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But enough with that, let's get to the show. Good morning, everybody, Happy Monday. We have an amazing show for everybody today.
When do we have crystal Many things to discuss this morning.
So first of all, after Biden State of the Union, he laid down a red line for Israel, which Babe immediately said he was fully intending to cross. We have additional fallout from the State of the Union, including some pulling about how exactly the public felt that Joe Biden did and we all know how the liberal pundits felt he did toward a force, says Joe Scarborough. So I'll get into all of that. Last night was the Oscars.
We have some highlights of some celebrities who were speaking out against Israel's assault on Gaza, which apparently triggered a leap freak out.
We'll take you through that.
We're also going to be discussing a new bill that targets TikTok soccer and I will have a little discussion potentially debate.
On that front. Where is Princess Kate?
A new photo has raised many questions among many people and sparked a lot of conspiracies, so we'll this is.
Story I don't even know. It is crazy.
CNN had a shocking report about those protesters who are blocking AID. We're also getting new details about this temporary port situation, so we'll break all of that down for you. I'm taking a look at how Israel tortured you and staffers in order to coerce confessions. Crazy story, so we'll dig into all of that.
There you go.
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Yeah, so Joe Biden after a State of the Union, seemed to be pretty excited, feeling energized. He actually gave a rare interview, of course too friendly over at MSNBC, but some interesting news was made nonetheless. Specifically, Jonathan Cape part of MSNBC, asked him whether he had any red lines for Israel.
Listen closely to the response, what is your.
Red line with Prime Minister Netanyahu? Do you of a red line? For instance, would invasion of Rapha, which you have urged him not to do, would that be a red line?
It is a red line, but I'm never going to leave Israel. The defense of Israel is still critical, so there's no red line. I'm going to cut off all weapons so they head don't have the iron dome to protect them.
They don't have.
But there's red lines that if he crosses in the cannot have thirty thousand more Palestinians dead as a consequence of going up. There's other ways to deal to get to to deal with with the trauma that caused by Hamas. It's like, well, look, the first time I went over, I sat with them, and I sat with a warcap, and I said, look, don't make the mistake America made. America made a mistake. We went after bin laduntil we
got them, but we shouldn't have gone into Ukraine. I mean, we shouldn't have got into the whole thing in Iraq, in Afghanistan wasn't necessary. It wasn't necessary. It has caused more problems in the race than it's the cured. After what happened in World War Two and the carpet bombing it took place. What happened was we ended up in a situation where we changed the rules of the game. The constitutions legitimate rules of war, and they should be bited.
By so a lot there on the red line, he's just a recap so k Part asked specifically about Rafa, Biden says it is a red line, but then he immediately says, but I'm never going to leave Israel. He says there's no red line where he would cut off all weapons, and then he says, we can't have thirty thousand more Palestinians dead. So your red line is sixty
thousand dead Palestinians. I mean, it's a muddled mess. And interestingly enough, Soger I thought the chiron they had up on the screen with MSNBC was actually accurate, which said Biden says no red lines for Israel.
I agree, actually, because that's the only honest way of reading the text. And in fact, I saw many tortured attempts. The Wall Street Journal, for example, said Biden has red line on Israel, and I was like, well, but if you read the quote, that's not.
What he says at all. Yeah, it also goes back.
I mean there's a lot of debates around red lines, et cetera, but the famous one is like Obama and Syria, and of some presidents actually learned from that.
I actually remember.
Asking Trump once like what his red lines were in a particular issue, and he's like, I don't do red lines.
That's what Obama did. I don't do red lines.
And I think that's exactly why, because if you say that it's a red line, there has to be consequences, whereas with Biden, he's like, but there is no scenario where I'm going to take my maximalist power in order to shut off weapons or any of that. It's like, well, then you have a strongly held inclination, but that's not the same thing if there's not going to attach any consequence.
So it fits with the utter pattern of the Biden administration is they have rhetorical criticism for the press, for the media pr purposes, but action wise, policy wise, there has been no substantive change. And in fact, this I assume that's really what he's telegraphing to the Israeli establishment.
Yeah, yeah, don't worry about it.
I mean, I think we've seen what the red lines are and they're non existent. I mean, we've had all of these, you know, previous desires stated through leaks to the press about we don't want a full wholesale invasion, will that happen, We need you to scale back the bombing. Well that didn't happen. You know, every wish that the US has sort of like floated to the Israelis, they've
immediately dispensed with. And I'm going to tell you in a minute with Nanya who responded to this sort of red line that he talks about with Rauffa before immediately saying, but I'm never going to leave Israel. There was another moment that really caught our attention as well, where Biden was asked about that uncommitted vote and about voters feeling that he is aiding and abutting a genocide.
Listen closely to this response.
One told Charles Blow of The New York Times that I'm quoting as bad as mister Trump's rhetoric was, and him putting a travel ban on five Withlim countries, he wasn't overseeing and actively arming a genocide.
Those are tough words.
What's your response to that widely shared sentiment?
It's not widely shared.
You guys make judgments, you know you're not capable of making. That's not what all those people said. What they said was they're very upset, and I don't blame them for being upset. There are families there, there are people who are dying. They want something done about it, and they're saying, Joe, do something, do something. But the idea that they all think is genocide is just not. That's a different situation. Look,
I can fully understand, and can't you. You have a family member there, a family member of families that come from a family that is still isolated there and may be victimized. It's to understandable they feel that way, and that's why I'm doing everything i can to try to stop it.
So I'm going to talk this answer up to delusion because we know the polling, fifty percent of Joe Biden voters from twenty twenty think it is a genocide.
Number one. Number two, he really wants.
To ascribe the protest movement and the uncommitted votes just to people who potentially have family members who've been directly impacted.
And you just can't look at the numbers in terms of, you know, the voters who are voting uncommitted, in terms of the mass wave of protests that who have made it so that Joe Biden cannot go anywhere without facing protests that have made them terrified to go to college campuses, for example, and think that this is just limited to people who have a direct familial connection to the Gaza strip.
And I think that was perhaps the thinking maybe a few months ago among the Biden campaign and Biden ministration. I mean, their first thing was just like, Oh, people don't really care that much, they'll get over it. The second thing was like, oh, maybe Arab Americans and Muslim Americans. Maybe they've got a little bit of an issue, but you know, we can we can deal with it by
making up with suburban women. I mean, what we've seen is that this is a very widespread sentiment that even outside of this sort of activist protest movement, the young people in the Democratic Party have really won. The argument that came out in a poll that we shared with you last week that older voters in the Democratic base now agree with young voters in terms of their position on this conflict in visa vases fire. Even a majority
of Jewish Americans support a ceasefire. So the idea that this is just, you know, this very limited demographic, or that a majority of Democratic voters don't think it's a genocide, is just wildly delusional.
Off base, a lie.
It's totally inaccurate and disconnected from reality.
I think it's biggest problem.
I mean, it's Biden like the bubbles that they swim in and they're in.
But I think he genuinely believes.
A lot of the analysis that says that this isn't going to be a problem for him. He thinks that it's highly localized. Now that we've had actual votes cast, we've seen problems in Hawaii and in Michigan. You know, the Hawaii number, if anything, is most interesting to me because Hawaii is the bluest of all states, right, I Mean,
it's like Washington, DC level of blues. So it's like, well, if you have that many blue voters who are coming out against you, you can extrapolate that maybe to some of the national coalition.
And we don't have to.
I've said this a million times, but if you just have the same number of people who voted in twenty twelve and twenty sixteen in the state of Michigan, then Hillary wins the election.
Same in the state of Pennsylvania.
So you have very very critical parts of a coalition where you're not able to lose one or two percent. Now we combine that with RFK Junior, Cornell West, and Jill Stein, the three of them making up a decent percentage of protest vote. Every poll that we've looked at, Crystal says that Trump is going to come out on top. Not only does he lead Biden in the head to head, but specifically with the protest votes in there, they disproportionately bleed.
Not RFK Junior per se, but definitely Cornell West and Jill Stein. They're on the ballot, and now I've seen some discussion of RFK potentially being on the libertarian ballot, at least on in some states. That would be absolutely devastating, I think for Joe Biden.
Yeah, I think so too.
So I mean, just a completely delusional response.
I think you're right.
I think you can see from the fact that he and his team believe that these little pr stunts like we're going to talk about later the aid drops, which by the way, killed five Palestinians and provide, you know, woefully inadequate levels of aid, this floating temporary peer that
may get constructed sixty days from now. I think they really believe that's going to be enough to you know, change the messaging and just say, co opt the language of ceasefire, even though you don't actually want a permanent
cease fire. You want this little six week pause. They think that'll be enough, and I think they have dramatically miscalculated, And that answer reflects an astonishing level of delusion and disconnect from just how upset so many people are and the impact that's going to have electorally come the fall.
So Bibe was asked in an interview This Is with Axel Springer and Politic co about some of the comments that Biden made, in particular the hot mic moment where he said he and people were going to have a quote unquote come to Jesus moment.
Bibe said, I'm Jewish, I'm not coming to.
Jesus and also asked about Biden's comments that asserting that Israel's actions in Gaza are doing Israel more harm than good. Let's take a listen to a little bit of his reaction.
Well, I don't know exactly what the President meant, but if you meant by that, then I'm pursuing private policies against the majority, the wish of the majority of Israelis, and that this is hurting the interest of Isuel, then he's wrong on both counts. Number one, these are not my private policies only, they're policies supported by the overwhelming majority of the Israelis. They support the action that we're
taking to destroy the remaining terrorist battalions of Ramas. They say that once we destroy the Kramas, the last thing we should do is put in Gaza in charge of Gaza, the Palestinian authority that educates its children towards terrorists and pays for terrorism. And they also support my position that says that we should resoundingly reject the attempt to ram down our throats of Palestinian state.
Mister PRIMEI says, so you took the decision you want out to put some sure that you go into Raffa, Oh, we'll go there.
We're not going to leave them. You know, I have a red line. You know what the red line is that October seventh doesn't happen again, never happens again.
And so you can hear there the purported Biden red line of going into Rafa that he responds, yes, that is a red line, before immediately says, but I'm never going to leave Israel. Natanyahu just dismisses that out of hand. You know, no, we're going in. We're determined to do it. Our only red line is October seven is never going
to happen again. The commons he made prior to that, we're also interesting because in a sense he's correct that, you know, the policies we've seen the polling coming out of Israel, the policies they're pursuing of all out war and total annihilation are broadly popular now there is dissent. We're seeing it very much in the streets of Tel Aviv with regards to the families of hostages, who want much more to be done to strike a deal to bring those hostages home. So there is descent in that regard.
But on the other hand, Sager, it's also very disingenuous because he is claiming a mandate from the Israeli public that also does not exist, because as much as they may support the overall war aims, they are absolutely disgusted with the leadership of Benjamin Netnahu himself. So it's this sort of very politician, he carefully crafted answer that does have a grain of truth, but is also very highly misleading.
Yeah.
Absolutely, can we put the next one up there please on the screen too, because there's also these comments of a Palestinian state, which I think is important, he says. When asked about the European view that there cannot be peace without tu state, he says, yeah, they would say that, but they don't understand that the reason we don't have peace is not because the Palestinians don't have a state.
It's because the Jews have a state, and in fact, the Palin studients have not brought themselves recognized except the Jewish State, so consistently basically batting back against the Western held position, including the United States official position at least of our government, that we support a two state solution and that's the only endurable path to some sort of
lasting piece. Also very difficult, I think now at this point, because their overall strategy for attaining peace after the war and not becoming a geopolitical pariah is having the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the other Gulf Arab states to fact and clearly Egypt as well to facto recognize or have their relations with Israel be totally normalized, which is
what they were pursuing ahead of this. However, the Palestinian now question been making it such that that is almost certainly impossible, just leaving them in a very difficult position in the future.
