bit more about bb Neetnahun what he might be thinking in this moment. So excited to welcome Scott Horton. He's with the Libertarian Institute and also Anti War dot Com.
Great to see you, sir, Good to see you man.
Thank you very much for having me both of you.
So let's start with this. Put this news article up on the screen. We mentioned this early from the intercept. They're reporting Netanyahu's goal for Gaza quote thinn population to a minimum. He has apparently tasked one of his top advisors with coming up with a plan to quote unquote thin the population and pressure of the US to go along with this plan. Scott, I wanted to talk to you because you have sort of studied net Nyahu and his political ideology and how he's operated for.
A long time.
So when you see a headline like that, what is your reaction to it? And you know how does this dovetail with net Nyaho's political ideology throughout his career.
Well, I mean, just with the last thing first there, I think this represents the complete failure of the net Nyahu doctrine in his Panic He has to keep the war going as long as he can to stay in office, and he has to try to figure out how to make his legacy as the longest serving prime minister in Israeli history be anything other than the catastrophe of October the seventh, and so he's got to come up with something. And this is his brilliant idea is he's going to cleanse the Gaza strip.
All this talk about targeting.
Hamas you've been talking out of both sides of their mouths for two months now, right, Eh, maybe we'll just get rid of all the Palestinians. And then they go, no, we're just targeting the bad guys, and we're real sorry if some medicine civilians getting the way, but not that sorry, but it is what it is.
And then they go, not, but we really want to kick.
Them all out into the Sinai Peninsula or then I can't even believe this.
This is just this alone is world history.
That the Wall Street Journal published an article by two Israeli ministers saying you take them yep, And I mean.
This is just incredible.
And they've leaked all various kind of trial balloons saying, yeah, we'll give twenty five thousand to all different countries all around the world. You say, love the Palestinians so much, why won't you help us cleanse them off of their land? And so this is I guess supposed to be Net Nyahu's big accomplishment. So you can go down in history as anything other than the guy who's doctrine, the official Net and Yahoo doctrine completely blew up in that society's face.
On October the seventh.
Scott Darryl Cooper, our mutual friend, recommended that I talked to you, and whenever Daryl tells me that you're a guy who's gone really deep on this, I'm like, he
knows the ins and outs and so something. I'm curious, as you talked about the Netanyahoo doctrine, if you could take a step back about Netta Yahoo, his relationship to hamas to Palestinian statehood going back throughout his career, and how a lot of it had culminated not only with October seventh, but with the policy that they're moving towards right now.
Yeah, So, I mean, what the heck.
I'll go back to nineteen ninety six when he first was Prime Minister, a guy who ended up being Dick Cheney's guy, David Wormser, along with Richard Pearl, probably the most powerful of the neo conservatives of the first w
Bush term era. These guys in Douglas fight, they wrote a plan called a clean Break and it was for net Yahoo and what it said was, we want regime change in Iraq in order to weaken Iran, Syria and has Bala so that we don't have to live up to the Oslo Accord and give the Palestinians their state.
And the thinking is completely crazy.
But the idea was that if Israel and or America could do a coup or ultimately a war in Iraq, that Jordan and Turkey would be dominant in Syria, and then they would force the Shiai clergy in Najaf to force Hasbala to stop being friends with Iran and be nice to Israel instead, and then once the pressure on Israel's northern front is relieved, then they won't have to deal in good faith with the Palestinians and negotiate over the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, so as in
the deal and their sworn promises. So this is the whole point of the Iraq war, of a Rock War two was to help Israel so they wouldn't have to give justice to the Palestinians.
And so you know Netnyahu was and in.
Fact, he later was caught on candid camera and anyone can watch this on YouTube bragging about how he fooled Bill Clinton at why and had promised he's going to make these concessions toward a Palestinian state. But haha, area see is two thirds of the whole thing, sucker, and all this he talks all about it, and he says Americans, eighty percent of American support US. It's absurd. America is
easily moved. They'll do whatever I tell them. And so then Sharon was Prime minister from I guess two thousand or very early oh one or very late two thousand through five when he had his stroke, or late o five when he had his stroke. So Sharon had this doctrine. He was also lakued with net Yahou, although they ended up splitting and he created his own party, Kadema. But he had a policy which avowedly at the time, was sabotage of the peace process.
