Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here and we here at breaking points, are already thinking of ways we can up our game for this critical election.
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Indeed, we do lots to get to this morning. So the southern ground invasion in Gaza has begun, so we'll give you updates on that, and Kamala Harris's team is traveling to the region, so a lot to stay there. Also, apparently someone got rich short selling Israeli stocks in the days before October seventh.
A bit of a mystery of who and how and why, but.
Pretty conclusive report showing that there was unusual trading activity leading up to the horrors that were perpetrated on October seventh. In addition, we have some dire news about health in America, both in terms of life expectancy and also suicides reaching an all time high. So we'll give you the details we know about what is happening there, a blockbuster report on Ukraine and what has been going on there, as well as Lindsey Graham, mister Warhawk himself actually saying he
is done with providing Ukraine with aid. So is this the end of US support for Ukraine? We will see. We've got a State Department spokesman caught live spreading misinformation, you might say, and congresson Rocana is going to join Sager in the studio to explain why he is now supporting a ceasefire in Gaza.
Yes, that's right, we missed you Crystal here in the studio, but we will have you back very very soon.
As you said, we're going to start with Israel.
But before we get to any of that, I know that our good friend Ryan Grimm's got a book out.
Why don't you tell the people about it?
Yeah, So Ryan out with a new book that has a lot of exclusive inside reporting, actually much of it very relevant to what is happening in domestic politics right now visa via Israel. It's called The Squad AOC and the Hope of a political revolution.
I read the whole thing.
It's really you know, it's very incisive and lease on some of the details of what's happened with the squad, some of the disappointments, some of how things unfolded there. So highly recommend you guys pick it up. It is available online and in stores now. And in addition, Sager, we are continuing our discount on premium memberships.
Yes, that's right.
We know so many of you took advantage of you yesterday. We just want to say thank you all so so much. It helps our business out tremendously. As we said, we are discounting the yearly membership and if you sign up for a year right now, you are actively helping fund all of our election coverage for the future.
Is because that's December. I can't believe it.
In a year, I hear from now at least the election itself will be over other shenanigans.
I don't know. Can't promise that, can't promise about the other shenanigans.
As we said, it's going to be a wild ride breakingpoints dot com if you can take advantage and so then let us begin with what is going on in Israel as you said, the southern invasion of Communis and the likely envelopment of that city and of that portion of Gaza now probably beginning from what we know from satellite imagery, let's ahead and put this up there on the screen. Went ahead and broke last night from commercial
satellite companies. From what you can see right there is that in the south of Gaza there are now fortifications, armored vehicles that are mounted in several different strategic areas. You've got tracks that show heavy vehicles equipment that are coming in. You also saw crystal yesterday widespread reports that there was telecommunications signal loss all throughout southern Gaza, which
has been a precursor previously to the ground invasions. This also comes as the idea for releases its official casualties this morning, officially eighty Israeli soldiers who've been killed in action in the north so far. So this is likely the beginning of that ground invasion after much more a much more shortened period of bombing. Now that does not mean that the bombing itself is over, just that you will now see the transition to having ground forces go
into there much quicker than happened before. So I'm curious for your reaction that they're beginning this so quickly.
Well, I mean a few things here. So first of all, as we have reported on this show, and I'm sure you guys have seen, an endless number of US officials have come out publicly and said that what happens in the southern part of Gaza has to be different than what happened in the north. All of these leaks to the US press saying we told the Israelis and no uncertain terms, comments from Tony Blinkn that leaked out about hey, you've got weeks not months, and that it has to
be different. This has to be more targeted in the south, with less civilian death. And so far there is zero
sign that anything has changed in their approach. The only thing that they can point to and that American officials are pointing to as like, oh, this is going to be different with the southern ground invasion is they put out this map that we showed you yesterday that has the whole Gaza strip dividing divided into hundreds of little units, and they're posting on social media where people should flee.
And remember, now you've got almost all two point two million residents of the Gaza Strip crunched down into the southern part of the strip, which is where they were told to be safe. Now, of course, the bombing campaign has massively ramped up, some of the most aggressive bombing we've seen yet in this campaign, happening in the south among an even more densely packed civilian population and sires you just mentioned, I said, they're posting online where you
should be moving to to remain safe. They don't have consistent internet, they don't have consistent telecommunications, and this has done nothing to alleviate the concern about you know, the humanitarian situation and the loss of civilian life. Already, in the first days of this Southern Gaza bombing campaign, the death toll among civilians has been over seven hundred. That is consistent with some of the most brutal days of
this campaign so far. So again, I was just reading this in the New York Times, you know, no very Western biased outlet, that there is zero sign that they have actually really changed the way that they're going about things. They're continuing to use these you know, massive bombs that the US completely rule down in similar dense urban warfare.
So that's where things stand as as far as I can tell.
Yes, that's right. So that's what we have in terms of the Southern invasion. Obviously, we'll continue to keep everybody updated counterpoints. We'll do that as well. We also, though, have some very unfortunate news for the Palestadians, Israelis and
the American people. It seems that President Biden has turned to Vice President Kamala Harris to now be in charge of initiatives for the day after on who will govern the who will govern the Gaza strip after Hamas is destroyed or at the very least after the military operation has concluded. Kamala telegraphed some of her role in these negotiations and her vision for what the future of Gaza will look like.
Here's what she had to say.
Well, as I said that we have to revitalize the Palestinian authority, which means giving the support that is necessary for good governance, understanding that on the issues that must be resolved as we think of a plan for the day after. It is about good governance, which will bring transparency and accountability to the people of Gaza and the
West Bank. It's also about what we need to do to recognize there must be some plan for security for the region, and I suspect it as a plan develops, it will take into account interim and then longer term and finally what we must do in terms of rebuilding Gaza and a commitment to that.
Okay, so that's as ann and I and I guess as a but it does seem that her and her team are very much in the driver's seat behind this project. Let's go and put this up there on the screen.
Times of Israel now reporting that the Vice President's National security advisor and other officials will be arriving in Israel later today quote for meetings with their counterparts to discuss planning for post war Gaza, led by the Vice President's National Security Advisor, who was actually with Kamala Harris by her side while she made that statement in Dubai after
meeting with other leaders. This will also be led by an official that we named yesterday, the Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer, former US Ambassador to the United States or sorry, former is reelly Ambassador to the United States. It also, though, does highlight that the Biden administration tasking this very I guess, thankless task to not exactly their most.
Competent member of government.
I'm curious, this is what you make of this overall crystal to put Kamala Harris now in charge and also spearheading this entire Palestinian of authority plan for Gaza, which seems dead on arrival both in the West Bank and in Gaza, and yet it appears to be the official position now of the US government.
Putting Kamala Harrison her team on this particular project is preposterous on literally every level. It does make me feel actually like the people from Kamala's team who leak out how much the White House actually hates her and sets her up to fail may actually be correct, because listen, think of the position that she's actually put in here. Right, she doesn't have the ability to threaten to condition aid, she doesn't have the ability to threaten to pull diplomatic cover.
All she and her team can do is the same finger wagging that every other US official has been doing with absolutely no effect. So you're put in the position of going out there and saying, gee, I hope they do better on civilian life. As we're watching bombs hit residential high rise after residential high rise in densely packed areas, children being pulled out of rubble, et cetera. So that's
the position she's put in. And then, of course, on the other level in terms of it being preposterous, Kamala Harris has never proven herself to be up to the job on even the most basic of texts. So already, you know, people were pointing out that she got asked this question about we've been covering how the net Nagahu government says they want to quote fit out the population.
They're talking about moving the borders, they're talking about pushing people out, and so she got asked a question about, you know, potentially changing the borders of Gaza, and she says, oh, we don't have a position on that, when her official statement that she put out said we're opposed to that. So she doesn't even know on the basic details of what the administration's stated position is at this point.
So it's I don't know.
It's a level of contempt for her, for the American people, certainly for Palestinians, and it is not a hopeful sign that the US is going to be any sort of effective, forceful or positive influence on the direction of this horrific war being waged right now.
Well, and especially it look if you took it seriously, then the Secretary of State, the National Security Advisor, any other member of the president's cabinet actually had their ear would be in charge anytime if we looked at it too. History and in the past, presidents, whenever they took a foreign relationship especially seriously, would even elevate somebody who was
on their most senior staff. I'm thinking of Fdr and Harold Hopkins and some of his other advisors who had frequently dispatched to Russia and others in a sign of like this person speaks for me directly. Anybody who reads a newspaper across the globe knows that this woman doesn't speak for the United States government and doesn't even speak for President Biden and her amateurist, amateur level. As you pointed out, we don't have a position on that.
Yes we do.
It's been the policy of the United States government since nineteen sixty seven. For her to have no idea about what the borders and our position on that would be is preposterous for her to be put in charge of this. It also does highlight just an ongoing, you know, real nightmare in the future sure over who is going to control Gaza.
Let's put this up there on the screen.
The Washington Post wrote up a decent summary at least of all of this. They say, who will run Gaza after the war? US searches for the best of bad options. But I actually thought that the lead paragraph put things especially well. The Israelis say they don't want the job. Arab nations are resisting Palestinian authority. President Mahmuda Boss might volunteer,
but the Palestinian people probably don't want him. As the Biden administration begins to plan for the day after in Gaza, confronting problematic questions such as who runs the territory once the shooting stops, how it gets rebuilt, and potentially how it eventually becomes part of an independent state, the stakeholders face a host of unattractive options. Unattractive, I guess, is certainly one way of putting it, and it does honestly
enrage me. I mean, the Israelis to mount a full blown military campaign and then to say, oh, we want to wash our hands of this the moment that the bombing stops.