We see some of us in the ceasefire negotiations happening right now too.
Yeah, I mean, Saudi came out and pretty directly rebuked some comments from the Biden administration. Remember we covered that previously, where the Biden administration was trying to say no, no, Saudi normalization still on the table, and Saudi came out and was like, no, it is not on the table barring an actual progress towards a real Palestinian state, not to some fake lip service bullshit. So that is certainly reality. I mean, I think Be these comments first of all,
saying listen, the domestic populace is behind me. And again there's a lot of pulling back this up. This not behind him as a leader, but behind the direction of the war. You know, only a tiny, tiny percentage thinks that the idea has gone too far. As an example in any case, that just underscores the fact that Biden, you know, meekly asking for a certain things, oh please don't go on an offer or whatever, is not going
to do anything. The only way that you're going to change the course of this war is if you, in fact use the tremendous power and leverage that the United States has, And so these little rhetorical shifts are not going to do anything whatsoever. And then it's also you know, that's also really underscored by the fact that this purported sort of kind of redline that Joe Biden lays out
in that MSNBC interview. I mean, Biebe thinks nothing of just immediately being like, no, I don't care if I'm going to do what I want to do, and do any of us have any expectation that Joe Biden is going to do anything more than like meekly protest and then accept whatever bbe wants to do and whatever Israel wants to do. No, of course not, because we've seen how this has played out time and time and time
again throughout this conflict. To your point, Sager, about those supposed ceasefire negotiations, let's go and put this up on the screen. An interesting note from Times of Israel and Wall Street Journal originally reported this. Qatar is apparently threatening to deport Hamas chiefs if they don't agree.
To a hostage truce deal.
As far as I can tell, the biggest sticking points are a really crucial one. Hamas wants a permanent, lasting ceasefire and Israel wants to go back to all out assault in annihilation in let's say six weeks time. So that's a pretty hard gulf to be able to close.
You know.
There have been reports previously that there were some disagreement between the political leadership of moss which is based in places like Katar, and the military leadership which continues to be in the Gaza strip. The military leadership more interested in the full lasting ceasefire, and the political leadership, you know, more open to a short term ceasefire. So I don't
know how those things will play out. But this is also a critical moment soccer because we are now officially in that month of Ramadan.
This was something else.
Remember back when Joe Biden was worried about the uncommitted vote in Michigan and he came out licking his ice cream cone and was like, oh, I think we'll have a seasfire by Monday.
Total bullshit.
And he had laid out before that his goal was to get there before Ramadan. Well, here we are at Ramadan and no progress.
Yeah, and there's also some pretty inflammatory images coming out of Jerusalem. Let's goud and put this up there on
the screen where you could see this happened yesterday. There were some major clashes actually at the All Oxa Mosque in Jerusalem where police appeared to be banning anyone from under the age of forty from actually praying at the mid This is look in a previous life, Crystal, This, you know, before the war would have been a major international incident, because I believe now you can try and correct me if I'm wrong, that it's in violation at
least of the general understanding and or treaty that governs Alaxa, the mosque and the security zone that's there. I've actually been to the area as well, and it is very confused as to who exactly controls what. But in general, and this goes back to some of the uglier moments of violence in Israel, like messing with the Alaksa Mosque and control and access to the mosque is itself one of the most inflammatory incidents in the past, especially den during the holy month of Ramadan for Islam.
Right it's in East Jerusalem, it's occupied territory. Some of the most extreme you know Israelis, including some who are in the government, always are looking for intense provocations here. This is a classic, you know, consistent flash point, very high emotions around Alazamusque, and so you know, this is
a potential additional escalatory point, additional potential conflagration here. So something we definitely want to keep our eye closely on the same point that also in that interview with Jonathan k Part, Joe Biden made some news about these comments he made off the cuff in the State of the Union speech about a quote unquote illegal killing Lincoln Riley.
Let's take a listen, just so we have the context to that moment in the State of the Union speech, and then we'll show you on the other side how he tried to clean it up with Jonathan k Part.
Take a listen.
Lincoln Riley and then acent young woman who was killed by an illegal that's right, but how many of the thousands of people being killed by legalists to her parents, I say, my heart goes out to you, having lost children myself, I understand.
Okay, so very the yeah, I mean, listen, we'll talk more about on the other side. But there was a tremendous democratic pushback here. Nancy Pelosi said she didn't like that language. Of course, they don't talk about the policy, just the language. Typical democratic stuff. So in any case, Joe Biden was asked about this in this MSNBC interview, estatele isn't what he had to.
Say during your response to her heckling of you. You used the word illegal when talking about the man who allegedly killed Doc Riley.
An undocumented person, and I shouldn't have used the legal as undocumented. And look, when I spoke about the difference between Trump and me, one of the things I talked about on the border was that his the way he talks about vermin, the way he talks about these people polluting the blood. I talked about what I'm not going to do, what I won't do. I'm not going to treat any of these people with disrespect. Look, they built the country, the reason our economy is growing. We have
to control the border and more orderly slow. But I don't share to do at all.
So you regret using that word, Yes.
Yes, I regret using it.
I mean, I just it's just perfect like Democratic Party theater.
Because they most of them, there are a few outliers, I think Cooleion Castro among them, and a couple others who were upset by the direction of the Biden administration on immigration, of the policy choices that they made, of the reaching out the hand to Donald Trump after I mean, you remember the reaction against Trump era immigration policies when he was president and Democrats were in the opposition, and now they, you know, Biden decides we're basically going to
adopt a lot of their policy. We are going to reach out our hand to Donald Trump directly and say, hey, how about you we do your border policy.
And the objection isn't to that.
The objection in the speech isn't to the portion on Gazo, which had a you know, is insane, like the port situation and even the whole framing of that. Instead it's to the use of this one word, which again I don't love that language either, but that is like, the language is so far from my top priority that it's absurd. But again it's a classic Democratic Party I.
Mean yeah position.
For me, it's just like, oh, this is the political correctness battle that we're fighting. I mean yeah, the policy actually is where the argument that you should be having, and we talked about it in our post show. We've done our debate here as well. I do also think, you know, the optics of it are terrible. It's like what you can apologize for saying illegally, you can't apologize for, you know, not saying Lake and O'Reilly's name correctly.
It's like, well, which one? You know?
So if you believe quote unquote no human being is different and or not illegal, it's like, well, you're supposed to treat them the same.
So I was bothered by that.
But overall, I just think that the freak out on it by the Democrats.
I mean, look, nobody is buying this. It all is going to come back to And.
We've talked about that nauseum, Crystal about at the end of the day, like if you care about the border and it's your number one issue, which it is for the vast majority of Republican voters, and there's some pulling out there that shows that it's at least number one or number two for a lot of general election. They are not paying attention to Biden saying a legal there
up on the state of the Union. They are like, Okay, what are we going to do about the number six to eight million migrants that have come into the country since and is that an acceptable policy? What's the number that we should have, Are we actually going to have a control boarder, what does security look like? What is the overall consensus in going forward as to like what we accept for overall levels of immigration, et cetera. So you know, focusing here on the political correctness on it
is ridiculous. I mean that said, I don't think there's anything wrong with the term of the use of illegal undocumented actually personally drives me insane because it doesn't it's a meaningless term, whereas at least here we have a clear delineation because somebody who entered under a legal process and or not. That said, you know, with Biden in the way that he's handled this, I just don't think he believes anything. I don't know if he saw this. I sent this to our group DM for our show.
I mean, people should go and watch. Maybe I wish i'd cut it. Biden's response for the State of the Union to George H. W.
Bush.
I mean, it's a Republican like it's He's like, I wish that we had longer jail sentences. I wish I didn't have to all my mom and worry that somebody's going to beat her up. I wish that we could control He actually advocated I had no idea in the early eight in the late eighties for striking drug cartels in Mexico using the US.
Military, all of this on camera.
Oh and by the way, if anyone's wondering, there was no stutter miraculously in that eighties. But see, he doesn't believe anything, but he personally that really bothers me.
That is what he actually believes.
I don't think what you're just going.
Is what he actually believes.
That's why he's so willing to you know, the instant there's a little bit of political pressure on immigration, he reverts back to where he has been his entire career, and you know, you see it. It is a little bit of like a mass slip moment when he tried to sort of reform himself in the modern democratic era.
And we remember those.
Debates with the high school Spanish and whatever, you know, back of the Democratic primary, trying to fit in with where the Democratic base and where the Democratic Party had moved. But no, I mean him being like, yeah, she's killed by an illegal. That actually is the way that he relates to this issue. And again it's consistent across decades
of his career. That's why it's always so preposterous and why I never landed when the right tries to paint him as some like, you know, open borders communists just taking his order of marching orders from Bernie and AOC, because he's never been that politician. And you see it also, I mean, he has a certain stubbornness around certain issues,
so you see that with Israel too. It's like, you know, he is locked in with He's going to give Israel whatever the hell they want, and it really doesn't matter.
What they do.
So I wouldn't you know when you say he doesn't believe anything, he has these sort of reflexes in place, I guess, is what I would say. Yeah, and that comes out here and it shows up in.
A variety of ways.
Occasionally it's a good it's actually good, like when he withdrew from Afghanisty and over the objections of everybody else. But you know, yeah, so in any case, that was that was the area where he got the most pressure is over the use of this one word, which I think.
That's very telling to me.
I mean, and that's why I would say I don't think he believes anything, because I mean, he did drop a lot of what he supposedly believed on immigration. This is a man who voted for the fence and made the case for basically a border wall in two thousand and seven and then completely flipped.
On a dime.
So then he rhetorically yeah, I agree, But that's my thing is with him, it's just all over the place. And then whenever he I mean, look, let's be honest, like whenever he came into office, he did rescind a lot of Trump era policy, and there have been a ton more migrants that have come across the border under him. Now that is not one hundred percent of his fault. A lot of that is pre existing. But you know, in terms of allowing it to fester, I think that
it has been a tremendous disservice. And that's part of the reason that you see some of the major flip flops is the situation became so untenable and insane and politically toxic specifically with the migrant crissease in the in the blue cities and the sanctuary cities, such that he was compelled to at least try and do something with this quote unquote bipartisan border bill. All of that has now come to the place where he doesn't know how he doesn't have a consensus that I think is politically
sustainable going into this election. Trump, you know, you can criticize it or not. Trump has an answer. He has a coherent answer as to what it is, which we should shut it down, we should depour people here who are illegally Biden he's all over the place. He actually kind of I think you noted that in his Lake and Riley answer if we had the full one, he was trying to try and make a point. He's like, well, actually, it's like native born people create commit more crimes.
It's like legal Yeah, by the way.
Maybe that's not the right time.
And also, I mean, there is a substantive difference between somebody shouldn't be here committing a crime and not committing a crime. But it's like he's very tortured in the way that he's trying to talk about this, And I don't find that politically. I don't find that a political answer. I agree, and it's coherence act. It's not coherent to Trump. It's not coherent. And as I've said a million times, you are not going to win the border cruelty race
with Donald Trump. Not going to do it if your answer quote unquote is to accept the Republican framing that the whole situation comes down to how much of how hard asked can we be at the border, how cruel can we be at the border? How much enforcement can we do at the border.
If you accept that.
Framing, then you are laying the groundwork for Donald Trump's arguments to fully land the reality is actually, you know, immigration, legal immigration is good for this country.
Now it should be controlled.
It should be that we don't have chaos at the border, that we're able to know who's coming in, etc. But the fact that he completely abandoned that argument, which by the way, has even at a time when there has been a large search in migration, there is a lot of concern about, you know, the level of migration coming across the border, those are still core values that land with the American people because people are complicated, like they feel like, Okay, we should know who's coming in and
we should have a handle on this. They also feel like this is a nation of immigrants and that has been a benefit to our country overall. And to totally abandon that argument and just see the ground to the Republicans,
I think it's politically foolish. And we've seen this. There was that study of a bunch of different countries in Europe where the quote unquote center left politicians tried this path that Joe Biden is right now trying, and it didn't work out for them for exactly the reason that I'm saying, and not to mention, you know, it really demoralizes the base of the party that thought you meant it when you had a very different line back in
twenty twenty than you do now. And lord knows the Democratic Party already has a big problem with the base. So politically, I think this direction is very foolish, you know, putting aside the morality of it, which obviously I disagree.
