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Good morning and welcome to Counterpoints. Ryan. How are you doing today?
Wonderful? How about yourself?
I'm doing well. We've got a big show. We're going to be starting with some really really big stuff coming from Israel. Then we'll dive more into the bridge collapse. We'll talk about RFK Junior's announcement. Vice presidential announcement speech, which I was just told by producer Mac started with the land acknowledgement.
So it's been an interesting campaign. I was going to say interesting vice presidential choice.
Yes, I was going to say pick a lane, but that's kind of his whole thing, not.
Picking picking a lane.
Yeah. Ronald McDaniel was officially fired for her new gig at NBC News. Former RNC chairs so we have some updates on that. Ryan has requested a segment on Conservative Twitter.
What is going on on Conservative Twitter?
Because I really don't know, and we have somebody here who can tell us, So why not take advantage of this sort of tell us.
Yes, we'll do our best, and we have a great guest ring.
Yes, so we're gonna we're going to be talking to the guy who's leading a tax revolt in the United Kingdom. They have they have discovered a provision in law that allows you to withhold taxes if your tax money is going to genocide. Can't do that here in the United States. There's zero reason for you to be able to withhold taxes. They are closing in on one hundred thousand people who are pledging not to pay taxes, which given the UK budget, is going to be a serious chunk.
And this is this is early on in their campaign.
So this this could lead to the United Kingdom stopping arms shipments to Israel. So we'll talk about that, and you know this. This organization is also working with prosecutors around Europe and around the world with the intention of prosecuting not only soldiers who are foreign nationals who are participating in the genocide, but also Israeli leadership, meaning it could become difficult for them to travel and they can get picked up here there.
If these prosecutions go forward.
So that's all of that's going to be interesting at the at the end of the show.
Certainly significant and also Ryan at the Breakingpoints dot Com. That's where you get the full version of Counterpoints, so it goes right to your inbox, and no, nothing is broken up into different clips, so you can just watch the whole thing right there.
No ads, no must, no fuss, get it an hour early Breakingpoints dot Com.
Why not?
There you go? All right, Ryan, let's start with Israel and actually really with Gaza.
Yes, So, the United Nations Human Rights Council delivered a report yesterday finding that the plausibility of genocide is growing greater and greater.
Let's play a little bit of this clip from the.
UN Following nearly six months of unrelenting Israeli a sult on ocupa Gaza. It is my solemn duty to report on the worst of what humanity is capable of and to present my finding the anatomy of genocide. One of my key findings is that Israel's executive and military leadership and soldiers have intentionally distorted rules of international humanitarian law, distinction, proportionality, and precaution in an attempt to legitimize genocidal violence against
the Palestinian people. By deliberately stretching the definitions of human shield, evacuation orders, warnings, safe zones, collateral damage, and medical protection, Israel has used their protective function as humanitarian camouflage, with the effect of concealing patterns of conduct from which the only inference can reasonably be drawn is a state policy
of genocidal violence against the Palestinians. In light of this, I find that there are reasonable grounds to believe that their threshold indicating the commission of the crime of genocide
against Palestinians as a group in Gaza has been met. Specifically, Israel has committed three acts of genocide with the requisite intent causing seriously serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group, deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part, and imposing measures intended to prevent birth within the group.
So there's the UN Human Rights Council stating what is increasingly hard to recognize from the outside that Israel is
committing a genocide in Gaza. And I found it interesting the way that they curious fear take on this, the way that they pointed to what we've all seen, which is Israel saying okay, everybody in the north, you evacuate to the south, and then firing at people as they're going, and then firing at people in the safe zones, and then saying, okay, yes, we attacked this hospital, but it's because there were tunnels underneath the hospital and therefore these
were quote unquote human shields, and so they were, you know, unfortunate but legitimate military targets.
And the un here.
Saying no, none, none of that is an excuse against what you're doing, and it seems to us to be a deliberate and calculated move.
Something I find interesting about all of this. I go back to a conversation we had, I think in December with an expert on genocide who we were talking with him about the sort of post World War two historical genesis of the current definition of genocide that we have, which was a reaction to the horrors of World War One and World War Two that had just absolutely terrorized a couple of generations of people in the earlier half
of the twentieth century. And you know, these these questions are so it's we agreed to hold ourselves to a higher standard, basically, and when you listened to you and Human Rights Council, there is something to be said, as you were just discussing that when, for instance, when they fire on people in the so called like humanitarian corridors or the escape corridors, however they phrase it, they're saying
they're terrorists among them. You know, the Hamas is putting civilians at danger by embedding in war time with people who are legitimately trying to evacuate. And it just reminds me of that David Brooks column I think from last week where he said, what would you have Israel do not fire on people as they're escaping, you know, like it could start like actually, like they're actually It's not that these questions aren't complicated. It's not that militants are not embedding with civilians.
It's just that, you know.
We all agreed to what happened after World War two, to these new standards, and that's it doesn't make certainly doesn't make war easy to fight a war in a way that meets these stands, But what would you have Israel do?
Not that good reason to reach a peace deal.
And so Secretary of State Anthony Blincoln was met with net Yahou yesterday, and we can put up this Axios.
Report because I think this puts it well.
Blincoln unloads on Bibi, you need a coherent plan or face disaster in Gaza, and their lead goes. Secretary of State Blincoln warned Israeli Prime Minister and Benjamin net Yaho and his war cabin in a meeting on Friday. Sorry, I said yesterday that Israel's security and its place in the world are in peril end quote. You might not realize it until it's too late, A source familiar with the meeting told Axios.
And this.
Is the message that we've been getting publicly from the Biden administration to the press and to Israel that because it almost isn't credible for the Biden administration to say that they are concerned about Palestinian welfare. And so the way that they constantly frame their concern about Israel's actions is that they.
Say what Israel is doing is hurting Israel.
Because everybody does agree that the United States does not want to see Israel harmed by the way.
It's basically the argument Donald Trump made recently.
Donald Trump made that's a very good point.
He gave an interview to Shelton Addison's paper, the late Sheldon Addison's paper, It's free paper in Israel is the most widely read paper in the country, and he said exactly that, right. He said, you need to wrap this up was practically his quote. Right, He's like, this is you don't realize how badly this is hurting you. There is some type of bubble going on in Israel right now that does seem to be blocking world opinion from
getting through. It's a combination I think of the war fever, the trauma from October seventh, and the propaganda inside Israel that the entire world is against us, even though the entire world is kind of for decades of support what it Israel against the Palestinians, but the entire world is against us, that thousands of years of anti Semitism are driving the criticism of our war effort rather than the actual images that we're seeing that the entire world is seeing coming out of Gaza.
Yeah, the Trump point I think is.
Actually, you're right, it's the same point that Biden's making, Like, guys, you don't have any idea how bad this.
Is for you.
Well, and so I wanted to get your take Ryan, And I think I showed you this before we started. But I was reading in the Jerusalem Post about a Shifa and I know we're about to get to that. But they write around six thousand civilians were also evacuated, but unlike the November operation when there was no inspection of evacuetions, these civilians were evacuated with a careful inspection to catch all of the terrorists. And the pressure that
Biden is exerting on Israel, Israel is mad about. Obviously there have been you know, words exchanged between it and yahoom Lincoln and Biden and Israel obviously feels like it's getting way too much pressure from the US to move to like precision operations or ceasefire, anything on that sort of spectrum of wrapping it up to paraphrasing, parapraising Donald Trump.
And yeah, it's true, that's not like the full demand for ceasefire, and it's not going full you know, saying as the un just did you know it's not making that designation from the US.
I think the pressure is at least.
Real, though it might not be enough, but I think it is at least real because it does seem like Israel is actually adapting.
Yes, the pressure is real to have Iron nations, for instance, Special Rappertoire there saying that Israel is committing genocide like that, is that that represents something that can't be ignored. You know the case itself that South Africa brought before the International Court of Justice with with something like thirteen other countries backing it up, where the judges found a plausible case that genocide has gone on.
All of this is creating pressure.
And we'll talk about talking a second about how Israel is actually concerned that this might lead to a restriction in arms flows, but it has created this refrain from the United States that well, look, Israel's just going to do what it's going to do. It's a sovereign country. And we actually have a clip that we can roll from the State Department making this point here. Let's roll Matt Miller, State Department spokesperson number one.