They called the disengagement.
And you'll hear pro israel Hawks all the time say, gee, we gave him a Palestinian state and the Gaza Strip and all we got in return is rockets. Well that's just not true. They withdrew, but they didn't end the occupation. Israel kept complete and total control of the Gaza Strip. Essentially, they just took the warden and the prison guards and moved them to the outer perimeter, but still a prison as nothing like a sovereign state.
Is kept total control over their.
Airspace, their borders, their taxation, the revenue, their fishing, rights offshore, every single thing the occupation didn't end. And in fact, I'll urge your audience to google these terms. That'll come right up. There's no mistake in it. It's aerial Sharon for maldehyde. And that's of course the preservative that you use for corpses right when you're preparing them for burial. And so the quote is from Dove Weist Glass. It's Dove with no e, Dove Weissglass, and he worked for Sharona,
an advisor to Sharona, and he's explained to Hiretz. The withdrawal, this is again the two thousand and five so called disengagement. The withdrawal is for maldehyde. It puts the peace process in for maldehyde. It means that with the Palestinians divided and conquered, those in charge in Gaza, they can't resort to participation in any international organizations or any kind of negotiation.
And we can say, in fact, he says, with the blessing of the Congress and the President, we got a no one to talk to certificate, you know, like they always say that.
We just have no partner for peace.
Well, we have no one to talk to certificate, and we won't have to talk to them until Gaza becomes Norway, meaning I guess a very polite and harmless and non violent society.
In other words, never. And then so.
Ahud Olmert was in there in the meantime between Sharon and net Yahoo, and he was a bit less worse than the two of them, although he was Sharon's guy, But he didn't really make any progress, you know, while he was in there toward any real negotiations. And then when Netanyah who came in the Net and Yahoo doctrine basically goes like this. He was coming into a situation where all of the Sunni kings of the Arabian Peninsula,
all them sock puppets of the American Empire. Essentially, they had promised that they would never normalize relations with Israel until the Palestinians got an independent state, and the Saudis had put forward their peace plan a very reasonable one in two thousand and two and had repeatedly suggested that I think in two thousand and seven it was the basis of the Annapolis talks, possibly anyway, very reasonable proposals
for a two state solution. But then Donald Trump's son in law, Jared Kushner figured out that no, everybody's got a price, and the American people can afford to borrow enough from South Korea or somebody to pay it. And so what we're going to do is we're going to give bahrain F sixteen's, we're going to give uae F thirty five, We're going to forgive Sudanese a debt, and we're gonna the Trump administration is going to recognize Morocco's
seizure of northern western Sahara. And with these bribes and then they're work on Saudi Arabia. These are called the Abraham Accords. And with these bribes, what they did was they succeeded in getting the Sunni sock puppet GCC kingdom regimes to go ahead and normalize relations with Israel, which
on the surface is great. That's what we want is every nation to get along, open trade, lower and lower tariffs, and more and more commercial relationships and fewer and fewer political relationships so that everybody in the world can get along. That's fine, but what it was really about was screwing the Palestinians. It was saying, you're not going to get your independent state and you are not going to get independent citizenship in one state or in any kind of
bi national state. You lose and people can go and look at Nettyanhu's speech that he gave to the United Nations just two weeks before the October seventh attack, where he holds up a piece of paper, he shows the map.
He's always got some visual aid.
This time he shows the map of one state from the river to the sea. There's no carved out piece of the west Bank or Gaza there.
And what he's saying is that's it we want.
The Netnyahoo doctrine has proved that I do not have to negotiate with the Palestinians. I do not have to concede citizenship rights or independence to them, and I can get what I want anyway. And the Palestinians they're just going to have to get used to living on their bellies.
And can you talk a little bit about these quotes that have been attributed to Nannyahoo talking about Hamas, where he says anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas. He also said reportedly this is part of our strategy to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank. Can you put those quotes in context for us?