Absolutely not. That is not how this works.
You can look at every other nation that has had to pie and had a military campaign to supposedly rid a territory.
You break it, you buy it.
It's the most basic rule of invading another or another country, or at least another territory. And here, you know, we, somehow we have become the people who are going to decide its future, which only means.
A couple of things. Diplomatic nightmares for.
The US, more funding, more calls possibly for the US to leverage it's you know, debt and other foreign aid relationships in the Arab region effectively blow our political capital for the mess at Israel is now creating. And then in the future we know what they want. Scott Horton brought this up yesterday. Israeli officials are writing in the Wall Street Journal, Hey, you take them, you guys, take these Palestinians, or at the very least you deal with it.
Or previously they had floated European Union and US peacekeepers patrolling the streets of Gaza. And you know, if Kamala Harris is going to come into this with such an amateur level of knowledge from a very basic question on day one, how can we have any trust Crystal is not stumble us directly into a similar incendiary type scenario where she would not even know the backstory enough to agree to something necessarily, which is an absolute non starter for all parties involved.
So I'm honestly really worried about this.
I might be more worried about this than anything else going on, because this is how the stage is set for decades long conflict.
Just like we had to deal with in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Well, here's the thing that I've been very worried about from the beginning. As you know, the Israeli government has made it very clear what their ideal end state is in Net Yahoo.
Now you know it's coming out.
He tasks is a top aid with coming up with a plan to quote unquote finn or you might say, cleanse the population in the Gaza Strip, and are floating plans to Congress that apparently have been received positively by both members of both parties, to push our allies who we give aid to in the region to accept some number of refugees and to you know, basically make good on y Netnyahuu and his government's desires to cleanse the
Gaza Strip at least of some number of Palestinians. And you might say Okay, the US will never allow that, and you know, Egypt is really dramatically opposed to that, and other Arab nations are opposed to it as well. But then you look at the other options that are
on the table. Israel is basically making it with their campaign of total war and absolute destruction that there are almost there are no good alternatives here, and so that's how you end up putting pressure on Egypt, That's how you end up putting pressure on us.
They're using these.
Words already about how this is the humanitarian solution. No, the humanitarian solution is to stop the bombing and negotiate a just peace, including a two state solution, so that the aspirations, legitimate aspirations of the Palestinian people can be recognized. So that's what I'm fearful of here. I mean, we've talked about how the US's planned, you know which Kamala Harris was there talking about, is to beef up the Palestinian authority and so somehow have them take control of
the Gaza strip. And you've compared it, I think, pretty athlete to like Comind Karzai in Afghanistan or Ahamed Chalabi and Iraq. But it's even worse than that, because those people were like sort of unknown, they weren't pre hated Mahmudabas in the Palestinian authority. They are hated, hated because they are it collaborators with the Israeli security regime. I mean, they are part of the occupying force. That is the role they occupy. And they're also corrupt and they don't
protect the Palestinians in the West Bank. So of course the Palestinians in the West Bank don't like them. The Palestinians in the Gaza Strip don't like them.
They have zero.
Legitimacy and they'll have even less legitimacy if they're foisted on Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, you know, brought in in the back of the idea of tanks. You can imagine how well that's going to go over part of that. What was interesting in that Washington Post piece was they actually talk to some Palestinians about how they feel about the PA, how they feel about Hamas, and you know,
I thought that this was worthwhile. They talked to one individual, twenty eight year old man, who said, our current focus is solely on ending the war, while Hamas may be somewhat reckless, the Palestinian authorities riddled with corruption and unfit to govern us, he went on. Hamas is far from ideal, he said, but we are oppressed, and those willing to help us must respect our perspectives and facilitate elections, allowing the Palestinian people to choose their leadership, whether it be
Hamas or others. A mother of two kids from Gaza City thirty two years old, said, both Hamas and the PA are marred by corruption. We endure without support from any party. Current political discussion seems senseless while people in Gaza continue to suffer, not just from bombings but also due to hunger and thirst. And of course Israel says their goal here is to eliminate Hamas. Well, it looks like right now they're headed in the polar opposite direction.
Put this up on the screen from Bloomberg support for Hamas. Now, this is in the West not in Gaza, where it's understandably very difficult to conduct any sort of polling or do any sort of analysis. Journalists have very difficult time even accessing any of the people there. Support for Hamas right now is surging in the West Bank. So the polar opposite of your goal. Your goal is to eradicate Hamas.
You have created more support for Hamas, you have created more members of Hamas, and so it's already been completely completely counterproductive. I did my monologue yesterday this blockbuster report from nine to seven to two magazine that I really recommend people people check out and read in its entirety because they talk about how the tactics of the Israeli military is not really to focus in a targeted way
on Hamas militants or Hamas infrastructure. It's to create a quote shock among the civilian public that will put pressure on them to hopefully turn against Amas. What we've seen throughout history, that never works. When you bomb civilian population.
You know what you.
Do, You create more support for the government in charge. You create a rally around the flag effect. And that's exactly what we're seeing in Israel right now.
Yeah.
I think it's important to understand too about what the future and all that looks look like. And the Hamad support in the West Bank is a very serious problem and indicative of exactly how this all may play out in the future. And it's something that I worry about very very deeply. You know, especially whenever we're looking at the supposed calls to the future, and worse that the US is even embracing the idea that we're the ones
who are supposed to be solely responsible. You flagged this yesterday, Crystal about a particular moment on BBC where the Israeli ambassador to the UK appeared, I think it was on Sky News to be asked around where Palestinian civilians were supposed to flee inside of the Gaza strip and there was an almost immediate fact check for those who are listening.
What you're about to listen to is her saying that Palstin should go to an area, and then the camera panning to that actual area, which basically refutes a lot of what she's saying.
Let's take a listen. There is a river.
There is a place in Gaza called the Muassi. The Muhassi is the place where they all can have shelters. Together with international organizations, we created shelters for the Palestinian people, so you cannot say Israel is not facilitating that together with humanitarianly.
This is where she's talking about, a desolate wasteland of sand dunes next to the Mediterranean Sea. There is no aid in our malwaite. There are no aid agency tents, there are no food kitchens, there is no help here.
The only food I saw there was a dead camel. So anyway, that's what she's saying. Let's go ahead, put this up there on the screen. This was actually after she reiterated this, after an Israeli organization also tweeted out this map quote. The IDEAF calls on Gaza City residents to evacuate south for their protection. All Mawassi is where international humanitarian aid will be provided as needed. So at very least now there is no international humanitarian aid in
that region. And also, I mean, if you just look at that on a map, it seems, I mean, how the hell are you supposed to fit two point two million people inside of what a couple square miles of territory, Gaza already being one of the single most densely populated places on the planet. So anyway, this just highlights the ongoing nightmare that remains there, and more importantly, the nightmare of the future. You may think that this war is the worse, but the more that this continues, far far
worse could come. Let's go ahead and turn now, sorry, go ahead.
Just quickly on Almawasi, and this is going to be you know, even mainstream out looks like Sky News, like Jake Tapper on CNN are racing this question now of like, where are people even supposed to go that area that they designated, Oh, there's you, and there's humanitarian aid there, et cetera.
First of all, obviously that was a lie.
Second of all, that whole area is the size of Lax for two point two million people, the size of lax at airport. To tell you how absolutely preposterous this is. And I think Counterpoints will cover this tomorrow. But Jake Tapper talking to a spokesperson for the Israeli government. CNN had a producer who lost nine family members and he's saying, where were they supposed to go to be safe? So even mainstream outlets are starting to realize the absurdity of this.
And at the same time, you had Matthew Miller, the State Department spokesman yesterday, you know, saying the same thing of oh, people can flee to these you know, un led areas where they can receive aid and they can receive shelter, and un spokespeople came out and said there is nowhere that is safe.
There is nowhere that is safe.
So as horrific as the bombing and the ground invasion of the North is, there's even more of a risk for catastrophes for civilians now because people are even more densely packed in this area that they were hold to flee to in order to be safe. The reality is, of course, there is nowhere to go that is actually safe.
Well, yeah, as you said, we'll continue to track it here. Let's move to a more important story in terms of domestic politics, which is how Americans are feeling about all of this that is happening in front of us. Let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. So this is some pretty extraordinary polling that has just come out from Gallup, and I want to actually spend some time here Americans' views of military Israel's Israel's military
action in Gaza by subgroup. So if you look at it by adults, it's fifty percent approved, forty five percent disapproved. I think, very different than how most people would look in the media. When you start to break it down though, by age, it's extraordinary eighteen to thirty four. In that age group, you have thirty percent approved, sixty seven percent disapproved thirty five to fifty four so gen x who
have fifty approved forty four percent disapproved. And then amongst boomers it's more significantly sick xty three percent approved, thirty four percent disapproved. I do think though, if you look at the breakdown where things really split, it's party id So you've got seventy one percent of Republicans who approve of the Israeli military actions in Gaza, twenty three percent disapproved. Amongst independents, it's almost entirely equally split forty seven percent approved,
forty eight percent disapproved. Amongst Democrats, absolutely extraordinary to see this number thirty six percent approve, sixty three percent disapprove,
And of course a Democrat is currently in the White House. Now, you shouldn't conduct all foreign policy just to pay based upon what your party wants, necessarily, but Chrystal, this does highlight something that we've been trying to bring attention to here, which is not even just young voters per se, but many Democrats who may feel very differently about the Israel conflict, who don't see their views really represented in their in the government, that is, or at least in the party
and the president that they are aligned with in a critical election year, and I thought that that was the biggest red sign I've seen yet for President Joe Biden, on top of all of his other problems. It explains why Trump right now is in the best position to win reelections for any Republican since George W.