When it comes to dictating, you're right, no, we do not dictate to them, we can't dictate it, and they're a sovereign country in the United States can't dictate to any sovereign country. They're going to make their own decisions and they have been quite clear about that, and we would expect nothing less from any sovereign country. That said, we always offer our best advice to them.
On your point about Israel being a sovereign country in the US can't tell them what to do. Back in May nineteenth, twenty twenty one, you have Joe Biden telling that Yahoo is quote was, hey man, we are out of runway here, it's over, and it was over.
Ronald Reagan famously did the same back in nineteen eighty two. Ultiment is over.
Why can't he say it's over this time? Does that mean he it supports the continuation of this war, even if it means going into run.
So we support Israel's ability to defeat hamas we support Israel's legitimate security objectives. We support them ensuring that October seventh can never happen again, and so we continue to support their ability to do that while offering as them, as I said, our best advice on how to go about that campaign. And that's what we'll continue to do.
What is your assessment on those two Hamas battalions that you that the US has said are so key to take out and that israels that are key to take out it. What's the assessment on why Hamas wouldn't be able to just create new with great new battalions. So in the appas of a political solution.
That said, your underlying question is exactly right. Ultimately, something that we have learned in our counter terrorism experience around the world is that you can while you can accomplish counter terrorism objectives on the battlefield, ultimately when it comes to when it comes to winning the larger battle, you have to offer a political path for the Palestinian people's legitimate or in this case, you would have to offer we believe you have to offer a political path for
the Palestinian people's legitimate aspirations.
So after that, I asked the what I think is the obvious follow up question. He said, would Hamas have any role, any version of Hamas have any role in this political solution that you're saying is essential that you can't win this militarily, And he said absolutely not. Hamas is a horrific and brutal terrorist organization, which you can just draw the circle, you get right back to the beginning. Then okay, well, now then you have to eliminate all
the battalions. Okay, but you've eliminated the battalions, so you don't have a political solution. There's going to make more battalions because you need a political solution. But you can't have a political solution that involves a mass so then they're going.
To just create more battalis.
And he says we've learned from our counter terrorism experience over the last twenty years with the global War on Terror, that you can win on the battlefield, but if you don't get if you don't win politically, if you don't get to some type of peaceful resolution, those battlefield victories are quickly reversed and new terrorists are created. So I don't see them. I don't see them getting out of that doom loop there.
Yeah. I think that's one of the biggest problems with like this entire purported plan, the day After plan. Right, we hear so much about the day After Plan, Day after plan. It just you can put it out like you can type it out, but it's not feasible. Whatever they're saying, like to first of all, it took them long enough to even put anything out about what if you had this like successful eradication of hamas military operation, what comes the day after nothing feasible has been presented.
And that's not because it's like an easy situation. It's obviously an incredibly difficult and complicated situation. But nothing that's been advanced in support of this vast sweeping military operation as feasible.
And the US has floated the Palestinian authority as as the kind of political entity that could get you to pay some toward a toward a resolution. But you've you've seen Israel respond to that saying, well, there was a PA police officer recently that killed in Israeli a soldier and injured several others, and so you can't you can't have that institution. But if you take that logic a step further and you actually have universal values around the question,
then you ask yourself, wait a minute. So you're saying that committing atrocities and let's say, committing acts of genocide makes you no longer legitimate as a governing.
Force, but that only goes one direction.
That's although they don't agree with the un categorization.
They just be at the U, but they certainly I would imagine they'd have to acknowledge at least some atrocities like let's say, the four unarmed teams that they blasted with the drone the other day, Like just just that you'd say, well, how could you have how could you have the people operating that drone be a legitimate political force going forward?
It's a total Yeah. I mean, it's that we have done this for decades obviously, say one thing. And then I was reading Alie North's memoir actually recently, and one of the things he says is, you know, he was one of the things he found frustrating. He's like, you know, the British, the Israelis, they were trading weapons too. The problem we do it is that we were like sanctimoniously saying nobody should do this, like we would never do this, but of course.
This is yeah, this is the Iran contract guy. Yeah.
So meanwhile, speaking of global pressure, for three days now, we've seen massive protests in Jordan against the war. We can roll some of the footage coming out of there. Every time you have some type of the crisis in the region, you'll have Yeah, dozens or maybe hundreds of people go down to the Israeli embassy. The last three days or so, you've seen thousands upon thousands of Jordanians, who most Jordanians actually are of Palestinian descent. It's like
a majority of the Jordanian population. And so this this is a especially dicey political situation for US ally Jordan. Jordan is a dictatorship that recognizes that recognized Israel without getting a solution to the Palestinian question. That has always been a source of consternation among Palestinians and also just regular Jordanians as well. This is the you know, so called Arab Street that people like Thomas Frieden have been warning about, you know, for decades.
But the Arab Street is a real thing.
And there's only so long that these populations are going to allow their governments to collaborate with Israel in this annihilation of their family members across the border.
It gets to the feasibility of any so called Day After plan as well. I mean again, it's not because this isn't difficult and complicated. It's not because there aren't extremists in the governments that surround Israel. But reality means that they have to live in that context, they have to exist in that context. And it's I mean, good luck with how things are going now.
And so meanwhile, relief efforts attempting to get around the Israeli siege of Gods that have taken another tragic turn. A dozen Palestinians drowned attempting to get humanitarian aid.
Let's roll a little bit of this news clip here.
As they spot a plane and the aid it begins to drop, they run as fast as they can. It's the rush of the people so desperately that would do anything to feed their children now on the brink of starvation. This is what survival in Gaza has come to, fighting for food, that little bit of aid that makes it into the north where a man made famine now looms. People chased parachutes that fell into these choppy waters. It is desperation that drives them into the sea of What
you're about to see next is disturbing. It's the reality of a war growing more cruel by the day. The fastest, the fittest emerged with boxes of American issued and he was ready to eat. Others didn't make it out alive. People gather around the thin, frail body of a man who drowned trying to reach that aid. Twelve people drowned, according to paramedics.
Like, what are we doing to people?
This is the this is the airlift that is being carried out by the United States and collaboration with Jordan because the US has refused to put pressure on the
Israelis to get crossings through over land. You see videos every day now of trucks people who you can drive for like forty five minutes outside of Gaza and just see truck after truck after truck just sitting there idling, waiting to go through if it gets through and they find so the Israelis are searching these American aid trucks, which is insane, Like think about that for a second.
The implication there is that the US is secretly smuggling in arms to Hamas and our ally Israel needs to search all of these trucks to make sure that we're not arming Hamas. They for instance, will find a tent pole because they've destroyed most of the infrastructure, so people are living outdoors, so the humanitarian aid includes tents, but if a tent pole is too thick, they will turn the entire truck around everything in it has to then go back and then it has to await a certain number of days.
So the air drops are kind of.
This this pretend effort that we're doing to suggest that we're not complicit in the genocide.
Do you know what we need?
What's that we need?
A peer?
A peer? Whyn't they just build a peer?
Yeah, because the problem apparently is that there are enough access points, and so we need one more access point. If we could just build a peer, maybe floating one, and then things could come in unmolested from Cypress.
We could see some contractors.
Down there, contractors could what could go wrong there?
It seems like a fool proof plan.
Yeah, And so the Cypress is the launching point for this, this pier that we're building in Gaza, and Cypress is now clogged just like every other poort is. Like, the problem is not an inability to get things in physically, Like there are plenty of ways that we could do it,
just Israel just simply won't allow it. And so this this relates to these negotiations and the starvation in northern Gaza, which is turning into anarchy as Israel continues to kind of target civilian police forces there as well, and also continues to continue to try to have its own presence in there, is blowing up the negotiations. According to Axios,
you can put up this from barakra Vit. He writes the main issue that led to the impast and the negotiations on the hostage deal was Hamasa's demand for the full return of Palestinian residents to the northern Gaza Strip, what is known in IDF parlance as drainage between the south of the Gaza Strip to the north. This is what Israeli and American officials who live over thea Strip have told me.
And then he goes on the next one. Why this is important, a senior.