I just wish he would look. It's like, you need a coherent answer, and if.
You really believe in the open border stuff, I mean, then run on it, like say it fine. I mean, I think you'll get your ass kicked at the ballot box, and you should be.
I think there's big debates to be happy to use orection.
I'm not saying up in borders, Joe Biden has never been open border.
Well if you're okay, well, then it's about the definition. If you think that's six to eight million people here who are coming basically illegally and taking advantage of asylum loophole, and they get to stay here for months, years on end with no orderly process and most of them aren't going to leave, then I think that's an open border.
I mean think, but.
That's objectively what I'm I mean, that's a polar opposite of what I've argued, well, no, which is that we should actually have a huge surge in resources to be able to appropriately adjudicate asylum claims like that. I fully support that, but to only have enforcement and to only have cruelty and I mean, you support zero migraine like, I'm wildly opposed to that, and it would be devastating
for the economy. You know, we just have gotten reports about how actually part of the reason why we avoided a recession and why we have you know, higher GDP than expected, et cetera, is because we have had so many migrants. Migrants have been a benefit of the country. Now, there's a limit to everything, right, of course, if you flood the zone with too many people, it causes friction in terms of getting people adjusted and the job market
and all of those things. But net net immigration is a net positive, and I think Joe Biden should be making that case. And by the way, a majority of the American people agree that migration has been a net positive for the United States.
Well, the GDP argument is a deeply neoliberal one because it's one where increasing GDP because you have a bunch of unskilled people you can pay.
Wages are going to Wages are going up faster than inflation.
Wages also dramatically increased from the Trump administration because we specifically had far less immigration.
It was just what increased. We know, it's true, you're going to go.
We could pull all that out if we want to, all of the wage increases from If you look at the study in Onward.
Case migrants from diminished wages.
No, No, this is asletely not accepted.
That absolutely accepted by almost every mainstream economy that if you look at the overwhelming majority of studies that have been done in this area, increased migration does not diminish wages. It helps uspur the economy. Again, I'm not saying open borders, I'm not saying completely unlimited, but I think that there is a strong case to be made that increasing migration
is good for the country. We can see it in economic numbers that are coming out right now, and I think Joe Biden was on stronger ground when he was willing to make that cout.
Much of this comes back to conflating people who are high skilled migrants people who are Indian, specifically h one b visas using their wages and are drawing them into low cost If you look at the sub fifteen dollars per hour level, it.
Is very clear. I mean, look, this is the basic supply and demand.
If you have millions of people who are coming here who are unskilled, and you have a domestic population who has to compete against them for wages, what's going to now?
But that just assumes that the economy is this set thing and the number of jobs is this set thing, which is not the way that an economy actually works. The thing that does can depress wages is if you have a large undocumented population being paid sub minimum wage with no labor protections under the table. That is a problem for native born workers who have to compete with
you know, with that situation. But that's why you should have a path to citizenship and you should have a legalization process so that people are working in the shadows and are subject to the same you know, competitive landscape as every other worker.
Well okay, but again you know we're talking about rewarding bad behavior which is coming here illegally. This all comes down to seeing people as widgets and units instead of citizens. Like citizens are the ones who get first grabs and should have the benefit of the economy. They are the ones who should have the first shot at anything. Then we can make a coherent decision. We can take actual analysis. Right now, the current status quo is outrageous that it
has been for twenty five years or so. There're probably nobody knows the number. It's probably between twenty five to thirty million. That's is hig that I have seen of the illegal population in the United States. I mean, you can't say with a straight face it's not going to have a huge impact on the economy, especially when positive one. No, but we have no idea whether we have no idea as to the actual benefit of that.
As you're just say you do no, no.
Because okay, if you are to do if you were a construction if you're a construction forman, you're going to pay a guy ten dollars an hour under the table, AHAs.
You have to pay another guy they should be legal?
Well, no, why they should be have a.
Pathway to citizenship because that's right. No, because the problem is when you are paying people under the table, that is actually the issue.
When you have a significant amount of legal migration.
By the way, that also cuts down on the quote unquote chaos at the border because people have a way to get in. People are going to flee desperate circumstances. The circumstances that many of these individuals are fleeing are so desperate they're going to do it no matter whether it's Trump or Biden, what sort of border cruelty there is, they are determined to get here.
Right.
Migration is a fact of human history throughout all of mankind. We're not going to stop that, okay, So do you want an orderly process where we have a significant amount of legal migration that we are able to track and we're able to control, and yes, benefits this country as previous waves of migration clearly have and is by the way, again, majority of the American people believe in and support our
country depends on immigrants. Like to deny that is insane and has tremendously benefited from previous ways and currently benefits from the legal migrants and the undocumented population that's here. So it is having a wildly different view of if people morality and what is actually beneficial for.
The morality in saying that people from Al Salvador should not be allowed to come and to America just because they're fearing for their life.
And by the way, El Salvador is doing a lot better.
It turns out again that these people can make determinations for themselves.
That's not my argument.
My argument is it's good for us, but most democratic question, woe to us When we are a place that immigrants don't want to come to, that's one will be in trouble.
Maybe, I mean, that's not necessarily.
That's one will be in trouble. Is you can become a country where people do not want to go, where there is not opportunity for people, then we're going to have a problem. I mean, you can see it, but you know it's it's a little bit of a different situation. You see it right now in Israel because they have blocked so many Palestinian workers who they really relied on.
Their economy is in shambles. Right if we deported all of the immigrants here, if we had net zero migrace, it would be a catastrophe for our catastrophe for our people.
Made those arguments in the nineteen twenties and turned out we were completely fine, Like this is not what I'm saying is that you see this.
When it comes to our birth rate, right, you're concerned about our low birth We need more people, we need more Americans, we need a higher birth rate. But somehow, you know, immigrants then are bad, Like more people when they're born from native born citizens are good. But then more people when it's immigrants are bad.
That doesn't make it that.
It's not logical, it's not necessarily bad.
It's just that we're again we're looking at citizen re versus widgets. It's if you look at it as a widget and you're like, yeah, it doesn't matter where you're from, or if we care about the COMPREHENSI like the actual cohesiveness of the nation. Look all of the arguments you and I had happened a century ago. I would say we're substantially in a different economy than the Irish waves
of immigration filled a rapidly industrializing economy. What do we have a rapidly de industrializing economy that's transitioning to US service based one that is not one where highly low skilled labor that doesn't even speak English can easily assimilate into and in fact it creates what you have in Germany, which is a vast underclass of people that just serve their betters at the top. I don't think that's fair to the Turks in Germany. I don't think it's fair
to Mexicans. Hondurance migration policy. That's about labor policy. That's about labor policy. That's about union rates.
That's about minimum having the high high world and minimum wage. I mean, that's not that's about making sure that your working class is doing well.
Period.
And of story, that's not about that's not an immigration story.
No, but it is an immigration story because one it was is that you have a complete you have a complete diversion in the culture, have no shared values between those populations where even when you do have some of the highest union rates in the entire world, they're not accepted as citizens.
I mean, it's just one of the things we have.
I mean, I mean, you can't perfect, but we have to.
Saying that anybody from anywhere can just come here and be like, yeah, you know what, I'm supposed to accept you. I mean, that's completely that is that's actually talktrary to the American story.
No, that's insane being as a human being.
Of course, but if you move here, you don't speak English, you move and then you take somebody's job, or you're competing at somebody's job.
You can't expect somebody else to be happy with that situation.
There's no evidence that is happening.
I mean, that's the thing is, like, you can, yeah, if if immigrants were genuinely like a problem for people in the economy and it was pushing out all these workers,
et cetera, that's not the issue. If you care about American workers, then you know, focus on unions, focus on lifting the minimum wage, focus on getting universal health care, paid family leave, making things better for them, not you know, punishing people who want to come to this country, not dehumanizing and saying them they don't belong and they you know, can't assimilate, which just looking at the American experiment is insane. I mean, it's been called the Great Melting Pot for
a reason. I believe in that vision of America. So in any case, I think Joe Biden should be affirmatively making the case that immigrants are positive for the country, something American people already agree with. I think he the pieces of the bill that he put forward that would surge, for example, judges to admunicate asylum claims. I think that's good. But I think you also have to have path to citizenship.
I think you have to celebrate the contribution of migrants and make the affirmative case that it is a net positive for Americans because it is.
Well, okay, I mean, if people want to run on that, go for it.
I think it did last time. Anyone, Okay, I.
Mean, let's let's have it. Let's see it.
I mean, if Trump wins this time, then I think we'll have a pretty clear answer is no, because people feel.
About But that's not true because Biden accepted the cruelty at the border situation. So it's not like we're running one candidate who is talking the way that I'm talking and another one who you know has.
Trump's Well, I mean this account of factual, man, and it's never going to get tested.
That said, a vast majority of the polling shows us that whilst people may support a pathway to citizenship, although some of that gets somebody.
Gets very certainly don't support net zero migration.
Well, that's not necessarily true. It is true. I mean if you put it in terms of a merit based system.
Whenever you say that people who come in based upon our birthrate or whatever should be calculated such that any but coming.
But you're not saying they're based. You're saying, no, I.
Believe in a merit based immigration system with the net number being zero. I didn't say that zero people should be coming in. I said the net number should know that.
It would be a catastrophe by the economy.
That's not Again, Look, these are all counterfactuals. These are not ones that can be proven. We have done it many times in the past. In the past it worked out fine. We actually do a much stronger country for it. So all I'm trying to come back to is that the arguments that we're having here in Crystal, I agree,
should be democratically tested. I also can read a poll and I know that people definitely reject a lot of the underlying philosophy of what you're advocating for when it comes to the border.
No, they don't, well because because the majority of people agree with me that migrants have been a net benefit to society. Now again, I think people are complicated. I think it depends on the question you ask them, and they may have some contradictory impulses, But you also have almost no one actually making the case that migration is positive that, yes, it should be controlled. Yes, we should
not have chaos at the border. And part of getting rid of that quote unquote chaos at the border is to have an actual pathway to citizenship that functions and lets a sufficient number of people in that you don't have people, you know, coming in undocumented, coming in illegally because there's just no other.
Option on the tape.
But there are many options on the table.
No, there's not one million people come to this country legally every single year.
It is actually very much on where you are from. That's right, Yeah, as it should be.
Wow, everybody said in Mexico should just get an automatic visa to the US.
That's not that's not what I said.
Well, anywhere around the world we have quotas for a reason.
Also, a lot of it is to crack down on chain migration, which is the number one way that we function currently, which is whether you have a family member here or not.
Not hate. Do you have any skillus if you're interested anything.
But if you're interested in this question of assimilation, which you seem very interested in, chain migration is actually a good way of trying to achieve that assimilation. If you have people who are already here who can help you assimilate into Actually, again I.
Don't agree with that at all, because what ends up happening is you have these subcommunities where nobody speaks in the English and there's no real incentive in order to assimilate and in fact, merit based in the past, what we have seen in many other countries Australia and others, is that they have much higher rates of assimilation and they have much better results in terms of the way that the native born population feels about the people who
are there because they know that as an orderly system. Now, Australia has some advantages. Being an island is number one, so it's not really one that we can have here.
But I mean chain has a lot.
Of issues whenever it comes to assimilation, but most importantly skill and the fact is that we don't assign. I mean, even Canada has merit based migration, Like are we going to say that Canada has a cruel migration policy, Like they have plenty of immigrants who are living in Canada.
