12/6/23: Bibi Shouted Down By Freed Hostages, Tapper Spars With Israeli Rep, Putin Meets With MBS, Pakistan Deepfake Smear Of The Intercept, Tuberville Folds On Military Hold Up, GOP Pushes To Impeach Biden, And How The CIA Helped Assassinate Lumumba

Saudis and the UAE today. That's huge news, obviously has big implications. You'll notice that we're almost in an American election year, so there's probably some important details to get to when it comes to those negotiations, which are supposed to be about oil, they're going to be about Israel

and you as well. According to spokesman for Putin, we're going to talk about what Ryan has dubbed a shallow fake, not a deep fake, but a shallow fake as it relates to his reporting on Imran Khan with his colleague Martaza Hussein over at the Intercept. Tommy Tuberville, senator from Alabama, has officially dropped his hold on military nominations so that's been going since March. Huge news on the Hill and

there's a lot to talk about there too. We're going to be talking about the news that came out just yesterday that House Republicans they don't really have much going on, of course, you know, there's nothing to do. They don't have to fund the government. But they will be starting their impeachment inquiry formally next week. We'll talk about what it means that it's going to be formally open. There's certainly a lot to deal with when it comes to

Hunter Biden. There's no shortage of potential avenues for investigation. We're also excited to talk to Stuart Reid, who's the author of a new book called The La Mumba Plot about the CIA's role in the assassination of Lamumba. If you don't know the story, please stick around and watch the interview because Stewart Read's book is so interesting and important and relevant. Now, Ryan, we should get to the news.

members clash with Netan Yahoo in meeting. So a marketly tense meeting, the Time says, was held Tuesday between a group of recently released hostages as well as family members of those still in Gaza and Prime Minister Benjamin and Yahoo, as well as other members of the war cabinet. Now, one interesting detail that the Times of Israel's reporting is Netanyaho showed up late for the meeting. So they were supposed to start at three pm, and Netanyahu and people

showed up at three forty five pm. And the quote is they let us get mad from a source and fight amongst ourselves. I left in the middle. It's not acceptable. As Ryan said, they have been demanding this for a long time. This came after on the heels of all of those demands. Some of the audio from the meeting leaked. Net and Yahoo could be heard telling the families as the time says, quote, there's no possibility right now to bring everyone home. Can anyone really imagine that if that

was an option, anyone would refuse it? He also said that they are He said something to the extent of these are demands that even you wouldn't take. That's a net and yah, who I'm paraphrasing him there, but that's yeah. He said. Basically, you know, even you, the people who are former hostages or whose family is still held hostage or recently released hostages, even you wouldn't take this deal. The numbers, by the way of hostages are also I mean were now how many have been released? About one

hundred and five I think have been released. One hundred and five civilians released from lost captivity. That's eighty three Israelis, twenty three Thai nationals, and one Filipino. So they think right now about one hundred and thirty eight hostages remain in Gaza, including around twenty women. One other statement I want to read before I get your thoughts on this, Ryan. This is from more of the leak to audio and it was a recording actually aired by Channel twelve. Quote,

I was there I know how hard it is. It's hard in captivity. Every day you don't know. She says, you have no idea what you're doing there, and I know the conditions they're holding the men in are worse worse for the women. Another one went and talked about sexual abuse, and then another said, quote, you have no

idea what's even going on there at all. You claim that you have intelligent but intelligence, but the fact is we were bombed huge, hugely consequential meeting for net and Yahoo, don't you think, Ryan, Yeah.

of your loved ones. And as a day goes by and you know your family members are not in that, then you're praying that the ceasefire goes so that there's another day so this kind of cruel lottery can continue to unfold where you're you're hoping that, hoping against hope

that eventually they will be released. And those Israeli families are some of the people that I thought about first when Israel resumed the bombing, because that much must have been just such a crushing blow, because you know that that hope that the next day their family might come home is is dashed by the resumption of the bombing and the and the end of these talks. And then to find out from these hostages that they were getting pounded by bombs the entire time or a significant amount

of time as well, is that much more poignant. And one of the hostages told Yaho, Hamas slept through your airstrikes like they kept us awake at night. They rattled us, but they just slept through it. They mean nothing to you, which gets in then to this question of negotiations. Nen Yah hasn't said what Hamas is demanding, you know, in exchange for this Hamas has floated, you know, a permanent

ceasefire in exchange for release of the hostages. I suspect that he's wrong and that the families would actually agree to that.

hostages in Gaza. So if net and Yaho's saying that his primary goal here is, you know, to eradicate Hamas and get back all of these hostages, and Israeli media is blanketing the airwaves with these quotes and in leaked audio, I mean something as visceral as the leaked audio of people being unhappy with Net Nyah who questioning the strategy of their own government. Again, it gets to something. This is a point I think it's excellent that you make

all of the time. It's it's actually criticism of net and Yaho and of the Israeli government is often much more pitched in Israel from either the right or from the left. Then you're sort of allowed to operate within the kind of boundaries in the United States, and that's important for Net and Yahoo as the US. If the US we talked about this last week President Biden, at least from his his statements says that he's been sort of taking public stances that allow him to negotiate with

Netanyahu privately. So if he is trying to end the conflict earlier than the Israeli government would like to, and you have hostages questioning the strategy and that being blanketed on Israeli media, that's a huge, I mean, obviously a huge problem for Netanya, who is already under a huge amount of pressure to answer questions about how the attack, how the security was breached on October seventh in the first.

very brutal in our calculations here. It's unfortunate, but we're just going to have to you know, they will also be kind of collateral damage in this, in this bombing campaign against the mass which has now picked up with a renewed ferocity.

his own fault. And when you're losing public support, I mean, even the Israeli left was a set some parts of the Israeli left were upset with talk that there was going to be an indefinite cease fire. And we're interested in what Bengavir had been saying about bringing down the government because they're so outraged by the way NETANYAHUO has handled the war and by how negotiations have gone. And

public opinion is just so crucial. Public support in Israel and in the West is so crucial, and this is not helpful obviously, right.

quote unquote legally a next more and more Palestinian land. That you can do that and be secure at the same time. That was his promise to the Israeli public. He's had an opportunity to kind of enact that vision, and you know, we've seen it, you know, blow up, blow up in his face, which is why you're seeing so much blowback from him, and now you're seeing so much of it and kind of blowback at the Palestinian population.

