Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here, and we here at breaking points, are already thinking of ways we can up our game for this critical election.
We rely on our premium subs to expand coverage, upgrade the studio ad staff give you, guys, the best independent.
Coverage that is possible.
If you like what we're all about, it just means the absolute world to have your support. But enough with that, let's get to the show.
Good morning, and welcome to Counterpoints. Emily.
Thanks to you and Christel for picking up the slack last Wednesday. How was the Ladies Show?
It was great? How was the Fish show? Shows?
The Fish Shows were wonderful.
Might be a little weepy today and now the re entry is difficult, the serotonin depletion, but I think we'll.
Get through this. So you've got this. If you do see a tier two, it's I got some other stuff going on.
Yeah, he's working through things.
Yeah, all right, So we're going to have an interesting show today.
We've got the results out of Michigan, both in the Republican primary and in the Democratic primary.
Democratic voter sent Biden a brutal.
Message by with more than one hundred thousand of them telling them, telling him they are uncommitted at this point, Republican voters sent Nikki Haley a pretty brutal message too well.
I mean that's been an ongoing story for the last couple of months.
Think she's going to get that message.
She's I think I'm rooting for the comeback ride. She's the real underdog.
I thing's possible.
So we're going to talk about twenty twenty four polling. We're also going to have updates on the negotiations toward a potential ceasefire in the Israel Gaza war. My colleague mas Hussein was on John Stewart this week talking debating Israel Palace time with Yer Rosenberg. We're going to talk about that for a little bit and what else we got. We might have a shutdown. I think we will shut down by the end of this week.
Yeah, I think we will have a shutdown by the end of this week. So we're going to go through there's a bunch of clips from yesterday, people coming in and out of the White House, Speaker Mike Johnson, Chuck Schumer talking about their perspective on how to keep the government open. But it seems really unlikely that the government is going to stay open. So we'll break down some
of those dynamics as they stand today. Whens and we're really excited to have Gabriel shipt him back in a year for an interview.
And Julian Sanje's brother. He's in the United States this week. He'll be in studio. Last week, as you guys talked about, Juliana sanch had potentially his last extradition hearing over in the UK. The next step would be yanking him over here and throwing him into some maximum security prison for the crime of publishing documents.
Let's start those with Starbucks.
Ryan, Yes, some huge news on the union front.
So Starbucks announced yesterday that it has reached an agreement with Starbucks United, which is the union that has been going around organizing Starbucks coffee shops around the country. It has been, you know, one of the you know, most intense kind of battles between labor and capital that we that we've seen in the United States. Schultze, CEO, the founder of the company, just despises this union with every fiber of his body.
He takes it so personally he does.
And what we learned from the American Prospect actually is that these negotiations began after and I'd reported this in the intercept, that Starbucks decided it was going to sue its union for using a Starbucks logo while opposing the War in Gaza. So all of us actually started with the Starbucks workers protest against the War in Gaza.
Those that lawsuit then led.
To some negotiations between the union and the company, and over the last week, as the Prospect reports, those negotiations evolved into actual talks about the union itself. And so the result, and what we're hearing is that this is
actually potentially more significant that it seems. The result is that there's going to be an agreement on an organized and fair process toward forming unions in Starbucks coffee shops, and Starbucks is going to negotiate collectively with all of those shops rather than what they've been doing is kind
of individually trying to crush every union. And what I think this reveals is that Starbucks is recognizing a they have a huge image problem in the wake of the guys A war, yes, and also that their workers are overwhelmingly in support of a union.
So it sounds like, I mean, Starbucks is one of the more interesting union dribes from my perspectives, because it also affects more than hundreds of thousands of workers in the United States. Basically an ever street cornerat in major cities and everyone's town at this point almost as a Starbucks unless you're lived in a pretty rural area. So there's just a lot going on with the dynamics culturally
with Starbucks. There are people in major city is one of the reasons it was a great Jacobin interview from a couple of years ago. People felt like they were being forced to work like untrained social workers because of some of the new policies about bathrooms that have since been rescinded. But there's just I mean, Starbucks workers have a very interesting and I hate to use the word unique, but it is kind of a unique, I guess, case to make for the unionization.
Meanwhile, relatedly, a Mercedes plant in UAW, the workers there announced that they that more than fifty percent of them have signed cards asking to be to organize with the UAW.
So the UAW is.
Absolutely on fire just like rolling up these plants, and whether they can actually turn just over fifty percent of cards into a union remains to be seen, but it shows extraordinary momentum. The ig Metal, which is maybe the biggest and strongest union in the world, a union in Germany, is going to pressure Mercedes and is pressuring Mercedes to be fair and to treat this treat this union drive fairly. Meanwhile, of course, Chinese ev cars are threatening to destroy the
entire American auto manufacturing industry. So we'll see if the uaw's kind of revival comes a little bit too late.
Well, Ran, that's a great transition to the Michigan primary election results. That it really really is perfect, especially with the electric vehicle point, not just the UAW, but specifically the election. Yeah, I think it's the fish though.
The wave of your fer camerly flowed.
So in Michigan last night, Donald Trump won the Republican nomination sixty eight to twenty seven percent, So sixty eight percent for Donald Trump, twenty seven percent for Nikki Haley. One of the big stories though, though you weren't hearing a lot about it in the media this morning, is that thirteen percent of Michigan voters selected uncommitted, so Joe Biden got eighty one percent of the vote. Thirteen percent
went to uncommitted. If you're doing the math there, that's because also another five percentage points, as one of our great producers pointed out, for US went to Dean Phillips and Mary and Williamson. So one hundred thousand votes, more than one hundred thousand votes went to uncommitted. You add twenty two thousand for Maryanne and twenty thousand for Dean Phillips into the mix, and you're almost getting to one out of every five voters one in every eight went
for uncommitted. But Michigan is a state that Joe Biden barely won. I think it was around three points he eked out of victory in twenty twenty, So a huge battleground state for him. And if you're doing the math, Ryan in a primary election which is generally low turnout, and in fact, forty percent more voters turned out for Republicans than Democrats last night, So if you're doing the math for Biden come November, this is a very very
bad sign. We know that they were expecting potentially a bad sign because they've dispatched all of their aids, not all of them, but an army of aids to dearborn and the Muslim American communities in Michigan. So they understand that they have a problem on their hands here, but I think that problem might be bigger than even they realized.
Yeah, the low turnout is key because you have to combine the two things. Yes, so there's one hundred thousand plus people in Michigan turned out to the polls to vote uncommitted. They walked to their polling place, they got on a bus, they drove, they saw in many cases, they registered that day just to register the fact that they wanted to reject Biden, that they were not willing to vote for Biden, a complete rejection of what they
were being offered. The rest that represent that gap of forty fifty percent between Democrats and Republicans rejected the status quote by just staying home, and that hurts Democrats just as much. In November, ask Hillary Clinton what happens in Michigan when people are so unenthusiastic or opposed to your campaign that they just don't bother to show up on election Day.
Yeah. And you know it's funny because I was reading a news report I think this was in the New York Times this morning about how you know if the Arab American vote swings thirty percent to Donald Trump at Michigan, it could be enough for Joe Biden to end up losing. They had a poll that showed something like that in the works, potentially a Times Siena pole. But to your point, just talking about a swing towards Trump is wildly insufficient. I mean, turnout is equally an important part of the
equation there. So when you have forty percent more Republican voters turning out the Democratic voters, yeah, No, I mean I think that's not a great sign for Joe Biden. Who if you'd understand that there's a battle over uncommitted happening, you really want to make your mark for Joe Biden,
you go turn out in the polls. So to have low turnout even if it's a pretty obvious outcome, right, you know that Joe Biden ultimately is going to prevail, but you would want to stamp down talk of quote uncommitted. You show up to vote.
Yeah, And I think the bigger problem for the Biden campaign is that they they and their enablers in the media harbored this genuinely kind of racist view that it was only Arab and Muslim voters that cared about this genocide.
Going on.
The idea that there is universal concern for women, children, elderly, innocent people get getting killed is just kind of anathma to this increasing I guess identitarian politics that has taken hold in the Democratic Party, where you would have people saying, you know what, only two percent of the Michigan population is Arab, So this isn't actually a promise, like you really think that it's only Arab people that care about
children getting killed by the hundreds every single day. And secondly, because the way the census works, it's not two percent, it's significantly more than two percent. But what these results showed is that racist assumption was utterly flawed. Basically everywhere around Michigan, at least ten percent of the electorate voted uncommitted places that have close to zero.
Arab American population.
Now in Dearborn, in places like that, you saw absolute blowouts for uncommitted, But in say ann Arbor, you had something like thirty percent of people coming out and voting uncommitted. So we can put up here, and it's also not just young people. You also hear young people and Arab Americans like that. That is the way that people have generously started to expand it. Oh yeah, you know, those soft hearted young people, they also care about genocide.
That that's also not true.
The penetration of opposition to genocide is is across the demographic board. Now, how many people are going to come out and express that varies, but it's not just isolated.
So yeah, and if you were just looking at that map, you saw again that Dean Phillips and mary Anne Williamson had more than forty thousand votes between them in addition to the more than one hundred thousand votes.
And those are protest votes.
Nobody walked into the polling place thinking that if they voted for Marianne that she was going to win, or that they voted for Dean that he's going to become the nominee.
That's sending a signal.
And both of those candidates were deeply frustrated that all of the kind of social media energy and the kind of public on the ground grassroots energy became organized around voting uncommitted and no doubt, like back in nineteen sixty eight, you had McCarthy to vote for. Like it's easier for organizers if somebody is running on a popular banner of peace and it becomes the one that you're going to vote for to send that signal.
That's much easier. But the population wants to.
Express its democratic will and it's going to find a way to do it. Often they find that way to do it by just not voting and just not showing up. This gave people an opportunity to say, Okay, I can actually show up and be heard and have my frustration against this shown.
So let's put a two up on the screen. This is some notable quote uncommitted slash no preference vote shares from Obama's uncontested twenty twelve primaries. So again this happened in twenty twelve. Those were very low turnout primaries because you know, satisfaction with the candidate was a lot higher than it is with Biden. So Kentucky was at forty two percent, Michigan itself was at a let seven percent, North Carolina twenty one percent, and then you had some
other states Rhode Island, Tennessee. People were organized and Ryan you probably covered that at the time, mobilized enough people to come out to uncommitted to the point where it was forty two percent in Kentucky. But again, that was a totally different context and bigger.