Bush in two thousand and four.
And it's not just that they don't see their view reflected in the United States government, and by the way, of course, consistently from the beginning, the overwhelming majority of Americans, some two thirds of Americans have supported a ceasefire.
Not only do they not see those views reflected.
In large numbers outside of a few courageous members of Congress, but they've been treated with absolute contempt smeared as Hamas or terrorist sympathizers, smeared as anti Semites. There's a new resolution up in the House to equate anti Zionism with anti Semitism, which is absolutely preposterous.
Now.
I did see Jerry Nadler and some others speaking out against that. That is good to see, but that is the level of contempt that young people and people of color who That's the other interesting divide here is the two real divides in terms of support for Israel or opposition of what Israel is doing here were generational, so young people, you know, far more disgusted with Israel's campaign and Gaza than older people. And then there's a huge
racial divide as well. And you actually see this represented in the members of Congress who have been for a ceasefire effectively from the beginning. They're overwhelmingly on the younger side, and they're overwhelmingly people of color. There were effectively no white Democrats calling for a seaspire for quite some time.
It took a while.
So those two parts of the Democratic base obviously being very large and very critical, is why then you see this huge party identification divide in terms of support for israel I. Also, don't want to miss the top line here, you know, you might look at it, okay, there's still a little bit of narrow you know, fifty percent support what Israel's up to forty five percent a post that is remarkable from not only the early days of this war, but from how Americans have viewed Israeli actions in the
past for years and years of years. I mean that should be sending shockwaves through DC and I think it is.
I mean, that's why you see these groups like APAC and Democratic Majority for Israel coming out and say we're going to spend all this am We're going to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to try to quash any sort of descent on this issue, because they can see the way that they are losing the messaging and propaganda war with young people, and they are even losing some of their grip on a uniformity of opinion even in the mainstream press. So that's why you see such a freak
out there. But yeah, for Biden, this is a complete disaster. You have far more Republicans supporting effectively his foreign policy than his own party. And you can only imagine, you know, if this was Trump with the same policies as Biden, would have like uniform democratic opposition to what was going
on here. So, especially given the amount of propaganda people are consistently fed from the US press, to see a fifty to fifty overall divide and to see these kind of generational and racial and party splits as well as it's extraordinary, it really is a remarkable.
Term.
It's also important to know that is very different than even conflicts which have now become much more fifty to fifty or even in the case of Ukraine, have switched entirely in terms of how Americans feel about eight If you look at the initial numbers on Ukraine, it was almost ninety ten in terms of people who were supportive of initial military aid. It took over a year, probably eighteen months before reality started to set in, and we
will talk quite a bit about that today. But nonetheless, from an electoral perspective, I think Biden certainly does face a problem.
We flagged this report. Let's go and put this up there on the screen.
Swing state Muslim leaders are now launching a campaign to quote abandon Biden in twenty twenty four. They're specifically trying to leverage the Muslim populations in Michigan, in Minnesota, Arizona, Wisconsin, Florida, and Georgia and Nevada and Pennsylvania, calling on the campaign quote abandon Biden, vowing to ensure Biden is a one
term president. Leaders have run separate pressure campaigns in these respective states, now are banding together to try and get the hashtag trending and to try and to have organization. They say that the bubbling anger amongst Arab and Muslim Americans could threaten Biden's chances of reelection in many of these swing states in twenty twenty four in key voting blocks. And one of the reasons why I think it really matters to break this down is the vote total in
Georgia is only a couple of thousand. In Arizona, we're talking about ten thousand votes. If you combine Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona, you only need thirty forty thousand votes to go in a different direction. And Trump is at back of the White House in twenty twenty. Looks a hell of a
lot different. I don't think yet that'll A lot of political analysis has caught up with just the slimmest margins by which Biden even won the presidency in twenty twenty, and how precarious his chances are even the White House.
Everybody seems to be.
Swaggering, being like, oh, there's no way, or they're not taking it seriously. The DNC, a lot of the Democratic you know, the chattering class. Just yesterday we covered the story that they're anointing Biden the the nominee from the state of Florida. They're not even allowing democracy or any
of that to creep in. So I think they're going to get smacked in the face come October of twenty twenty four, Crystal, when all of this just comes to a head and they're looking at their internals three weeks one month out to election day, and they're gonna be like, oh my god, this is a totally different election than we expected, almost like a Hillary oh shit moment from twenty sixteen that was happening at least in some parts of her campaign, but she didn't want to listen to.
They still believe that this will just blow over that young people, that Arab Americans, that Muslim Americans, when they're face with the alternative of Trump and you know, his foading of a Muslim ban and wanting to ban from the country anyone who is Palestinian or supports the Palestinian cause, that they will suck it up and vote for Joe, that they'll move on, or they'll forget that any of this ever happened. And I just think that they're completely
wrong in that. And you the greatest effort that you see in order to win people over is not to change the policy, is not to try to allay their concerns. It's to effectively brate and shame them for you know, quote unquote like voting to end democracy by not just getting on board with Joe Biden, who is complicit with these Israeli atrocities that we all see unfolding in front of our eyes every single day. So listen, you can
make the lesser evil argument, that's fine. You know, I do think Donald Trump is worse, so may've been very clear about it, but it's always the responsibility of the voters rather than responsibility of Joe Biden, his administration and the party leadership. And frankly, I just don't think it's
going to work this time. These Muslim leaders who are organizing this effort, they were asked about exactly this, and they said that they are not planning to vote for Donald Trump, though they recognize their effort to rally support against Biden could elevate the former president. But they said they're going to continue to have discussions about which candidate to throw their support behind as the primaries rapidly approached.
Quote, We're not supporting Trump.
We're not going to make the same mistake of thinking about President Biden the way we thought we don't have two options. We have many options, and we're going to exercise that. So I think that the Biden administration underestimates this political ground swell of.
Outrage at their peril.
And it is not on the young people, or the Arab American leaders, or the Muslim leaders who are disgusted with this policy.
If Biden loses.
Which he is on track to do, that is one hundred percent going to be on Joe Biden, his team and his policies with regard to Israel and also with regard to the account.
Yes, exactly, well, it will be. I think it'll be very, very multi faceted. And you know, I'll speak up to.
For the non voter.
You don't know, you don't owe anyone your vote. If you it's up to you to decide what's the most important for you. And if you don't want to vote
for somebody, you shouldn't be shamed into doing so. And I've you know, I've long decried lesser of two evils voting and all that, even though we've basically been forced into it now for my entire lifetime in American politics, and I think people who are especially younger, are very stick of it because they can't even remember, or they're only reading about times when people might have promised to actually do something and had a chance of doing it. So anyway, I think it's going to be a very
significant story. We've got independent candidates galore, people like RFK Junior, Cornell West.
And who the hell knows.
I just saw yesterday Joe Lieberman floated that Nikki Haley could run on the no Labels ticket against Trump if she doesn't end up winning the GOP primary.
Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, listen, the more the barrier, as far as as far as you can ask me.
Okay, yeah, let's move on.
All right.
So this was a fascinating report that really caught our attention.
Put this up on the screen.
This right up from Harets of an analysis of stop trading.
Before October seventh.
Now, their headline here is did Hamas make millions betting against Israeli shares before the October seventh massacre? Giant gambles against Israel and the markets in Tel Avivan Wall Street days before Hamas's attack made billions. Somebody seems to have known about the plan in advance. Now let me give you some of the details here. So first of all, they're sort of floating that. Obviously Hamas knew the attack was coming, so perhaps they were the ones that profited here.
But we don't actually have any idea who it was that was placing these bets. We just know from this these researchers analysis that massive bets were placed against Israel, so short selling here in the days before October seventh, and it was on a scale that you know, can't be explained effectively by you know, chance or the random
fluctuations of the market. So let me read you a little bit of this and you can see up on the screen how remarkable the amount of short selling on October seventh versus other times were here, which is pretty wild. And if you're confused, they have you know, this is in Israel and other countries, they do the dates in the reverse order, so two ten is actually ten two when we're thinking about it, anyway.
It's the wrong order, let's be clear. Anyway.
Anyway, moving forward, so they were short selling Israeli shares, betting they will fall in advance of October seventh, far exceeding the short selling during numerous other periods of crisis. This is according to a paper titled Trading on tear. They were betting on this ETF that tracks Israeli shares in New York, so they're basically betting against Israeli shares without buying any Just to explain the concept of short selling for people who aren't, you know, super into this
kind of stuff. To explain how unusual the gamble against Israel was. They check the volume of short transactions in this ETF from thousand and nine to twenty twenty three, so quite a long period of time during which Israel experienced plenty of crises. There were three thousand, five hundred and seventy trading days during that period. The volume of shorts on October second was in the top ninety ninth percentile. The short ratio for eis was also extraordinary on October seventh.