Israeli officials said, at the political level in Israel and to a certain extent in the US, made a miscalculation regarding Hamasa's position and the ability of the mediators to extract additional concessions from it, especially on the issue of returning to the northern Strip. It seems rather indicative of Israeli intent here that allowing residents to return to the northern Guyza Strip is such a sticking point for Israel.
What what could we possibly draw from that? Other than that this looks to be a land grab.
Yeah. I mean again, it's you have Netnah, who caught We've talked about this all the time, caught between a rock and a hard place with his own coalition of people, who said, what happened after after October seventh was the opportunity for Israel to make serious incursions land incursions back into land that was given up and to you know, that would that that would allow them to create more of a barrier, et cetera. Like this was the moment.
And Netanyah, who who is obviously deeply opposed to any idea of a two state solution, whereas Joe Biden is deeply committed to a two state solution. And these are two people funding a war together, funding and allowing for war together.
It's just you know, indicative.
I think of that too, that deeper problem for Nahu dynamic, the political dynamic in Israel too.
Now, let's talk about another factor in these negotiations that most Western news outlets don't talk about.
And that is the question of why why is it difficult?
Why is Israel miscalculating Hamasa's stubbornness on some of these negotiations, And if you, if you follow a lot of the kind of local press about this, you realize that the war for the IDF is going very badly. From the air, it is true they have been effectively able to raise most of the Gaza strip, but on the ground it's
a much different story. So the IDF yesterday posted a rather extraordinary video, and this is kind of in response to the way that Hamas since the very beginning, has been posting on Telegram and other channels regular updates from the street battles and on a near daily bail basis, sometimes you know, multiple times a day, and they become iconic among people watching these worth that you've now got that that little red carrot that kind of points down
onto an IDF soldier before say an RPG is centered or has become kind of the symbol of this of of this war.
And you'll, you'll, you'll you'll see people.
Say they're gonna get a red carrot like that that that alluding to this, alluding to the fact they're gonna wind up in one.
Of these videos.
Israel has barely ever put out any of its own videos, so they put one out yesterday, and I think it's instructive to take take a look at this is This is one from uh the Alshifa complex, So this is a residential house kind of within the kind of vicinity of the hospital.
Uh.
This is seven IDF soldiers. They see a guy stick a muzzle out of a of a rifle out of a closet. Now, all seven of them take off. If if you're not watching this there they kind of start shooting wildly at walls. It looks it looks actually insanely dangerous. It looks like they're lucky that nobody died of friendly fire. Here at the very end, the guy comes down the stairs. So this one guy has chased seven people down several flights of stairs.
Uh.
And then as he's coming down the final flight of stairs, they they strike him seven against one, and they decided decided to post that. I asked Hin Kaudrey, who who's done some reporting for the intercept, who is a reporter in Gaza, if she could find out who who this was.
There were some rumors that it was a police officer.
There was some rumors that it was Fayak al Machmud who was killed by IDA forces. He was the kind of senior police commander in charge of making sure coordinating with UNRA and making sure aid could be distributed in a peaceful way.
She said, no, it was not. We can put this up here.
It was Omar al Dadu from the al Dadu family who was who she confirmed.
Was a fighter. Uh, not a not a police officer.
Separately, are our condolences to to hint, she she posted this morning that both her uncle and her cousin were killed by Israel last night. So condolences to hind and to her family for for.
That added tragedy. Uh.
But we also wanted to play just for instance, we just just randomly grabbed the most recent clip put up by the Cassambra Gates on their telegram channel, so we can just roll this one here. This is the kind of thing they're posting absolutely constantly. So if you're not if you're not watching, you're listening. This is an Israeli tank rolling through the rubble and gets hit by an RPG.
You know, just every day you're posting something like this, and you can only begin to imagine how horrifying it must be to be in one of those tanks rolling through this rubble. It's one thing to be in the like the tunnels I'm sure terrifying too, but at least with a tunnel.
You're looking that way, and you're looking that way.
Going through these bombed out healscapes everywhere around.
You could be an RPG any second.
And I think, and with the guy with a GoPro and you're going to wind up on telegram within a couple hours.
You know, You've done some really amazing coverage of how veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan are using psychedelics for their PTSD. And in some of the interviews that we've done on the show with people, they talk about how that kind of warfare is a new kind of PTSD because it.
Is so every second is terrifying.
It is exactly. And so what you have here is this generation of men, obviously in Gaza, generation of men in Israel who are embroiled and just the most horrifying, one of the most horrify. I shouldn't say the most, but one of the most horrifying. War is always horrifying. That kind of war, there's a there's a special trauma to it, for sure.
Yeah, And there's there's a tendency toward kind of war porn amongst amongst some folks. And so that's one reason we've showed very little of this footage throughout this entire conflict, because it's it's horrifying, and you don't you don't want people leering or glorifying it in any kind of way.
The reason we wanted to play it today is to make the political point that one of the reasons that Israel the United States is having such a difficult time in these negotiations that yes, Israel is managing to push two million people to famine, a million of them children, but on the ground they are not doing well in the actual fighting, which is which I think then gives the military wing of Hamas, the political wing of Hamas a different question. The ones that cutter who were trying
to reach a deal, it's a different question. The military wing of Hamas has an incentive to keep this going because I think, what are you going to do just keep sending tanks into the line of fire of our RPGs.
Yeah, it's like THEO they're like seven dollars RPGs.
Their incentives are completely different than this, like big modern militaries incentives. Yeah.
Absolutely.
And the point that I mentioned earlier about David Brooks is what would you have Israel do? Column? And I know we disagree with this, but in the macro sense, I think that point is really well taken. In the micro sense, though, it's like these various examples case studies from the warfare just take a step back, you think, in service of what like in service of Joe Biden's goal for the day after, in service of net and Yahoo's goal for the day after, in service of Motrix
goal for the day after. What's the plan? What's the plan? It just it's been an incredible several months to watch the floundering on that point.
And to wrap up this block, we can put up a four which I had skipped over. This is the Jerusalem Post article about that says Gallance washing. So this is about yo have Gallance coming trip to the United
States trying to head off in arms embargo. And it's an interview that was done on Israeli radio with IDF Major General Nimrod Schaeffer, who who says just straight up in this article, read the whole thing for yourself that if the United States tells Israel not to do an invasion of Rapa, Israel will not do one.
That It's just that simple.
That there are, and he goes into he just says, look, Bbe's saying this for political reasons.
This is just red meat for his base there.
He said, there is no world in which Israel is doing this without the support of the United States. And he said they have other ways of cutting off weapons. They don't have to publicly say we're cutting off weapons. What he describes it as as as kind of a process on a spectrum that you're like, hey, what's up with what's up that ammunition?
Where's that shipment? And you just hear back from the US H.
Yeah, it's it's caught up in paperwork, like we're gonna we're working on it, and it just doesn't come and then and then there doesn't have to be kind of Biden and bb having a Titanic clash over weapons. Uh publicly, but privately they don't get the weapons that they need. So that means that if Israel does go into Rafa, it means the United States supported that invasion, no matter what they say publicly. This is according to broad shape.
Yeah, not ideal.
That ideal All right, Rayan, should we move on.
To the bridge, call, let's go to the bridge.
So the obviously Soccer and Crystal covered this yesterday. But the Key bridge collapse in Baltimore. Now six people are presumed dead workers who were you know again doing construction on that bridge. Mostly is from what we know, six of them presumed dead. Now the black box has been recovered. We're told that inspection crew overnight went onto the boat, which is still basically stuck in the position after the bridge collapsed onto it. So you have this bizarre situation.
There's an utterly bizarre situation. But the black box apparently recovered, which is going to be very helpful because it looks like obviously this was there's some type of power failure on the ship itself. There's a lot we can get into this, but let's just start with B one. This is if you're watching, you're going to see exactly what we were just talking about.
So this is.