Should we talk about the way that it's kind of unfolding in the Western press with this kind of fascinating Jake Tapper interview.

what happened. I don't have the specific circumstances. I know there's deadly combat going on now in the north still between these IDF and CAMAS Terrists, yes, and we don't want to see anyone caught up in the crossfire. But why didn't they heed the advice?

to return to their homes. In that situation, you could you could say, look, people who didn't take that warning were taking on some serious risk. But none of those conditions were met.

of people in these places. They are instead making sure that the civilian infrastructure has been basically, you know, eradicated, so that you know, sewage treatment uh is non existent, disease is you know, just just is rampant, uh. You know, if they're lucky one hundred trucks with humanitarian supplies or getting in on a on a daily basis for two for two million people, cutting off water, you know, taking

the already low calorie counts, you know, significantly down. And so you can imagine why in that situation people might say, if those are all of the options, we're just going to try to hunker down right here. And I thought it was interesting, I'm curious for your take on this that he didn't he the IDF spokesperson there sort of seemed to forget that he's talking to a Western audience.

Like his original answer, my condolence is I'm deeply sorry for this good The second answer might be better for a in Israeli audience, but not for an American Always the second answer of well why were they there? It kind of sounds like their fart, their fault, and it lands. You can see how poorly it lands with Jake Tapper there.

front of a Western audience. I mean, I don't know what else he could have said there. To be honest, I don't know what else there is other than saying, you know what we've heard from Yahoo and others that this is the terrible cost. You know, when we heard early in the conflict that this is. They were invoking Dresden and other just awful things. That's it seems to me like the only honest defense that you can offer, because nothing else is especially persuasive in light of that evidence.

You know, we're what two months in now, these answers are not quite cutting it in the West, that's for sure to your point. And you know, maybe it's even more effective for them, sadly to make the argument that they were making earlier. Maybe that's maybe people will believe that they actually believe it, because I don't think it's believable when you say things like you know it was in the North, right, I mean that just it doesn't cut it anymore. So no, I agree with you, and

I think we should let's throw this. This is the first of two Aaron Burnett clips will play from CNN in the segment. One will actually feature Ryan himself. But this is with of course, Israeli Army spokesman Jonathan Conricus on CNN talking about the ratio of civilian casualties, So.

unique in the world. I understand that there are civilian casualties, and I understand that footage and coverage goes towards emotions and to cover those civilian casualties. But what I want to say is that we will get those figures out and they will be official and on record by the IDEAF with the name behind it, and then we will be able to say and to back up afterwards with names and numbers that we are indeed targeting the terrorists, we are not after the civilians.

un numbers as well. And I understand people have concerns about the numbers, but women and children make up sixty nine percent of the deads in the twenty twenty three war, but forty one percent of twenty twenty one fighting, thirty eight percent of the twenty fourteen war, and thirty nine percent of the eight nine war. So by these numbers, and again, you know, I look forward to the IDF's numbers because I think it is helpful to be able to compare the data. But Ryan, to your point, these

numbers could even be underestimating. You know, there's an argument that Israel seems to imply repeatedly implies that they're overestimating the level of death, but in some cases there's been an argument they're actually underestimating it. So we should have numbers to compare if we're not supposed to trust the Hamas numbers. And I understand the reasons for that argument, But then we need numbers to compare that too, because

these numbers are really really bad. These ratios, even compared with Israel's previous handling, are bad even by their own measures.

killed seventy three journalists. A significant number of them were men, not all of them, but a significant number were I know of, you know, through people I've interviewed, significant, signicant, significant numbers of men, even fighting age, men who had absolutely nothing to do with Hamas. And so once you once you throw them and you're getting you know, even further down. We can just talk about this based on

kind of the Israeli figures. You heard the spokesperson there say that they're they're killing two civilians for every you know, one Hamas fighter that they that they kill Now that's take I would take that with a grain of salt as well. If that's what they're saying publicly, Now I suspect, well, we'll find the ratio to be significantly higher. But what's so disturbing about that is that he says that, well, if you look at previous combat, you know we should.

You know, if you compare us to perfection, well of course we fall short. But if you compare us to previous combat, then actually, you know, we're doing quite well. If you compare that to October seventh, they're not doing well. And October seventh is a useful comparison because all of us recognize that as a horrific atrocity and as something that you should be condemned, kind of top to bottom.

But if you look at the military to civilian casualty rates, you're looking at a roughly two to one civilian to military personnel military or police personnel. And so if we all agree and we do that that was a horrific atrocity and a war crime that should be prosecuted, how can the IDF then say, with roughly the same proportion that they are actually conducting themselves in an ethical fashion. Doesn't that put them in a pretty tough mind and expose what's going on.

towards that end goal. That that is a kind of in some ways, you can have a similar conversation about Ukraine. Ukraine is going to reclaim every inch of the DNBAS and until that, all of the blood will continue to be spilled. And you know, the eradication of Hamas is just an impossible goal, an understandable, an important goal, but I think you know that it's just not good enough two months into the conflict as a sort of end while these numbers continue to stack up, and let's put

the next element up on the screen. This is an estimate of the a number of Hamas fighters that have been killed so far, according to a report Israel Intelligence. Their latest estiment is that they've killed around fifty three hundred Hamas terrorists. The New York Times reports that the estimate is there are about thirty thousand Hamas terrorists embedded in the two point something million about two point two million person population of Gaza, So fifty three hundred Hamas

terrorists we don't know's that's almost impossible to confirm. At the same time, that's a you know, that will factor into those calculations. Ryan, where does that sound to you like a plausible number?