Raw numbers here.
Yes, like the number of well over one hundred thousand is the one that they're going to have to take home.
The satisfaction with Obama on behalf of Democrats in twenty eleven relatively high compared to.
Well Bernie was calling for to his eternal kind of electoral Chagrin was calling for a primary challenge to Obama because he was embracing austerity at the time. By the time of the election, he had gone into kind of populist mode, painting Romney as the plutocrad that he was. And so the left was and there was no primary challenge. They're a little back behind that.
But yeah, it's not like everyone was, Oh, Obama is, you know, the savior of the working class. But it was satisfaction with it Romney. Satisfaction with Joe Biden is on a Dissatisfaction with Joe Biden's on another level in this case. So let's go ahead and pivot to this conflict that bubbled over on CNN.
We knew that cable News was going to have a measure sober response to the Michigan public declaring its opposition to this genocide, and they delivered for us. Yeah, let's show a friend of the show, Nina Turner here walking into the lions Den and trying to actually talk substance with a CNN horse race panel, and let's see how well that goes.
And I think sometimes as we talk about this issue, we're making it. We're centering President Biden, we are centering former President Donald J. Trump, when the uncommitted efforts is the center the people closest to the pain, and that is the air of American community, that is the Palestinian community, that is communities that care about peace. And so while this president was in the ice cream shop saying I think there's going to be a ceasefire, thirty thousand people
have been slaughtered. People are living in famine. They can't get medical care, so it can't come soon enough for them. And that was really the weight that I picked up on when I was in Dearborn. So we get to be comfortable and talk about this like these people are widgets when they are in fact suffering. And I am young enough to remember, colleagues, when Congresswoman Rashida to Leib and also Congresswoman Corey Bush called for a ceasefire very early on.
They were called abhorrent.
Now fast forward to all of these bodies land in the wake and people who are living through this every single day.
By the way, there's also been slaughter in say so on both sides. No, I'm not on your lecture on the problem. What I'm talking about the politics of this tonight. How what to you would be a victory if somebody was calling for this uncommitted vote, what to you would be a victory tonight?
To get that messages.
I'm not denying that pain. All I'm saying that at a certain point after October to seventh, it becomes clear. I mean, you have a right wing prime minister. But but you understand, say, I'm not denying anybody's pain. What I am saying is that this president and our country has the power to say to net and Yahoo, we need a permanent cease fire.
The only time I only wait one more point.
The only time hostages were released is when we had that brief cease fire.
That is another reason why.
But also I also have to remind people we had to ceasefire prior to October seventh, well, that.
It was uncomfortable and let me say something in defense of Nina Turner there that people might not recognize. So in that back and forth there, so when Anderson Cooper jumps in, he's like, hold hold on, there's pain on both sides here, and then tries to move it back to the horse race and he's like, give me your view of the politics here, and then she takes it back to the pain. Like he gets he gets upset with her, like, hey, I told you to take this
back to the horse race. But if if she hadn't done that, you know, she knows that she's constantly getting hit as you hostile to Israel and maybe even anti Semitic, and that if she didn't respond to that, then that would be the thing that people would hit her for. So she has to then, so he he kind of forces her to respond to that and then gets upset with her that when she does, you know, actually respond to that.
But it was interesting to see the panel just.
So reflexively unable to even kind of think about the substance of the issue, like what is why are people voting the way that they did?
Yeah, the I don't we don't need a lecture on the problem line is come on, not collegial. So it tells me that Anderson Cooper must have and that sells.
Directed at the voters too in a way.
It's like like frustrated at the voters that they're like going to lecture about like that. And you saw people getting saying that, ah, these these voters and who want their moral clarity like more, what and what a lot of them are demanding is is not actually that much.
You're just saying, just call for a ceasefire.
So on this point, we also have an exchange between Jake Tapper and Wie Dingle to roll let's watch that.
And what is it You have been with about sixteen percent of the vote in so it's going to be a sizeable uncommitted vote. Is this a surprise to you in any way? And what do you make of this potential impact? Will the White House change course in any way?
So, first of all, it's not a surprise to me. I've been telling people that we have a kind of campaign called Listen to Michigan with people that want to be listened to. But you know, as everybody started acting surprise tonight or were looking at figures, I said to multiple people over the course of the last month and my district, Washnon County, which has got Ann Arbor and Ippsilani and everybody really ignores me when I say Hipsilanti too,
I bet have more committed votes than dearborn. And as you're watching, I'm going.
To be right and I expected it because it's not just the air of American Muslim community. It's young people who you know want to be heard, are concerned, have the same concerns about They know what Hamas did was a pair is it? But they are watching innocent civilians be killed in that kind of damage. That that's there.
We've got to talk about that issue, but we've got to talk about a lot of other issues too.
So actually sounding a little bit like Nina Turner from one of the most moderate members, one of the most centrist members of the Hou Representatives, now Tapper doesn't shut her down like Cooper shud down Anderson Cooper, I think because she delivered it in a way that was that strikes you know, your average in an anchor as being a different angle than listening to Nina Turner, who's someone
on the left. But if it comes out of the mouth of a centrist, it's exactly the point you were making, right, she's talking about epseil Ante, she's talking about Ann Arbor.
She won a bunch of credibility too, because she was the person in twenty sixteen who was, you know, most loudly yelling at the Hillary Clinton campaign, well Michael Moore, telling them that they were misunderstanding what was happening in Michigan and that they were on the brink of losing it. And she was doing that publicly enough that when it actually came to pass, everybody was like, oh yeah, Debbie Dinga was saying that. So now when she talks and makes an electoral argument, people listen.
One of the kind of.
I think hard to swallow pills for people is that is the Biden line that comes out where he says, well, this is not about electoral politics, this is about doing.
The right thing.
It's like, well, that's almost worse like the idea that you think that you look at you're handling of this assault since October seventh, and you look at the thirty thousand dead plus, you know, there's just recent projections that you know you're looking at. Even if there's a ceasefire
right now, you're looking at tens of thousands more. You're looking at the Israeli civilians in coordination with the idea of setting up bouncy castles and having carnivals outside of the fence into Gaza, and at those carnivals protesting and blocking aid from getting in while children have now gone from the brink of famine, the brink of starvation to
actually starving to death. And so you look at that and you say, you think you're the one who's ignoring electoral implications and doing the right thing, then you are a moral creature of like such disrepute that we don't mind seeing you lose the same to mind, no.
Matter what the consequences are.
So another note, I mean again, Debbie Dingle was talking about this not being isolated to Dearborn, and that was the point that you made, Ryan, which means that this translates outside of Michigan. That's a really important.
They're moving to Minnesota, like Minnesota's next, and you're going to see people pushing to vote uncommitted in or whatever. I don't know the exact what you can vote on the ballot. Michigan has the uncommitted line, but in Minnesota they're going to be pushing for something similar. You know, New Hampshire they've said, right and cease fire. You know that you have to do something different in every state because we've got these federated electoral systems.
So literally, as we were talking, one of the candidates that we mentioned here, someone who got twenty two thousand votes in Michigan last night, unsuspended her campaign. And that would be Marianne Williamson. Again, this happened as we were discussing this on air and taping this very segment. Let's take a listen to what Marion had to say.
Hey, I have an important announcement to make as of today, I am unsuspending my campaign.
For the presidency of the United States.
I had suspended it because I was losing the horse race.
But something so much more important than the horse race is at stake here and we must respond.
Right, Marion Williamson unsuspending her campaign. The uncommitted movement now with a little bit of momentum going to like you said, Minnesota, California's got a primary coming up. We're reeling right into We're rolling right into Super Tuesday. It looks like Biden might be facing a seriously mobilized protest volte movement in this primary.
Now, yes, I mean across the Democratic Party. The opposition to his unconditional support for Israel's war effort is overwhelming. There was a Paul recently that showed that there's double digit opposition from Jewish Democrats and significant double digit now like ten or twelve, I don't remember the exact number, but it's significant O and that stretches across the board.
There's basically no demographic in the Democratic coalition that supports what Biden is doing, and so they're going to be looking for any channel to express that opposition.
And just before we leave this block, I know we didn't cover much Trump Haley ground because basically the results are really similar to what people expected. So sixty eight to twenty seven. Again, that's the breakdown. There was a five thirty.
Eight polling out five percent uncommitted, right, I'm doing my math right, it's.
Somewhere around it. But there's a and Nicki Hilly, to your point, is kind of a protest vote to Donald Trump. There's not a lot of people who are like I just love Nikki Haley. There's some people there Democrats that love there's some yeah, exactly exactly, but again, There was a five thirty eight average that I saw getting a little bit of attraction on the internet last night, and
I went and looked at it. It was like a few polls over the course in the last couple of months, and so Trump did underperform that by about ten points. It had him in the mid to high seventies, and again he.
Ended up six pattern right, he keeps under performing his polls.
He keeps underperforming, although I don't necessarily know that that's a huge Again, when the polls are in state levels. I mean, polls just aren't always If you have a polling average of a couple polls in Michigan, I don't know what that means, but it's still obviously the quote that I wanted to read from this acxios report was about Nikki Haley. They said, but a sizable trunk Nikki
Haley's performance so again twenty seven percent. And Nicki Haley, when she was in South Carolina, her home state that she poured way more money into than Donald Trump poured into South Carolina, she actually outspent round of Santis and Trump in Iowa. She wildly outspent Donald Trump in New Hampshire. So she's pouring a lot of money into these states, getting thirty forty percent of the vote. Again, we saw that happen last night. Significant in a place where Donald
Trump was always felt at home. It's done a lot of stuff in Michigan. Axios says that the vote for Nicki Haley shows that quote, but a sizable chunk of Republican voters may never be on board with Donald Trump. Yeah, it's twenty twenty four. We've known that since twenty fifteen. We've seen it again since twenty sixteen. We saw it in twenty eighteen, we sat in twenty twenty, we signed
in twenty twenty two. We did not need Nikki Haley coming at twenty seven percent in Michigan to show that a sizable chunk of Republican voters may never be on board with Donald Trump. But thank you Mike Allen for putting that out.