They don't come there based on chain. They come on a points.
Based system which was explicitly rejected, which under the trumpet Miss I.
Think extremely classystem means basically, just like if you're rich you can come, and if you're poor you can.
And I think poor.
People in other countries that's their problem, that's their country the problem.
Again, they're framing this as a problem, and I don't see it as a problem. I see it as a challenge to make sure the system works properly, and on that we have definitely failed. But I don't see it as a quote unquote problem that we have people who want to come here or have something to offer to the American public, to the economy, et cetera.
I see it as a benefit. So anyway, all.
Right, I guess we can call it there.
But I mean I would just say, Crystal, Okay, Well, then, for example, if there's high rates of people who come here illegally or legally and then.
Go on welfare, do you think that's acceptable? Well, I don't think exactly. I think why are you coming here?
I think if you the chain migration that you're talking about actually helps with that too, because you have a built in safety net. But yeah, I think it's reasonable that if you are coming here and you're unskilled, that it may take you some time to get on your feet but we've seen how hard working immigrants are, how important they do all the bunch of jobs that native born Americans won't do, and are not interested.
In any price as long as the wages high. I'm totally four eye wages. But you know the problem that we have right now is that, like you just said, there are a bunch of people who are willing to work for nothing, and that's what depresses wages.
And so there you go.
At the same time, the State of the Union reaction is in and the pundits, including ones who previously had called for Joe Biden to drop out of the race, are dropping their sword and surrendering.
Put it up there on the screen. Ez reclined. Chrystal, who famously did a podcast.
A well researched story all about how Joe Biden should drop out with all of this incredible polling and data to back it up, just says, fine, call it a comeback. If Joe Biden wh showed up to deliver The State of the Union addresses that Joe Biden wh shows up for the campaign, you're not going to have to worry about any of those weak need pundits suggesting he's not up to running.
For reelection.
Here's hoping he does so, maya culpa of all Maya culpaks and falls exactly Backlee, in line with the way that the pundit class felt about this, which contrasts very differently from the way that the public did mourning Joe, for example, literally drooling and fawning.
Over the president's speech. Let's take a listen.
This was This was a tour de force by Joe Biden, and yet Peggy noon In last week calling him cranky old Joe after his angry press confidence who last night Michael Beschloss likened him to Harry Truman, And there was a real give him hell Harry a part of this.
But what really completed it was it was.
Give him hell. Harry meets Ronald Reagan's a city shining brightly on the hill for all the world to say. We always under Democrats always underestimated Ike, They always underestimated Reagan. Now it's us we always underestimate Biden.
Yes, Joe Biden is Eisenhower, General Eisenhower, Harry Truman, Ronald Reagan all rolled into one.
He's actually better than all of them, Crystal.
You know, turns out I would I would, I would die happy if we could just have one of those gentlemen to come back as opposed to the husk that we have in front of us. And yet who do we have next here? The view also giving their laudatory comments. Anna Navarro, the quote unquote Republican host, very much talking him up after the State of the Union.
Here's what she had to say.
Joe Biden is old. Yes, he's slower of step, yes, but he is far from being incoherent, from having dementia, from not being in charge. Yesterday, he showed he is engaged, He was impassioned, he was pissed off Scranton. Joe showed up and fought. He had his gloves on from moment one. He was knowledgeable about policy. He turned the immigration issue, which I agree with you is the most difficult issue he's facing, and he turned it to one of the
most strongest moments of that speech. He they thought they were going to rattle him by wearing the buttons of Lake and Riley. He took it, and he looked at our parents and he offered condolences. He made it, you know. He went and he rattled off all the points that were in that bipartisan immigration legislation that Donald Trump and his minions sabotaged. I loved the ending four more years and four more years okay for more alrighty, I loved it.
Scranton, Joe's back.
Who is who is this mythical man that these people are talking about?
He sounds great. Yeah, Look, it's just going I.
Mean, it's just so delusional to think that one like, okay speech performance off of the telebrondra is going to just eliminate, you know, it's just gonna wipe clean the memories of everything everybody has seen over the past number of years. And also to think that that image is going to then persist throughout whatever additional Joe Biden brain
melts we are certain to witness. So you know, they're excited. Though, So for him, he needed to quiet people like Azra Klein who were floating that he needed to be replaced. I mean that was job number one, was him to do enough so that he could get exactly this fawning reaction from the pundit class, And he did that. The rest of the American people, though not quite as convinced as they are, that that he's really the man for the job going for and that This was the quote
unquote toward a force that morning. Joe thinks, I also just have to say on the Azra client thing, like how pathetic.
Yeah, if you believe in something for.
You, right, if you're going to go through to write a whole do a whole podcast late, how do the interview like really make the case? And he made a good case, and then he gives one okay performance that was still at times very dicey, and you're just gonna mount and like collapse into groups and it just shows you, like he must have gotten tremendous amount of pressure after that last column, slash podcast and just infillent caves, which is kind of hilarious.
Absolutely, and Biden himself addressing the age issue at least at the top of his brand new ad. They're calling it the quote spring media campaign. Let's take a lesson.
Look, I'm not a young guy, that's no secret.
But here's the deal.
I understand how to get things done for the American people. I led the country through the COVID crisis. Today we have the strongest economy in the world. I passed the law the lowest prescription drug prices cap Sense are thirty five dollars a month, forcedures.
There you go.
He's basically like, I'm not a young guy, rolls into a bunch of policy stuff.
I mean, look, it's probably the best he can do.
Right Honestly, it's he talked about, you know, things that pull well for him, right the thirty five dollars insulin lowering prescription drug prices. He goes on in that to talk about rope versus weight and you know, lies that he's going to codify it into law, which we don't know is not going to happen, but obviously that's a key issue for them. I thought it was a solid enough and probably lands you know, decently enough.
As far I thought it was fine.
It just is interesting to me that for everybody else, so the pundits and all that, they're like, no, it was amazing and all that. But for him, he's acknowledging the age at the top, which at least demonstrates that they have some political acumen now to get though to where some of this is coming from in terms of
the media response versus the public response. Let's put this up there, because even the Washington Post is forced to admit here early polling of the Biden State of the Union does not match the hype.
They even say.
Democrats would like you to believe that this changed the game on Thursday, it is not clear that the American public saw the home run that they did. According to the CNN Instant poll, sixty five percent offered a positive view, but viewers also shifted seventeen percent toward believing the country has had in the right direction. That's what they're saying
in terms of what they say is true. But what they also true is the State of the Union speech is quote almost always receives strongly favorable views, in part because the viewership tends to draw disproportionately from their allies. And in fact, what they point to is that quote. Dating back to Bill Clinton's nineteen ninety eight State of the Union, viewers have always shifted an average of fifteen points toward a more optimistic view whenever they are watching.
They also show that quote in Trump's twenty seventeen and twenty eighteen speeches. Republicans were outnumbering the Democrats by five percentage points in CNN sample Trump's reviews and those teachers were still stronger than Joe Biden's on Thursday, showing the relative to where.
Trump was again.
I mean, remember Crystal, how crazy things were in twenty seventeen. That was like the peak of the Trump madness. And even in that actually Trump was getting better remarks on his State of the Union response. So when we look at it here, it is pretty clear that when you look at it history, he's right within the line against Trump.
He didn't actually do all that well.
So the home run, I mean a home run would be vastly overperforming all previous presidents are combined, or at least by a magnificant margin, or overperforming your predecessor, which he did not do in either of these cases.
Yeah, I mean, the reality is it's probably not going to matter at all.
At the end of the day.
I could see he may get a little bit of an approval rating bump out of this, you know, people feeling a little better about him. The vibes, the way the pundits are selling it so so so hard across all of these networks. By the way, the Republican reaction and opposition was equally deranged to the liberal reaction.
They were like, you know, after.
For so long complaining about I think accurately that he's so feeble and whatever, then it was oh my god, he was like so over the top and so angry. You can't really have it both ways anyway. Putting that aside, I think the probably reality out of the state of the Union is is not really going to matter either way. He didn't have a like major obvious health event while he was silvering at which is what people sort of like wondered whether that would happen and feared it would happen.
It had a lot of downside risk, Like if it had been a catastrophe, I think it would have had a huge and lasting impact because it would have affirmed people's deepest fears about Joe Biden. But since it was, you know, adequately handled, he avoided that catastrophic downside risk. Is he able to significantly achieve like higher pull numbers, higher lasting approval ratings.
I think that's probably unlikely.
Yeah, I think you're right, Crystal, And I think overall, what we can see is that the pundit class and all of them have very very low expectations for Biden. I've stolen your line. You're like, guys, if this was Obama, we would all be saying, we're.
Like, man, there's something wrong. What's going on, and you.
Know, he is a guy who actually won elections, actually was a Look, whatever you think of him, he was good at speaking, and he was a good politician, and he was able to at least get himself re elected twice. Pretty remarkable. Whereas with Biden, you see the curve that he's being graded on, You're like, oh my god, what are we doing here? So if that's where the bar is, as far as h I think we can at least
put some trust in people. Ryan also had a good point in our post coverage where he said, look, this isn't like the old days. They're still going to see clips of Biden unable to physically speak and function over
and over again, simply because of the Internet. So this monolith media like environment that these people want to live in where this matters, and this is really the only connection that we have to our president like we did in the nineties, that doesn't exist anymore the current media environment.
Yeah, that is a good point there, you go.
All right, let's talk a little bit about what unfolded at the Oscars last night, especially vis a vis protests of Israel's assault on Gaza. So before the big ceremony even got underway. You had protesters out in the street put this up on the screen, so they are actually.
Blocking the main.
Route to the what is it called the Dolby theaters that where it happens, and they were able to block it so effectively, and you can see a large number of people out there that they actually were a little bit late.
They were worried.
About having to use seat fillers, I think that's what they're called, so that it didn't look empty in the auditorium.
When the show got underway.
You had stars ditching their heels and having to hoofit into the theater. Some people had golf carts sent for them to be able to make it there. So before it even started there was a strong procease fire, anti war protest going on.
But the moment that actually.
Got the biggest attention was Jonathan Glazer accepting his award and the comments he made. Listened very carefully to them, and then I'll tell you the way they were interpreted.
On the other side, all.
Our choices were made to reflect and confront us in the present, not to say look what they did then, rather look what we do now. How film shows where dehumanization leads at its worst it shaped all of our past and present. Right now we stand here as men who refute their Jewishness and the Holocaust being hijacked by an occupation which has led to conflict for so many innocent people, whether the victims of October, the victims of October the seventh in Israel, or the ongoing attack on Gaza,
all the victims of this tea humanization. How do we resist? Alexandra Bistron Calasihchek, the girl who glows in the film as she did in life, chose to I dedicate this to her memory and her resistance.
Thank you, so, I thought very powerful and courageous comments there, clearly saying, you know, we refute our Jewishness and the Holocaust being weaponized in these and appropriated in these ways that we do not support, making sure to talk not only about the Gaza victims but also the victims on October seventh. But Sager, that has not prevented a full and complete meltdown over these comments, and absolutely disingenuous mischaracterization
of what he said, people clipping out of context. Just him saying we stand here as men who refute our Jewishness without going on to say and the Holocaust and the way that they're being weaponized. Not that he's refuting as Jewishness, he's refuting the weaponization of that identity, which I think many many especially American Jews right now, really resonate with in support because they don't feel that the Israeli government actions reflect them, reflect their identity, reflect their Jewishness.
And in fact, it would be the height of anti Semitism to say that every Jew must be in lockstep with exactly what the Israeli government is doing. And that's something you see in Israel where there's quite a bit of debate and dissent about exactly the policies of the net Yahoo.
Govern Even if ninety seven percent of Jews felt that way, there would still be two to three percent.
And to me, they are not Jews.