You mentioned sexual violence. I was part of the human rights vetting process for arms going to Israel, and a charity called Defensive Children International Palestine drew our attention at the State Department to the sexual assault, actually the rape of a thirteen year old boy that occurred in an Israeli prison in the Moscow Bea in Jerusalem. We examined these allegations. We believe they were credible. We put them to the government of Israel, and you know what happened.

The next day, the IDF went into the DCIP offices and removed all their computers and declared them a terrorist entity. I think it is vital that atrostees not happened to anyone, not sexual atrocity, not sexual violations, not any kind of

gross violation of human rights. We are looking at a situation where there is so much dehumanification, where people are not seen for the value that they have, and I think that's true whether you're talking about those who are attacked on their kibbutz or those who are attacked in their homes and go or in the West Bank. What we really need is to center the human beings who are at the core and who are suffering so much in this conflict.

timeline will net and Yaho budget. That's basically what we've been talking about in this entire segment is how are the mounting pressures from the mounting tragedies in Gaza ultimately going to influence Netnyahu himself? The decision makers behind Israel is really military, as the US has reportedly again this timeline of their target date for an end of the invasion being sometime around everywhere one. What do you make of that.

of it at the very end. And the reason that you see them, you know, saying that you're running out of credit, I think is the people like Josh Paul kind of breaking through in the in the global media and bringing attention to not just what's going on in Gaza, but what's happening, you know, more generally with with the occupation.

That that story he told was I think controversial on an American television show because he's equating, you know, Palestinian lives with Israeli lives, and that's just you're just not supposed to do that. You know, you're not You're not supposed to you know what, when Permilla Gaiapol called for quote unquote balance and how we talk about this, she was pillaried, you know, for the for a couple of

days over that. But for Josh Paul to say, look, I was involved in a specific case of an allegation, a credible allegation of the rape of a thirteen year old boy, which should make a lot of people pause and me like, wait a minute, why was there a

thirteen year old boy in prison to begin with? And then he follows up with, you know, when they alerted Israel authority, they you know, thank you for the tip, We appreciate that, and they raid the offices of the Human Rights Organization, sees their computers and designate them as as a terrorist organization like that. That's the kind of

thing I think that is drying up Israeli credit. On the other hand, it doesn't seem like Israel cares that much at this moment, you know what the White House says, as long as what the White House says doesn't translate into them actually doing anything.

to the American public in public forums. So, I mean, I do think that's interesting. And I think Israeli civilians aren't going to be served and protected by an extended conflict either. I think that's really important. Again, from the perspective of somebody maybe on the other side, is that like the is really civilians before October seventh and after October seventh. I think we all agree the security situation is not ideal. It's more for ideal, it is there

was no resolution to it before October seventh. On October sixth, and that's the security situation has only worsened. And so with the end goal of eradicating Hamas and no, I would say plausible, viable plan as to what would fill that vacuum if this impossible end was actually achieved, and what will fill the vacuum, you know, after it is

partially likely partially achieved. I don't think we have confidence or can have confidence that Israeli civilians are going to be much safer after than let's say that January one target is hit. Well, Ryan, you were talking about a lot of this because your book is out this week on CNN. So you joined Aaron Burnett and we have a clip of your appearance on Aaron Burnett Show on CNN last night.

net Yahoo cabinet. I was just trying to in that interview find some common moral plane, because you know, anytime you have anybody on who's remotely critical of Israel, the interview starts with, you know, will you condemn at what Hamas did on October seventh. Today is December fifth, We're still having news cycles organized around that question from two

months ago. So then it follows that, well, let's also get on the same moral level and condemn the kind of collective punishment of Palestinians as well, and then we can talk about a way forward. But he wouldn't go there, and that was kind of Once he didn't, You're like, okay, well I've got If you condemn nothing, then there's nothing I can tell you that's.

an elected official, and you know, not a hack, but like somebody who's actually going to engage on the issue. And so I think it's actually really heartening that people watch that and it came away with this was really sort of insightful.

anything more than that. But if you do that, then right, you can't, you can't kind of draw out the more the more interesting takeaways from UH, from conversations like uh, I'm gonna I condemn absolutely nothing and you know, up to and including things that even that Yahoo's cab that would condemn. And that goes to what we were talking

about earlier. This stark difference between how this conversation unfolds, you know, here in the United States and how it how it unfolds over in the Israeli media, where because there is you know, so much more kind of lust for revenge after October seventh, there that the is Israel the government is much more open about what it's doing.