The boat itself is basically where it is right now. You can see the bridge just collapsed on the bow and the bridge is you know, submerged in the river. So that's again, this is where they took the black box from, because the boat is still exactly right there, basically where it hit. Now. Interestingly enough, my dad happens to be a retired bridge inspector, so I made sure to give him a call yesterday. And there were a lot of sort of armchair bridge experts suddenly on Twitter yesterday,
but they're all there. Actually are also some real bridge experts on Twitter. One of them is named John Conrad. He runs the website g Captain, and they've had some really good coverage of this that basically comports with what I was talking to my dad about that when you hit the pier in the way that you hit the peer,
there's almost nothing you could do. There's basically a lot of people have been talking about the fenders, you know, where the fenders on a bridge like that, it should have fender exactly what it sounds like, some type of barrier around the different support structure parts of the bridge, and this one looks like it didn't have much of that. If it did, it was really minimal. And people are like, well, what, there's massive cargo ships going through here, why would you
not have fenders. When the bridge was built in nineteen seventy seven, I think they didn't have ships as big and powerful as we have now, so bridges were constructed differently. It's really expensive to retrofit bridges for that type of thing. The other question a lot of people have is the tugboats. John Conrad made a really interesting point that so actually the tugboats did escort the bridge. You're not required to
have a tugboat escore escort under the Key Bridge. Interestingly enough, and Baltimore, john Conrad said, is not alone in releasing the tugboats early. It's also something that happens, for example, in San Diego with the beautiful Coronado Bridge in the Port of San Diego. So big questions about how many different ports are now going to be requiring those tug boat escorts. It does seem like why would you not
have the tugboat escort. At the same time, it also seems like this was like a one in a million chants. I'm usually that, you know, just as a phrase. I don't have any idea what the actual chance is, but one in a million chants that you have this ship drifting exactly at the point that it did into exactly that part of the bridge, the pier basically and hitting it the way that it.
Did, right.
And I feel bad for some of these bridge experts because we don't really need I'm glad. We heard from your dad and we tried to get him off, but you said that he probably wouldn't be He probably wouldn't be into it.
We'd love to have him on at some point in the future if we can talk him into it.
But we also we a thousand foot bridge loaded up with stuff going something like eight knots into any bridge anywhere is.
Going to take it out.
No amount of fenders, no amount of bumpers, like, there's nothing you can do. I think, just as a jobs program, I think requiring them all to have tugboats would would be a good idea. A bunch of my friends from the Eastern Shore worked on.
Tugboats and they're there.
There are great jobs for like single men in their twenties and thirties, because you're on it for I said, I mean some of them, some of them were not single. But it's difficult for them because you're out for weeks at a time. But and they're really difficult. Jobs are tough on your body. But but you like make a ton of money and like a six week stretch and then you know then and then you're and then you're back on.
Land and the below deck ritual basically yeah, and.
You're not gonna you can't you know, offshore those I mean they're literally offshore, but not far offshore. But because you're only doing the tug, you're only doing the tug operation, you know, within several miles the harbor.
But yes, like if if these ships are going to.
Cut costs by us by not doing the proper maintenance and by by otherwise, you know, not having enough redundancies so that if you get a power outage, just float into the pier or float into the bridge.
Uh, then you ought to have some.
Extra redundancies in the form of tugboats. Though they'd have to be massive tugboats because these ships are so huge. But maybe they can be big enough that they can just just be enough to like slow you down.
Enough.
Credit though, to the crew for this the may Day call that they that they put out for people who haven't been following it closely.
They were able to get a may Day.
Call out, and uh, Maryland Police and Baltimore Police were able to get to the bridge fast enough to make sure that the traffic was stopped. You had there's there's a radio call from one officer who says, all right, I've got the traffic stopped. I've heard that there's a construction crew on the bridge. I'm racing onto the bridge to warn them, and just as he says that, he hears back the bridge just collapsed. Yeah, so it just wasn't enough time. It's a long bridge.
To those workers, it is. It's almost a two mile.
Bridge, right, Yeah, it's a massive bridge, and from the aerial shots it almost makes it look it's hard to have perspective on size when you have an aerial shot like that where it's just water and a bridge, because you know, it's just hard to compare to other things.
But it's a huge, huge bridge.
So even with the mayday call, and we can talk about the mayday call in a second, because there were all kinds of theories kind of bumping around yesterday, and I don't blame X for any of that.
In particular.
I feel like even before X Ryan, you know, we'd all be at bars, like speculating wildly about what happened, because it is such a it looks like such a one in a million chance. And again, many many ships go through this port every single year. It's a very important. I think it might be like the eighteenth most busy port in the United States, some like eight hundred and fifty thousand cars in particulars one thing that passed through
that port a lot. That's just in last year. So let's let's take a listen to this clip from Fox Business. This is Maria Barbiromo talking to Senator Rick Scott, and B three is right.
This is yeah, she brings immigration into the conversation.
A Singaporean flagged container. But of course you've been talking a lot about the potential for wrongdoing or potential for foul play given the wide open border.
That is why you have.
Been so adamant. Why has the Republicans had such a hard time securing this border. The President says he's not going to take his executive action.
You know that.
Well, we all have to stand together.
We have to say that that it takes sixty.
Votes to pass anything in the Senate.
So I think that was like a kind of clumsy attempt to pivot the conversation that she was having with Rick Scott to immigration more than.
Like a conspiracy there.
He's like, you know, there's a possibility and everything like this.
All of us angors have made some awkward transitions.
That's what it seemed like, let's give her that one, but other people were dead serious about some of these comparisons. In fact, so we can put B four up on the screen. This is from Michael Flynn, and a lot of people remember Michael Flynn from the Trump administration. He says, this is a black Swan event. Black Swan's normally come
out of the world of finance, not military. The standard operating procedures for all US ports, harbors and bays that transit, commerce and military activities are supposed to maintain an incredible level of discipline, rigor, and awareness for these very type events to not occur. Ever, yet here we are there are harbor masters for every single one of these transit ports in America that are in charge of assuring the safety of navigation.
Start there.
We can also then go to trying to say, so I've saw like speculation along these letter.
I thought he was in prison.
Now, how's Andrew Tate out there becoming a shipping conspiracy expert.
There were a lot of shipping conspiracy experts yesterday, and you know, I saw conspiracy theories that weren't totally explicit, but that were kind of floated along those lines or just uh, conversations about what could have happened and how could.
They packed and like look how it like look how the Chinese took the power down and the propelled it right into the bridge, like all kinds.
Yeah, and I don't find a nonsense.
I mean, I don't disagree.
We were talking earlier that this is like extremely unusual thing that happened, but explicable, right right, So you know, there there, it seems like there are pretty obvious explanations for exactly what happened so far. And that's not to say that either of us put it past our government to be involved in some shady business, but it looks
very clear like that's not what happened here. I don't begrudge people for asking questions at all, because trust in government is extremely low, not just among members of the public, but among members of the media ryan including US.
And let's put let's put B six up to talking about trust in government.
This is a from the Lever.
FEDS recently hit Cargo Giant in Baltimore Disaster for silencing whistleblowers. So this is a piece that looked at government documents from the Department of Labor that found that.
The company that runs this runs.
This ship had recently, about eight months ago or so, been hit by the Labor Department for this horrendous policy that it had of preventing whistleblowers on its ships from going directly to the Coastguard or to other authorities with complaints and first having to route them through kind of
company management. One of the people that complained about safety issues on one ship was subsequently fired, which you said was retaliation, which the Department of Labor found to be a credible claim and came sounds yeah, and came after the company. And so you cannot do that, like you have to have more serious safety measures in place here.
And so I think there's something interesting about the way that our reaction wants to find some type of conspiracy in this, because if there's a conspiracy, that implies that actually somebody is in control, like don't like we've got this, like somebody's got this, you know, it's in that case, And.
It's like what Michael Flynn was saying exactly, was saying that there are harbor masters.
But there are nefarious people are who have their hands on all of this, and they use that control to then create this disaster for some reason that we will then figure out later. But the assumption there is that it's under control. That's a much more comforting thing to
tell ourselves. Then it's actually not under control because we've allowed greedy corporations to take over our government and our regulatory apparatuses, and these Singaporean ships that can have low wage labor from you know, any anywhere anywhere in the world without any kind of uh, you know, training or other other requirements, and that they can fail to maintain the ship such that it has a catastrophic power failure.
And crashes into the bridge.
Because knowing that we're we don't actually have control is much more frightening to some of us than yes, there are evil people who do have control, right.