They are American citizens who have the First Amendment right to say and speak what they wish. Mister Glazer didn't say anything all that controversial. Many of the protesters that I see here in Washington often have the no in our Name t shirts on, which means that they are members of a Jewish organization. I mean, again, not that it matters, but I think rhetorically it's one of those
that they're able to. You know, it's a powerful rebuke, right, It's like this is one where they were being basically
tone policed by a lot of Jewish commentators. And Jonathan John put Harrits, who's the editor at Commentary, failed son and inheritor of his father's magazine, and one of these individuals saying by saying he refutes his Jewishness on the biggest stage in the world, five months after the attack on Israel, Jonathan Glazer has instantly made himself into one of Judaism's historical villains, like we're going to put him up there with Hitler, We're gonna put him up there.
I mean, I've seen JPod make comparisons like this in the past, comparions.
He is an incredibly unhimed individual.
But he's one of those where I've seen him align Jews who speak out against the war in Gaza, like copposed in concentration camps, which are like basically Jewish prisoners who cooperated with the Nazi regime. But I mean, it's one of those where it takes a special level of insanity to ascribe here, who is I mean, he sounds British to me. Not exactly who he is, but you know, he's on a stage in the United States of America, and I mean, frankly, it wasn't all that controversially even
mentioned the victims of October seventh. It's like, well, what else do you want from somebody who's speaking out against violence. I mean, it's one of those where he can say what he wants. He's using and I mean in some ways kind of honoring his religion, just saying like this was a historical horrible event, like please don't use that event in order to perpetrate what we see personally as an atrocity. I think that's fine, you know, once again, and it's I think the response to it is frankly
just disgusting in it. It goes back to the Biden project, and frankly a lot of American Jewish commentators project, which is to conflate all Judaism with the State of Israel. Yes, that's right, I mean, that's honestly disgusting.
That is anti Semitic.
Yeah, to say you have to if you are Jewish, you are fully identified with the State of Israel, you must support everything that they do. You have to speak about it in these set prescribed ways I mean to paint with that broader brush, is like the definition of racism and anti semitism.
And the other thing I saw.
That people were intentionally construing his comments is they were saying, oh, he's comparing what's happening in Gozen now to the Holocaust, which personally, if he did that I would also find perfectly fine, and not in obviously the number of people killed, but in the ideology and the genocidal rhetoric and ideology. I think that comparison is perfectly apt. But that's also
not what he was saying. He was saying, stop weaponizing the Holocaust to justify atrocities, to justify things that should not be justified. So I think the reason there was such a freak out is number one because of them being Jewish. Number two because the movie itself the zone of interest, which I haven't seen. I don't think you've seen either.
I've seen it. I am going to watch it.
I want to watch it. This actually made me want to watch it. But it's about the Holocaust. It's about the banality of evil. So the fact that he did this movie about the Holocaust and then used his platform in order to oppose Israel's assault on Gaza. I think that was, you know, particularly apparently sensitive for a number of people. Rabbi Schmoli of course had to weigh in in the way that he does. He described it as
absolutely disgusting. Jonathan Glazer, who deserves so much credit for his incredible Holocaust film The Zote of Interest, which I loved, betrayed his people and disgraced himself and trivialized the six million martyrs of the Holocaust when he said Israel's Warren Gaza was hijacking the memory of the Holocaust. How dare you compare the two? Again, he wasn't actually comparing the two, although again I personally would support that comparison.
You fool.
The whole purpose of Israel's Warren Gaza to make sure there isn't a second Holocaust, so we don't need more of your films because Jews actually remain alive. AMAS has one intention genocide of Jews. How is it the Jews in Hollywood have absolutely no pride in being Jewish and never ever stand up for the only Jewish country on earth, Israel, it seems to me very much has pride in his Jewish identity and what he objects to is that identity being used in the service of things that he finds
to be morally unconscionable. So, you know, I thought the response to it, especially the way the words were intentionally twisted in misunderstood, was really telling and really disgusting and showed you why it took courage by the way, and you could tell he was nervous when he was delivering the remarks that he had prepared and written down so that he could get the language exactly as he wanted
it to. So you know, I really applaud him for being willing to do that knowing that there would be an unhinged.
Freak out on the other side.
You also had a number of artists who were wearing pins, you know, a sort of more quiet form of protests. We can put some of these images up on the screen. These pins were in support of a ceasefire. Some of the actors, directors, et cetera, who were wearing the pins. You had a pneumona actors out. How you say that
I don't know anything about pop culture, Sorry, guys. Eugene Lee Yang, director Ava Duverne, director of Massan Harriman, who's behind Best Live Action Short nominee The After Writer director, I'm really going to butcher this one. Kyle, author Ben Hania, Best Documentary Feature nominee Four Daughters singer Billy Eilish also and one of the people you saw there on the screen was Ronny Yusef, who was in Poor Things, who also spoke out in favor of a ceasefire in Gaza.
Let's take a listen to that.
Tell me about the pin.
Yeah, we'll come on for immediate, permanent ceasefire in Gaza.
We're calling for peace.
And justice, lasting justice for the people of Palestine. And I think it's a universal message of just let's stop killing kids, let's not be part of war.
War.
No one's ever looked back at war and thought a bombing campaign was a good idea. And so to be surrounded by so many artists who are willing to lend their voice, the list is growing. A lot of people are going to be wearing these pins tonight, and it's because we want to kind of use where we're at to speak to people's hearts. You know, there's a lot of talking heads on the news. This is a space of talking hearts, and so we're trying to just kind of have that big beam the humanity.
Are you a hopeful there will be a ceas fire?
Yeah, there has to be. I don't I don't think that there's any there's no there's no other root. It's just it's taking so long. And you know, the president has now called for it in a State of the Union, the Vice president has and so I think we need to kind of really look at ourselves and be honest of Okay, if the leadership supposedly thinks that should happen, why has it not happened? And so I think that's what we're all encouraging, you know, everyone to be vocal about.
I thought that was kind of interesting framing since Biden and Kamala have co opted the language language of seas fireman that they don't actually support a full and lasting ceasefire, saying, hey, you're saying.
Ceasefire, that's great.
Where is it you claim you want to you know, you claim you want this now, So why isn't it actually happening? You'll recall that, especially immediately after October seventh, there were a number of high profile firings in Hollywood over people who are expressing support for Palestinians. So it still is you know, a cause that is take some courage to speak out on. So kudos to these individuals who took this protest to the oscars and tried to raise a visibility there for.
One that was interesting. I mean the freak at on is that's just a whole other level.
And like compare it to some of the other historic ones like Michael Moore at the Oscar stage see that, Well, that one was wild because remember he got booed people really memory hole how pro war Hollywood was too at the time.
So things certainly a little bit yeah.
So true.
At the same time, there's some major domestic news here with the shock passage of a new bill through the House Committee on Energy and Commerce Affairs on TikTok. Let's go and put this up there on the screen. If this advances to the full House, of which there's every expectation that it will and will likely pass, will go to the Senate, and would result in an immediate status quote change for TikTok. So what it says is that this TikTok crackdown is now shifting into overdrive quote with
sale or shut down on the table. So I actually went through read the full bill talked to some of the people who have helped craft it, and details are basically like this. TikTok is owned by byte Dance. The holding company Byte Dance is headquartered in China. I've done extensive work on this in the past, and they would not even really dispute it that they are controlled by.
The Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese government.
Byte Dances specifically, which is the holding company of TikTok. So this bill would require Byte Dance to immediately, within forty days a passage of the bill divest itself of TikTok as a media asset, or then face a shutdown and a ban. Inside the United States. It's very substantively
different from the Restrict Act. The Restrict Act we previously had spoken about Crystal would have resulted in the discretionary authority of the President to ban such a thing, whereas this relies on export import control laws that we have on our books that say that control of assets by foreign governments, as it could be applied here to social media would then result in an immediate divestiture and or a band. So substantively it is a little bit different.
This has though transformed itself into a major political issue. TikTok immediately push notifications to many of its users, resulting in a flood of calls on Capitol Hill TikTok cleaning that the legislation would have resulted in an immediate ban, failing to neglect the sale part that I mentioned here. However, the discourse has now transformed and is now all about whether we should ban TikTok or not. Donald Trump actually weighing in on this on the opposite side of the issue that.
He was previously.
He says, if you get rid of TikTok, Facebook and Zucker Schmuck will double their business. I don't want Facebook, who cheated in the last election, doing better. They are the true enemy of the people. Immediately then backed up by Elon Musk. If we can put that up there please, he says. Trump's statement there is correct, and a lot of this actually traces back to an interesting gentleman who recently become acquainted with named Jeff Yass.
If we can put this up there please on the screen.
Mister Yoss is a billionaire Republican donor and happens to own a nice thirty three billion dollar steak in byte Dance, which, of course is reaping massive benefits from the TikTok profits
and has been whispering, it seems in Trump's ear. He is also the major funder of the Club for Growth pack here in the United States, which is like a major kind of libertarian organization, and apparently has now placed Kelly am Conway, Trump's former community strategic communications advisor on retainer and she's being paid a nice, healthy salary to lobby against us.
So with all the details there, Crystal, what do you think.
Well, we should also keep it.
I mean Trump in his way, he does make a point that banning TikTok will be a tremendous gift to all the TikTok competitors. Yes, correct, tremendous gift to you too, I mean we self interestedly, I should be in favor of it, I guess, because it would funnel a bunch people our white potentially. You know, all of these social media giants. They've been desperately trying to recreate TikTok success, Zuckerberg in particular with Instagram reels.
So banning TikTok is a massive.
Gift to the tech industry, which I think is part of why this bill sailed through Committee with the unanimous vote, because yes, while TikTok obviously has a.
Lot of interest in not being banned and not having.
A sale force on it, you also have other money to interest on the other side that are pushing in the other direction.
So that's number one. Number two.
I mean, it's no mystery to me why this is coming about right now, which has everything to do with the fact that young people are getting, you know, a very different and very real view of what's happening in Gaza right now on TikTok, and so this conversation to you know, sort of spike during the Trump administration has sort of died down. The reason it's coming back right now, I think is directly tied to the fact that.
They see the numbers among young people.
They see the different view of Israel, they see the different view of Israel's assault on Gaza, and so there's a panic about like these young people and we got to control what they see in disinformation.
Et cetera, et cetera.
So I think that's also part of why you see this new initiative and this bipartisan unanimity when it comes to banning TikTok, and you know, the other thing I would say is I do think that there's huge First Amendment issues here. You know, I mean Twitter has taken like money from Saudi Arabia. Does that mean that they should be banned as well? If YouTube got a huge you know, had a huge investment from a foreign country, we're just going to ban or force the sale.
Of YouTube as well.
You're really directly attacking a lot of people's livelihoods number one, number two a lot of people's creative outlet, and number three a lot of people's social outlets. So I think it is a real sort of outrageous assault on freedom of speech and creative expression.
Well, that would be if it was a ban. Now let's be clear. I mean if we did a segment.
As a ban or a sale.
Well, we did a segment.
Here previously, for example, about US Steel being acquired by Nip and Steele. I oppose that transaction, even though Japan. Look, I love Japan, I we're blood brothers.
Where are allies?
I respect their Honestly, I like their culture more than I like our own. Sometimes that said, sorry, you shouldn't be owning critical parts of our steel infrastructure because you're going to use it for your purposes and not. I don't think there's really a substantive difference here. Now, the difference between a Twitter investment is that Twitter is headquartered and controlled here in the United States. TikTok is hold one hundred percent as a subsidiary of the Byte Dance Corporation,
by Dance itself one hundred percent controlled by China. Very different than a non controlling stake or even frankly like a board seat.
As opposed to where we are right now.