They don't they don't want to sugarcoat anything that they're doing in Gaza, because if they sugarcoat it, then the public and some of the kind of the cabinet will demand no, no, no, we want more than that.

it's unfortunate the extent of which people are afraid. For example, when you read what you read as we just watched again that people feel as though they have no flexibility to kind of honestly reckon with some serious points there and there are. We could have gone much longer in that interview, and I think we both wanted to, but yeah, I thought that was the best part of the interview,

that the most helpful part of the exchange. I want to also put this element on the screen from huff Post because it's more reporting from your book, and the book you've mentioned this before is so timely. It turned out to be so timely because it ended up as you were digging into kind of the evolution of the squad. So much of it is sort of revolving around a pack and around the question of Israel. So this is

the headline. Top Pro Israel group offered a Kazio Cortez one hundred thousand dollars of campaign cash per new book ran. You also reported this week that the I think you said, like the Murdoch Empire, it just utterly twisted parts of the book in an effort to make Alexandro A Kazu Cortes and the squad in general and sort of the Green Agenda look foolish. I was really like, I mean not I shouldn't stay surprised, but taken it back by I think how egregious. The coverage of things from your

book has been Daniel Mary articles not among them. He is reporting, based on your report that APEC actually reached out to Okazio Cortes with quote a whole lot more than an olive branch.

question because you know, I'm dying inside here. That's basically what you can you can see on her face as she's getting asked about her use of the phrase quote occupation of Palestine or or equating of Palestinian lives being taken by the IDF with you know, protesters getting shot in Puerto Rico or protesters getting shot in Fergus in Missouri.

Like the Carlson seems to like really object to this, this equating of Palestinian lives and American and American live lives because of the Middle Eastern dynamics are so so different, and and so she just kind of taps out at the very end. And so what what I reord in the book is that about a week later, when she and Bernie are in Kansas campaigning for a candidate out there or Corbyn. Trent communications director gets a call and says, hey, you know, we saw that, we saw the interview. You know,

I'm with Apex. I've already bundled together you know, a good one hundred thousand dollars to start the conversation with AOC. We can you know, we can help to educate her, you know, to make sure that you know, she doesn't have another, uh, you know, another face plan interview like

this again. And it was it was for her team, her and her team a real window into kind of how Washington works, and that if you were a normal member of Congress who had just won a primary and had not instantly become, you know, bizarrely and uniquely this kind of global celebrity which comes with it all this campaign cash, he'd be like, all one hundred thousand dollars,

I desperately need one hundred thousand dollars. And also I need I need talking points on this issue because you know, I didn't run on this question.

It was, it's been kind of surreal to to watch, Uh. Basically, they you know, they got some early copies of the book and took you know, quotes by people who were quoted in the book, attributed them, attributed them to me, and then kind of elevated Like for instance, there was one where one person for Sunrise said that one element of the Green New Deal rollout was a you know,

a cluster uh. And instead of quoting that person, they attribute to me and they and they say that I report in the book that the entire Green New.

be learned? One of the other funny and it's funny isn't the right word, but funny examples was you know that I say that, you know, she became a like a pariah and closed off to all these donors without setting close off these big donors, without without adding the context that her decision to be closed off to these major donors is a good thing and is a function of the squad's ability in the Bernie Standers Wings ability to kind of raise so many small done dollars, and

that that then appears to be a threat to the rest of the caucus, and they kind of flip that on its head into into you know, whatever weird cynical kind of framing they put on top of it. It's you know, I've obviously seen that the kind of Murdoch empire do that for years, but it was kind of surreal to like be in the middle of it, and probably for you too, since you actually had read the book and you read these pieces and you're like, h no, that's not that's not right.

we can put the element up on the screen. While the kingdom has made a voluntary oil production cut of one million barrels a day, The New York Times reports, Russia has contributed smaller cuts to its exports, but not its production, despite Saudi attempts to convince Russian officials to

take more action. Another important thing here, Putin is actually on Thursday in Moscow hosting the ARRAY president, and he hasn't Putin himself has not traveled beyond China, Iran and some former Soviet states actually since he first invaded Ukraine back in February twenty twenty two. So he's doing UAE Saudi Arabia in one day and then hosting Iran in Moscow the next day and set to negotiate over oil.

Actually a pro to Russia government daily paper, as The New York Times notes reported on Tuesday that Russia would not oppose conducting talks with Ukraine in a European country like Hungary. So with these sort of three front talking about Ukraine, talking about Israel and Gaza, and talking about oil. Ryan, You've made some really interesting points about a Trump Biden

matchup in twenty twenty four and oil in particular. When you have the Saudi royal family very close to Jared Kushner and very close to the Trumps, what could potentially happen on that front when you talk about the American election, could potentially affect the conflicts and US support military support for the Ukrainian military and Ukrainian government, and for the Israeli military and the Israeli government. That's all on the line in the next year, which we're rapidly careening towards.

So pretty interesting timing for this trip.

pushed n BS, he's had much less success. The reporting and the analysis that I've seen is is pretty strongly indicative of the fact that you know, n b S would love to see Republicans, you know, come come back and off as Saudi Arabia has become more aligned with with Republicans, There's been some reporting that you know, Putin thinks that you know, he might be able to get a better deal with Trump, uh than that with Biden.

So you do have this interesting situation where, you know, the elections are so organized around gas prices sometimes that you end up kind of outsourcing uh power over moving the needle of our electoral dial to two people like uh, you know, uh nb Z, n B S, Putin, et cetera. And also I can confirm out here with Los Angeles, they want like six dollars a gallon for guests. I thought that I thought they were making that up there. I'm like, there's no way, no. Gavin Newsom incredible.

showing him that attempts to isolate Russia have failed. I mean, I don't know that that's his primary goal, but that is definitely, I think probably an intended outcome from Vladimir put In this case that he hasn't traveled outside of Russia ran China since the invasion, and now that there's another hot conflict, two hot conflicts that the US is waging almost as proxy wars, obviously as a proxy war in Ukraine and arguably is a proxy war in Israel

and Gaza. And precisely, by the way, with this Axis of Evil formulation. We've heard this from Netanyahu, We've heard this from other people about the alliance between Russia, Iran and China, and then Iran's relationship with Hamas and Hezbollah. That's sort of been precisely the justification for US involvement and for a broad Western a sort of brick of support in this region. And this is in some ways

bolstering those sort of claims. But on the other hand, if you have the Saudis squeezed between Trump and Biden and Putin, I mean, these dynamics are just so it's a very fragile ecosystem. I'm a very fragile ecosystem.