It is extremely unlikely that the volume of short selling occurred by random chance. They also looked at other periods of crisis, including the recession following the two thousand and eight financial crisis, the twenty fourteen Israel Gaza war, the COVID nineteen pandemic, and nothing compared to the level of short selling that happened on October seventh and during other days in advance of October seventh, and they also note
that this was during the Secode Jewish holiday. There was no expectation of anything crazy going on, so somebody knew something in advance and placed some really big that's here that paid off to the tune of billions.
Who it was, we have no idea.
I have no idea, and we don't even know if it's a single individual.
As you said, the Haretz report speculated it could be Hamas, It could be a variety of actors. It could be people who military intelligence officials, possibly who had been trying to warn the government nobody was listening, and then maybe they leaked out the word there. It could be Iranian back to actors, people like Iran and North Korea have done things like this in the past with regards to
cryptocurrency and others. It could be you know, anything. It really it's basically the plot of Casino Royales, or at least part of it for those who have watched that Bond movie, which is why this is so intriguing. All of it traces back to this academic paper, which is pretty solid. I went and read through most of it. We can go ahead and put this up there on the screen. They're the ones who provided that chart to Haretz.
But if you go and you read through it, they say, we identify increases in short selling before the attack, and a dozens of Israeli companies traded in Tel Aviv, one company alone four point four to three million new share over September fourteenth to October five, yielding profits of millions of dollars on additional short selling for one out of hundreds of securities that were traded on the Tel Aviv
stock exchange. They also have some pretty interesting stuff here about the exact timing of the report and just how good the intel the trader was. Previously, it had been reported from the Times of Israel Hamas had initially planned the cross border onslaught for the eve of Passover, but canceled the attack after Israel had raised the alert level. Military intelligence had caught the early signs of an attack on Passover the year fell on April five and raised
the alert. However, similar levels of trading were not seen within that So whoever knew this knew not only to not trade short you know, behead of Passover, they knew that the plans were ironclad, were set in stone, that it was almost one hundred percent that was going to happen, and the evidence I mean is basically incontrovertible if you
look at this statistically. One thing they also point out or some of the shortfalls in US security law whenever you're actually trying to even get down to the bottom. I know that there's been a lot of speculation in the past about nine to eleven and possible insider knowledge and all of that, but they talk about the so called trading on terror phenomenon and how it has materialized
in the past. But at the very least, if some of this or even any of this touch US securities markets, they need to do a pretty big investigation here, hopefully our own securities regulators, just to name them. If it's Hamas, if it's Iran, if it's you know, into some broken cider official or any of that. This is outrageous because it not only shows, you know, profiting from death. I believe there's also a billion subplot to something like this, which is just the purest type of evil, but.
It shows that somebody was so sure that this.
Was going to happen they were able to place bets that reaped them extraordinary profits. But with also some pretty extraordinary risk if it was a normal type of bet crystal.
Yeah, that's exactly right.
That's really important to emphasize that they must have had a very high level of confidence to place this type of that because when you're you know, when you're shorting an ETF like this, I mean, your exposure is absolutely massive. Your potential for profit is huge, but your potential for catastrophic losses is also really huge. So there was certainly a level of confidence going into these trades, manifested by
their size and by the level of the exposure. Now you make a great point, Sager, which is there isn't really any law in the US, at least against profiting off war profiting off of terror attacks, which is disgusting and we could talk about that another day, but there are laws that prohibit the finance of terrorism. So if it was in fact Hamas or Hamas related, or even Iranian related, the way that we will know is there
is some sort of an investigation. If there's no investigation, then you can feel pretty confident then it was probably one of our friends rather than one of our foes. Or if we never hear about the investigation, you can probably be pretty confident it was one of our friends versus one of our foes.
I genuinely have no idea.
I'm not speculating here whatsoever in either direction, but it is worth noting. Part of the context here is, of course, we've now learned that the Israeli government had this plan in great detail of what Hamas was planning for October seventh, more than a year before these atrocities were perpetrated. So there were people in the government who had this plan. Now they waved it off and say, oh, we don't think that they have this is just aspirational. We don't
think they have these capabilities, et cetera. And you also had this group of intelligence analyst spotters who were looking into the Gaza Strip.
We're basically, you know, spying.
And using the high tech cameras, so look at the Gaza Strip and watching Hamas training for exactly what is laid out in this document and sounding the alarm as clearly as they possibly could. Say No, no, this isn't aspirational. They're training for this. We are watching them in real time train for this. You need to take this seriously or this is going to be horrific. And of course it was the same you know, wave them off. No, no, they can't do that. They just they want to We've
got it under control. Don't worry about it, effectively like you're being hysterical.
Calm down. So this information was out there.
There's also indications that you know, some other regional states. I believe it wasn't an Egypt that said that they also had some intel about the planet. Had warmed warned the net Yahoo government as well. So there were people and governments in the region that had gathered some intel about this. So that raises the possibility of any variety of actors who potentially could have looked at this and said, you know what, I don't think that they're faking here.
I don't think this is aspirational. I think this is real, and I'm willing to put my money where the bet is in profit off of this horror, which is just you know, disgusting.
Good point. It could have been in the Turks, could have been the Egyptians. You know, a hell of a
lot of people knew about this attack. Could be Amas. Look, I want an investigation because this is outrageous, and especially if any US citizen or any other type of thing we're involved in US security regulators absolutely should do one into this and just let the public know because that nine to eleven one is one of the most enduring parts of the nine to eleven conspiracy that goes back around short selling, allegedly going on airline stocks and things
like that. It's I think it quite literally inspired the plot for Casino Royale.
I'm not sure.
I haven't read the book, but it was enough so that it remained in the culture that it was a mainstay, you know, behind cable news before the age, or at least in the very early days of the Internet. And this certainly is already making the round, so it'd be better off we all had an explanation.
Let's move on to the next one.
This is a story I've been really wanting to and spend some time on, absolutely tragic debts of despair skyrocketing here in the United States. We're going to start off one where you can either be glass half full or glass half empty.
Let's go and put this up there.
I'm gonna choose empty just because of the sheer scale of what's happening. This is about new CDC life expectancy data, which shows a rebound from twenty twenty. Now, at a glance, you might think that that's good. A decline in US life expectancy from coronavirus eased in twenty twenty two, and that was the majority of the headlines that was released, including by the CDC. What they failed to mention is that the country remains quote well behind the overall peak
of like life expectancy in twenty fourteen. But even more importantly, Crystal, I went through and I reviewed the data. Our life expectancy data is now on par with two thousand and one.
So let that sink in.
We have had a twenty year setback now and we continue honor decline of life expectancy. Twenty twenty and twenty twenty one obviously were extraordinary. They had the lowest, the biggest drop in life expectancy not seen since World War One here in the US. Some of that was attributable to COVID, But if you read and you actually get into the data, there are two glaring reasons why life expectancy has been on a general decline since twenty fourteen.
It is chronic illness, drug overdose, and suicide. Chronic illness being one of the number one killers here in the United States drug overdose already surpassing car accidents, and the other is one of the number one cause of death for people who are young. And then the suicide rate also going sky high. And to that end, we actually have the suicide data which is really truly heartbreaking whenever
you break it down. US suicides per one hundred thousand actually went up to the highest per capita rate since nineteen forty one. The actual number of suicides has hit a record high. So there are two important parts of that. The record high number is obviously just devastating. You know, you're losing more than all nearly fifty thousand people in the United States to suicide just in twenty twenty two.
But I actually thought that per capita number was most important and a lot of people might be asking what the hell was happening in nineteen forty one.
I went back and I.
Pulled the suicide data crystal. Unfortunately, it was the tail end effects of the Great Depression. Suicide is actually peaked
here in the United States in nineteen thirty seven. Per capita, Absolutely untold numbers of people per capita were killing themselves at that time simply because they couldn't feed their families from despair and more, and we are seeing a recreation of that the tail end now effect of nineteen forty one for the per capita rate on suicide, chronic illness, drug overdose, the deaths of despair has peaked now in twenty twenty two. That's eight years now into the decline.
I mean, and this to me is the most important story in the US and something Andrew Yang, to his credit, always used to talk about during during his twenty twenty run. I always loved when we brought that ups. The most basic metric of how society is doing are people living or dying?
In terms of the suicide numbers. What jumps out here is, you know, there's been a really alarming increase in young people committing suicide, and whatever interventions have been taken, I think also just you know, teenagers being back in school and having their social social networks back intact has probably been useful there as well. Those numbers have actually gone down, So that's encouraging. So that tells you that there are things we could.
Do about it.
On the other side, you know what is absolutely heart wrenching is older people and especially old men, are killing themselves at rates that we have just almost never seen before. And it's horrific and heartbreaking to think about what leads you to that place, you know, is it financial stress? Is it health stress? Is it feeling that you're a burden on people? Is it our broken elder care system where there are no good solutions for our elders, you know,
in the latter years of their life. And you're right, Soccer, I mean, this is a horrifying indictment of our entire society, both on the suicide rate and also on life expectancy. You know, if you dig into some of those numbers on life expectancy, there were a few things that I wanted to point out. First of all, they have it broken down by racial category, and the decline among American Indians or Native Americans over this period, you just you
can't even wrap your head around it. They suffered a loss of almost four years in life expectancy to sixty eight years. Black people suffered the second largest life expectancy setback of two years. Hispanics suffered an almost two year life expectancy drop.