I think they now I will as I understand what I would say is one of the reasons as I've sailed through fifty to zero through the Energy and Commerce Committee, was not just because the Israel issue, although look, let's not deny it's obviously true, but that TikTok actually showed its ability to influence US election, which was the worst thing that they should have done, because they demonstrate it through their ability to flood the zone and by having
all these calls that they actually could flex political power.
If they wanted to.
Honestly, it was a huge backfire on their part because they opened a lot of people's eyes. They're like, oh, man, if they do push notification to any of their users, their users actually will call.
And we'll face it. Now.
I have complicated feelings at this point. I don't think we can ban it. I think we waited way too late. If we had banned it five six years ago, we would have had a different competitor, different conversation.
I mean it is.
Look, I wish that we weren't in this situation, but one hundred and seventy million people now use this thing.
What are you going to do?
I think that a fail forced sale is the best possible option, and that's what this legislation does now. Look by dancers, wasn't to let go of it, even though TikTok is banned in China, because it's tremendously profitable already, there are US investors and US companies that are very
willing to buy it, frankly, for a premium. They'll buy for eight nine hundred million dollars, then the ins the impetus, or an eight nine hundred billion dollars to be clear, possibly even a trillion dollar transaction, apparently for what I've been reading. Just because it's overall media, its ability to compel so much watch time, which is why Instagram and others want it banned I think where we are is it's a matter of sovereignty.
So I agree with you.
I think that if it was an outright ban itself and did not give the option at least for sale, then we could talk about First Amendment considerations. But at a baseline level, we're talking about sovereignty in US markets like China does not allow American technology companies to operate in China. Thus there is no reason why we should not have reciprocal trade rules. We have reciprocal actions against the European Union, against Indian companies, against Panic Canadian companies,
every other in the world. Why should we have a Chinese exception whenever it comes to tech, And I get the common retort I get is yeah, but big tech is just as bad. It's like, okay, but we can change that. There are American companies subject to a US jurisdiction. We have no jurisdiction over TikTok.
But see that's actually a good point, which is, I mean, we do have jurisdiction over TikTok when they're operating in our borders. So the real problem is like overall data privacy issues, because that's the that's the case that I hear made, I mean the election interference stuff that sounds a lot to me, like the like Russian Facebook moment memes and like that direction of chanic and freak out right. In terms of the data privacy concerns, these are not
limited to TikTok. In fact, the data that you know TikTok would have available to it is widely available for sale already on the open market. So that's the issue I think we should be dealing with versus going after this one platform because there's this like you know, freak out about China and this freak out about oh my god, the youths as per usual. So the other thing I would say is you're right, we can do it. I'm not saying we can't do it, Like as a sovereignation, we could.
I just don't think we should.
And part of why is because I don't think it'll lead to a better outcome. It does end up consolidating even more power in the hands of the already gigantic, you know, monopolistic social media monoliths. And for example, one of the things I was cited in this Wall Street Journal piece was that Sam Altman and open AI and conjunction with Microsoft were like, maybe we'll buy TikTok, maybe we'll use it to train our AI algorithms, which to me, I'm like, that's how is that a better state of affairs?
How is that an improvement over the current situation. So, you know, I think there's a reason why when people got that prompt to call into the legislators, why they were so active about it. Because for a lot of people, this is important to them, and they use it a lot, and they drive a lot of benefit from it. And so for them to like, you know, feel like it was under assault, that was enough to spur to actually trying.
To take some action.
The other thing I would say is Joe Biden said that he would sign a ban if it came to his desk. He signed this bill if it came to his desk. And if you want to lose young people, for sure, Joe Biden, go ahead and try to mess with TikTok, because I think that would be a political absolute catastrophe and.
Disaster that sport could shut down. I mean, they can sell it, I mean they should, There's no reason, there's no.
It would probably be hobbled if it was sold. I mean, even they acknowledge that in this Wall Street Journal pieces.
Yeah, I mean, look, I mean Instagram reil is not great, but like it's fine, and it's like not an insane technology that we're trying to duplicate here at this point, especially if they sell whatever their subsidiary is with the exist pre existing technology. I mean, look even to your data privacy point, though, there is again a substante difference.
The servers and all the data that TikTok takes is routed through Singapore but goes back to China, whereas our servers again are under US jurisdiction, of which we as a democratic people, can legislate, can change.
I mean we have correctly.
They've been open to having exactly that arrangement that you're describing, the arrangement that they have.
The arrangement they've described is one where they would route their data through Oracle through Singapore, but ultimately has back doors from China. Much of their much of their like their reply, and all that comes down to the fact that they want to keep their bike dance ownership. And listen, if I were by Dance, yeah, I would want to keep it too. But guess what, you don't let us do business in your country. So why should we let you do business in our country?
That's nuts?
Are people really like it?
A lot of people?
I mean, just imagine if it was YouTube and like it is very dependent on it, right, I mean, there's a lot of people whose livelihoods at this point are tied up in TikTok. And so I've just I've never really understood the scariest scenario. People always sort of like allude to these like nefarious things that could happen, but I've never really understood how that could play out in this way that would be disastrous, which isn't already unfolding.
Like I said that the data and privacy has already invaded Our legislators have already failed us on that front. And I just don't see it as being really any different with TikTok.
Versus I think it's a basic market fairness position.
I mean, like, like listen, try going to China or Japan or Korea and try opening a social media app. It's not going to happen, period to their level, because it's it's a typical trade agreement.
It's not about that.
It's like this is a very libertarian argument too, which is that, oh, well, we shouldn't resort to that. It's like, no, this is about basic market sovereignty. Americans should have control of their markets. We have no control over.
This asset amendment.
Those which is like, you know, if we're cracking down and censoring based on foreign ownership and foreign influence, et cetera. I mean, those are the sorts of things that more dictatorial countries like China tend to.
I think we should do so.
I don't think that we should be doing that.
What if TikTok was old by an Israeli company? What would you?
I mean, like Ways, for example, I believe I think Ways is owned by Israel.
I mean that means that they have.
Do you see me out there pushing for Ways to be banned?
But if you did, I would be like, hey, it's a valid argument.
It's one of those where like, I don't know, should they really have access to all of our data here? It seems a little bit for what if they use it for their state purposes, which.
They definitely would.
It's one of those where we could see from a basic market fairness position as we apply to Japan, China, Canada, Mexico, any other country in the world, why do you get complete access to our markets whenever you do not allow our companies to do business there.
This is sovereignty.
Now, in terms of forcing a sale, I think it was the best option.
I would also.
Say Trump is the reason that all of this happened, and I will never let him off the hook for this. If you'll recall in twenty nineteen. In twenty twenty, he tried to do a forced sale option, but screwed it up so badly that both the US government and TikTok basically folded. At that point, there are only some sixty million, I mean, still a lot, but sixty million people who were using the app. He probably could have bannoned at that time and there wouldn't have been the attendant social
chaos at this point. Now, I don't think it is possible just because we have some one hundred and seventy one hundred and eighty million people. It is a part of the culture, whether you like it or not. And it's with then now a question of like, okay, well, how do we manageably have this asset you know here in the US operate and not take something away.
But the first Amendment thing I want to come back to.
I don't think it's fair because you're not censoring people's right to speech. We're talking specifically about ownership of the company.
And then the onus goes.
To bike dance, because if we apply that First Amendment right, then any foreign company in the world would have right to do business in the US. And it's just like a premise that I fundamentally reject, like they do not have the rights under our system, especifically when specifically when we're talking about reciprocal trade, which long time has been an avenue for the executive and has always been biased towards like a sovereign direction over control of markets.
Yeah, like I.
Said, I think we could do it. I just don't think we should. I think that I don't see the case that you know, banning TikTok or for forcing its sale is going to improve data security for Americans. I think it's gigantic gift to Mark Zuckerberg, to Trump's point, and to the other really and to the other you know, large tech platform you have if they sell it, because it would likely be bought by one of these platforms.
I mean that was likely to buy it by one of these people.
Well, I mean they could try but oh, okay. But then here's the other thing.
We have a Department of Justice, Crystal, we have an anti trustpens. We could say no, you can't buy that. Under Alena, she hasn't even allowed like Spirit Airlines and Jet Blue defuse.
I think this is all based not on genuine concerns. Not you, but many of the lawmakers and a lot of the conversation around this isn't based on genuine concerns.
It's based on an.
Anti China freak out, and it's based on the worry that young people are forming views that the political elite do not find to be acceptable, and they want to be able to, you know, to sort of coerce them in better manufacturer consent.
So I'm, you know, not for it.
I won't deny not that's certainly part of it. Yeah, that's said. I mean, especially with the for sale option, I don't see any reason not to at least try and pursue it. Just to highlight though and give you your due, Nikki Haley really gave the reason away as to why she wants to ban TikTok. Let's take a listen to that from back during her debate moments.
We really do need to ban TikTok once and for all. And let me tell you why. For every thirty minutes that someone watches TikTok every day, they become seventeen percent more anti Semitic, more pro Hamas. Based on doing that, we now know that fifty percent of adults eighteen to twenty five think that Hamas was warranted and what they did with Israel, that's a problem.
For every thirty minutes, you become seventeen percent more anti city.
Yeah, even though I'm going to be late, I'm not sure about that one, Nicky.
Well, and even more telling, there was some leaked audio a while back of that dude is the head of eighty l's num.
I always forget.
I'm sorry, guys, my brain is absolute mush, but saying exactly the same thing of we got a big problem. We got a big problem with young people. TikTok is at the center of it. Let's take a listen to what he had to say.
I also want to point out that we have a major manor major animational problem all appalling. I think an L palling by falling independent palling a cap and not a left right gap. Folks, the Asian, the United States, and support for Israel is not left and right, it is young and old. And the numbers of young people hooking that Hamas's you know, massacre was justified is shockingly
and terrifyingly high. And so we really have a TikTok problem, the gen Z problem that our community needs to put the same brains that gave us Tag Lead, the same brains that gave us all these other amazing innovations, need to put our energy towards this like fast as again, like we've been chasing this left right divide. It's the wrong game.
So we really have a TikTok problem. We really have a gen Z problem. You do have a gen Z problem, but it's not so much about TikTok. It's just people being able to see what's happening for themselves.
That's why I get annoyed to because I'm like, guys, it's not a TikTok problem. And go on Twitter. You can see these xact same things, like what are you talking about? Like get you don't even need Twitter.
You can go on Google, go on WhatsApp, like you have people Telegram, any of these other channels.
It's like, you have an Internet problem. You don't have a take.
You have a reality problem. That's the truth.
So there it is.
By the way, if anybody's wondering, I doubt that this thing is going to go anywhere, as I understand, the Senate very unlikely to take it up, just because there's multiple TikTok pieces of legislation inside of that. Even though Biden said he would sign it as politically, it'd be a problem for him, and they have their own what's it called, they have their own Scifius review that's actually
going on right now. Sifius is like the it's like the organization inside of the Treasury Department which sets the kind of export import rules that I'm talking about here. That would be an easy thing to fall back on, and then they would likely just come to some sort of data agreement that you and I were talking about yastly.
So my prediction is that's probably where we end up.
I don't see any scenario politically where it's going to be banned where even that the forced sale. The problem in the past with the forced sale was specifically individuals like Jeff Yass sued against securities guidelines because they're like, well, you're robbing me as my rights as a US investor in BYTDW. So there's a lot of legal hurdles before we get to any of that point for any TikTokers who are out there. At the same time, we had to do a fun story and we had to put
it here to the show. People here may know my obsession with the UK Royals. Well, there has been a major discussion in the UK and I guess actually here in the US two as to where Kate Middleton is. And this all comes after Kate Middleton, it appears, had gone undergone surgery.
Nobody knows what's for. She hadn't been seen in public.
There were some leaked paparazzi images that showed her in a car where there was some speculations whether they were even.
Real or not.
And so Kensington Palace released actually a photo of Kate Middleton with her three children. But a very interesting saga has since unfolded because the photo was meant to quell speculation as to her well being and exactly what was.