its support for its proxies around the world. You know, amash Uh it's you know, it's climbed and you know the Randak Boothy's whether the Syrian or Iraqi militias or Hezbola Uh and so and then that that then you know further kind of pushes them closer to uh, to China and to Russia. And so you just constantly see a receding of American influence through decisions that we continue

to make. And then you throw on top of that our our belief that by you know, financing the Ukrainian kind of resistance to the Russian invasion that we were going to you know, dramatically weaken Russia's military capacity. You know, it appears like, you know, Russia's military capacity in twenty twenty two was actually pretty weak.

So a whole lot of people are arguing that the war in Ukraine, a whole lot of I guess neo conservative warhawks are arguing that the war in Ukraine has just re emboldened the US industrial base that we are getting back to nineteen forty five and the thriving military industrial complex that we so badly need, and it's just bringing the American economy into full bloom. And actually that's

not what's happening. If you look at people who are particularly concerned, even hawkish people that are particularly concerned about Taiwan, that are particularly concerned about how long it's going to take to onshore chips manufacturing in the United States even with the Chips Act, all this has done has depleted our capacity to again, even by sort of hawkish terms,

support Taiwan in the case of an invasion. And we have her Shei Jinpang, who's allied with Ladibir Putin, talking very clearly about the sort of he usually says, like the peaceful, the peaceful unification process as it relates to Taiwan and everything like that. But the reality is the United States relies on Taiwan for national security, for a huge, huge chunk of our economy and our ability to sort of function with the technological necessities that we've come to

depend on. And so if these two conflicts are affecting public support for militarism, and if they're affecting our actual ability to engage in a military conflict elsewhere, you can see very clearly how Putin would be finding allies in places like Iran and China and how those relations would be short up because there's a sort of mutually beneficial outcome of you know, pushing the US to burn more and more resources in Ukraine. And Putting obviously has his

own problems. He's lost tens of thousands of people in battle, and you know, lost was not initially as successful as you know, they sort of expected to be in Ukraine.

But this is, you know, even by I think it's such an important point, Even by the standards that the Hawks purport to be seeking, they're falling wildly short, and the Biden administration is falling falling wildly short, and just I'm reminded of what Jake Sullivan said before October seventh, and about the Biden administration sort of perpetuation of the Abraham Accords, although some conservatives would argue that its relationship with Iran had undercut its approval for the Abraham Accords.

Jake Sullivan said, you've never seen such peace in the Middle East. They just keep getting sort of smacked left and right by reality.

you know, kind of pitiful attempts to counteract reporting that I've seen. But we can play this little clip from this kind of account, this called I think it's called PTI Insider, which is broadly understood in Pakistan to be kind of a front for the kind of Pakistan military establishment. And what what we're not to play for you is is alleged and this is not a parody, Like as you're listening to it, you're going to think this is

a parody. It's it's alleged to be a leaked conversation between my intercept colleague Martaza Hussein and his alleged uh Irani not Iranian Indian basically c I a handler the CIA. The Indian CIA is called the r A w uh So and they call him something absurd, almost like mister Shwarma uh so. But let's let's play a little clip of so this was this was leaked and basically in Pakistani social media.

of Indian intelligence agency. So therefore, you know, these these reporters are actually just just agents of India, so you shouldn't shouldn't trust them out.

are there is. And so if anything that you can kind of taint in the public with Indian influence, they hope, then the public is going to dismiss there's a there's an election that's going to be happening in Pakistan, which which in Imran Khan so far is not being able to UH participate in he's in prison facing you know,

completely you know, trumped up charges UH. And so the US has been saying out loud that you know, Pakistan needs to allow free and fair elections and that everybody should be able to participate, but they don't act, they don't they aren't pressuring Pakistan to to require the most popular politician in Pakistan, who is in ran Kan UH,

to be on the ballot. And I think that there's some and there's a lot of concern in Pakistan about the reporting that we've done because it has it has exposed the role of the Pakistani UH military and in the Maaccini military establishment in collusion with the United States and in helping to push him out of UH, having to push him out of office related to you know, his refusal to give full throat and support to Ukraine and to US's you know, the US's effort to arm

the Ukrainians in the wake of his ouster. Pakistan has become a critical supplier of artillery shells for for Ukraine. And you've also seen and now Israel ramping up it's demand for artillery shells. And so you know, there aren't. There aren't a whole lot of places where all of you know, this kind of low these low grade munitions

can be made. And so you know, the pack Pakistan's kind of democracy became something that could be sacrificed for the the altar of the production of these this art to these artillery shells.

in blue states, to travel to get abortions. Republicans, I think have a pretty good case arguing that that's illegal because there's obviously a ban on taxpayer funding of abortions. But the Pentagon can say it's not funding for abortions, it's funding for the travel. So you sort of get into the legal weeds on that question. But Tommy Tuberville, as negotiations for funding the government and end of year, at the end of your scramble to meet all of

these deadlines is coming up. Tabar Towberville agreed yesterday to drop most of the holds, but not all of the holds. Let's put this up on the screen. This is from the Hill. You see right there the headline Tuberville releasing

holds on hundreds of military promotions. If I were writing this headline for even for a sort of centrist or purportedly neutral publication, I think it's really really important to note, and I would probably put it in the headline as the Hill writes, quote, A hold will remain in place for the roughly ten nominations for four star generals and officers. So yes, it's true that hundreds of other promotions are

now going to move really quickly through the Senate. But to have ten four star nominations continue to be held up actually is still a very big deal because that continues to put pressure in some of the highest stake decisions and approvals over this Pentagon policy. And I want to put the next element up on the screen. This is a story from one of my colleagues at the Federalist. This is our headline, don't blame Taberville for dropping his