And and knowing actually that sort of forces of oligarchy are really in control in this like haphazard like cocktail of different interests.
I think that's you know, maybe the scarious.
Thing, right exactly, because that's much harder to take on, or at least it's harder to accept then, because if you can, if you can find some QAnon type conspiracy here, then at least you can then tell yourself that you've kind of figured it out, rather than you live in a world where these oligarchs are are chipping away at your ability to you know, regulate safety in a way that just keeps people basically safe. And then, of course, uh, it being Twitter, the racism surfaced and bubbled all the
way to the top. A couple a couple of tweets, you know, really ricocheted around. We can put up B two here, which is this is uh, this is Baltimore may Or Brand and Scott speaking at a press conference, and you had not just this account, but a decent number of them saying this is Baltimore's DEI mayor commenting on the collapse to Francis Scott keat Bridge, it's going to get so so much worse.
Prepare accordingly?
Uh?
And then I think, uh, B five if you can throw B five up there. D I did this as another just another clown on Twitter, but it represented a reaction that that you did see.
And because of Twitter's new.
Kind of algorithmic efforts that where you can you know, pay to get your your racism boosted. Uh, it became a thing that people were you know, talking talking talking about.
Uh.
First of all, can I say, Brandon Scott, an illustrious graduate of my alma mater, Saint Mary's College of Maryland. Wow, I've been following his career, uh as he rose up through Baltimore politics proudly.
Interesting.
He's class two thousand and six, so he was he was six years younger. He six years younger than me, but he would have overlapped my brother, who was class of vote four. Interesting, the same college. So Brandon Scott graduate of the best college in America, Saint Mary's College of Maryland.
So you know, how dare anybody come at him?
But also, uh, he there was nothing like he gave an eloquent performance. Uh it's like cold out, so he's got a jacket on, and like, what's what's your problem other than the fact that he's black and d e? I like, do do people think that a firm of action is required for there to be.
A black mayor in Baltimore?
Well?
Are people this stupid?
Yeah?
I mean it's a population of Baltimore is about sixty five percent. I think he won with like seventy five percent of the vote.
I think it's just like, yes, I think unfortunately that conflation is now happening.
That's what di I means to people now.
Although I tend to blame like insist people who insist on affirmative action, as a lot of Black Americans do, for casting that like stereotype of putting people in that unfortunate position of like, oh, you're successful in black you must be a product of affirmative acts.
Otherwise Baltimore would have just the greatest white mayor ever.
What was the guy, the guy from the wire, Yeah, he would be great.
But the DEI thing actually, at one point on that is, you know, the David serote a piece in the lever that you were just talking about. I think there's a really a very legitimate argument about DEI and American infrastructure,
and like, I get that. I think we have funneled an absurd amount of resources that could have been spent in other places into some of these into some of these different initiatives, corporate initiatives, municipal initiatives, and I think our resources probably could have been better spent elsewhere, like millions billions of dollars.
Just I think that is a very real thing.
But I also think if people who are just sort of like throwing DEI out there constantly actually put as much effort and thought as Serda does into examining how corporate interests are like influencing this in a sort of
financial way. There's even deeper elements to the story. I mean, as Saroda discovered in this case very quickly, he was able to put this story together that like, there are economic forces that you know, push and it's not to say that people aren't talking about the confluence of like aligarch and culture dei stuff, but in this case there are actual oligarchs that allow these things to happen. And
we don't know the full story here yet. We do know that this boat had problems inspection recently in Chile, I think just in the last year. There are problems raised, not in.
A crash into a peer in Brussels, I think, notre crashing to appear somewhere in Europe in twenty sixteen.
And Conrad John Conrad was talking about from g captain points out, but it's not again, it's not uncommon for ships that fail different parts of their inspections to keep operating if they don't rise to the level that's you know, a serious threat. But that's the interesting part about this conversation on corporate interests is that for different corporations I think Boeing is a really good example some of these failures that can lead to loss of life, that can
lead to huge infrastructure costs. We're not going to see all of the I mean, traffic in Baltimore is going to be a nightmare.
For people for the foresee future.
We're rerouting all of these car shipment, sugar, all of these things that go through the Port of Baltimore are going to be like routed on A ninety five, which is going to probably cause worse in traffic for.
You know, regular people up and down the.
Sort of a Cela corridor as it's called in the upcoming months. But the problem is the cost of doing business has become such that, you know, some of these major corporations sacrifice these potential calamities as just like a cost of doing business. You know, like it's this, it could happen, but we can save money, and it probably won't. If it does, we'll pay for it. We'll take the public relations hit because we can afford it, and that will allow us to keep doing business.
And on your d iPoint, I have a slightly different takelethough you might agree with it to it, I think that there was an actual cost to Corporate America to maintaining the kind of WASP cartel that it had for so many times. There was actual racism for many decades in the leadership of corporate America, which which still exists, and made those corporations less effective because it coddled underperforming
wasps and it kept out higher performing non wasps. What the way that the way that DEI plays plays into this, though, is too often you'll bring in a DEI consultant after you get accused of some type of racial injustice inside your corporation.
And that will be your answer.
Rather than making structural reforms that may make you an actually better corporation. It's people in power will say, all right, well, we're going to have these consultants come in for two days and you're going to examine your internalized racisms, which is much more comfortable for a corporation to ask you to do than to examine the externalized corporate racism at work or or what the corporation is actually doing.
In the world.
Yeah, and so to the extent that it furthers the the kind of lack of diversity and the lack of racial justice inside an organization, it ends up it ends up being harmful, but then you have the reverse critique from actual racists who are like, oh, DEI just means black in my mind.
I think there's another important point in all of this about so I I was asking my dad about the state of bridges overall in America, because that was a huge conversation yesterday, especially when before we totally knew what had happened. There's tons of speculation about the bridges. And he described it as he said, it's safe, but they need maintenance. That was like his overall take. The bridges
in America are safe, but they generally need maintenance. And I think that's probably going to prove to have been true with the friends to Scott Key Bridge. It may have needed the cost of being retro fitted with giant fenders. Whether the fenders actually would have stopped that boat is a huge question. Like it's pretty it looks like a thing would have stopped the boat from causing that bridge
if you hit the pier like that to collapse. That said John Conrad points out he quote tweeted somebody who found that at one point it just like an old It looks like it's an old newspaper blurb that that bridge could have actually been a tunnel. That some people said that this should have been a tunnel instead of a bridge, but the bridge was just easier, it was more cost effective at the time. And this is going all the way back to that.
There you go, good call, like there already is a harbor tunnel. Maybe when they rebuild it, they'll do another harbor tunnel. The clip you saw Biden at the beginning was him saying that feds are going to pick this up. Nice if they found the singapore and billionaire and had him pay for that.
Yes, it looks like, you know, the main questions here should be directed towards what happened with the ship, and that's where our focus should be going forward now. Still, as Baltimore rebuilds over the course of my gosh, I can't imagine how long this is going to take. That in and of itself is a big story. Conrad pointing out in another tweet that other countries can rebuild these types of this type of infrastructure much more quickly than
we can at this point. But I mean, it's just our system is not optimizing the potential of our workers in the United States of our It's just it's not, and it hasn't been for some time.
Your friend of the show, Matt Iglesias, had been joking earlier that the US should hire Hamas to like work on our subways. Given the effective kind of tunnel structures they built, have them do the Harbor tunnel. I mean, imagine what they could do without like having to smuggle everything in the impressive work, right.
I don't know if I should dignify this with the rest.
Anyway, Thank you to the control room for that one, because we've moved to all those elements all over the place I was around.
You guys were on top of it, very much appreciated. Let's move on to Ron McDaniel.
Let's move on to RFK JR R Junior. Okay, two friends of the show. It's easy to confuse. Who among us has not confused RFK Junior and Ron McDaniel. Big newsweek for both of them, Yes, indeed. But RFK Junior yesterday announced his vice presidential running mate. There were some interesting reactions that we're going to get to in a second, but let's start here with C one. This is a clip from the announcement RFK Junior made just yesterday.
I'm so proud to introduce to you the next Vice President of the United States, my fellow lawyer, a brilliant scientist, technologist, fears warrior mom, Nicola shanahand.