Going on with her.
But the photo now has been revealed to have been pretty heavily photo edited. Let's put this up there on the screen. Just yesterday, the Royal correspondence out of the UK. We're noting that at least three international picture agencies, including the AP, the AFP and Reuters, have refused to distribute the photo that was released by Kate Middleton and her children, saying that the quote the source has been manipulating the image. Let's go to the next part because it actually shows
the specific problems. There were some major photoshop errors in the mirror behind one of her son's head in terms of the blending between this red sweater, there pattern matching that happened there on the left, and then also weird things going on with the finger that was crossed in the photo. Now, this is not the most important news, Crystal, but for some reason this has reached escape Velocity online as.
To what is going on with this lady? Is she okay?
There have been all kinds of jokes and all of this, so this really could not be a worst possible situation. We have an update actually from Kate Middleton if we can put it up there please on the screen, in which she says, like many amateur photographers, I do occasionally experiment with editing. I want to share my apologies for any confusion the family photograph. We shared yesterday cause I hope everyone celebrating had a very happy Mother's Day.
For those wondering they have a different Mother's Day in the UK, no idea. Why so, that's what it is, Crystal.
They release an image, people very quickly online are like, this is horribly edited, and then every major photo wire from Getty, APAFP, Reuters immediately puts a kill button on the image and just vastly explodes a lot of the constituency as to what's going on with Kate.
So she had this surgery surgery a month ago, yes, and she has not been seen in public.
Well, allegedly in a paparazzi photo, although the Royal influencer some say that it's a fake photo.
I don't know.
Oh okay, And so I mean to me, if you're going to put out the statement like, oh ga, sorry guys, it sort of screwed up the editing on this photo. Why don't you release like the real photo without the editing, and then we could all be like, oh, she's fine.
This is your problem that I keeps.
So for example, King Charles announced that he has cancer, but he won't tell anybody what kind of cancer he has.
And now here.
It's like, guys, you're the world fan. First of all, you're an outdated institution. You're lucky that you still survive. Also, all of your income comes from the public in terms of like appropriated from Parliament. It's complicated in terms of like the ownership and how exactly they derive their income and all that. But ostensibly, the only reason they're still around is that they're the heads of state and they're
the figureheads and they're controlled by the state. It's like, well, why exactly, then, are do you claim the same right to privacy as any as any like average Joe who's on the street. You guys are basically living a billionaire lifestyle, genuine kings and queens, not even metaphorical gangs, and we don't know anything about your health or about anything that's going on there.
Right Well, and you're the royal expert on me. But my understanding is Kay was really looking for this life.
Wow, this is very cool.
She was.
Okay, so I'm touching on something that's touchy.
Depends what you ask. If you were to watch, the lady.
Was getting into that.
One hundred percent. She knew was the game. Okay, so let's let's just put it this way.
From the very early days of their relationship, she knew exactly what she was getting into from the tabloids, et cetera.
They've had their own wars.
Kate Milton has her sister too in terms of the tabloids, et cetera. The real I think, just like shock factor here is like you said, she still didn't release the unedited photo, right, and she didn't get for any other thing but as to her condition. And there was also some sketchy stuff where Prince William actually canceled an engagement last minute and he was like, gave no explanation, and people were like, well, what's going on here, Like what
is happening? So yeah, So you've got the King who's undergoing cancer treatment and we don't know his prognosis, We don't know whether he's sick or not, what kind of cancer, what treatment he's undergoing. Now we've got the princess who had this crazy something like mysterious surgery and she hasn't been seen in public. They have no events on the calendar in the future. It just for me, it comes back to and actually, what's funny too is a lot of this discourse is us base because the Brits abide
by all of these censorious laws. So, for example, that paparazzi photo I'm talking about was leaked to TMZ, it was not published in the British press because they want to respect the privacy of the royals, to which I say, guys, are.
You a real country or not?
Like listening to the King or queen, they're afraid of recreating a Princess Diana thing because they still feel guilty for they think they're.
Rozzi chasing her and then she's her dying in that horrible car crash. I mean, listen, in general, I don't really care about these people or what they're up to, but you can't help but resist, like the good mystery and potential conspiracy, conspiracy of whatever the ell is going on here. And so obviously she doesn't didn't answer any
of the many questions that people have. And I'm also just perplexed by the incredible badness of the photoshop or AI, Like, if you're the royal family and you're gonna put out a fake photo, at least get some experts.
Really, we got the tech.
Now, you could have done this and no one would have even noticed, right, But it was so sloppy in hanmhand.
You're the princess of Wales, you have the future queen of England. You ain't got any boats.
In photo chef. Can we have her?
All three people on staff here who could do a better job. Absolutely, absolutely, the youngest of our chaff, he could put that thing out. You have no problems, all right, No twisted fingers, no pattern. How is this even possible? It is too crazy to believe that. I actually do believe her story now at this point.
Really do you think she just did it?
I mean, it's so terrible, it's really bad.
The thing with the sweater and all that. But man, she has no idea what she lit on fire. Like I said, there are speaking of TikTok, which we previously talked about. There there are ladies out there whose entire careers on TikTok with millions of followers. It's just tracking every single one of these things. So congratulations to them because they all just got a lot more.
Content, amazing content, and for us too, apparently. All right, let's move on to much more serious matters with to US policy visa Israel and Gaza. We have new details about this stupid fricking temporary port situation the President announced last week in his State of the Union. Let's go and put this up on the screen. So these are the new details from the Department of Defense, and we just read to you what we have learned. So this is going to the construction of this temporary peer is
going to require over one thousand US military personnel. It will take about sixty days to plan and execute, so we're talking about about two months before this is even up and running. US Army seventh Transportation Brigade Expeditionary from Virginia is tasked with this mission. Maintains the ability to provide unique capabilities from offshore without US military presence within Gaza. The US Navy will not play a role because it
doesn't require combat capability. Working with military Sealift Command and logistics support vessels involved. Multiple ships from across the world will come together j last Joint Logistics over the Shore operation confirmed employed last year in Australia, will be loaded from Cyprus, taken to the floating peer, barged to a causeway brought ashore by quote unquote partners don't know who that is into Gaza. Working with like minded countries and
partners who will provide security and assistance on the ground. Again, still very amorphous and undefined, sending out prepared to deploy orders and process provide up to two million meals per day under Sentcom command.
I mean, listen, there's so much to say about this. Let's go and put the visual up on the screen too, so you guys can see.
It's sort of like, it's difficult to talk about this in a way without first establishing that this is just a pr move to try to make the Biden and give the Biden administration some sort of message they can take to the base to try to claim that they actually care about the starvation suffering of the Palace in any population.
So that's number one to keep in mind with all of this.
Number Two, even if you take this seriously as an idea, it's got a whole lot of problems. The whole issue right now isn't that there aren't roads into Gaza and plenty of aid available to go into Gaza. The issue is Israel blocking that aid.
Going through.
Establishing a temporary peer doesn't change any of those dynamics. The only two things that change those dynamics are number one, pressureing and forcing Israel to allow that aid in and number two a permanent and lasting ceasefire. Obviously, a temporary peer does not accomplish either of those things.
Soger, Yeah, I mean, this entire idea is totally ridiculous. What it also the DoD just casually confirming. By the way, when they say up to one thousand troops, that means five thousand, just so everybody who speaks up, and.
I assume when they say sixty days, that probably means that.
Means three hundred days, whatever they like. I love how over one thousand, what does that mean? That could mean one hundred thousand. It doesn't mean anything great.
It's not gonna be less than a thousand.
Ivan covered the Pentagon, and watching the way that they do the counting tricks in Syria, it will all be fake if it's over one hundred and seventy nine days and they have to acknowledge it, which means every one hundred and seventy nine day, they'll rotate everybody in and out.
All of the details here demonstrate and confirm all of our worst suspicions, which are Israelis inspecting US military cargo, thousands and thousands of American soldiers who are involved in this mission, probably tens of billions of dollars that this will require putting American soldiers in harm's way.
I mean, what are we all going to just.
Trust the accuracy of the Israelis whenever it comes to our guys who are there. I mean, I wouldn't do that. I wouldn't put them in a combat zone. And yet that is the preferred solution of this entire thing. Plus talking about like a D day level, you know, mission, when we have perfectly ten good entry ways that are right there, it'd be a lot cheaper. It's the eight is waiting. We can just send it in there. And yet that's not the option that we're pursuing.
And people are starving. Children are starving two days right now. They are starving. And by the way, those warnings have been coming for months now. It's been clear since the beginning of Israel's assault on Gaza that we would had in this direction when they announced a complete siege. So all of this was predictable, and this is clearly no solution.
The press corps picking up on some of exactly the questions that you are raising, Sager and pressing the Pentagon on a number of key issues, one of them being I mean, we just watched the Flower massacre where hungry Gazans were trying to get food off of an AID truck. These raally military fires on them, and over one hundred are massacred in this horrific incident. That's not the only time either, far from it, that hungry Palestinians have been fired on by the is Israeli military while they are
trying to seek aid. So one of the questions I was asked of the Pentagon was, hey, are you going to make sure that Israel isn't firing on people who are trying to obtain starving Palestinians who are trying to obtain this aid.
Let's take a listen to that response.
We received assurances from the Israelis that they will fire upon Palestinians as they seek to retrieve the aid.
Look, well, you know, our focus is on delivering the aid. I'm not going to speak for the Israelis, obviously the focus make.
Sure, thank you, So, No, we have no assurances that the Israeli military isn't going to fire on the starving civilians who are trying to obtain this temporary port delivered aid. There's another question, though, which is, Hey, are our soldier is going to be safe the one thousand plus who are involved in constructing this or are you afraid that Hamas could fire on this temporary peer.
No assurance is there either. Let's take a listen to.
That duty anticipate that Hamas will try to fire on them on the operation.
You know, look, I mean that's certainly a risk. Again, but if the the if Hamas truly does care about the Palestinian peep, then again one would hope that this international mission to deliver aid to people who need it would be able to happen unhindered.
That's certainly to prayer a risk.
Yeah, I mean, you know, the reason they're doing this peer is so that they don't technically have quote unquote boots on the ground. But this is an extraordinary admission that, of course our service members are being put once again in harm's way. Why because we don't want to pressure the Israelis to allow in the trucks that are already masked at the border, and we don't want to pressure the Israelis to have an actual cease fire so that Palestinians are able to live. I mean that is the
height of your responsibility and insanity. And this is just an utter boondoggle.
The whole thing is completely nuts. We even saw more recent evidence of this. Let's put this up there on the screen. Tragic news, but actually exactly why dropping aid from the air is pretty inefficient, not all that reliable. At least five people were actual killed after airdrop AID fell on them in Gaza because their parachutes didn't deploy. I mean this, it's inaccurate. It's not enough food in the first place. There's plenty of food waiting on the
other side of the border. That doesn't take sixty to ninety days to build, that doesn't take thousands of American service members being put in harm's way.
And just take a look here of the video of what this looks like.
I mean, that's you know, the American plane that's there, the AID I believe, with the cooperation of the Royal Jordanian Air Force, that's falling down everywhere around them in Gaza. You can actually see it is dropping, you know, quite quickly. But it just just highlights the ridiculousness of the whole situation. There's all this AID that's waiting on the other side of the border. All you have to do is just say, hey, let it in, or we're not going to allow you to continue to prosecute.
This war this way.
Just let's have a ceaspar let's allow some of this that's come in, and instead we're going to build a port on the other side Hamas may or may not fire on it. Also, who wants to bet this is the greatest Israeli plan ever. All that it's gonna take is one idiot in Gaza to fire a rocket and now we're in the damn war.
And that's what they want. That's what they've been begging for from day one.
They want us to take security control, to pay all their bills like we always do. And you know, you don't hear any you hear silence from Congress. How can they allow something like this to happen? Yeah, you know, in terms of their overview, do they should defund this product? They should with whole funding or something to keep our people safe and not have to go into this situation.