Pentagon abortion protest, blame his feckless GPE colleagues. And why this is interesting is my colleague Sean Fleetwood has some more reporting on the intraparty dynamics that never really showed up in the kind of neutral corporate media. As Sean mentions, Tuberville actually had enough votes to include a provision nuking the Pentagon's illegal abortion policy, as Sean puts it in

the twenty twenty four NDAA. Chuck Schumer, however, gutted that provision before the measure could be considered by the Upper Chamber. So word got to Schumer. If you talk to sources with knowledge of the situation, word gets to Schumer is the assumption, and he says, we're not voting on this.

So Tuberville does everything to get the votes to say, if Joe Biden and the Pentagon are not going to withdraw this policy on their own, we're actually going to pass it through Congress, and we're going to get Democrats support for it because there is this provision against prohibition on tax fair funding for abortion. And he did he had that, but Chuck Schumer outmaneuvered him, because obviously Democrats control the Senate and the White House and they wanted

to actually move something through the Rules Committee. He had a resolution he is going to pass the Rules Committee that if it was approved by sixty senators would have, as Sean puts it, effectively allowed their parties to circumvent Tuberville's protest and permit the Pentagon's policy to go unchallenged. And the worry there from even the staunchest pro life anti abortion senators was that is setting a terrifying precedent

for how the Senate would operate in the future. So, as Sean puts it again, this left Turberville with no good options. This is on everyone who sold them out, a Hill staffer, senior Hill staffer told the Federalist, and not on Tuberville himself. This was a huge rallying moment for the conservative movement over the course of the last year.

But as the attack on Israel on October seventh happened, and then as actually you started to see, like for example, Ohio, the results come in from Issue one in Ohio, more and more pressure hit Tommy Tuberville, who basically shocked his Republican colleagues. Nobody expected him to have a strong ideological position on abortion, Nobody expected him to be so hostile to leadership and to become sort of a conservative stallwart.

Who knows where this goes on other issues. But again from my read of the situation of talking to people in these circles is Tuberville was furious by the way he was treated by the Republican establishment, and this is all of their attacks on him made him handle this, or it made him continue this from March until now instead of caving at any given point because of the

way Republican leadership treated him. And it's interesting because he got a taste of how Republican leadership has treated people who take serious conservative positions in line with their voters' positions, but not in line was sort of the Beltway Publican lobbying circles positions, and we've talked about this many times. You know, parallels between the Freedom Caucus and the Squad, Parallels between how dem leadership Schumer operates compared to McConnell

operates compared to McCarthy. There's all kinds of interesting dynamics about how both parties have handled populism. But Ryan, I just want to ask you about that question of how this coverage has been handled, because again, my headline wouldn't have been Tuberville caves. It would have been Tuverville blackmailed by Republicans into dropping popular conservative position. I just I think the media got the story really wrong since March.

a captain or a court appointed colonel. That promotion, you know, bizarrely to me, kind of has to go through the Senate for approval, and so there just isn't enough floor time to handle each each individual one. And so you had, you know, all, you know, all of these promotions just hanging in limbo. People you know, couldn't move and you know, to deploy. That was causing you know all, you know, it's causing a lot of organizational you know, problems throughout

throughout the military, across the board. Uh And and so finally there was so much frustration that Schumer was saying, all right, we're going to change the rules and we're going to take away this power to do this, hold in this in this circumstance, and the Senate is becoming so much like the House that they saw, like a senator saw like, if we lose this one privilege remaining that we have, than what is our role here other

than just to support leadership? And so just so I understand, So your reporting is that Tuberville had sixty votes to kind of overturn the Pentagon's abortion policy, so that you would have had almost ten or more Democrats willing to go along. And why, you know, the Democratic Caucus is pretty pro choice at this point. Why do you think that they were willing to go along with it just to end end the blockade of all of these nominations.

they helped, you know, secure military readiness, which is another really point, by the way, because the corporate media has unsurprisingly run with the Pentagon's narrative and the Biden administration's narrative, and it's been interesting to see the confluence of the sort of pro choice left and Defense Department. Pentagon talking point here, which is that it is absolutely essential to

national security. They won't tell you how many times the policy has been used over the course of the last couple of years, but they do say that it's absolutely essential to national security. To have this policy and that Tommy Tuberville has his hold has severely damaged military readiness, and the corporate press has really run with that line in a way to kind of make Tommy Taberville look

like a rube. Like this, you know, Alabama redneck cares more about his r religious fanaticism than he does about the military. So there are all kinds of like interesting cross sections here. But why that's interesting is if this, if military readiness was on the line, this is a policy that probably affects maybe at most like a couple dozen people a year, you would you know that the Pentsagon would have dropped the policy immediately if military readiness

were actually like really a big concern here. What this is about is them not wanting to get smacked around by Republicans. They have had that relationship on lock for decades and what they don't want is to give into what they think of as the crazy wing of the Republican Party. It's just as simple as that, and from their perspective, understandable strategy because they thought if they gave in that they would be vulnerable to cuts to Ukraine, to cuts to all kinds of different things. Their powers

surveillance powers, et cetera, et cetera. I think right at least that's what ultimately their fear was.

democratic in their in their preferences. Now they're very you know, staunchly kind of a political as you know, uh as

as military men and women. They don't they're not burning people, no, no, but and they're also not you know, they're not they're not actively like lobbying in the way they like, or or running the country the way that Pakistans uh military is that there is a very strong culture of separating, you know, the military and civilian, but personally a lot of them are becoming voters for Democrats.