Yeah, I mean that's the other half of the Ntnyahu doctrine right there. So the first part is we want to essentially get over the hurdle of dealing with the Palestinians in order to make a deal with the Sunni Arab states. And then the other half was making sure that mackmood A Boss, who you know Donald Trump talked about like, oh, he's such a nice old grandpa. He doesn't come across like Yasir Arafat even much less Hamas right, And so that's a real problem from La Koud's point of view.
They don't even care as much about gossip.
They want that West Bank, that land, and the Palestinians there, they're just in the way. We're gonna have to figure that out later. Right now, it's facts on the ground. But if the consensus in America and Europe and what passes for the left in Israel is that no, we have to deal with mackmood A Boss and the Palestinian authority and give them a two state solution like in the promise, then that ruins the net and Yahoo doctrine.
They want that land.
So in order to prevent that, Net Yahu essentially accelerated that aerial Sharon policy. Now, just for time, I'll skip this, but I'll drop a great footnote for you, okay, that everybody knows there was the election of six where Hamas want a plurality, not a majority, seventeen years ago. And then there's a great article called the Gaza Bombshell.
You got to read.
It has quotes from David Wormser telling the truth about it in there Eden.
It's incredible.
It's the Gaza Bombshell by David Rose, and it's about how they tried to do a coup against Hamas after the election in favor of the PA, but that blew up and failed, and that was how Hamas took over the strip. And that was, of course before Netnyahu came back. That was during a hoot Olmert. But then when net Yahoo came back, he decided, this is great, just like with formaldehyde, and the Palestinians divided and conquered. Now they're divided and conquered. Plus now not only are they divided,
geographically in this way. But now you have Hamas in control of Gaza and the PA in the West Bank. And so if anyone ever says it's time for you guys to negotiate with the PA, they can point at Hamas in Gaza and say, nope, we have no partner for peace.
You don't expect us to negotiate with these terrorists, do you.
And so there's the one famous quote that you just read there, Crystal, comes from Net Yahoo briefing the leaders of the Likud party in the Knesset. And again the quote is we have to bolster Hamas. He says, transfer them money, and that means pressure and cutter to transfer the money basically, and in order to what to quote, to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state. And now
here's what you do. You go to antiwar dot com slash Scott because I collect these quotes like hot wheels, okay, and I got about ten or twelve of them for you from not just Net and Yahoo, but Bezileel Smatrich, who is his finance minister, who says the PA is a liability, Hamas is an asset. He says, in this game of de legitimization. Hamas is an asset. They can't go to the UN, they can't go to the International
Criminal Court. They we can't put us in a situation where we might need the US to come and veto a resolution against us.
They can't do nothing.
And the more we have Hamas to point at, then the better situation we're in. And he even was the question even was, yeah, but isn't Hamas dangerous?
And he ends with yeah, I don't think we need to worry about that.
Just like net and Yahuu in that quote that you read there, Crystal ends with don't worry.
We control the height of the flames.
And because of this imperial hubris, that's what reached out and got them on October the seventh. They thought that they had this perfectly in hand, as long as we have these good little pet terrorists in Gaza to point at and scapegoat and say we have no partner for peace. Everybody repeat after me, we have no partner for peace. See the alliteration. There are two p words. You know it's true, we have no partner for peace. And you can memorize it and you can repeat it so you
know it's right. And it's some of the most successful hasbara probably in history in fact.
Yeah, so true, man, drop a knowledge here, Scott Horden, You've given us an incredible amount of background here sir. Where can people find out more about your work? Just anti war dot com slash Scott.
Yes, so that's my latest piece and my latest two pieces about the current war at anti ward dot com slash Scott, and I do have all of all the best quotes of Lakud talking about why they really deliberately pursued this policy of supporting Hamas. It's called net Yahu's support for Hamas backfired. And I'm also the director of the Libertarian Institute and it happens to be our fund
drive right now. If you like what you hear, folks, libertariansuit dot org slash donate And I'm the author of the book enough already Time to end the war on terrorism?
Excellent.
We will have a link to all those in the description. We really appreciate you taking your time, and I don't think this is the last we we'll see if you, sir, So thank.
You, Thanks Scott, great, appreciate our pleasure.
Okay, we'll see you guys later. We got a great show for everybody Tomorrow,