The whole thing is crazy.
It's just it's completely insane. I mean, I really am genuinely losing my mind over the insanity of it, because it's long it's expensive, and it doesn't solve any of the existing problems when there is a very obvious, glaring solution staring right in the face, which is to allow in the AID that is right there and to have
a ceasefires. Part of the picture of the starvation of Palestinians in Gaza which has reached horrific levels, and I'm talking a little bit more about this in my monologue as well, but part of that picture which we have been covering is these protests which have been allowed to persist by the IDEF and the Israeli government. Israeli police force have allowed these protesters to block AID coming into
the Gaza strip. CNN's Clarissa Award, to her credit, went and talked to these protesters and argued with them a bit about what they're doing.
Let's take a listen to how that went.
Under international law, it's Israel's obligation to make sure that the ordinary citizens of Gaza don't starve to death, and right now they are starving to Deathmas.
Is making it very difficult because Ramas is not allowing this to they're.
Not holding it, they're not receiving it, but they're doing it.
I'm telling you here and now.
If we knew it's getting to children of Gaza, we will do it. This does not arrive there's those steps.
This arrives into the chunnels of Ramasta that affighting us on holding our hostages.
No, there was no evidence to support the idea that all of this aid is going to Hamas, not.
To the rest of the population. This is intelligence only for terror.
That's why they're.
Getting They should get only the minimum colories required to survive.
They're starving to death.
They are not.
They are starving to death.
You know what, if they are starting to death, give us back, give the hostages back. No, a single a loaf of bread should go there till our hostages are coming back.
To many people in the world listening to what you're saying and what you're protesting for, it sounds like a a contravention of international law and b incredibly callous.
You know, even if there is a humanitarian crisis, and there is no Even if there is, it's my right and my deality to prioritize the life of fewbieve us one year old babies are desert over a dozen.
Babies just wild.
The justifications here. I mean, first, the denial of reality. Right, Well, they're not starving. They literally are. I mean, we've had now dozens of especially infants starving to death and this is happening now on a daily basis. Infants particularly at risk because mothers are so weak they're unable to breastfeed, formula and milk is not widely available, difficult to come by when you do come by it, there is effectively
no clean water available. So these babies are being dispatched from the hospital, they're immediately getting sick, having diarrhea, and just literally wasting away.
So that's where we are. So that's the first thing.
Well, they're not really starving. There isn't really a humanitarian crisis. Also, Hamas is just stealing the aid. There's not evidence of that either. I mean there may be some one off instances, but we have not seen widespread indications that Hamas is stealing the aid anyway. Basically, the bottom line is, even if there is a humanitarian crisis, I don't really care because it's my duty to prioritize me and my line first.
And again, Sager, let's be honest. This is the view.
Not only are the Israeli government, which we've seen implement in terms of policy, their official government policies to basically collective punishment, hold the entire population of Gaza hostage for their own ends, and additionally enjoys a lot of support from the Israeli domestic population, which is why these protests have been allowed to go on.
Well, yeah, it comes at a certain point.
It's like, they're crazy people in any country, and it's about how the government deals with said crazy people. And it's like, well, whenever you're going to spray people in Tel Aviv w members of hostage families because they're protesting, and you're going to break them up with police force, but these people get to stay there with impunity, then this is a government sanctioned protest. That's why it's worth highlighting.
It's not like, yeah, I'm not denying that this element and all that wouldn't exist in Israeli society at a private level, but it's more about the allowing it to continue and not I mean not even allowing in many case being cheered on by members of the cat It. Then this is a government policy. This is something that you're sanctioning and you support. That's what connects back to the debates or in the US and to specifically why it is so crazy that we're building this peer in.
This military operation when these people.
Are the only ones standing in their way, and these reelities have proven to us that they have no issues, you know, using force against their own citizens whenever it comes to civil protests and all that that they don't like. So then do the same thing here, but they won't do it. And that's why the whole situation is nuts.
Yeah, And you know, to bring it back to US policy, as Biden is now pretending, because you realize he has a political problem that he cares about the suffering the plight of Palestinian civilians.
We just learned put this up on the screen that.
There have been more than a hundred arm sales to Israel post October seventh, and this Guardian article details how they use these legal loopholes to avoid public scrutiny and to avoid congressional oversight.
Let me just read you a little bit.
They say the US is reported to have made more than one hundred weapons sales to Israel, including thousands of bombs, since the start of the war in Gaza, but the deliveries escape congressional oversight because each transaction was under the dollar amount requiring approval. The Arms Export Control Act makes significant exceptions for arms sales to close allies, a limit of twenty five million for major defense equipment, and the limit rises to one hundred million for quote other defense
articles like bombs. They have a number of quotes here from people who are concerned about this policy. One person who's the director of the Security Assistance Monitor at the Center for International Policy think tank said, this doesn't just seem like an attempt to avoid technical compliance with US arms export law. It's extremely troubling way to avoid transparency and accountability on.
A high profile issue.
So how are you going to claim and even MSMBZ is calling this out at this point, how are you going to claim that you care about Palestinian civilians when you are skirting congressional authority to ship as many weapons as possible, as quickly as possible, to destroy all of Palestinian civilian institutions, to kill tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians, something even the Biden administration admits at this point, which really raises a question for me of what the actual
death toll really must be. How can you claim that this little pittily bit of aid is anything but a pr stunt when this is the actual reality of your policy.
I think that's right, Crystal. What are you taking a look at?
Well, take a look at this image. Bombs and aid simultaneously dropped on Palestinians from the skies above the gaza strip the perfect encapsulation of an outrageously insane and in moral US policy. On the one hand, we ship two thousand pounds bunker buster bombs to help our ally with their genocide. On the other, we drop a pathetic amount of food so that our murderous president can pretend he cares about these lives.
And there's an election coming up after all.
An artist captured this dynamic well too, portraying an onslaught of bombs raining down on a destroyed gaza. Interspersed among those bombs couple loaves of bread. Unfortunately, even this aid
has proved deadly for Palestinians. Five people, including this beautiful child, were killed by one of these AID drops when the parachute malfunctioned, bringing to awful reality the warnings of experts that these drops are dangerous and are no substitute for a lasting ceasefire and forcing Israel to allow in the hundreds of AIDS trucks that are amassed at the Gaza border. But as not only are bombs and bullets that have
helped to push this population absolute desperation. We have backed Israel at every turn when they throw on a new set of lives in propaganda, whether it's headed babies or a Hamas command center underneath of a hospital, or the evidence free allegation that un AID workers are actually Hamas terrorists.
You remember that, right on the very day that the Internet Court of Justice ruled Israel was plausibly committing genocide, we parroted here in the United States Israel's evidence free claims that some dozen UNRAUT employees were involved in October seven, and then we use that as a pretext to strip funding from that critical organization, which just so happens to be the top AID organization on the ground in Gaza. So our response the ICJ ruling was to heighten the
genocidal conditions, exacerbate the starvation by cutting aid. Of course, even if true, these claims about a dozen employees would not justify an attack on the entire organization, But it almost immediately emerged that no evidence was actually offered by the Israeli government to back up these extraordinary claims. The UN says they still have not been given any evidence, and now we are learning something even more shocking. According to the UN, the IDF tortured UNRA aid workers in
order to extract false confessions of Hamas affiliation. Really sit with this because I can scarcely believe the depths of depravity that this revelation reflects. The Israelis tortured UN staffers, humanitarian aid workers. They then use these fake confessions to push the world to defund UNRA, also that they could more effectively starve the civilian population, and we here in the United States, our president went right along with it.
Here is a bit of that report.
The UN Agency for Palestinian Refugees said some employees released into Gaza from Israeli detention reported having been pressured by Israeli authorities into falsely stating that the agency has Hamas links and that staff took part in the October seventh attacks.
The assertions are contained in report by the UN Relief and Works Agency UNRA, reviewed by Reuters and dated February twenty twenty four, which detailed allegations of mistreatment in Israeli detention made by unidentified Palestinians, including several working for UNRA. The document said several Unrepealastine Means staffers had been detained by the Israeli army, and added that the ill treatment and abuse they said they had experienced included severe physical beatings, waterboarding,
and threats of harm to family members. Severe physical beatings, waterboarding, and threats to family members. I guess we shouldn't be surprised, since Israel has already killed more un workers than anyone else in history, and Israel has so little shame about these war crimes that they proudly broadcast them to the entire world and especially to their own revenge drunk nation.
Here's a report that was broadcast on Israeli TV showing how they humiliate his prisoners and demand that they admit that they are actually Hamas even when they swear that they are not that as of now, unreleased un report that we were just discussing that says a lot more, too, about the routine torture meted out against anyone fortunate enough
to be detained, not just those un AID workers. Former prisoners testified that they were beaten they were deprived of sleep, they are held without adequate food and water, not allowed access to bathrooms, and some were sexually abused. The injuries sustained during their captivity were severe enough in the medical neglect so profound that every prisoner release necessitated ambulances to transport former captives for emergency medical care. And those are
the lucky ones. Accorney to Israeli outlet Haretes, at least twenty seven Palestinians have died in Israeli custody since October seventh. The Israeli government refuses to divulge to the details surrounding those deaths. Now, the wake of these revelations about forced under confessions, and as reports pour out of the strip of babies starving to death, children with bodies wasted for malnutrition, countries with slightly more shame than the US have actually
reversed course. Of the dozen countries which had suspended funding to UNRA under US and Israeli pressure, Sweden, Canada and the EU have now all restored their aid dollars to this aid group, whose mission has literally never been more critical or more impossible to fulfill.
But not the US.
We are standing strong with our big bombs and tiny bread strategy, shipping the weapons of death, defunding the most critical aid agency, and acting fox shocked at the predictable results that we ourselves engineered. And what are those results? Well, let me show you another image which perfectly encapsulates us policy. This precious angel, only ten years old, Yasan Kafarna, died
from nolnutrition shortly after this video was taken. Yazon had cerebral palsy and was reliant on a diet of soft foods with high nutrition.
He couldn't walk, but he loved to swim.
His father, who you see in this video, lovingly tended to Yazan's care, therapy and feeding every day until the siege on Gazan Constant bombing made that life given care impossible. But Yazon is not alone. Fifteen percent of northern Gaza children are acutely malnourished, and the south in number is roughly five percent. Dozens of children, mostly babies, have died
already of starvation. Infants are the most at risk. Their mothers are too weak to produce milk, formulas, rare, clean water non existent.
But don't worry.
Worry starving babies of Gaza are great president. After defunding the main aid agency based on torture force confessions and helping bomb the hell out of a trop population, He's building a temporary port in a few months to facilitate a slightly larger but still wildly inadequate amount of aid, an absurd boodoggle so that Biden and the Dems can pretend they aren't just.
Cold hearted killers. But they are.
They killed Yason just as surely as if they had put a gun to his head. It's applying the bombs that up ended his world, ignoring the desperate warnings that famine was imminent, defunding the most important AID organization, and running cover for Israel's lives at every chance they could. When the history is written of the Gaza genocide, many of the details are going to be forgotten. Well, we
remember this stupid frickin port. Are we going to remember how Kamala called for a temporary ceasefire and the media pretended like was the actual policy shift, Or how Biden sort of told MSNBC that he had red lines before immediately proclaiy Aim that he will never leave Israel. Probably not out of those details will be lost, but the images of yazan body, impossibly wasted skin stretched over his tiny skeleton, an image that unavoidably recalls the tortuous horrors
of the Holocaust. These images, and our complicity in causing them, we could never forget if we spent our whole lives trying and sager and.
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Thank you guys so much for watching. We appreciate it.
Apologies, we had a lot to cover today, but we will get it out to you as.
Soon as we can. We'll see you guys tomorrow.