Ernst and Dan Sullivan and Mitch mcconnald. Mitch McConnell criticized Tubberville immediately, like basically right out of the gate, within the first couple of months of the hold because what is more sacred to We talked about this when the Dobbs decision was announced. It's I think, again a big misconception in the media. What is more sacred to elite Republicans who run the GOP than abortion, oh, the military

and low taxes. And I could keep going a million other priorities other than like social conservatism, and so I think this was a real test of that, and I think the McConnell's and Sullivan's of the world are genuinely afraid of the post Trump cracks in that consensus about the mic and all of that. So ultimately, I think that's what this was about, and I'm glad we got a chance to talk about it because I think the rest of the media missed the story.

mentioned that on the Sunday shows this week. He says he has enough votes now that George Santis is gone. They have a three vote majority, so that means basically every Republican is going to have to vote to open an impeachment inquiry. Formally, it's something that Kevin McCarthy didn't have. Just a couple of months ago, he said that they were going to start opening this impeachment inquiry, but whether they had enough votes to formally do that was a

different question. So Jim Jordan has come out, we can put this first element up on the screen and said he hopes that the vote would the House would vote quote as soon as possible, and as early possibly as this week. It looks like it's going to be next week now. He says, we think it's helpful to have that vote because we do think that someone will take

us to court. Constitutionally, it's not required. I think another important part of that is he says Republicans have not yet made a decision on what the charges against President Biden would be. As NPR puts it, Jordan said he still wants to talk to roughly ten people over the course of six to seven weeks, and those witnesses would include Hunter Biden, James Biden, Frank Biden, and some of

their business associates, probably just James Biden. And also, following up on the whistleblower claims that there was slow walking of this at the DOJ and potentially at the IRS as well. Ryan, this comes as the amount of time versus the amount of work that has to be done to fund the government by different deadlines at the end of the year. You Republicans, I don't think. I don't think Republican leadership is super eager to have to deal

with this. But also maybe they also think, like McCarthy did just a couple of months ago, this will make it easier for their voters to sort of swallow the pill of potentially bad deals on end of your funding.

he was going to do an impeachment inquiry. Uh, didn't put it onto the floor in the way that you're you know that you're opposed to just it's an impeachment inquiry.

of vaguely saying we're going to launch an inquiry. In the past, in order to vote to impeach, you actually had to have some pretty significant evidence.

stronger case than the other three. There's clearly political law fare going on, and the Biden family is clearly corrupt, and now the degree of that corruption is a different question, and that's what Republicans are right now trying to prove. Jim Comer came out on Monday what I saw referred to in some corners of the Conservative precess quote a smoking gun, and that's the kind of rub is that the evidence was regular payments were coming from And I actually have how NPR put it because I found it

very amusing. House Chairman House over Chairman Jim Comber posted a video on social media on Monday laying out allegations, including reporting that bank records a panel has indicate that Hunter Biden set up an account that sent monthly payments to his father in twenty eighteen, and then NPR goes on to say, but press reports indicate that the payments

were related to repaying personal loans from his father. It looks like it was a truck that these were payments about, like a forward raptor an NPR saying, oh, but it was just a personal loan, when we know at the time from records that Hunter Biden is flush with cash from business deals in China, specifically China at that time and around the world, and saying that none of this

could have anything to do but it's just personal. I thought that sort of hand waving from NPR was like incredibly unhelpful and sort of exactly why Republicans are saying, screw it. If the media is going to dismiss all of this and just going to, you know, sort of do the Biden family's bidding by being dismissive of what does appear to be serious influence pedaling all well, saying that Donald Trump was an influence peddling on behalf of

the Russians for years in daily news cycles. You can understand, you know, on both levels, A the level of like the probably corruption here, there was definitely corruption here, and B the media is not talking about it. I don't think the sort of democrats do themselves if they want to, you know, kind of get the country back to some semblance of normalcy and defeat the scourge of right populism. They're not doing any favors by pretending none of this is serious.

football for sure. For Democrats, there's no question about it. They claim that witnesses aren't cooperating, and that's what Jim Jordan is saying. If the witnesses aren't cooperating, you need to have a formal impeachment inquiry open in order to force legally cooperation or to have a stronger hand at

forcing cooperation legally. And I think there's some real merit to that, but just an interesting an interesting development to add an interesting part of the negotiations for funding the government too, because I do really think Republicans know if they don't do this, and they, you know, take they give their constituents a hard pill to swallow going into twenty twenty four with a potential government funding deal that relates to Ukraine, that relates to maybe the Pentagon and

all of that. At least they'll have this to cling to, I guess.

feet as we start this conversation. Before we began, you answered a question to Ryan from Ryan that you spent about six years of your life on this book, so you're very intimately familiar with the La Mumba plot, obviously, but for those who aren't, could you just give a brief overview of what the La Mumba plot is, what happened to Lamumba, and what you're reporting tells us about how the US sanctioned the operation.

to help put his country back together. And in the context of the Cold War, this was seen as an unforgivable sin, and so that's when the CIA set in motion this bizarre assassination plot involving poisons that were flown to the Congo that the CIA station chief was supposed to put in the food or toothpaste of Lamumba. That poisoning plot ended up not coming to fruition, but the CIA was involved in a different way. It helped overthrow Lamumba.