But meanwhile, an interesting New Yugov Economist poll finds that he's picked up sizeable ground basically since Biden was sworn in. Now, we could put this tweet from Adam Carlson up here, but well, you have to remember that this represents sort of a nator of Trump support. Like this is the moment this we're talking like just a little bit after January sixth, where the guy's mob ransacked the capitol and
he's like facing impeachment. So this bottoming out, He's seen a forty five point gain among black voters, a forty point gain among people eighteen to twenty nine, let's go back to that in a second. Interestingly, a twenty seven percent gain among people who make more than one hundred thousand dollars modern he's doing. And then he's picked up about a fifth of the electorate with basically everybody else, you know, moderates people letting less than fifty percent, even
liberals and Democrats. That comes, I think from how you know, he was down in probably single digits among some among some of those liberals and Democrats pulling.
Finding the shifts in black voters, young voters, and Hispanic voters tirty seventy four terrify Joe Biden. And another thing I just want to point out, because you won't hear it in the corporate press, is that this is just about Donald Trump. And I'm not particularly a fan of Donald Trump, nor are most people that work in journalism professionally. But this is only happening with Donald Trump. This would you would not see these numbers with Nikki Haley. You
would not see these numbers with other Republican candidates. For some reason, Donald Trump is making inroads with black voters, young voters, and Hispanic voters that Republicans who put out in twenty twelve their RNC autopsy saying, the only way that we're going to win Hispanic voters is by moderating on immigration. The only way we're going to win young
voters is by moderating on culture war issues. For some reason, Donald Trump is making inroads with those voting blocks that other Republicans are not, and other Republicans have never figured out how to do it. And again, so much of this is just like unique to Donald Trump, Donald Trump. You can't really replicate Donald Trump and Doug Mastriano or even in Rond De Santis, as we've seen many different times play out with many different candidates. So it's not
like this is some boon of the Republican Party. I think, you know, it would be easy to read these numbers and say, wow, you know, Donald Trump, He's the future of the Republican Party. Republican Party is now the party of the young and Hispanics and the working class. It doesn't translate to other Republicans, but it is something that Donald Trump is doing, and these are huge gains in ways that should definitely terrify Joe Biden. We can put b two up on the screen here. This is another
one of the polls. This is from an Axios poll. They found again gen Z millennial voters Kida Biden's twenty twenty victory. They turned out in huge numbers, favored him by twenty points back in twenty twenty. His support for Israel, biden support for Israel is hurting him with young voters. Biden got fifty two percent to Trump's forty eight percent in a new Axios gen Lab survey of voters between
the ages of eighteen and thirty four. Forty nine percent of eighteen to twenty nine year old supported Trump, compared with forty three percent for Biden in a New York Times Sienna College poll. So that's Axios in New York Times finding Donald Trump making huge, huge inroads on Joe Biden with young voters in the midst of the October seventh fallout. And Ryan another part of this that's interesting is that's not just people saying neither, that's people actually gravitating.
Forms Donald Trump.
Yeah, And there was a vision in twenty twenty two of a Democratic coalition that would consist of young people, then people with college degrees, people of color that could get that could that was broadly behind a progressive agenda that if if with enough a depth to kind of work inside the coalition, could be weaponized toward a kind of working class agenda, child tax credits, other support for the working class, pro union stuff, that turns the Democratic
Coalition back into a genuinely progressive force.
Like you.
They only won, say Georgia, for instance, because of the overwhelming support from voters of color and young people, and there's a huge overlap between those two because the younger generation is the most most diverse that we've had. That that was a kind of hopeful vision of a Democratic party that could actually do something good for everyday people
around the country. Uh, they threw that all away with over support, unconditional support of this genocide in Gaza, And for a prime minister in Benjamin Netanyahu whose mission is to see Biden lose, it's absolutely just an incredible lack of concern for their own electoral kind of success, absolutely
mind blowing. And so now you with Trump, even with young people, that blows up that that potential coalition that they had, unless you can get that back, which is possible because, like you said, without Trump, those young people are like these guys, creeps and freaks. And we're actually
going to talk about that pretty soon. Yes, so it could come back, but if you don't have that, if you if you don't, because in order to win young people and also in order to win a lot of black voters, you need policies they are going to benefit the kind of working class and progressive people kind of generally. If you're not going for young people, then you're just you know, playing Clintonian triangulation games and just trying to you know, win fifty point one percent by picking off
you know, center right voters. And that's not a coalition that certainly gets me excited.
So we saw Trump make huge in roads with in the Rio Grand Valley, and Tager has talked about this Texas guy, so he understands Texas politics. But Jhnald Trump's margins with Hispanic voters in the rear Grand Valley and taxes were very, very important to how close he came to defeating Joe Biden back in twenty twenty. I mean, these margins in certain states are just absolutely critical, especially
the battleground states in a place exactly like Michigan. But these that's why this forty five percent jump again, that is a very important point. It's from February of twenty twenty one until now, so absolute low point for Donald Trump. But it's a forty five point jump, you know, not a five point jump ten point Trump forty five point jump. So it's significant no matter what. Forty with people aged eighteen to twenty nine, twenty seven, with Hispanic voters, that's
a huge deal. That's a five alarm fire type deal. That's like the media is even covering this and they don't like Donald Trump, but like it should be an even bigger story given how huge these advantages are. Again for Republicans, though, the Rio Grand Valley is a great example. Mayra Flores was and she was redistricted, but was one of those Hispanic candidates. She was elected to Congress. I think she was elected in twenty twenty and then lost
again in twenty twenty two. But either way, with the redistricting, she ended up losing her seat, and some of the candidates done in the Rio Grand Valley that Kevin McCarthy kind of hat and pick to win did not win. There's something when Donald Trump is not on the ballot that doesn't translate for Republican voters necessarily with those same groups that have come to really like Donald Trump, and the Republican Party keeps trying to push Donald Trump away.
That was one of his issues with Ronald McDaniel is that she just didn't kind of get Trump as am. She didn't want to necessarily have the RNC being used in ways that were helpful in the legal battle sphere. I mean, money is fungible, and I think they're not technically allowed to use. He can't use campaign funds for paying off the legal battles, so what the RNC can do for the campaign then becomes a big question. But the point is establishment Republicans in Washington are still very
uncomfortable with Donald Trump. But Donald Trump has a political instincts that resonate with people, and you know, eight years later, Republicans still can't quite grapple with that in a way that translates to other candidates. Ryan Trump right away came
out and said we're protecting IVF. That's a second point of this block that we want to get to, because when you're looking at Donald Trump specifically making gains with young voters, with people who consider themselves liberal, he's up twenty. He has a twenty point bump from February of twenty twenty one that can go out the door with other Republican candidates. Donald Trump, though, came out right away saying.
Yeah, this is and this I think is the key problem for the Republican coalition because the one thing that kind of Trump and the anti Trump Republican establishment agree on is that a lot of the kind of Republican cultural positions are terrible for them in general elections. Yes, and probably I probably nothing more so than the than the IVF issue, right right, I mean, which is what's within the sphere of abortion rights.
But it's probably even even worse for them.
I yes, significantly.
But so let's so today the Senate is going to Democrats in the Senate, Tammy Duckworth something else and Patty Murray are going to try to force a vote on the Senate floor that tries to put Republicans on record that will say you could put this element up here, uh that will say I v F is protected on
a on a federal level. This flows out of the kind of shocking to the public Alabama Supreme Court decision that declared that embryos uh that have been produced through the IVF process are children, uh and through through the entire kind of Alabama I v F system into into
complete chaos. All all of the people who have been uh you know, hoping and praying uh that they're finally going to have a chance to uh to to raise children and spending like enormous amounts of money, like you know, taking this taking you know, a lot of people do this on credit uh and and otherwise making extraordinary sacrifices because they want to they want to build a nuclear family. Are now all of a sudden told that.
It's not happening.
Now Alabama's is trying to give some type of community legal shield to doctors. But walk us through and actually tell us a little bit about how big a part of the kind of pro life movement is this IVF faction that wants to go all the way to the wall for this.
So in pro life circles you basically never hear this talked about. It it's not in a top of mind issue, especially after Dobbs. It's a lot of conversations just about states and abortion in particular. Although if you believe, and Crystal and I talked about this and actually really kind of debated it a little bit last week. If you believe that, you know, conception is the moment of that life begins. Obviously, most people in pro life circles push comes to shove, end up on that side of the
myself included to end up on side of that. But there are other states. I think Louisiana is one of the examples that have protections for embryos that have not upended the entire IVF system in this way that I mean, the politics of it are bad, and we'll get to this in a bit, but the morality of it is awful. I mean, NPR profiled a woman who is now like, my embryos are at this clinic, but the clinic will not give me my embryos, and the clinic can't do
anything with my fertilized embryos. It's just heart wrenching. People's hopes and dreams and livelihoods are on the line because of a ping ponging sort of legal question.
It's awful because you end up losing the moral thread there. It feels like, if the purpose is life and family, just leaving an embryo in a freezer indefinitely, yeah, doesn't seem to even be kind of in service of their own.
No, no, not at all. Yeah. I think that's a great point. And so Tammy Duckworth picked up on the politics of the Donald Trump right away, so protecting it. But Tammy Duckworth and Democrats immediately, there's a lot of headlines that always say Republicans pounce whenever there's a politically convenient issue for them. Well, Democrats definitely pounce this time. Let's listen to Senator Duckworth, whose children, by the way, were born by Ivah.
One in four married women have difficulty getting pregnant or carrying a pregnancy to term. One in four. That doesn't even include single individuals and other families also trying to conceive. So, but to my Republican colleagues, please think about how many that one in four represents in your state. Women willing to go through expensive, painful treatsments just for a chance to experience the most banal moments of parenthood. Just to have a newborn to swaddle, a toddler whose shoes that
needed to be tied. And if you believe that they should have the right to be called mom without also being called a criminal, then all you have to do to prove it is help us pass this should be obvious legislation, because in this nightmarriage moment, it's nowhere near enough to send out a vaguely worded tweet suggesting that you care about women's rights despite a voting record to
the absolute contrary. Instead, if you truly care about the sanctity of families, if you're genuinely, actually honestly interested in protecting IVF, then you need to show it by not blocking this bill on the floor tomorrow.
It's that simple. And she said that because we can put this next element up on the screen. This is from Newsweek. It's a headline that says Republicans call Alabama IVF ruling scary. And if you're watching this, you see the picture of Matt Gates up on the screen. Because Matt Gates is one of the Republicans who came out right away and said nope, Republicans should be protecting IVF. He said there was something quote totally wrong about the situation.