So Peter Hanby pointed out, this is C two. We can put it on the screen. Some reactions, just among RFK Junior's online based to this pick of Nicole Shanahan were immediately negative. One person said, Kirsten Cinema would have been like a million times better. Just one person said, Tulsi excellent exclamation points. Now, one person did say Nicole has a heart of gold. Someone said, terrible pick improves how meaningless words can be. This is some.
Clear sexism there.
Actually when it says, well, I'm not even going to read it, but Shanahan is right out of globalist central
casting was another reaction. And you know, people might say that online reactions not representative of the broader population, which is absolutely online reaction, although in that case it's it is also true that he has a huge proportion of his supporters are the types of people that are frankly commenting on videos like we put out like he put out right there, So there is something representative about it in that sense. But Ryan, what did you make of the announcement yesterday?
The person who said she's out of this like w E F Central Casting kind of hits the hits the nail on the head. It's the kind of person who was gravitating towards RFK Junior after he made his campaign focused on independent media. Basically, yes, you know, when went around the gatekeepers in the mainstream media.
Uh right, smart, smart play.
That kind of person does not like the profile of Nicole.
Shanahan, who no so right.
So the number one thing, as people said that they know her from is she was the husband Sorgey Brent, which is sound sexist to say, but in general that's correct, Like he's.
Ultra powerful and famous. So yeah, the association I think is entirely fair.
Right. And she's a patent attorney.
I guarantee if I had a patent case that I needed, I couldn't do any better than her. I'm sure she's an incredible patent attorney, but thirty something patent attorney is generally not the kind of bio that we think of for Okay, well.
That person should be therefore be vice president.
Amusingly, from my perspective, like she funds all sorts of causes that I'm all about climate change stuff, progressive prosecutors, criminal justice, reform, reproductive justice, and so for if you're if you were kind of a Trump curious but didn't like Trump type of person who was then gravitating towards RFK Junior, a lot of those things are gonna are gonna turn you off from from her.
Uh.
The thing that she was in the press for was then the divorce from Sergey Brinn, which, because we can put this next element up on the screen, according to the Wall Street Journal, Elon Musk's friendship with Sergey Brin ruptured by alleged affair.
Now, both Shanahan and.
Musk have denied that there was an affair, but there's also been reporting that Musk like got down on one knee at a party and apologized to his good friend Sergei Brynn for it. They were divorced within weeks of it. It almost feels perfectly fitting for our time that the kind of choice of the independent space would be linked to billionaires and involved in all sorts of drama, because that kind of is what our kind of online politics is, you know, drama and billionaires.
Actually that's a really good well to that point.
I was actually going to say, it reminds me of the tension also between sort of like og Silicon Valley and post Obama Silicon Valley, where at first you see yourselves as like the pirates and the disruptors, and now it's like, well, you are now the man. It's not screw the man anymore, fight the man. It is you.
You're the man.
And to Ela Musk sort of walks that fine line in interesting way while like constantly criticizing US foreign policy but also being a major defense contractor and having all of these like various interests going on.
But with Shanahan, the point.
You made about how if you're someone that's uncomfortable with Trump is I think it could actually be a preview of the RFK Junior strategy to come and an example of why I think Biden is increasingly worried about RFK Junior. I know people didn't the DNC actually do like a press call yesterday amid the announcement, which would be unusual for a third party candidate to have. The DNC Liz Smith is running that effort now, right, Yeah, Like they've fancy.
Third party effort.
They've steered some real resources into this, and I think that's because he's around nine point nine percent I think in the RCP national average when you put Cornell West, who I think is that like two percent in the RCPN I average, and then there's another like one point
something percent for Jill Stein in there. If that remained constant going into election day, and rf K Junior is able to pour vast resources into a state like Nevada where he's on the ballot, imagine Jill Stein, but Jill Stein with way more like a higher proportion of the vote in Pennsylvania in twenty sixteen, justin Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. So we'll see, you know, ultimately how many states he's
able to get on the ballot in. But I think, you know, him going with somebody that has real sort of progressive bonafides is a pretty interesting signal that he's
going to make a real push for those voters. And I also have continue to have the theory that as soon as Donald Trump turns to RFK Junior in earnest like really starts pushing back on RFK Junior, if he's worried about losing some of his own supporters to him, that will also highlight RFK Junior's progressive bona fides, because, as you know as well as anybody, he was kind of a mainstream dude in progressive circles for a long time, someone that was like.
He became fringe also with vaccine stuff, with vaccines smother conspiracy, but he.
Was still showing up at the events.
He was like in this persona grata.
Yeah, persona grata. That's a good way to put it.
And so I think it if Donald well, right, if Donald Trump starts talking about how r f K Junior is like an environmentalist whose pro regulation and pro medicare for all and all of that. I don't know what the Trump attacks will look like, although we've seen a little preview of it. That also reminds some potential Biden voters that urf K Junior has like decades of work in that space in ways that they might really like.
So maybe it's maybe it's a smarter pick than people realize, because is he going to lose some of his hardcore fans over a weird vice presidential pick that they're unhappy with?
I don't know.
I would, I would think he would.
The informed speculation though, of why would he do this. Number one answer that you've seen from people who have some clue on this is that when she went through her divorce publicly, it's known that she asked for a billion dollars went through arbitration.
We don't know exactly what she got. We know that she got a lot of money.
She financed the Super Bowl ad that RFK Junior later apologized for.
Remember that one.
But there is a you can call it a loophole in campaign finance that says that if you are on a ticket, you can spend an unlimited amount of your own money. So she could have from the outside done an RFK Junior super pack. They get they don't get favorable rates, they can't coordinate with the campaign with her on the ticket. If she gives a hundred million dollars to the campaign, the campaign can directly spend that hundred million dollars.
So that is the number one benefit SHO offers.
The second one is this looks like RFK Junior has long ago given up on the idea that he's going to win the presidency and is making sure that he will still be a palatable kind of social figure when he returns to Los Angeles and Silicon Valley after this to have somebody that is well regarded in that community as his running mate. I'm not sure if that calculation is correct, because if he well, different elements of Silicon Valley, different elements of LA have different hopes coming out of
this presidential election. You know, some of them are fine with Trump, but the elements that are not fine with Trump, if they blame him for swinging the election to Trump, doesn't matter who his running mate's going to be, He's not gonna get those dinner party invites.
Yeah, that's interesting. That is really interesting because you'd think these.
Are the risks that our public servants take them.
Although I do I still maintain that people who are making fundamentally making protest votes are not making protest votes based on VP picks. But there are people with this sense. It can contribute to people making an argument that they trusted RFK Junior sort of anti establishment streak, and then when they.
See his position on Israel or they see who he picks as a.
VP candidate, it makes the it hurts his credibility as like an anti establishment guy, and so it can contribute to that broader narrative that a lot of people have started picking up on and that's frustrated a lot of potential RFK junior voters. Again, it's not a huge lights of the population, although I continue to think that it can be a huge part of some of these these key states and does pose a real threat to Biden's reelection.
It's I do think there's a counterfactual history where he could have been a credible candidate if he if he flowed out of the RFK senior in anti war, if he carried that mantle.
Which he tried to do until October, which he did.
Which he did right with Ukraine and otherwise saying the US needs US, empire needs to you know, mind his business like that's a that plus like progressive domestic policy is is a potent combination for independent voters and for a lot of a lot of Democrats and Republicans who
are not locked in on their party. But yeah, after October seventh, you know, he he happens to be a very strident Zionist who was out of the gate, you know, sales interviews here and elsewhere, who was out of the gate, unapologetically, unconditionally supportive of Israel and willing to give as much American support to Israel as possible, and so that that lane.
Was no longer kind of available to him. But I think.
There is a world with the combination of his name and that positioning that he could be polling in the thirties and then he's with three people in the race. Then you're you're you're in the ball game at that point, because then all these other people who reluctantly are voting for Trump or reluctantly are voting for Biden are like, oh wait, this is not a protest vote. Yeah, I can actually vote for this guy. But also the voice, the voice is I'm sorry. People don't want to hear
that for four years and it's a health condition. It's terrible to say, but it's a huge obstacle for him.