And these numbers are just you know, unconutionable. Now.
COVID, of course, played a huge role in this story. There was no other wealthy country that experienced so high a rate of death per capita from COVID as ours. But that is not disconnected from the other issues that they point out here, including the chronic health conditions, which are really underappreciated as one of the major reasons that we've seen this fall in life expectancy. To put it plainly, our healthcare system is total shit. You know, we have
it's dramatically expensive. You still have so many people who are either uninsured or underinsured who can't go to the doctor when they're sick. Then you have, on top of that, you know, the subsidation of like the worst type of foods, you know, and like the type of poison that we're just pumping into our people day in and day out. We have these incredibly sedentary lifestyles, and you add this all in and you just see a calamity in terms of our basic health and in terms of our life expectancy.
So even with you know, COVID, it's it's certainly not gone, but you know, more or less in the rear view mirror, you can see the effects of these long term trends in decline in our basic health persisting We're also the only wealthy nation that doesn't have some sort of universal healthcare system, and I think that is a huge part of the story as well, which by the way, doesn't get a mention in the Washington Post article.
Healthcare is a huge part of the story. Chronic illness is number one by state. This also is just so obvious whenever it bears out the lowest life expectancy in the US to state of Mississippi, unexpectedly also as the highest obesity rate and also a very high poverty rate.
Number two West Virginia. Same thing. You've got tons of.
Obesity, you've got a huge drug problem, you have an immense amount of poverty. Number three was Louisiana, then Alabama, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, South Carolina. All of the things that jump out from there is that with as if you have a lack of lack of access to healthcare, you have poverty, you have chronic illness, and you have extraordinarily high rates of obesity.
And that's what you also brought up.
One of the reasons the US suffered more than any of the developed country on the world because we're the fattest developed country on Earth, and you know, this is one of those where you have underlying health conditions, you're extraordinarily unhealthy, you have lack of access to healthcare, and it's much easier for a relatively minor illness like COVID to push somebody who is hanging on by a thread.
Drug overdose is also a massive part of this, and I don't want to move past it as well, because drug overdose is fentanyl overdose specifically accounted for tens of thousands of debts in the United States just last year in twenty twenty two. The official numbers not yet clear, but it does come through in the life expectancy number.
So while it's good that we've made strides and we've slightly reduced the suicide rate for young people, the elder one there, we shouldn't move past as well because it actually was especially highest and this is not surprising amongst older men over the age of seventy five, who were either suffering from loneliness or a health condition. And the thing is too, is this is a North American phenomenon.
I don't know if anybody is tracking. There's a big debate right now in Canada over assisted suicide, but one.
Whether it should be legal or not.
I have complicated feelings about the matter, and it's probably a subject for another day. What is not deniable is that huge numbers of Canadians are taking advantage of this, and anytime people are taking advantage of a program to voluntarily end their life through the state, whether you think that should be allowed or not, that is extraordinarily grim. So I think some of this is downstream from like you know, metaphysical I guess, for lack of a better word, conditions.
But a lot of it is a crisis internally and a structure of the US.
But I don't know, I can't help but look at that.
You got the highest suicide rate since World War Two and the Great Depression, and this, like you know, floated into the ether. I actually don't know a single major news outlet that talked about it in a cable format or in a discussion format like what we're doing here?
I looked at it, Yeah, yeah, well, and you know, it ties into not good everything's about politics. But all this debate online of like, oh, why are people saying things aren't going well? We aren't they happy with the Joe Biden economy? And then you look at these metrics of just like the most basic measure of well being,
and it's a catastrophe. So, you know, how can you look at those numbers and then you know, imagine that people are going to think that things are going well and we're on the right track in the society's on the up and up.
It's really tragic.
At the same time, an extraordinary development here in Washington. Even uber hawk Lindsey Graham says he's done funding Ukraine with the blank check unless it comes with a border security package.
Stunning.
I guess everybody involved here's what you had to say.
I think their votes for Israel apart from the package. Republicans overwhelming support Israel, so do most Democrats. Republicans are divided on Ukraine. Republicans are one hundred percent behind strong border security. If you want aid to Ukraine, we need to control our southern border. I will not vote for any aid until we secure our own border, reform, asylum, reform.
Parole, It's possible to do.
Democrats don't want to do it, Pulgans want to do it. I'm not helping Ukraine into weigh up ourselves.
So we are not helping Ukraine until we help ourselves. Where has this man been all my life? But I can crystal offer some inside reporting from people that I have spoken to on Capitol Hill who are involved in this. A lot of this is a feint from Lindsay Graham and from others. They have come to terms with the fact that Ukraine is dead on its own in terms
of just aid going through sixty one billion dollars. So what they have done is kind of co opted this America First framework or whatever by trying to shoehorn a border security package that would be acceptable to the House Republicans, at least in rhetoric. So Lindsay Graham is trying to telegraph no, no, no, guys, I'm on your side.
As these negotiations continue.
Now, from what I understand, those negotiations are actually not going well at all. You had multiple of the sides who are nitpicking against each other, and these negotiations or at least talks whatever continue on Capitol Hill. But I think, I think the rhetoric itself, when even Lindsey is forced to saying something like that, you've got to know that what is a phrase like the goose is cooked or or.
Something like that, well, not only that, but you increasingly have administration officials admitting things aren't going well, admitting that we need to push for some sort of resolution of this conflict. You even have you know, officials within Selensky's government admitting they're out of stalemate, admitting things.
Are not going well.
Now they're not saying, okay, well, let's come to some sort of a negotiated settlement of this. And by the way, it's a real question whether that's even on the table at this point, because, as we've discussed before, if you're Russia, you feel like you're winning, why do you feel like you want to bargain or negotiate at this point.
The time when we should have done that was.
Back when there were peace talks at the beginning of the war that we of course short circuited and said we don't want even if it is a real possibility. And listen, you never know until the thing is done and dusted. But we now have all of these admissions that many of the key details had been resolved, and we and the UK were the major roadblocks to getting
that done. In Ukraine was of course in a much better and stronger negotiating position at that point, because they had outperformed in the early days of the war, and because Russia looked like they were in you know, total chaos disarray, they had dramatically underperformed.
It was humiliating.
There were a lot of questions about what was going to happen with their economy. There was some descent and domestic unrest within Russia itself.
So you know, that ship has sailed.
But now administration officials and even people like Lindsay Graham floating the end of this conflict is pretty extuordinary.
The last thing I'll say, in terms.
Of this package that is supposed to be border security, Israel and Ukraine, at this point, all three pieces of that are very controversial. I mean the border security piece, you know what Democrats are going to accept there and what everybody can agree on that's of course always controversial. Ukraine has become extremely controversial, certainly within the Republican Party, but also, as I said, even Democrats now acknowledging there's you know, we've got to have some kind of end
in sight here. And then on the Israeli AID, we've covered how there are increasing discussions and not just from Ernie Sanderson AOC, but from you know, sort of normal democratic, mainstream traditional members of the Caucus who are saying, hey, maybe we need to condition aid to Israel as well. So every single piece of that package has become extraordinarily controversial.
That is an excellent point.
And I also want to take an opportunity to say this, This is why I hate bundling all these things together, and it is each one of these are absurd on his face. If you support Israel, why would you want to have Israel funding tied to Ukraine? If you support Ukraine, or let's say you support a border security package, I definitely support a hell of a lot of reforms for the US border. Why should the US border policy, security and funding be subject to literally funding a foreign war?
Which one of these should be debated and presented on its face. Now, I'm not naive, and I know that's not the way that it works. But the reason that they do it is so the people like Lindsay who have hidden agendas and all these other Republicans on Capitol Hill who want to defy the will of their voters who don't support more funding for Ukraine can hide behind it and dangle some shimmery package about some fake border
thing now. I have no idea if it we'll even materialize, or if it has any sort of chance of passing the House of Representatives. But do not think that the fight over Ukraine funding is dead at all. And that really brings us to what I wanted to spend some time on here, which is just a shocking and heartbreaking report about US policy towards Ukraine. Let's go and put
this up there on the screen. These were two key findings from a month's long investigation into the failure of the Ukrainian counter offensive, and I put them up side by side because they're two separate stories. The first was about US military planning. I want to let some of this sink in. The United States held quote eight tabletop ex sizes at a certain point to try and game out what the Ukrainians should do. They advocated focused assaults
by the Ukrainians amongst a southern axis. They encouraged them to basically take all of the weapons material in them and then run into fortified Russian positions at the hope of a breakthrough. They did this despite tons of intelligence that they were being told. The United States military was being told the chances of the Ukrainian breakthrough in these
types of conditions not going to happen. So the US itself basically encouraged an entire generation of Ukrainian young men to run into their debts in this counter offensive and it didn't even work. So we are entire we are very much to blame in this. But there's another side of this coin too. The Ukrainian military leadership is arrogant
and largely incompetent. Something that we talked about endlessly here on the show was the defense of Bachmut, about how they were blowing billions of dollars of AMMO and artillery and all these other things to eventually fight a battle that they would always go to lose. And it turns out that the US military was like, hey, you probably should conserve some of that fear counter offensive.