You also had Byron Donald's, another Freedom Caucus guy, come out in that direction. And then some establishment people like Christan Nunow, even Tommy Talberville again who is seen as like now a pro life champion based on his stand that we covered a lot here last year on Pentagon and abortion.
Sort even rebels, even Dubberville, and so is if this gets to the floor, will this be a thing where Republicans just kind of cave and like it gets unanimous support.
I don't know, because Duckworth did something really clever. It's basically like she's basically saying it would establish a federal right to IVF and other fertility treatments that are risk in the post row era. That's what, according to the Hill, is on the line in the bill that she and Patty Murray puts the floor. So if it's a bill with really sweeping implications that Republicans don't necessarily want to sign on to at a federal level, then she might
have a bunch of Republicans. And you heard that in her quote at the end of the statement there. She might have a bunch of Republicans in a real pickle voting against a bill that they.
Feel as what are the sweeping kind of protections, like it would undermine Louisiana's.
Maybe yeah, right, so like maybe if and I'm not saying that that's the right interpretation of it, but you could see how like legally, Republican interpretations of a federal right to IVF might yeah, exactly, like go after certain state protections or whatever, or it might just be something that has implications for other abortion legislation. Because if you're like birth control legislation, some really like I don't know.
Where they get even more tangled up.
Yeah, because then they're like, well, I would love to support this protection of IVF, but I'm worried it might protect birth control, and then voters like, well, wait a minute, you're seriously against earth control too, exactly. And Speaker Mike Johnson's response to this, I think was indicative of the problems that Republicans have, where he immediately came out and was like this, this is this is bad what the
Alabama Supreme Court did. And then people are immediately like, you sponsored a bill that would basically do this, yes, and it feels like the Republican implicit responses Yeah, but I just did that for political purposes, like I don't actually intend that to become law. And then the public is like, well, we kind of heard you say that for like fifty years with Roe v. Way, and we sort of were lulled into complacency, and then all of a sudden you overturn Roe v.
Wade. So this like, well, this is just cynicism that we're doing here.
We wouldn't actually do this. It doesn't work. After they overturned Row, Well.
Yeah, and again you have Tammy Duckworth saying if you're serious, you need to vote in favor of this bill, and so I think, again, yeah, that's what Democrats have learned is like the big political lesson post Row is to tell Republicans to put their money where their mouth is if they're going to come out in all of these things. So I was on Megan Kelly show this week, and among the sort of Republican politicians that we just discussed,
Megan's a huge supporter of IVF. And again, you know, I've talked to debated with Crystal about this and others. I have a wildly unpopular position on this, but it's just sort of the logical consistency if you believe that life begins a conception. This is where the problem for Republican cross or no, not at all, And that's that's what the clip actually gets to. So let's roll the conversation.
Megan gets into how I'm popular, She thinks this is going to be for Republicans, dangerous to this for Republicans, and then pushes me on one thing as well.
There is a huge difference between looking at a woman and saying you do not have the right to kill your own child and saying to her you do not have the right to have your own child. That is just a complete, completely different message politically, morally, religiously, take your pick, and the latter's not going to fly. It's
not going to fly with Republicans. I'm not going to fly with the very group that Trump is trying to win over, as we discussed earlier, in particular young moderate women, right, that's who he needs to win. So he took the right position on this before we go, Can you just can you expand on what you're saying, Emily, because it's
been a long while. You know, my youngest child is now ten, so I haven't really been following the latest IVF developments, But what is the more moral, humane way of doing it that you're referring to.
So targeted, Yeah, like what you were saying about to minimize situations where people have extra embryos that they have to make decisions.
On, So like just put the number of eggs in the petri dish that you're willing to have, like it's really the eggs that will control the number of children.
Right right, right right, and then figuring out what these clinics do with extra eggs too. I think that's a big, big, big, big legal question as well, because now we have people like the woman on the daily caught in the lurch when a court decision comes down. So as the stuff sort of flip flops or ping pongs through the legal system, you don't have people's lives sort of caught in the balance, And there should be some way that there's there's clarity
so people aren't in those situations. So Ryan Megan is picking up on an important point which is similar to what Tammy duckworth, so that you should have the right to have your own child. The problem with the way that I believe IVF should be done is that it's extremely expensive to do that. It is basically unfeasible for
a lot of people. So I don't pretend that that's like an easy answer to the question, but I think, you know, Republicans are starting to realize post row how bad the environment is for them, especially they can pointed out young women. Probably another reason Tammy Duckworth and Patty Murray jumped on this right away, because you know, Donald Trump is saying one thing about IVF, but down ballot candidates that can get really tough.
For them, right, And because the problems are many, it's you know, it's not just money, it's also time.
You know, you're you're getting older every single month.
Yes, And one reason that they do you know, more than the more than one is so that one takes, yes, sometimes six take, and you know that could be fatal
for a woman trying to carry that. The other problem comes with the Some of it is around genetics, like there might be some genetic problems in the family that would that would create practically an unviable pregnancy, and so they can then create an embryo and genetically test and make sure, okay, it did not get that gene and so therefore, you know, we're not going to use this one, because that could you know, that just simply won't work.
Now you can imagine where you can get into some ethical complications where then you start to do genetic engineering. But that's not that's not what's going on, or or or unless the government wants to come in and say, like this is like we're gonna we're gonna dictate exactly how this, how this goes down.
Uh.
And the point that she made about the painful nature of it, I think is also important to underscore. For some reason, the medical community, uh, when it comes to women just can't figure out ways to do these procedures,
you know, without them being extraordinarily painful. And so every time that a woman tries this and fails, they went through all of that pain coupled within this hope, coupled within the heartbreak of it not working, followed up by oh, you're back in for this like excruciatingly painful process, something that I imagined, like most men like would never be able to even like remotely handle. And then Snell told, oh, you can only do one again, because the Republicans don't want you to do.
More than one.
You get your hopes up again, your heart breaks again, you're back in the painful situation.
And time, Like you said, you're back at square one, but your a year further.
Ahead and lost one hundred thousand dollars to this now and you finance that now.
What and the physical toll in your body?
Yeah?
Absolutely, no, I don't disagree with that at all. And just it's what's happening to people, the uncertainty that people in Alabama are dealing with right now. Like again MPR profile of this woman who's fertilize embryos are in a clinic, and you know, if you believe that that's life, that's human.
Life, it feels like kidnapping.
Christopher Hitchins, I'm sure it feels a woman like that, her kid, like her future children have been kidnapped.
Yeah, I would commend to everybody. There was a great Christopher Hitchins say that he wrote in two thousand and three for Vanity Fair, just sort of talking about the implications of technology and the left sort of idea about when life does begin and the kind of difficult places that I can take us, that that can take us to. These are questions that are worth thinking about. But it's
in Alabama right now. There are a lot of people who are in dire straits and just desperately worried about these you know, these lives from my perspective at least that and from their perspective. Again, the woman from NPR said, those are it feels like a death in the family. So it's yeah, it's awful and there needs to be solutions to it. And the politics of this are absolutely brutal for Republicans.
Let's talk about the ongoing ceasefire negotiations over in the Middle East. President Biden kind of supplanted himself as one of the most, if not the most hated presidents in the Middle East by announcing that there was going to be a ceasefire while licking an ice cream cone, an image that will live in infamy for decades to come. Worse still, it seems like it wasn't even true that he may have been doing this on Monday, right before Michigan was supposed to vote, to try to depress the
uncommitted vote. Is a thought almost kind of too cynical to even contemplate. I'm going to tell myself that it was just his addled mind that allowed him to kind of lie about this, or his spokesperson John Kirby was lying one or the other. Let's play John Kirby's response to Biden's claim that he expected a ceasefire by this coming Monday.
Just a full one.
We just previous questioned, though, we've learned, according to an Israeli source, that Yaku was quite surprised by the President's comments about his expectations that there would be a ceasefire by Monday. So that doesn't vote a lot of optimism that one of the key parties was surprised by that timeline. The President said, so why did he say Monday?
I can't speak for the surprise that foreign leaders have or don't have regard to things that we're saying. The President talked to y'all after staying completely up to speed, and he has been kept up to speed on how these negotiations are going, and he shared with you some context, and he certainly shared with you his optimism that.
We can get there in hopefully a short order. Right. Can I just say how weird it is that he felt the need to confirm that the President has stayed quote completely up to speed on the negotiations.
That's a strange thing to say, and then lied if that's what Kirby is saying. So, yeah, he was up to speed on the negotiations, but then he said something that shocked the people who are actually engaged in the negotiations.
But it almost felt like a tell like, oh, like they're we're keeping them in the loop. Yeah, it's weird.
So Matt Miller over the State Department was also asked about this.
Let's roll his response.
Back up the assertion that you just made in response to one of the questions that we're closer today than we were yesterday.
Just that we continue negotiations and I can't Unfortunately.
What.
They haven't broken down is that why.
We I am so I can't really answer that without getting into the underlying substance of the negotiations. But the talks continue and we think we continue to make progress. But I'm well, you said we think we continue to make progress. That's that is the basis of my state.
That we are closer today than continuing.
Continuing to make progress.
There isn't anything you can give to us now, or present to us or tell us that would actually back up the idea that I that I cease fire slash.
Hot, I it is closer today than it was yesterday.
I can never show you definitive progress and talks that by their very nature are secret.
I mean, okay, I get the logical point he's making that there's secret talks, he's not going to say anything about them, and so therefore he can't back up what he's saying there. But the context is that the President of the United States just said that he expects to seize fire on a very specific time frame one week from the day that he said it, and then he had specifically said we're closer today than we were yesterday.
So those are very reasonable questions.
Okay, great, why like he tells anything, because we're hearing from sources in Helmas and from sources in the Israeli government that they're.
Not very close at all.
Katari's too, and they're saying there's not remotely close.
So anyway, there you go. That's what the American government is going to share with us.
And again that's why I think it's really noteworthy that Kirby said the President has been quote up to speed, kept up to speed in the negotiations, because it actually seems like Biden and I know this is fraud, but it seems like Biden might not have been up to speed. And so when they say that he's been kept up to speed, that's sort of the tell. They're like projecting what they want to the opposite of what the truth is,
to say he's he's totally up to speed. Maybe he's not up to speed because he's not lucid enough to be a significant part of these negotiations.
Yeah, Unfortunately, everything we keep hearing is that he is, that Biden is driving this policy.
Or Biden's lieutenants understand the Biden policy well enough to drive it for him.
I would I don't know you would?