It helped support the man Joseph Mobutu later known as Mobutu ses Seku, who took power in a military coup and replaced Lamumba. And then crucially when La Mumba was

sent to his death in January nineteen sixty one. The CIA station chief on the ground essentially gave a green light for that operation, and on January seventeenth, nineteen sixty one, La Mumba was shot dead in the breakaway province of Katonga, executed by a Congolese firing squad commanded by Belgian officers who are answering to the secessionist leaders of that province.

But the CIA played a key role in green lighting La Mumba's transferred to a place where everyone knew he was going to die, Yeah, and.

too fast and aggressive a plan. Events intervened and then suddenly in the beginning of nineteen sixty the Belgians realized they had had to offload their colony, that this was not a sustainable enterprise. So what that meant is that you got the politicians in power after independence had no experience being politicians because political behavior political activity was outlawed before independence. So La Mumba is, as you mentioned, a

beer salesman. He had been a postal clerk working for the colonial administration, and it was in Laopoldville, the capital of the Congo, as a beer salesman, that he really dove into politics. Had first and co founded a political party, the National Congolese Movement, and then in elections parliamentary elections held in the spring in nineteen sixty, his party won the most votes and that's why he was asked to

form a government and become Prime minister. And I mean, the key thing about the moment that distinguished him was that he was incredibly charismatic. Even his bitterest foes recognized that that he really had a way with words. He was also a skilled political organizer, and he was peddling a message that was appealing, which is that the Congo had to be strong, united and independent, truly independent after independence.

may have pushed people kind of closer to the arms of the Soviets where they may not have ever wanted to go, and in fact definitely didn't want to go. Was the kind of ideological approach that Lamimba was taking to a that kind of broader world conflict that certainly wasn't on the minds of his constituents in DRC on a kind of daily basis, but also the sort of question of global communism or what in an industrial society the right way to run a government is.

Soviets didn't really care about the country. They viewed it as a far away place where Moscow was never going to have much influence as a heavily Catholic country not amenable to communism, and in nineteen sixty the Soviet Union was not particularly powerful and didn't have a great ability to project power far abroad. Yet from the American perspective,

they saw Soviet ghosts everywhere. And this is the one of the great tragedies of the story, I think, is that La Mumba was fundamentally misread by Washington, and they couldn't understand that he in fact wanted to stay neutral in the Cold War and simply wanted help putting his country back together and having his government and country survive.

conditions weren't right for it, or like you said, just just completely ignoring it, like with with you know, no sense from the Soviets that they had any entry into Congo. Uh you right, at one point that Kasavubu, who is kind of the more radical revolutionary, was at least a little bit more interesting to the Soviets. But even in

that case, there wasn't much they could do that. It's like and La Mumba winds up as this such a tragic figure because he seemed to really believe the rhetoric that was coming, you know, from the United States it's about democracy and self determination and from the United Nations, and you've got these moments where kind of he's reaching out to the United Nations saying, you know, it's basically like calling the manager, like, hey, you know, here are

the values that the world says it upholds. I share those values. I'm trying to implement those values here in Congo.

had announced its secession. So the UN goes into Congo, imagining it can be a neutral mediator, but what it discovers pretty quickly is that they're actually important political choices that have to be made where it's going to anger one side or the other. So the UN refuses to go into Katonga at first, and Lamumba is extremely frustrated with this effecklessness on its part, and it's then that he tries the Americans, gets rebuffed, and only after that does he goes to the Soviet Union.

and so on. In narrow Cold War terms, this was a success because you got rid of a potentially pro Soviet leader in Lamumba, never mind that that's an exaggeration, and you installed in his place a supposedly pliant American pro American dictator in Joseph Mogutu, never mind that he took ANDed out to be far less pro American than American officials hoped so in that by that sense it worked.

If you broad in the scope even just a little bit, to include, for instance, the plight of the Congolese people, it becomes a failure. You have Mobutu in power for thirty plus years, nourished by American aid, nearly to the very end, ran the country into the ground, extraordinary, extraordinarily kleptocratic, repressive, and so on, and his regime's implosion kicked off a

massive civil war that killed millions. And also, I would argue you didn't even need to get rid of La Mumba to have a country that was not communists and not pro Soviet. There's no world in which Lamuba was about to, after having thrown off the Belgian colonial yolk, was going to turn around and allow his country to be dominated by the Soviets, yet within the CIA this

was viewed as a success. Larry Devil in the CIA Station chief got promoted for his work in the Congo, he won at least won an award for it, and then throughout the rest of the Cold War, as you know, there's this pattern of yet more instances where the CIA is intervening on behalf of a friendly tyrant and against the wishes of the democratic impulse of the broader population.

So this was not something that was invented in Congo, but I would argue was really perfected and most shown as a success quote unquote in Congo in nineteen sixty in nineteen sixty one, and would be a pattern that would continue throughout the rest of the Cold War and arguably.

of the US government in certain cases that this is a mentality that makes sense.

I think the broader lesson of nineteen sixty nineteen sixty one into Congo is the danger of paranoia, and that Americans were obsessed with what the Soviets were seemingly up to and invented all sorts of apparitions in their And so the lesson is that your geopolitical rival is often not ten feet tall, perfectly competent. And today you see a lot of hyperventilation about what China and Russia are up to in Africa, But if you actually sort of look at the.

just the Biden administration. This was happening during the Trump administration as well. So we'll obviously follow that story because my full time job is at The Federalist, but I wanted to mention that as well, Ryan, because Missouri v. Biden has gone all the way up. This is going

to be a landmark. The Missouri Biden v. Biden is already in you know, clearly going to be a landmark case about how the government is able to sort of exercise its powers over speech, over social media, over journalism, and this case is actually really testing that as well.

be over on Serious XM Channel one eleven. Ryan. Any appearances for the book that people should be on the.