They were said, oh, no, we know best.
Then, even though we provided them with all these leopards and all these other Western you know, this Western military equipment that they had asked for, is that much of it was destroyed in a single battle, and that they were incompetently employing it. They did not listen to the US military advisors. They were treated to Soviet tactics. Much of the troops that they had seventy percent of them
had never seen combat before. They were totally green. The Western military training that they tried to do over the course of a year and in some cases a summer for many of these troops, it's a total failure. I mean, how many times do we have to learn the lesson? From Vietnam to Iraq, to Afghanistan to the Syrian what was the good the good militias or whatever they were called, the good rebels, even Korea to a certain extent, We cannot competently train and equip a foreign military. It just
doesn't work. And yet we pour billions and billions and billions and billions of dollars into this end and I just want to end on this so and I'm trying aptly to place the blame on the hands of the military who really encourage a lot of these guys to just run into their death. So, in some respects I sympathize with those people who were like, oh, we should have given Ukraine long range missiles, airpower and all of this. But what comes through on the Ukrainian side is a
couple of things. Number One, these people are not trustworthy. They're incredibly arrogant. They absolutely would have used it to attack Russia, and we have intercepts, spying, leaked records and all of that that confirms it. So it was irresponsible on our part to do so. Number Two, they were incompetent from the get go, and we're never going to
succeed in this counter offensive. And then really three is that at this point, when you combine the worst of all worlds of our policy, you have hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian young men who are either dead or maimed for the rest of their life and are out of the fight.
We brought people the recruitment.
News last time about how the average age of the Ukrainian fighting mail right now is forty three years old. You know, Crystal, there are six hundred thousand Ukrainian fighting aged males who have fled the country.
They don't want to fight.
Morale is at an all time low at this point, they're conscripting anybody that can even move, even with prior medical dischargement.
I mean, as I've.
Said previously, this is what it looks like in the last days of resistance. Now I don't know how much longer they can hold on defensive. Is obviously a better position to be in. But this is a horrible situation for Ukraine, and the US really did hang them. We bled them dry, We encourage them not to take a peace deal. We bled them for you know, to what is it to degrade the Russian military, even though by many respects we've sharpened them to be more combat effective
than they've ever been before. We taught them all these new lessons about next generation combat and at this point, you know, Jake Sullivan, I'll just send on this. He said yesterday, anybody who doesn't vote for the sixty one billion dollars package to Ukraine is a vote for Putin.
That's basically what he said. But I would put it the other way. If you vote for sixty one billion dollars for Ukraine.
You are voting to bleed the last able bodied Ukrainian men debt dry. You're voting to bleed them dry for maybe a few square miles of territory in the hopes of reaching peace deal that was on the.
Table in April twenty twenty two. How is that a defensible policy. It's not.
It's absolutely not.
It truly sickens me the way that we have used Ukraine and used Ukrainian military age fighting men in particular as pawns in our effectively imperial game, you know, hoping we can degrade Russia, hoping we can give Russia a bloody nose. It sickens me, It truly disgusts me, because you are right. We hung these people out to dry. And here's the other piece that I want people to really take in. Think of how you have been lied
to during this conflict. Lied to about the possibility of a peace deal, lied to about you know, the nord Stream pipeline as one example, but in particular from this report, lied to about who really was in charge here. It has always been the US who's been governing the time, manner and direction of the fighting. We have always had
a say in the direction of this war. And instead Biden and other officials always, oh, it's you know nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine, and it's all on them and we're just trying to help them.
Bull shit.
It has always been a complete lie. The other thing that I'll say about this is, Okay, well, why are these things coming out now? And you know, it's not that the reporting couldn't have been done earlier, et cetera.
Et cetera.
But you now have this very clear realization that this thing has gone completely sideways, and so you've effectively got US officials and you Krainian officials trying to you know,
trying to blame shift. You know, the US officials are leaking about how it is the Ukrainian's fault and they're incompetent and we told them what to do and they didn't listen, etc. And the Ukrainians leaking that, no, they don't understand the reality of the war that we're fighting, and they hung us ound to dry and we didn't have the equipment we needed. That's what's going on here.
I mean, you see this all the time. You know, I sort of hate sports analogies, but you see this too, when when the team starts losing, everybody starts sniping at each other. Everybody starts blaming each other. You see it in political campaigns. Just go and look at what's happening in the Ronda Santis campaign right now. This one blaming the other one and this one getting fired and this is the problem with the campaign.
No, that's the problem with the campaign.
That's the stage we're at right now in the Ukraine War is everyone just trying to leak to the press to set the narrative of what the hell actually went wrong here, And so that's increasingly why you see these reports that give you some insight into what was going on behind the scenes.
That's why these are coming out right now.
Yes, and the all as you.
Let's spend some time on that about the lying and also about the reporting. This was evident from day one. I was saying in here on Bakmut you can roll the tape. We're saying it six months ago. And it's funny all of the professional military analysts were lying to our face.
Now. I don't speak ill of former employers.
And of people who helped me out in the past, but there are a lot of organizations who are out there who were absolutely spinning things with all of these maps and all of these releases and leaking to the New York Times, people of real prestige, with real military experience, who went all over TV, the pundit generals, all these
former NATO commanders, YUKAM commanders, all this stuff bs. Everything they said was a lie, and all of it was a lie perpetrator to just continue the money flowing into Ukraine, and the thing is too about the money is if it would actually make a difference.
I think that there is a little more of a debate on this.
I would still be against it. But we have their own admission. They are stealing everything not nailed to the floor.
Are they are?
They're the most one of the most corrupt nations in the entire world. How many untold billions of dollars have been stolen from this aid We don't even have an inspector general. We'll never find out. At least we found out some of it. In Afghanistan, the troops on the front line, according to many Western reporters, even joke about how they are not getting sub they are getting suboptimal supplies because so much corruption has leaked down to them.
They're the ones who are fighting. They're the ones who are dying. Six hundred thousand them don't even want to fight. What is the point of continuing all of this? And the really the worst part is is that previously Russia might have negotiated, but now since the West has basically moved on from Ukraine, why would you negotiate.
I've said this before too.
If I'm Russia, I got a hardened economy, I got industry spinning up. We Russia is pumping out more ammunition than all of NATO combined. As I've said before, we did them a favor. We sharpened their military, we got rid of they're useless initial generals. They've got their tactics down pretty well. They're in a well hardened defense battle position. They've got missiles that they're pumping out. They've got these
new drones and other things that they're experimenting with. With the help of the North Koreans and of the Iranians, they're reigning terror down on Ukraine. Ukraine is in a far far worse position for its survival than it has been really since the beginning and early days of the war. Nobody is more to blame, I think, here than Washington. So congratulations to all of the people who supported this grift and this tragedy, I think from the very beginning, because most of it could have been avoided.
And it really is just it's sickening. It really is sickening.
Whenever it does, when it does eventually come to end, we'll see the final toll.
That's exactly right, All of this time and money spent for what what has been accomplished here nothing, just lives lost, destruction. For Ukraine to be in a worse position than they were at the beginning of the we it's I mean, it is just a catastrophic failure. It's a humiliation, it is a moral rot. It is disgusting what has unfolded the last uh. This is kind of a side note, but it just it piqued my interest and I wanted
to note it. From one of the Washington Post reports, they talked about the centrality of these very inexpensive drones, which was also something that Hamas used to great effect in their Horse on October seventh, But they said Russia is deploying fleets of these handbuilt attack drones. Ukraine is deploying them as well. They cost less than one thousand dollars each and can disable a multi million dollar tank.
I think that is going to be you know, putting this particular conflict aside, But as we look forward to the future of conflict and war fighting and guerrilla war fighting, et cetera, some of these technological advances are you know, really terrifying for our troops abroad for what these conflicts are going to look like in terms of evening the blaying field here, and I think the drones and the use of them very inexpensive, effectively off the shelf at
this point is kind of the bleeding edge of some of this leveling of the technological blaying field.
There's a lot to be said about that, because for years there was something in military speak called the revolution in military affairs. The Gulf War showed everybody it's Shakana campaign of two thousand and three. Everyone's like warfare has changed forever. Technology has changed the game. Except in the biggest war since World War Two, it looks more like nineteen fourteen than any book I've ever read about supposed
drone warfare and all of that in twenty twenty five. Instead, it seems a technology and asymmetric warfare has flattened the battlefield and reverted tactics back to historical levels than any sort of fifth generation fighter aircraft that was promising that no American soldier ever had to be put in harm's way.
So there's a ton of military lessons on this.
I'm sure there are a lot of geeks at West Point and all these others who are studying it, but a lot of them are grim lessons for the billions of dollars that we've poured into Lockheed Raytheon and all these other people in the hope of keeping us safe.
Why don't we move on.
Indeed, we'll save that, We'll save a deeper conversation on that for another day. So State Department spokesperson Matt Miller was at the podium yesterday and he started discussing why the ceasefire broke down and why he alleges that some of the women who are being held hostage by Hamas were not ultimately released. And he says this thing, which apparently was pure conjecture, that it seems maybe they weren't released because Hamas doesn't want them to come out and
say what they were subjected to. And in the very same press briefing, he is forced to admit that he just made this up and actually has no evidence for these, you know, pretty inflammatory and extraordinary claims that he just casually put out there. Let's take a listen to his original comments and also the pushback that he received, the admission he had to make.