You would hope that, I mean, And maybe that represents a lack of lucidity, that that Biden is just so kind of locked into his ideological, unconditioned Israel that he's unable to absorb new inputs.
Even when people are seeing like this five alarm fire in Michigan, Like you have to, you have to start reconciling your mister two state solution decade, a two state solution with what Natanyahu is doing as mister one state solution.
It's wrecking you and he's not He's changing nothing, Like he went on Seth Myers the other day, right and Myers presses him on this. Myers, who's Jewish American by the way, Biden responds by saying, I'm a Zionist.
You don't have to be Jewish to be a Zionist.
And I believe that no Jew in the world is safe without Israel. Talking to a Jewish American like telling him that he's incapable of keeping Seth Meyers safe in his own country.
What a failure on his part.
If that's true, If there are so many Nazis running rampant in this country, then go do your job and make this country safe for everyone. The idea that you can outsource your job as American president to keep all Americans safe by saying, well, we've got some other country. Can you imagine if he said, no, no Nigerian is safe here in the United States, it's without Nigeria.
They'd be like, uh, well, how about.
Uh, you keep the Nigerians in the United States safe. Now that's a nationality question rather than a religion question.
Uh.
But the entire premise of it is just so convoluted that this is.
One of the other reasons that I read these leaks in a different way coming from the right than people on the left, because I do think it's a frustration. We know that like Biden's own staff is kind of split on this, that there's some people that are hardcore with him on that question of Zionism and the two state solution, when there are other people in the administration that are less comfortable with that. Karine Jean Pierre herself wrote an op ed about the problems with that. What
was this like three years ago? I think it was a tough post. So, I mean, these these divides exist in.
The Oh, it was the Newsweek.
That's like, there you go, But actually we have another clip of Matt Miller getting press press on some of these problems for the administration. We can roll up there.
Then now at least six document instances depicting members of the IDF displaying or rifling through women's underwear, and of course that's just on camera. Soldiers as we've seen stripped and tortured Palestinians. There have been a reported history of soldiers abusing children that they've detained even before October seventh, And of course, you know, invoicate investigations need to be pursued.
It's still given.
You know, although we've seen from Israeli forces. Just up to this point, what's the US government doing in response? Now, given the UN experts' alarm at credible allegations of human rights violations and sexual violence committed against past it, we make.
Clear to the governor of Israel that we expect them to behave consistent with the laws of war and consistent with their own rules of engagement. And we have seen the Israeli military come out and say it is conducting its own investigations into reports of soldiers who have failed to comply with either of those two sets of rules. And that's appropriate, and that's what you expect to professional
military to do. And we expect those investigations to proceed and if appropriate, hold the the responsible parties accountable.
Yeah, and this is this is in response to the new TikTok trend among IDF soldiers. Uh to kind of steal lingerie and other other garments. Palestinian women canes uh one one guy curled up in a crib uh and and put that on on TikTok. No nobody knows, uh, you know where that child is? Is that has that child been killed by the I d F H Is
that child starving? Is that Obviously the child is it has has been pushed out of his or her home because the soldier is now like, you know, having a good time, like sleeping in the kids in the kid's crib.
Uh.
The one though, correction that I would make to Miller's point here he says that you know, we expect uh the Israelis to abide by international law. The US government actually has given Israel until middle of March to sign a document saying that they will abide by international law
in order to continue to receive American weapons. The irony is that within the US government that represents a victory for the people who have been pushing for some sort of accountability and some sort of reckoning with the human rights abuses that Israel's committing with American weapons. But it also puts on display a rather glaring problem, which is at wait a minute, you're giving them until the middle of March to follow the law, and in.
The meantime insane and in the meantime saying, you know, we expect our partners in Israel, Right.
You've been saying that you expect them to follow Why do you expect them to follow it? If it's going to take them until the middle of March, even to decide whether or not they're going to put their signature on a meaningless document asserting that they're going to follow the law when they haven't been following the law for months and years.
Actually, yeah, absolutely, let's put this next element up on the screen, just to wrap up this block. A Reuter's report inside the Democratic rebellion against Biden over the Gaza war. We covered earlier in the show today, Ryan, what happened in Michigan last night, which you know, I think really was worse than what the Biden administration even expected. If you put the protest vote together, you're somewhere near twenty percent of voters coming out against Biden. He lost or
him tire. He won Michigan in twenty twenty by one hundred and fifty five thousand votes. The protest vote itself was around one hundred and twenty two thousand, one hundred and forty something thousand votes just last night in a low turnout primary for Joe Biden. We played Debbie Dingle early in the show saying this was even ipsilante. It
wasn't just dearborn. This is kind of across the board in places where you know, there are concentrations of young voters, ever American voters and people across the border concerned about this issue for Joe Biden, and that may translate into how people vote. It does seem and according to this Reuters report, people were caught off guard in the White House.
That might be the most shocking part, Like, what do
you mean you were caught off right? The Reuter's report tells us that the Biden campaign really did believe that this was isolated to Arab and or Muslim voters, and that once the campaign really heated up and the contest was between Biden and Trump, that it would fade as a concern like that was the that was according to this article, the actual belief of grown people who looked at this situation, analyzed it and came to a conclusion that is rather shocking.
Yeah, it's it seems like at the very least they would be aware. You know, you can, you can prosecute your policy, but to have the blind spot about what this is doing is somewhat shocking.
Yeah, if you would say, look, we're happy to lose over this. If they want to say that, okay, that's an immortally principled position, right, but to say we're going to engage in this and people are going to forget about it because Trump is so out of touch right that it is genuinely shocking.
But this is where, actually, and that's an interesting point, This is where democrats and especially establishment democrats, laser focused on Donald Trump since twenty sixteen, a guy who is super polarizing and absolutely will get them votes in battleground states that are critical to winning reelection, there's no question about it. But if you just bank on that without also advancing an agenda that people a lot of other people feel because on the margins, if you lose other people,
the marginal math against Donald Trump doesn't work. So you can't do one and not the other. You can't just say Donald Trump is so toxic that as much as we talk about him, so long as it's a binary choice between a Democrat Joe Biden and Donald Trump, a binary choice between Amy Klobahar or Pete booda judge and Donald Trump, or Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. As long as we have that binary choice, we can do what we want policy wise, that's just stupid.
Yeah, and you know what Biden might still win, which is the craziest thing on the planet.
He might well again, I mean, like, the binary choice is not good for Republicans.
They're not wrong abouts is the more accurate way to put it.
They're not wrong about that. It is not helpful to Republicans to have the binary choice on the national level. Even though we talked earlier and show about Trump making gains with certain demo blocks that are helpful to Republicans, it's still, you know, the binary choice isn't.
Great for Surely, if bind wins and he's still president in twenty twenty eight, he would leave in twenty twenty nine.
January twenty twenty nine.
I congenuinely not imagine Joe Biden in.
Twenty twenty is going to be something to say.
Actually, Ryan, something the White House might want to take a look at is this video of students for Justice in Palestine at the University of Texas and Dallas doing some work. Here a top executive of Lockheed Martin, let's watch it right now.
That you have a very cussive resume during eighteen years that you spent working on the fey two jets, in the year six that you work on the F thirty five. If you were to give an estimate, how many children do you think you've killed?
I didn't even have answer that question.
We're wanting to the job, thank.
You, Hey Buss. As a business major, company culture is a factor of looking franticships, especially at a project manager position where you can spend most of your time working with others. What can you share about company culture and working with a team of genocide supporters and murderers.
That's an I'm.
That's an answer because that's not who I work with.
And I'm just wondering, as let's say, an intern working on as a systems engineer or a software engineer.
I don't know if.
You'll be able to speak on this, but would you be working on a small part of those systems you're working on projects with business impact? Would I be kind of like a small little side project, or would I be able to directly contribute to the murder of posting and children?
That was a really well done protest. Having dealt with these types of protests significantly, that's one of the most well done that I've seen. Subtle, but stinging, unstoppable.
It forces you to think about the implications of the work that you're doing. You know you know, and you know what, there are a lot of good people working for companies that are doing horrible things.
The United States of.
America has wrought so much. You know, the number of people at US has killed since the Global War on Terror was launched is well into the millions. And you don't do that without the backing of basically the entire kind of industrial base. And so it's very hard not to be complicit in it. Some people are more complicit than others. If you're a software engineer on an F twenty two, now, you may you may have gone to.
Work for the working hoping that you're working on.
A seven forty seven, just trying, just trying to get people from one place to another, and then you wind up working for an F twenty two, and you hope that that F twenty two is going to do some type of Tom Cruise. I was just going to saying that just taking out an unnamed country's evil system, unnamed evil system, and just making the.
World a better place. You find out that.
In real life you're just you're just blaying children against the walls, the crumbling walls of Gaza top Gun.
Like many many movies made with significant Pentagon.
Yes, unable to be make, unable to be made without the Pentagon's cooperation and support.
And to Debbie Dingle's point, and to your point, that was at the University of Texas in Dallas. This is not just dearborn as people in the White House might want.
To think of us.
All right, let's move on to John Stewart, who Ryan hosts a debate with your colleague Murtizza Hussein and who is a Rosenberg was on it, and but Johnspert basically covered this issue more broadly on his show, zeroed in on that yeah, yeah, in a way that really seemed to resonate with a lot of people. Let's roll one clip of that here.
Dear God, if you insist on this plan, if you think that ends hamas, I believe, we in the United States have a banner you can use. It's a little wind damaged, but equally delusional. Look, the United States is Israel's closest ally, Israel's big brother in the Fraternity of Nations, Israel's work emergency contact. Maybe it's time for the US to give Israel some tough moral love.
This is shameful. There has to be accountability for these war crimes.
No targeting civilians in war, stop the war crimes and the atrocities, and end.
The war today. It could happen right now, right now, thank you.
These atrocities.
So I'm being told the administration was talking about Russia bombing Ukraine. I apologize, also a war crime. But I'm sure they're giving equally stern advice to Israel.
The Bide administration is urging Israel to be much more careful, to be more cautious.
How Israel does this matters. Israel must do more to protect innocent civilians.
We want to see the government of Israel take steps to minimize civilian harm.
Be more surgical and more precise and more careful.
Hey, Israel, could you please.
Be more careful with your bombing.
It's good advice, but really couldn't The United States have told Israel that when we gave.
Them all the bombs where there are bombs.
This is like your coke dealer coming in with an eight ball and going, don't.
Stay up all night.