I'm just seeing a Charlie kirkweet that's upset about the land acknowledgment that the VP of ARFA Junior's VP announcement opened with. We kind of teased that earlier, but yes, a Native American tribe did give a land acknowledgment before they started, and this is indicative of and actually apparently that was at his campaign lunch too. According to Brent Share of the Daily Wire. This is I think indicative
of the really tough road. It's sort of like what Bernie Sanders had to deal with with some of the cultural issues in twenty sixteen and then in twenty twenty, but it's on a much, much much like intensified scale, when you have someone like he's on independent media all the time, like openly criticizing, aggressively criticizing some of the culture warriors on the left. I agree, I mean he is.
There have been some polls that find him around thirty percent or higher with young voters that could have been reflected in the broader population.
I still have a lot of respect for the campaign that he's running.
I'm curious to see what kind of course correction, if any course correction, or even just pouring more money into those nostalgic ads. I'm curious to see what's ahead. I still think he's even all of these divisions. The demand for a protest vote right now, even if it's literally uncommitted, just the bland phrase uncommitted, is so high that he could do a lot of damage to Biden.
Now, there was also a chance that he might have discovered a preternatural political talent who is going to take the world by storm. Let's roll a little bit of Nicole Shanahan's speech and let you decide whether or not you think he discovered that people talk.
About my age. It's true. I will be the youngest vice president of America history. Let me tell you why so many of us young people have turned away from politics. It's because we lost hope that change would ever come from inside the system. After all, which party wins with promises of hope and change or to drain the swamp? Things proceed as usual, declining bit by bit each passion passing year. So that's the reason. But the other reason is that we can't stand the phoniness anymore. We can't
stand the lies, we can't stand the inauthenticity. And that's why Bobby Kennedy leads in all the polls among young people. We are hearing our voice in.
His that as effective as speech as I deliver.
Up there, I think it's a youth uprising.
That's right, say if she counts as youth, so do I Let me tell you what the youths are thinking about.
Go to Ryan for all of your gen Z pop culture questions. There you go, all right, should we move on to Ronal McDaniel.
Let's do it.
Hell of a week for Ronald McDaniel, Hell of a week over at NBC News.
Ronal McDaniel's out.
We put up this first element here that one of the briefest tenures as an NBC News analyst in NBC News analyst history. I would think she did one interview with Kristen Welker, a bit of a grilling on the Sunday Show, and that was it. Now she'll still get paid, is my understanding her entire contract because they don't.
That's what happened to Magan Kelly two.
Yes, because they don't have a justification other than oh, that was a mistake.
It turns out employs are mad.
Terms out everybody is mad about this.
Internally, nothing changed, Yeah, Like Ryan McDaniel didn't say anything new. That's agree to us that anybody's taking issue with it was Chuck Tudd and Joscarborough have said basically they would have objected before.
The announcement was even made. That's out there in the open.
So it's a pretty good case for no real reason to drop the contract in a way that would take funning away from her. So there's an interesting part of Rachel Maddow's long rant about the hiring of Rona McDaniels that now in light of McDaniel's firing, I think is perhaps worth revisiting. This is Rachel Mattow talking specifically about the distinction between NBC and MSNBC on her show earlier this week.
It's my understanding that MSNBC's leadership did not object to Ronal McDaniel being hired by NBC News when the matter first arose, But when the hiring was announced and MSNBC staff essentially unanimously and instantly expressed outrage, our leadership at MSNBC heard us, understood, and adjusted course. We were told this weekend, in clear terms, ron A McDaniel will not be on our air. Roni McDaniel will not be on MSNBC.
And I say that and give you that level of detail, because there has been an effort since by other parts of the company to muddy that up in the press and make it seem like that's not what happened at MSNBC.
I can assure you that is what happened at MSNBC.
If you care what I think about.
This, I will tell you the fact that ms McDaniel is on the payroll at NBC News.
To me, that is inexplicable.
I mean, you wouldn't.
You wouldn't.
You wouldn't hire.
Like a wise guy. You wouldn't hire a made man like a mobster to work at a DA's office, right, you wouldn't hire a pickpocket to work as a TSA screener. And so I find the decision to put her.
On the payroll inexplicable.
Okay, Right, something really interesting there that gets to the heart of the story where she's saying, you wouldn't hire a pickpocket to work out I think she says TSA in the clip. But you know, in journalism you would interview the pickpocket, right, That's kind of part of the job. If you have a massive surge in retail theft, which some cities actually have been dealing with recently, you might want to get the perspective of the thieves. So even if I buy her comparison, and by the way, I
would apply that to literally all politicians they constantly. Joy Reid said on MSNBC, we want more Republicans on MSNBC, give me more. This is a real quote. Adam Kinsinger's and Liz Cheney's also pickpockets. By the way, Nicole Wallace, who lied about the Iraq War for the Bush administration, hosts a show on MSNBC. So while we are drawing red lines in the sand at anybody who could potentially
be the pickpocket, come on, give me a break. I'm not sure that MSNBC or NBC News is in any position to do that.
Yeah, and she also said, you wouldn't have the mafia come and work with the prosecutors. But actually, when you set up the SEC they had Joe Kennedy run it, who was mob linked and was brought in because he.
Was one of the most corrupt kind of traders.
You can say that you're also Irish.
There you go otherwise. Yeah, exactly, it's in the family. But look at the people who are complaining. Joe Scarborough, Republican Congressman Mika Brazinski, the daughter of Spring News to Brazinski, one of the most bloodthirsty kind of imperialists that the that our government produced in the twentieth century.
And yeah, like you said, Nicole Wallace, who George W.
Bush, like all of those amaz NBC viewers at one point were chanting Bush lied, people died and Nicole Wallace was the one writing those lies and.
Was the spokesperson for those lies.
You've got Jensaki, who was Obama and Biden partisan spokesperson. You know, most of spokespeople while wind up going to one network or another. So clearly what they're saying is that that's okay. But Ronald McDaniel, this is beyond the pale basically because she was vaguely supportive or you know, do you tell me how supportive she was of kind of Trump's like January sixth insurrectionary activities.
Yeah, that's what it all comes down to. This is how Jensaki actually explained that. Jensaki came out and addressed head on the.
I'm a hack.
Yeah, she was like, you know what, I'm here, right, She was like, you people have pointed out that I work at me see and she was like, but it's different because of.
Election denialism and ran I think.
We've been circulated a clip of her pretending that the US never interferes with South American elections.
Perfect.
I mean, you can just there's such a wealth those elections.
You can deny the.
Things that they said. I saw clips going around the things that they said that you know, maybe they had good reason for saying them back in the early days of the pandemic, but that were I mean, Fauci is a great example, Fauci himself, like Nicole Wallace, Fauci, Adam Kinziger, Liz Cheney, I mean, people who have trafficked in disinformation
period that we don't draw the red line at. We're drawing the red line at this Trump insurrection, like well not even the insurrection, but like the Trump election denialism as they call it, as Jensaki I think directly called it because RONI McDaniel flirted with it. The bad news for MSNBC is that Ron McDaniel is like moderately pro Trump compared to a lot of the Republican base, not all Republican voters, but Ron McDaniel I think, in her
interview with Kristen Walker said something so gross. I don't know if you caught this part where and this is before she was fired, it was her first interview. It's when she's, you know, wants that three hundred thousand dollars, wants to make a good impression, wants to get invited to the NBC Christmas Party or whatever, saying you know, when you are head of the r n C, when you work for the party, you just got to take one for the team. And I can now be more myself.
That's what she said, which is code for I lied for years to make Yes, I lied professionally for the power and the money, and now I can get the power and the money.
But without lying.
Why why would MSNBC viewers or NBC viewers want her actual thoughts? Like who cares what her actual thoughts are to the extent that she's remotely interesting? Yeah, it's because of her access to power. Yeah, and because of the insurrectionary support, Like that's those are the those are the kinds of things that actually matter.
Like what Ron McDaniel actually thinks about X, Y or Z issue is. I can't I can't begin.
To imagine why that would be remotely interesting to anybody.
Yes, they actually should have They should have the guts to hire somebody who actually makes the journalism.
Worthwhile or just interview them. Like that's the funniest thing.
Like you want Republicans or Democrats on your channel, right, just call them and they will come on because you have millions of people watching you.
You don't actually have to pay them.