They continue to hold women hostages, the fact that they continued to hold children hostages, the fact that it seems one of the reasons they don't want to turn women over that they've been holding hostage. And the reason this pause fell apart is they don't way those women to be able to talk about what happened to them during their time in custody.
The fact that it seems why is not dropping on your or well do you know? Do you do? You have very good reason to believe evidence to believe that AMAS is deliberately continuing to hold on to female hostages because they're concerned that they will speak about atrocities that were that they were subjected.
So I will accept the edit not fact seems is a better way to say it. But let me let me answer than the answer the question. I won't say fact because I don't know it for a fa Okay, a number of people believe I just me. Let me just say a people in the US government. Let me let me just finish my answer. We have seen Hamas commit all kinds of atrocities.
I know all.
I am not suggesting that these things did not happen, and I am not suggesting that Matt is. I just want a reason for not releasing the remaining female hostages is one.
I just I just want to be very sensitive in my language.
Any evidence to suggest that that is what what it is, or is it.
Just I want to be very sensitive in my language when talking about people that continue to be held hostage, that have UH families on the outside. I will so I will. What I will say is we know Hamas has committed atrocities. You know they hold they continue to hold women. They were going to release these women and then suddenly at the last point renegged on the deal. And we're never able to provide a credible reason why we hope that they will change their mind and release as women.
But you don't know though, for certain, that that the or a reason for them renegging on the deal and not releasing them is because they're worried about them.
Speaking about I'm not able to speak with the deitive assessment that that is the case.
So this was pure conjecture, just floated And let's be clear what he's honestly floating here. He's basically implying that these women are raped, they were raped by Hamas, and that's why they're being held back because Hamas doesn't want them to come out and.
Tell the world what happened.
He floats this and has to admit that there's no evidence to back it up. Now that's not before though, there are you know, the original comments saying it seems this is what's happened, picked up by any number of members of the press, and you know, tweeted to the government and spread like wildfire and the Israeli government before he then has to walk it back. And this is
disgraceful on any number of levels. I mean, first of all, there should be some expectation that US government officials when they say something from the podium like that, that it is based in some sort of evidence, fact and reality, not just speculating for the sake of speculating. So that's number one. Number two, and Matt Miller himself sort of
alludes to this. Imagine you're one of the families of these women and you hear a US government official in flying that your mom, your sister, your aunt, your grandma has been raped and that's why she's being still held by Hamas.
Imagine that.
Just imagine that, and then he has to admit, no, I actually I just made that up effectively. It's disgusting, and you can never imagine them doing this in the other direction of just sort of casually well maybe the IDF rape, this woman.
Do I have any proof?
Not I have any proof, but I'm just gonna go ahead and say it from the podium a State Department spokesperson, that's the key.
Look, I mean, they're not maybe we wouldn't put it past them, luckily.
And this is the other thing. It's almost like everyone wants this to be true.
Thank God, so far, no female hostage yet as far as I understand it has reported being rape.
Thank god for that.
Having Crystal, you and I sat here with the brother of one of those hostages who, thank god, was released and seems at least she has not reported anything as such. If she does, will absolutely update people here on this show. Now, there's a lot of you know, investigation into some of the things and the claims and all of that haven't made and when it bears out what bears out to be true is very important, but it's also important not to just wildly speculate from the podium for the exact
reasons that you said. And if that was the case, then the US government should say, based on intelligence assessment, we believe that this is why. I mean, that's a shocking story in its own right. But then for them to on the very first question. Matt Lee, by the way, works to the Associated Press. He is one of the best reporters in all of Washington. He sees through the bs, he cuts through every administration right and left, and he
knows things like the back of his hand. And I'm very glad that he had that follow up also too, that the families of those who are held could see that, because the inverse of if that was true, then you should really be resigned to, oh my god, these people never may be released. And if it's not true, then you can say and maintain some hope that a future
sees fire's future negotiation or something like that could materialize. Anyway, I think it was absolutely outrageous and irresponsible the way that he handled that, because, as you said, you know, it was immediately I saw it spread by the Israeli government and others, and that's just the worst thing you can imagine if you're one of the families of the people who are being harpsed, and all we want is for those people to come home, and I hope that
they're being treated, you know, a humane fashion.
You know, can't guarantee or anything.
Like that, but yeah, I thought it was crazy, absolutely crazy that he just spread.
That, yeah, one hundred percent.
And here's the other thing is when you you know, as that reporter did raise questions about, well, do you have any evidence of this? I mean, the risk is you end up looking like you're some sort of rape or hums apologists, when in reality, there is plenty of good reason to doubt what this government has said during this time period. You know, Joe Biden had to apologize because he, you know, had had downplayed the number of
civilian debts and doubted the civilian death toll. He has repeated some claims about the specifics of the atrocities which were real on October seventh, but some of the specifics of the claims he played up turned out to be completely untrue. The net and Yahoo government certainly has been spreading multiple falsehoods. And this is not according to me
crystal Ball. This is according to Aretz, leading Israeli newspaper that did an investigation into some of the most horrifying claims that were being made about the atrocities on October seventh, and the gruesome nature of which have been used to justify the gruesome assault that is occurring right now on Gaza. Put this up on the screen from Haratz. I'll go through a few of these. I recommend you read this entire report, which is in English so it's easily accessible.
The headline here is the Hamas massacre led to the spread of horror stories, not all of which happened in reality.
The truth is.
Hard enough, which I would just echo listen, not denying that there were horrors committed by Hamas on October seventh. But some of these stories turned out to be completely baseless. One of the most I guess infamous at this point is the story about forty babies being murdered. In some cases they were described as beheaded. That report was quoted on social media, often referenced as quote dozens of the headed babies. Sometimes it was burnt babies, sometimes it was
hanged babies. The Foreign Ministry published an account from a colonel from the Home Front Command who said that in one house he found the bodies of eight burnt babies. You also had the Prime Minister Office's Twitter account spreading this similar claims about the murder of a large number of infants, including graphic pictures that they said that net Nyaho showed to Tony Blinken. Well, it turns out that heels and I hate to use word only, but there
was one baby who was killed during these horrors. Now that's obviously one baby too many that was killed here. But the reports of forty babies beheaded, burnt babies, baby in the oven, baby on the clothes lines, et cetera, et cetera. None of these turned out to be true. The truth of what happened on October seventh is horrific enough, but these, you know, intentional embellishments and gruesome stories again are used to sort of justify the response in the
atrosties here. But that's far from all. There was also claims by net Yahu that there were quote dozens of children that Hamas tied them up, burned them, and executed them. This also on every level, both in terms of the numbers of children who were killed by Hamas on that day and also the nature and manner that they were killed. None of this was accurate whatsoever. There was a horrific story about a pregnant woman who was whose baby was cut out of her and then stabbed. This also turns
out not to be true. And then the last one that I'll mention here, and there were a number of others in this Harat story that were debunked as well. But the Prime Minister's wife, Sarah Neett Yahoo, wrote a letter to our First Lady, Jill Biden. She wrote that a woman who was taken hostage was in her ninth month of pregnancy when she was abducted, and that she gave birth while she was being held hostage. The woman that they claimed was pregnant was not pregnant. She has
now been released. She did not have a baby. She was not pregnant at any point. So again, this lie was spread from the first Lady of Israel to the first Lady of the United States. And you know, you feel horrible talking about these things because they make you feel like you're downplaying what happened on October seven. I'm not downplaying what happened on October seventh, but it's important that there'll be some fealty to truth, accuracy, and reality
in the events that unfolded on that day. And now you have both the Net and Yahoo government and our own government caught in multiple lives. So yes, of course, people have every right at this point to not take what these government officials are saying at face value, to demand evidence for every single claim that is being made here from their podium, our podium, Matt Miller, Joe Biden, or anyone else in between.
Yeah, as you said, small small lies beget big lies. It calls into question credibility, and many lies are often spread in order to inflame emotional tensions to a point where you can justify a different policy. This is the time hon or tradition. You can look no past our WMD lie whenever it came to Iraq, just for a
more potent example. But these things are fastt of warfare from the history, you know, going all the way back to whenever you have recorded his about what people would say about what others have done, and propaganda and for
used explicitly for certain purposes. And I just think the number one message that we've been trying to spread here is you better be careful don't fall victim to this yourself, because it's an emotional tool that is being used by great effect by a lot of people who are in power.
Yeah.
And another thing that we've seen throughout this conflict is an effort to downplay the amount of civilian death. I referenced before Joe Biden calling into question the numbers and then privately apologizing for having done that and pledging that whole quote unquote do better. There have been all of these viral fake stories about the quote unquote Hollywood conspiracy that all of these children being pulled from the rubble and all these horrific scenes that we're seeing these are
actually many of them crisis actors. Well, we had one of these that actually got picked up by one of the largest English language Israeli media outlets, the Jerusalem Post, put this up on the screen. So there was this theory going around that this five month old baby who had been killed in Israeli airstrike that you know, a photojournalist took pictures of his grieving father and family holding
this baby. There was this myth floating around and conspiracy theory that this was actually a doll again part of minimizing the civilian catastrophe that's unfolding here. And the Jerusalem Post actually published a story claiming that this was not a real human child who had been killed, that this was a doll. They then, after confronted with the evidence that no, this is a real baby who was killed here, had to delete that fake story and apologize for posting it.