Don't sleep is very important.
You gotta sleep.
So the problem funny good stuff biting like this is this is the John Stewart that we love. The problem I had with this is that when he came out later and hosts this debate between your Rosenberg and Moz Hussein Moz and people should go watch the whole thing.
It was among the most kind of obtuse and.
Dens I've seen John Stewart really in an interview, Moz was making the point that the US should either be a faar broker between the Palestinians and the Israelis and actually get, you know, towards peace, rather than what they're doing now, which is basically unconditional support for one side and not even talking to the other side except some of boss figures who are not remotely creditable among Palestinians.
So we're just we're not engaged.
In any kind of fair serious way leading to any he said, so either do it fairly, which we're not going to do, or step aside get out. And Maz's argument is that if the United States kind of withdraws its blank check, withdraws its unconditional support for Israel, that
could actually help Israel. That would enable Israel's need to compromise with its neighbors, rather than enabling its worst impulses, which are never to compromise and continuing to annext create more settlements, more conflict, manage the conflict so that you can appease the kind of far right which wants complete control of the West Bank, the far far right, the
one's complete control of Godza Strip. Although that you know that that element is now creeping well across the entire Israeli spectrum on this the heat of this, of this moment, with the US offering unconditional support, that political element within israel Is is kind of buttressed and is able to then push aside any elements that say, no, why don't we why don't we compromise, because you know, we we live here, like we're going to have to live with
these with with these neighbors for hundreds and thousands of years. So let's let's find a solution here. You don't need a solution that the US is going to support you. So mazariment was US backs away, then they're forced into actually doing some sort of compromise here.
Uh.
John Stewart and Yeerra's response to that was to kind of make these dumb, you know, stale twenty year old jokes about how the United States can't wave a magic wand and influence world affairs everywhere in the world they never address his very specific point about why in fact they could, which is beside the point that all of the kind of money and weapons that we're giving are making the entire thing possible. Like we talk about a
magic wand we're not giving them magic wands. We're giving them exploding wands all the time, and they keep dropping them on people, and that is the thing that is driving them forward. At the same day that this was happening, Bibi and Yahoo posted a statement bragging about a completely absurd Mark Penn Harris X. You know that, like he's the last guy on earth who actually thinks Mark Penn is doing like real credible polls.
But so Mark Penn posted post of this poll.
Yeah, just the worst person on the planet objectively speaking.
And so I want to see your worst people. Actually, that would be a fun.
There's good Mark Penn stuff, and I think most of my books.
But anyway, so the poll that.
Mark Penn claimed to have come up with said that the American people are actually more supportive of Israel than they are of the Palestinians. American public opinion is strongly against this war and strongly for a ceasefire.
So but set that aside, pretend it's true.
Netanyah who pointed at this poll and said, look, this is a result of my pr campaign that I've been doing in the United States. I have gotten the US public support for this war effort. That US public support will enable us to continue this war until complete victory. That's what he's telling the Israeli public. So if net Yahoo believes that American support is essential and American public opinion is essential to continuing the war, why do John
Stewart and Naria Rosenberg think that he's wrong about that? Like, why does he think that the US actually doesn't have that much influence. So that's what bothered me about the kind of contradiction between his good monologue and you know, effectively pointing out the way that the US is enabling war crimes at one place and condemning them another place. But then when it comes to having the actual conversation, he just felt ub to us about the whole thing.
I've always found John Stewart to be inflexible in debate. I think it's his weakness, Whereas, like when he can write or work on a really clever scripted monologue, his more biding and I think his arguments are more finely honed or finally tuned. But in debates, you know, actually, speaking of which, Tucker Carlson just yesterday went on Lex Friedman show or the interview dropped yesterday, and Tucker Carlson said,
John Stewart was right in that infamous Crossfire interview. It was one of the there's a super interesting interview that Tucker do with Lex Friedman. But it was one point that Tucker said, and I disagree with that actually, but it's one point Tucker said. You know, Crossfire was fundamentally toxic because it was just about Democrats versus Republicans. It was this binary part is of binary DEM's Republicans, not so much even like left and right independent, it was
just Dems and Republicans. And that was fundamentally harmful to the country. So John stew It was right. So maybe right, that's a moment where John Stewart thrived in debate. How did Maz find the experience of going on the show?
I think the he thought the questions were a little bit not well pointed, I'd say, and if you and if you go, I think you should go watch the interview. You see him, You see that Stuart's questions, You're like, how do you even answer that? Like, what is what kind of question is this? It wasn't it? Almost It almost felt like John Stewart was pretty nervous and was kind of retreating.
To more comfortable tropes. It's a hard thing to do, oh for sure. Yeah.
I mean, you know when when I go on let's say, like CNN or something and I'm and I'm asked to talk about like the most sensitive stuff, like I get a little nervous.
I'm like, am I going to say the wrong thing here?
Like I don't blame him for that for some reason, I'm not nervous here, even though these clips also go out to the world.
Sure do. Sometimes we don't know what that's about media.
The other dirty secret, by the way, to back up what Tucker said about John Stewart being right, is that most people in media, and I bet you would bet you this is your experience too, most people in media who participate in that circus think that it's a sham and and think that it's actually bad for the country and are frustrated. Like you know, I used to be an MSNBC contributor back in the mid twenty.
Tens, and it was. It was frustrating.
You'd get on and you'd have like forty five seconds, Yeah, do an answer, and then you'd have another forty five seconds to do another answer, and then and then like that's it. Yeah, like this is so so much more Now, forty five seconds is better than none.
So that's why I do it.
But I prefer this format much much better, where we can just go on and on and on and never shut up.
Although sometimes we have you know, people guests in studio like we have right now that we're going to.
Get to we got to shut up and bring them in.
But yes, no, it's super interesting, and I look forward to watching the full debate because I mean, even if Stuart's questions were lacking, hosting a debate in that format, that's why I disagree and cross from fire, I think that's fundamentally a good thing. So I look forward to watching it.
Let's talk government shutdown.
All right, So we are just two days away from a Friday government shutdown of twenty percent of the government if we don't reach a deal, and spoiler, it does not look like we're going to reach a deal that.
Does not make Mitch McConnell happy.
Let's roll this clip from the Senate Republican leader.
Good afternoon everyone. As you know, we were four of us were at the White House with Presbent Biden earlier in the day, and I think it's pretty safe to say we all agree we need to avoid a government shutdown. The Speaker was optimistic that they would be able to move forward first with the four bills, and under no circumstances does anybody want to shut the government down. So I think we can stop that drama right here before it emerges.
We're simply not going to do that.
So we're going to come close. I hope to have an orderly appropriation process, obviously not by the time we should have done it, but better than we've done some years by getting this four through and then doing the balance of them as a mini us.
A little bit later, a little more than ten years ago, Mitch McConnell pushed kind of was part of a government shutdown that went absolutely terribly for Republicans, and when republic when the kind of right flank of Republicans came back shortly afterwards trying to shut the government down, he said, there's no education in the second kick of a mule. Since then, he has been kicked by that mule over and over and over again, and there is no education
in it. He's still of the mind that a government shut down is terrible for Republicans, and yet it still looks like he's going to get kicked.
What's what's your.
Read on poor miss McConnell and that mule.
First of all, speaking at a you could say tortoise like pace, just.
Glacially, So I hope everybody sped that one up.
Yeah, that was really something. Mitch McConnell's word is not going to mean a whole lot on the House set anymore. And actually, even as became clear last month, on the Senate side, it's starting to hold increasingly last water because there's a mutiny brewing that is being led by people like Mike Lee, but also being joined by people like Tid Cruz others that have you know, been sort of faithful McConnell deputies.
To you know, he led that shutdown I was talking about.
He did, he did, but in like the last.
Went very well five years.
Yes, it went great. That's what I was just going to say. Actually, is you know, if you're talking to Chip Roy, who is leading the mutiny along Freedom coccus. Republicans on the House side, they know that their constituents want them to shut down the government. They will not be punished in their districts for shutting down the government, but nationally, Republicans will certainly be punished for shutting down
the government. Chuck Schumer was in a meeting with Hakim Jeffreys, Mike Johnson, Kamala Harris, Joe Biden at the White House yesterday, and yeah, the whole gang was there. So let's take a little listen to what Chuck Schumer said outside the White House after the meeting yesterday, and then we'll hear from Mike Johnson as well. Here's Schumer.
So, what made this meeting one of the most intense you've ever had? The urgency of supporting Ukraine and the consequences to the people of America, to America's strength if we don't do anything, and don't do anything soon. I
was so, so shaken. But what I saw at the border, I was strengthened by the strength of Zelenski and the Ukrainian people and the Ukrainian soldiers, but shaken that here they are fighting without arms against a brutal dictator who will just do anything to kill them, and the intensity in that room was surprising to me, but because of the passion of the President, the Vice President, Leader, Leader Jeffreys, Speaker, Leader McConnell, and myself.
So he seemed to have a little Freudian slip there, and Chiprop Mitch mcc I'm sorry, Chuck Schumer seemed to have a little Freudians slipped there when he said the urgency of supporting Ukraine, I was shaken by what I saw at the border. Tip Roy jumped on that and said, I think reasonably implied that Schumer was talking The only border he could have been talking about in that context is the Ukrainian border. That is a very tone deaf
way to defend this government shutdown. There's a much better way for Democrats to defend to defend this government shutdown, Saying that you were shaken by what you saw at the Ukraine border is a out as bad as it could get for Democrats messaging on this.
This is their big issue right now. And Mitch McConnell too. McConnell said that, you know ro connell privately in that meeting, but also publicly pressed Mike Johnson directly to say, look, take our Israel, Taiwan and Ukraine funding bill up separately and let your one hundred Republicans who support it and the two hundred Democrats who support it kind of push it through. But he's, you know, Mike Johnson's under intense
pressure not to support it. You noticed that Chuck Schumer was talking about all the people who were so passionate and support of the Ukraine money there, and he briefly said Speaker, and then he took that back because Speaker Johnson is the one who was not energetically supportive of that.
So this entire thing ends.
Up kind of being caught up in the war, the war spending as well as the fight around all the government spending. If people are curious by the way, it's the agencies that would shut down would be agriculture, energy, transportation, VA Veterans affairs a big one, and HUD which is also a big one that you know, if if that's shut down for like thirty days or so, then you know, Section eight checks stop going out. Section eight checks stop going out. All of the people that you know rely
on either that housing or the or those checks. You know, those people are at significant you.
Know, hardship.
You know, all of it, all of it matters, but that you know, that's that's just one example of it.
I would believe it's what.
March eighth, where the rest of the government would then shut down because this was speaking Mike Johnson's kind of way to get out of hit the last jam that he was in.
He said, well, here's my solution. That's going to be a two tier thing.
Yeah, and it's like pixie dust that you throw up two tiers and you're like, oh, okay, well that sounds interesting. Let's let's try that, knowing all the while that the the first here was just going to be blown through. Yeah like that, this twenty percent is going down, but the next one then is the Pentagon and you know,
the rest, the rest of the government. But yes, it's all tangled up with Israel, Ukraine and this money for a potential war in Taiwan, over China, over you know, Chinese you know, claims of sovereignty, et cetera like that. That one just kind of gets brushed aside. But that's a that's a.
Big part of this as well.
Meanwhile, you've got Israeli officials who were saying we need that money yesterday I think that was what Ron Dharmer, Netanyahuo's kind of top lieutenant said.
So, yeah, it doesn't look like it's moving though.
So Mike Johnson, she had truck shom, we're talking about the Ukrainian border, ostensibly talking about the Ukrainian border. Here's what House Speaker Mike Johnson said when he came out of that meeting.
We believe that we can get to agreement on these issues and prevent a government shut down, and that's our first responsibility. You also heard, I'm sure that there was discussion about the supplemental a spending package, and I was very clear with the President and all those in the room that the House is actively pursuing and investigating all the various options on that and we will address that
in a timely manner. But again, the first priority of the country is our border and making sure it's secure.
So ran a gallop pole that came out. I think it was actually even just yesterday found immigration was the issue the most important issue for people who are asked in this gallop pole, what is the most important problem in the country right now? Twenty eight percent said immigration. That was higher than any of the other options. Government, economy, inflation immigration again twenty eight percent. That was an eight
point jump from the month before. So and Trump and Biden are both actually on Tomorrow Thursday going to the border, making trips to the border. So it makes it easier for Republicans to have that conversation. Obviously Democrats wanted and Mitch McConnell actually allowed them to have that little talking point when they worked out a build with James Langford
and said, here, we tried to fix the border. Republicans rejected the plan to fix the border, and so then they put the Ukraine Israel spending by itself up for House Republicans to vote up or down. House Republicans don't want to vote anything up or down unless it includes border security. And their members are not worried about a shutdown because they don't think they're going to be punished in their districts on the House side for a government
shut down. Obviously, their case is made easier when you have Chuck Schumer talking about Ukraine. His biggest thing is thinking about Ukraine at the same time, though they continue to govern by a continuing resolution. I mean, this is just a pathetic cycle that I think speaks ran too our inability to govern as a country period to keep on funding the government by a continuing resolution. Mike Johnson, though, the reason that he's between a rock and a hard place.
As people remember, one of the most important parts of the rules packaged that in the House was passed in order for Mike John's and to become speaker. They out to Kevin McCarthy. They couldn't land on any consensus speaker candidate because their margins are so slim, and Mike Johnson agreed to what's called the motion of a kate. And people have all become familiar with this little aspect of parliamentary procedure in the last year because it's what allowed
Republicans to get rid of Kevin McCarthy. And he didn't want the motion of a kate to be in the rules package that after eighteen tries got him elected speaker. It was it was his downfall. Then you have Mike Johnson agreeing also to the motion of a kate. So basically one member, one member who's unhappy with this shutdown can bring a vote to the floor to vacate the chair.
So the Democrats couldn't save him at that format. Democrats, actually they've floated that they might actually do. If he's being helpful to them.
They can get some stuff out of that. Although then it becomes difficult for Democrats, and it becomes difficult for republic It becomes difficult for Freedom Caucus guys the moment of their members. A rogue person says they.
Have two hundred nineteen and you need to eighteen to pass legislation.
They lost George Santos. It's even a thinner, it's even a slimmer majority now. So that's why you know, Mike Johnson is in a very difficult position. And Ryan, I am hearing that Mike Johnson does continue to be a real person as well, not a he's an actual lab created.
Mike Mike Johnson five years from now. If you ask me who the speaker was for the brief period, Mike Johnson, I'll be like Mark Thompson like.
Something.
And when you're like, when somebody's like, no, I think they have Google, it was Mike Johnson, like A, that's right, it was Mike Johnson.
Yeah, But we do like that's one of the duties that we take seriously is continue to update the viewers on whether Mike Johnson continues to exist as a real human being.
And my read on why we were likely it seems like to potentially get a shutdown is that I think Biden would like to change the topic of conversation from how his support unconditional support of the genocide Gaza is costing him potentially the presidential election, to look how incompetent these Republicans are.
They're shutting down the government for no discernible reason.
Yeah, Democrats are just salivating over the possibility of being able to say that again, and Republicans may just be dysfunctional enough to allow them to go ahead and say it. So Democrats are going to do absolutely nothing to get out of Republicans' way on this thing, Like they're going to make sure that Republicans have every opportunity to trip over their shoelaces yep.
And shut down politics if you're the one that's in the way. And you know, the media always puts Republicans as being the ones in the way, even when they have a case that I think is popular with the public. Immigration is certainly a case that's popular with the public. But even so, voters, even if they're not even paying attention to the media, they see Republicans shut down DHS. DHS is interesting because that's the border.
It's that fundamental contradiction in your messaging that says, we're so concerned about the way that the government is handling the border that we're going to shut the government down. And then and regular people that are like, don't think that's going to help things at the border.
Well, and also the media immediately will start talking about the VA with good reason. So you are always going to you're as a Republican, you're always going to get blamed for the government shutdown because the media is not going to be sympathetic to your cause. And also because if you're the obstructionist, the public just reads obstruction as
the blame. You can never have that nuanced discussion about the negotiations that you've been having with leadership behind closed doors, because those dynamics are complicated and like, actually, even when you follow the dynamics closely, like if you read playbook every morning, and you know whatever, even if you talk to people in those circles, sometimes you don't know what the truth is about what leader how much leadership actually
screwed you over? Did you screw leadership over who agreed to what So that's just never really a winning argument outside a district where you can say I'm doing this to stick it to Mitch McConnell.
Well, we'll say, gonna be interesting.
I don't know, Ryan, I feel like this one might actually happen briefly.
So that's my so O the reason it wouldn't happen is there's so little upside for Republicans.
Well, the reason that it wouldn't happen is the same reason I think it could happen. And that's what's complicated here, which is that they don't have any good options. So that's why we've been funding the government via CR for so long, is that they're just like, screw it. We're obviously not going to get a deal. So CR like poison pill. You can have like your protest vote, but that's it. There's no way that if we vacate the chair, this goes to a place where we can fund the
government because there's literally no deal to be made. And so I think that's the best case that the shutdown doesn't happen, just because there's really nowhere to go afterwards. But they feel like they've exhausted their options, they've vacated the chair. They got mad over the debt ceiling negotiations and they vacated the chair. And now they've pushed Johnson as far as they feel like they could push him.
So that's where you get a motion to vacate. But everyone knows even if you do that, it doesn't fund the government.
Yeah, our entire two hundred plus year old system relies really on consensus because of all the choke points that are in it, and consensus is slowly breaking down. You know, it peaked to say in the nineteen fifties with that monoculture. We still have something of a monoculture around despite people thinking that we're all just a bunch of divided, niche subcultures. But it's fraying, and the more it phrays, the more
we're going to have these kinds of problems. And I think so the system's going to have to respond somehow because there's two built in idiotic things, which like when you can't get consensus, there's a potential global financial crisis over defaulting on the debt for no reason, and the government just shuts down and stops working and everybody goes home and then comes back on month later and gets paid for things that they didn't do during that month,
and in the meantime, lots of people suffered, and I feel.
Like it solves nothing.
As the system continues to break down, they're going to have to be some kind of redundancies built in that say, like, all right, if you don't get the consensus, you still get section your Section eight check still goes to the landlord or whatever. Like we're still paying these basic things
at some basic level. And I think maybe at some point lawmakers will produce that system because it's so irrational, but we're certainly not there yet, and I think we need some The system is going to need to create a lot of pain for people before that eventually happens. Whether it's this time or at a future time remains to be seen.
It's like a Kissinger. Let's heighten the contradictions in Chile, make the economy scream, take a scream.
Yeah, then we'll get a revolution.
Yeah yeah, Well, we'll see what happens. By Friday, a lot on the line, and it's not looking good, So we'll continue to follow that story for everyone. We have a great guest here in Studio Ryan. It would be Gabe shipton the filmmaker brother of Julianasange can't wait to have a conversation with him.
I stick around for that, all right.
We're joined now by Gabe Shipman, who's a filmmaker and also the brother of Julian Sange. Gabe, welcome back to the program. Thanks for joining us. Good to be with you again. And so you're you're an Australian but you're hearing you're here in Washington, DC, kind of drumming up support for your brother in the wake of his most recent hearing, which we talked about last week on the program. We had Chip Gibbons on. People can go back and watch that interview if they want to. You saw him
at the hearing. I gather how was how was the hearing from your perspective, this two day affair, this kind of final battle before before the decision on extradition.
My impression was.
That the hard court judges were really feeling feeling the pressure. They were on their best behavior and trying to really engage with the arguments in a different way that I hadn't seen before. When Julian faces these British judges, usually they're very closed and very terse towards the defense, But this time they were engaging with the arguments and also engaging with the prosecution arguments, making statements like, oh so if Julian is extradited, does that mean any journalists in
the UK could be extradited? And the prosecution essentially had to answer yes. So, you know, the judges making these sorts of points I found quite interesting in a different vibe sense.
Yeah, that's huge, and I'm curious. Ryan mentioned you're here to drum up support for Julian's cause in DC. When you talk to maybe skeptical lawmakers or staffers, you're really putting a human face on this issue. But also, what are the arguments you find that have you know, all of the question of the last almost you know, years and years, how that have been most persuasive? I mean you just mentioned the judge and the journalism question. That's
a pretty persuasive one, especially to US journalists. But if you're talking to scap decks, and as you're talking maybe even the next week to some scap decks, what's the most powerful argument you found?
Well, you know, it sort of changes. Everyone sort of comes at this from their own you know, political perspective, and you know, on the on the Democrat side, Press freedom resonates a lot with peoples, particularly exposing war crimes, you know, of the military industrial complex, you know, state criminality.