But this sort of stuff is just running rampant. And again this is a supposedly you know, quote unquote credible outlet that just ran with a wild conspiracy theory based on absolute garbage.
Yeah, I mean, I think that the baby doll, the
pally Wood that we talked here previously and more. Anyway, I just want people to take this away as you need to be very clear about what you're ingesting, what you're spreading, about what you can say is actually a matter of fact, you should question the government too, because they can fold almost immediately in terms of things, and much of it is being done in order to justify many things that are being done with you know, for US policy, for as really policy we've seen and we've
showed previous examples here from the Palaes Indian side as well. So yeah, it's a terrible facet of war.
Christal.
We've got Congressman Rowe Kanna standing by, So any final thoughts that you want to say before you sign off.
No, I'll be back on Thursday, and thank you guys as always for watching.
All Right, we missed you and we'll see you soon. Joining us now is Congressman row Conna is a friend of the show. We always appreciate you joining us, sir, and whenever you're here in Washington, and our audience always wants to hear what we have to say.
Let's increase my name recognition amongst Capital Yeah, please, you've got that's your demographic.
Yeah, I was.
Telling you we have a shocking audience amongst the Capitol police. Every time I'm on Capitol Hell, we can see some of that. So I wanted to ask you about some of these things that are happening here in Washington. Something Crystal in particular really wanted to speak with you about was the idea of conditioning US military aid to Israel based upon either humanity or like having to abide with the international hamitarian rules, the Lay Amendment and all that.
I know that something that you've been involved in. So give us your thoughts and some of the actions going on behind the scenes.
Well, first of all, I've called for a permanent ceasefire. We just need an end to the cycle of violence and the release of all the hostages. But the aid should be following the Lay Law. I don't understand why this is controversial. We have a law in the United States, it's called the Lahy Law. It says that any aid to any country has to uphold human rights standards, international law standards. The problem is that the State Department hasn't
been enforcing the lay Hey law in cases. And what I've said is that.
That has to be enforced.
If we are going to pass an aid package, we should explicitly say that it should be upholding the Lehi law.
Well.
So on the permanency spire point, I guess if we want to steal man the position, what the pro Israel side would say is your only cease fires are going to help Hamas and help them regroup. This will not allow us to rid Hamas of the population inside of Gaza. Is that even an attainable goal in your view? If we have a permanency spire, what would the next step be for people who are advocating for that policy.
So I had said Israel has the right to self defense. When the brutal attack happened, I unambiguously condemned it. But Israel has diminished significantly at this point Hamas's military capability in northern Gaza. Now there are forty five thousand Hamas fighters. Israel has killed probably one to three thousand, depending on whose estimate you built. You believe Macron is saying that it would take ten years of a war to eradicate Israel, And when you talk to Israel's or our allies in
the Gulf, they'll tell you the same thing. So a, it's an unachievable goal. I guess if you were going to try to achieve it, it would be massive civilian casualties. And we've all seen the women, the children who are being killed. I mean, it's heartrending. And you can't have two hundred three hundred thousand casualties or the entire expulsion of Palaestindias from Gaza.
What do you think should come next?
We had a whole segment on our show here Kamala Harris and the Palstinian authority needs to be revitalized. Do you think the Palistinian Authority is a legitimate actor that could be takeover governance? What is your view of what the next phase of this should look like. We have a ceasefire, now we have to do governance, possibly elections. Who is legitimate who is not? What should that look like in your view?
Well, I don't think it should be the United States dictating who is at the table. I think we want to have every polistated voice under the condition that they recognize Israel's right to exist and they renounce violence, which has been the precondition for those negotiations. But then have the diverse factions of Palestine represented, so you have a Palestinian state with equal rights and Israel obviously at the
table as well. The problem the United States made is for years we thought we could just ignore the Palestinian issue, and they tried the abraham agwords. They didn't have Palestinians have a voice for a state, and now people are realizing that's not going to work.
So what is your view?
Then you're an ally the president, I know he talks to you from time to time. What's your assessment of how the Biden administration has handled this so far?
What do you think?
I don't agree fully with the way that they've handled it. I mean, obviously I'm calling for a permanent cease fire. I thought initially the statement that Israel has a right to defend itself was completely fine. I thought the unambiguous condemnation of Hamas and the attacks, we're fine. But I don't think we should have beer hug Net Yahou, which gave a far right government in Israel way too much of a green light to have the bombing that they did.
These should have been much more surgical strikes against Hamas perpetrators who committed the attacks, And that to me was where I had disagreements with the administration.
What do you make of the general ubiquity of support for Israel amongst the Democratic Party. One of the things that we covered here today was that forty or sixty something percent of Democrats disapprove of Israeli military action inside
of Gaza. I believe you said forty some people have called on for a permanency's fire, but nonetheless not even representative of voters and all that have you hoard organic pushback on this and are do you worry about electoral consequences as a result of this policy.
I do worry about the losing young people, losing minorities, not just Muslim Americans or Arab Americans, but voters of color. I worry about it in the battleground state. And I think that you can stand with Israel condemn October seven, unambiguously condemn the horrors, the rape, the twelve hundred people who are killed, and still say that we also recognize
the dignity the value of Palestinian lives. Here's what I'm hearing from people who and I don't think this is fully understood, that they don't see American policymakers expressing the same empathy, the same value for the Palestinian children, for the Palestinian women being killed, as they do for people who are Israeli or European. And we have to make sure that we, as a country in a multi racial democracy,
say that every human life has value. And that to me is really what's driving some of the anger among young people, progressives, and minority communities in America.
What do you make of some of the ongoing heightened attacks on US forces? And I know you've got a lot of foreign I know you spend a lot of time thinking about foreign policy as well. This is something that's worried me, particularly about attacks on not only US troops. Now we've had multiple weird incidents in the Red Sea,
We've got hoothy drone attacks and all that is. Do you think that's derivative largely of what Israel is doing inside of Gaza, is of US support or is this just part of the inflamed tensions of unleashed a lot of tension that was already simmering behind the scenes. And what do you think of the Biden administration's handling of it so far?
I think the latter I think you have a conflict that is escalating. This is why we need a permanency's fire to ratchet down the tension so we don't get drawn in to a Middle East conflict. I mean, some of it is a remnant of the Yemen War, which where the UTIs were fighting the Saudas, and that was a foreign policy mistake. The President has corrected course on Yemen,
which I give him credit for. But overall, what I would say is that the administration needs to figure out a way for the bombing and the war to end. And once you have a permanent ceasefire with the release of all hostages, then I think you can start to ratchet down the tensions and lessen the likelihood not just of the United States getting into a war, but an attack on the United States.
Yeah, that's something I'm deeply worried about.
I also wanted to ask you something I know Crystals particularly up about this.
Let's put this please up there on the screen.
It's about a new House resolution which could be voted on very early, which quote clearly firmly states that anti Zionism is anti Semitism. I know that there were previous statements and resolutions that had passed the House. What do you make of this resolution, which I know even people like Jerry Nadler have spoken out against.
Probably voting no. Look, I voted for resolutions to say we do not want any anti Semitism on college campuses. And I recognize the genuine fear of anti Semitism in this country. I mean, they're Jewish Americans who tell me they're changing their names when they're getting on cerebrale cab drivers,
and that's a real issue. But you can't say a resolution like this basically says if you're criticizing the net Yahu government, if you're criticizing the net Whose policies on annexation, if you're calling for a Palestinian state and saying that Palestinians have legitimate grievances against occupation, then you may be seen as anti Semitic. And I don't think that the criticisms of Israeli policy should in any way be equated to anti semitism. That diminishes actually what anti Semitism.
Is when you speak with your colleagues generally, what is the feeling behind the scenes. You have forty some people now calling for a permancy spar Do you think that the overall sentiment is beginning to grow? Like, do you think that there may be a particular event may push things, Because it does seem that things, at least on the
democratic side are trending in a very different direction. Even when you look at the Senate, people like Mark Warner and others who have said things very disconsonant with the current US policy towards the towards Israel and his military action.
I would say the last two weeks there has started to be a shift both the scenes of the bombings and the children, the women, the devastation there. I mean, people have seen that from a human perspective, but also the fact that we did have a temporary cease fire, hostages did start to be released. That shows that through diplomacy we can get all the hostages out and a diplomatic solution and then to the violence. So there was
hope there. Even the President was saying, I hope this is lasting, but now we've got to move beyond hope to making it lasting. Just one basic point. The Gaza war into the twenty twenty one ended when Biden called up net Yahu and he said, that's it. The runways ended, and that yao was the hours before say we're going to continue. We're going to continue. An hour later. They stopped. Reagan when he called up the Israeli Prime minister in
nineteen eighty two, they stopped with it hours. Reagan was sent to someone I didn't know I had that much power. So the American policy, America policy space Sea bakers have a lot of power here.
Well, Congressman, we always appreciate you joining us on side. Crystal wasn't able to join us, but we always appreciate your views. And thank you very much, sir, Thank you absolutely. We'll see you guys later