Those sorts of arguments really resonate with the Democrat side, and then you know, with the Republicans, it's always first Amendment, you know, freedom of speech, first Amendment, first Amendment rights, and that argument carries a lot of weight, particularly with people like Rampaul, the libertarian leaning folks on the Hill.
But there's a resolution Resolution.
One three four before in the in the Judiciary Committee, and we're asking lawmakers to sign on to that resolution. It's got cosponsors like Jim McGovern, Thomas Messi, and I think they're about eight in total, and we'd like to get to that to twenty.
So that's my real I am, well, I'm in Washington.
The twenty sixteen reporting that Juliana Sangje did has nothing to do with these charges, like this is all you know, Chelsea Manning related stuff about the you know, the.
Cables collateral collateral murder.
Yet Democrats still hold a huge grudge against your brother for you know, the reporting he did on the on the DNC and Hillary Clinton in twenty sixteen. How often does that still come up now? Like, what's seven eight years later when you're talking to Democrats, is it does it go unspoken?
Do you do it? Like?
How do you how do you confront that political obstacle.
Yeah, that's a big one for Democrats, and we always you know, we're always talking about what's actually at stake and sort of reframing, reframing it in that sense, saying that this is an unprecedent to espionage prosecution that could be turned against you know, democrat media in the future, like the New York Times or the Washington Post.
Do they acknowledge it's democratic media? You? I mean, I think it's pretty they get it.
Yeah, yeah, I think that it's pretty you know that they're they're sort of you know.
Cultural cultural allies.
Yeah.
Yeah, So I don't think anyone really denies that that's the case. And having the New York Times actually writing to President Biden, which they did, I think at the end of twenty two, calling on him to drop the charges, that really helps focus that argument because having them saying, hey, look,
this is a threat to us. You know, when we're approaching lawmakers, we say, well, you know, if there's a Trump administration down the track, do you want them to have this president to potentially use against these other media organizations.
So I think sort of moving around that twenty sixteen argument and really getting to you know, what's really at stake here and what this prosecution means for other media around the place, I think, And also one other argument that cuts through is that the global support now for Julian, particularly with Australia that is one of the US's closest allies, has making this prosecution very obviously scandalous around the world.
And really talking to lawmakers here about that how it's seen by allies or even not allies like China or Russia, who use it often when they're confronted with their human.
Rights to do anything they want.
Then with the press and just pointed, well, you guys are trying to lock up Julian's.
On yeah, exactly, So you are locking them all, yeah, And so it reduces the US's standing when they want to advocate for human rights causes with these countries, but also with their allies now such as Australia, And just a couple of weeks ago, the Australian Parliament put through a resolution that passed the parliament. Over two thirds of the parliament voted for it in favor of it, and that was calling on the United States to.
Let Julian go home.
So I think those these steps are really significant speaking with lawmakers because there's not really an understanding of how this affects the image internationally of the United States.
And actually, again on the human level, your family has been very clear that you're worried about your brother's health and that his very life is on the line, and
these legal proceedings. The other thing I wanted to add to that, I wanted to ask you any updates on Julian's health since the hearing, how he's doing, But also just how worried are you about a second Trump administration given that during the first Trump administration, I think it was Michael Issakaff reported in Yahoo that Mike Pompeo contemplated an assassination plot against your brother. That has to be surreal.
But where's your head when you think about how this could where this could go in the coming years.
Yeah, Well, if Mike Pompeo sort of ends up in this new and in a potentially new administration, I think that's really worrying. Not just for Julian but for many, many people. And yeah, those were very difficult times for Julian. When you know, Pompeo called WikiLeaks and non state Hostile intelligence Agency, they were able to use clandestine operations with
our congressional oversight against Julian, against Wiki leaks. Then that's where we saw those plots to kidnap Julian and to even kill him, and that's where this prosecution has come from. I think people need to understand that Pompeo was talking to the Justice Department and they said, well, what are you going to do with him once you kidnap him? You know, you can't just put him in a black site. Just wait and we'll get some charges ready and then
you can take him from the embassy. So we can see the prosecution actually stemmed from this, you know, Pompeo going off the deep end and pursuing Wiki Leaks. So's it's really politically motivated, and I think that's a really good argument for the Biden administration to bring this to a close because it was a Pompeo fueled prosecution.
There's been reporting in Australia that there was some hope over the last several months of some pape of a deal because he is an Australian citizen, and what business is it of the United States. It's like be like Pakistan, like extraditing me to Pakistan for violating Pakistan's media.
Don't give them ideas.
I mean, it's I think it is a real problem going forward for journalists who write on things around the world. Carolyn Kennedy, who's our ambassador to Australia, and met with a bunch of Australian officials and there was some hope that there could be some deal that would come out of that where Australia would say, look, this is not your problem, this is our problem.
He's our citizen. Let us handle this.
Yet they seem to be pushing ahead with this attempt to extradate him. Here, what's your understanding of the latest in those talks between Australia, this real essential ally of the United States and the US.
Well, we're always pushing the Australian government to do more, and I think that's why this resolution that was passed through parliament is important because now the Prime Minister and the diplomats have the backing, you know, not just the Australian people who ninety percent want Julian to come home, but also the Australian Parliament. That's every single minister, Defense minister, you know, Home Affairs minister, all the ministry cabinet have
all voted to bring Julian home. So I think that's a real escalation, if you will, or like a next step for the Australian government to push their allies, the US and the UK to bring this to an end. In terms of you know, these rumored deals, I think what would what would I'm not sure what a deal with you know, would you Julian pled guilty to journalism? I think is is you know, is that is that a potential deal or outcome that that the Department of Justice would be happy with. I'm not sure, but I
think any any sort of deal Julian. We know that if Julian comes here that that he could potentially face a death penalty. That was part of the in the proceedings the judge us the prosecution could could you rule out death penalty if Julian's extradited and he could say no. He couldn't say yes.
Why not? What's that? What's the capital crime? That espionage?
Yes, so under the Espionage Act there is there's the room for the death penalty, so that the it is potential for it to be expanded. And you had the Shulter sentencing just recently where they have an all of life sentence so no parole and bringing out under the terrorism under the Patriot Act, so there is potential for it to expand, for other charges to be brought against Julian for other publications like the Bolt seven twenty seventeen,
THEIA leagues. So that's a real concern and any sort of deal, would you know, we would say Julian cannot travel to the US.
So now before even going to the US, there are still there is still at least one other appeals process depending on how this curing goes. Could you talk to USCAPE just a little bit about what the options might be going forward to prevent the extradition.
After the hearing, well, so Julian has so the judges are now taken leave to make their decision on whether they'll approve an appeal or reject an appeal. If that appeal is rejected, Britain could move to extradite Julian quickly. They will order the extradition but Julian could apply to the European Court of Human Rights to have an emergency stop on that extradition and then put a case to the European courts. But that is you still have to
make an application that still has to be approved. And I think there were sixty three applications in the previous year for this sort of thing and only only one was approved by the European courts. So that is not
a guarantee that it will stop stop his extradition. But interestingly, the European courts heard Agnes Klaman from Amnesty Internationals say just they had a briefing on the Hill on Monday, and she said the European courts were able to order Russia after Navalni was poisoned with the Navuchok that they were able to order Russia to return him to Germany for treatment. So that's the sort of power the European
courts have. And I don't think the United States would want the European courts interfering and ordering the.
UK to return Julian into Australia.
I think that would be extremely embarrassing for the Department of Justice.
Of the key questions and the Appeals was whether or not Massage would be tortured by being placed in solitary confinement here in the United States, and the US had made you know, after they realized that was a problem for them in their case, they made some representations that they said, well, we won't do that. Those representations included a clause that said unless we decide that we need
to do that. So what was the reaction from the judges to how the US would treat Assange if he was extraight and how important is that at this point in the decision making.
So those weren't really going into a great deal in the court and didn't form a big part of Those assurances or so called assurances that are caveated, didn't form a large part of the hearing. It was really more about the political nature of the charges against Julian. There's a clause in the in the treaty with the United Kingdom and the US that says you cannot be extradited
for political political charges, and espionage is inherently political. So there was a lot about that, But the prison conditions that Julian would face didn't really come up. It was more of those expanding of the charges and potential death penalty sentencing that that that were brought up in that hearing.
Did you think that judges were kind of covering what would be a future negative ruling, you know, being more open and being more reasonable people so that when they finally extra date him, they'll seem like more reasonable people. Or was your guy telling you that maybe the pressure was actually getting to them and they might actually kind of do the right thing.
Well, yeah, you know, yeah, I think a lot of it is having that external you know, that external facing engagement and looking to be engaged. I think that is a very big part of it. I think you're right, And the pressure and the monitoring has led them to have to do that. You know, previously they didn't have to because you know, we didn't have you know, Amnesty International was there, We had people from the UN observing
as well as the German embassy, Australian embassy. A lot of eyes are on that court more so than that in previous hearings. So yeah, there is that element to it as well that they were just you know, entering into this sort of performance to make it seem like that they were really going to consider it and consider it properly. But I mean we'd see down the track
when they make their decision. The defense has until the third of March to give more information and then they can make their decision anytime after that, so we'll see what appeal points they may allow or whether they reject.
Then last question on mayan is just what can average people do to help? You know, lawmakers obviously play the big role in us the court is fate is in the hands of a court right now. But if average people want to learn their support to the cause the cause, what can they do game.
We've been asking people to contact their representatives about this resolution nine thirty four and ask them to sign on to that resolution. Ask their representatives to sign on to that. You can also go to Sirange defense dot org. Join our subscriber list and you'll receive emails about what's going on around the country, different actions that you can take, donations, things like that. So Sannge Defense dot org is a good place to go for that sort of info.
Excellent, sounds good.
Absolutely, thank you for being here and bussive luck as you make your case to lawmakers in the next week or so.
Thanks for having me. Thanks you jeers. So again, that was Assannge defense dot org.
Go check go, check that out, join their mailing list and tell you know, Tell, tell your member of Congress signed nine thirty Four's right, it's the Resolute's the one. Nine thirty four put some pressure on the Biden administration for the once in their lives, do the right thing.
That does it for us on today's edition of Counterpoints. Though Ryan will have had almost two weeks by next week's show to reacclimate to the non fish universe. So Ryan will be back here next week and maybe he'll be a little less out of sorts. We'll see, there's no way to be sure
And we'll see you that either way.