It reminds me of The New York Times hiring James Bennett to run their opinion section so that he could bring more conservative voices on them, running a conservative piece by Tom Cotton, and then freaking firing James Bennett over it. This is the dumbest thing in the world. It's because they can't figure out their business model, Like the New York Times hasn't realized that it now has to be.
Instead of being like the paper of record that's responsive to this broadswath of the public that reads it around the country, they're responsive to like the NPR topey crowd.
Which creates a different business incentive.
Like that's just a different You're not doing neutral news for all of America. In the new business model where mass media is dying, you're responsive to a different group of people. And so for the sake of like the journalism, the quote sacred airwaves that that's an actual just scription from Nicole Wallace, they purport to care about. You know, you would want to have someone even more hardcore.
Than Rono McDaniel.
You would want to have like an actual Trump twenty twenty election with stolen type of person on the show. Because if you're confident in you're fast, Steve, get on that you can. But in all serious that's like normalize the Steve Bannon on NBC because that's people don't need to be protected. What they need is to trust that the people who are saying Steve Bannon is wrong because of A, B and C are themselves telling the truth and are that those those disputes with Steve Bannon are
rooted in something real. And now nobody trusts anyone. So when Steve Bannon says something that's wrong, it's like.
Well, who do you trust? Do you trust him?
Do you trust the people who are also wrong, who are saying he's wrong? Nobody knows who to trust. And one good way to build rebuild trust is to actually like talk to people and figure that stuff out. And yes, agreed, we solved the problem. Frond see, we do have one final element we can put up this screen.
This is and relatedly, by the way, the biggest gift to Trump has been as deep platforming from liberal agree media.
And here's an example of corporate media not learning that lesson lesson. This is from Sarah Fisher at Axios last night. She reported that Caesar Conde of NBC Universal he's the chairman of the group, took full responsibility.
He said he approved.
Ron McDaniel's hiring, so that went all the way up, though unfortunately apparently not to Joe and Mika they had no say in it. But you're right, Ryan, this massive effort to say, like we have guilt about Donald Trump being elected in twenty sixteen, we think people need to be protected from Trump. We're not going to air his rallies. We're not going to let him say whatever the hell he wants to on Twitter or Facebook whatever. It has given so much credibility to Trump's claims of censorship.
He is really extreme.
And the more normally people see of Trump, the less they like him. The more he's in their face, the less go less they appreciate him. And when he's at a distance, you're like, oh, well, that guy kind of funny and wages were good.
True.
But then he's get back in your face, You're like, oh, yeah, that's why I didn't like that guy. But the liberals, by keeping him off of Twitter and Facebook and kind of keeping his antics away from people's faces, have actually done the thing that Trump's advisors had failed to do, which is to get Trump to just cool it and stop being such a freak all the time. So he gets to be a freak all the time, but people don't see the freak outs.
Yeah it's is this a Cory lewandowskiar State Bandon quote? Like, let Trump be Trump, don't try to make Trump someone else. That was like the Trump campaign.
Motto, but it should also be the anti Trump motto, because letting Trump be Trump is good.
Actually more powerful, And if you have a good like if you're working with Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden, it might be harder to control the opposition to Donald Trump. But most of the country doesn't like Donald Trump. So let Trump be Trump, and you just focus on doing a better job as the anti Trump side instead of clinging to the crutch of censorship and disinformation.
Yeap, all right, So now we're going to move on to the segment that I've been waiting for because I am genuinely curious what the heck is going on on conservative Twitter. I have some sense that it has something to do with this Babylon b.
Article.
So if you can put up this e one, they put out a headline the white race must maintain our genetic purity, says Inbred man over an image of a inbred man with a Nazi flag and a Confederate flag behind him inbread. Confederate supporters apparently took extraordinary offense to this or something, and so maybe this isn't even the thing that prompted this meltdown on conservative Twitter.
I don't know. We put up E.
Two and then and then E three. Oh yeah, so here, well, so here, here's E two. You got people unfollowed discusting organization. The Babylon b is is run by looks like Stara David there who often lashing out against Christians, like just the anti semitism and white nationalism just on display. Angry at the Babylon b I put up the next one there at and you've got Ali BETSTUCKI who's been on this program. There is no way to explain to a
normal person what's happening on conservative Twitter right now. Chris Rufo, also been on this program, says it's getting insane.
We have a problem in the right.
The economics of online discourse are increasingly at odds with forming and mobilizing a successful political movement. I'm skeptical that they're talking just about the Babylon b thing. I know there was the Candice Owen's Daily wire stuff. Chris Rufo later says that Tucker's show, by getting taken away, took away kind of a north star that helped to organize right wing discourse.
But yeah, what, what's what's going on? What's all the drama about?
So I work very hard not to have deep intimate understanding of Twitter beefs, but I will say unless I think that they're relevant in some ways, and there may be an argument that this is relevant in some ways. I think Rufo's point about the economics of online incentives or the incentives of yeah, and I actually think this is something that left has been dealing with for a really long time in ways that you're very familiar with, because it's.
I have YouTubers who like have entire subchannels just like about my hair.
Right. Yes, again, speaking of things that are relevant to the average American.
We kind of get to the bottom of war stuff.
Yeah, stuff, But it reminds me of how I felt during the like force the boat whirlwind that absolutely consumed the online left. And again, I actually think they're some that was a very.
Legitimate spial dispute, yeah, right.
And sometimes I think things are online. Things that are legitimate disputes among organizers in the grassroots are also online, so they get dismissed as being just online beefs instead of real representative ones. This one, I don't know how representative it is of anything broader except what Rufo said that these conversations online are making it really hard for conservative media conservative activists to focus on what matters, because
it puts you in a bubble. If a lot of your work is being conducted on Twitter, you're just on a bubble where the incentives are totally different for what you talk about how you talk about it, as opposed to like appealing broadly to the American public. So I definitely don't think it's unique to the right. I think the right it didn't learn from the online left and has now leaned fully into the influencer space without taking
some of those lessons to heart. Like even back in the day, young Turks, you know, you definitely remember this. It just they they had like the beef they were in on the sort of online beef economy before anyone kind of you know, you had these like warring YouTube channels going back and forth and the Twitter beefs like this is this goes back a long way, you know, to the dawn of the new media ecosystem on YouTube and Twitter.
Before that, like radio radio hosts on the same channel used to have management tell them, okay, now you two hosts are fighting for the next two weeks because that would bring in that would bring in the ratings.
But is the current meltdown more about Canice Ellen's or like.
Yeah, I think that's a Babylon b thing. Yeah, I think that so the Babylon Bee for what it's worth, I love them and they are equal opportunity. Like they I would be tempted on another account to like to see that as kind of classist, but it's that.
Was one of the first like ones that approached being funny that I'd say, I wouldn't quite call it funny, but at least it was like, all right, that's an attempted big funny.
They're not all winners. They also they started as like a really inter nice scene. Uh, intern ice scene is sort of I didn't even mean that as a pun, but like a real inter nice scene mockery of like evangelical subculture, and it was really funny or like even just like Christian subculture was it was actually really funny on those those types of along those lines, and yeah, they're not all winners, but they have some genuinely very biting and funny stuff that mocks conservatives, mocks the left,
mocks rich people, mocks poor people, mocks everyone. So I don't the replies to that were taking issue with alleged like.
I mean, these we really pretty bigoted.
There were some pretty bigoted replies saying that there's just run by a bunch of Zionists, and some people were outright saying Jews. And this is a continuation of the discourse over Canvas Owens and her departure from the Daily Wire, which saw obviously Jewish leadership at the Daily Wire, from Ben Shapiro to you know, Andrew Clavin who talks about he's ethnically Jewish and is very proud of that, although
he's Christian now. Like it was just a pretty ridiculous like I don't even know, and the Daily Wire feeds into it, I think to some extent by putting out statements. I actually kind of disagree with their decision to do that. Like you can just things can just happen and you can kind of move on, you.
Know, what I mean.
But it's in t Rufo's point though, the economics of Twitter makes everybody think that they they kind of have to comment on everything because you're getting piled on.
And is that good for the brand? Is that good for your ability to make arguments?
That's the big question I think that is relevant. It is I think very much a continuation though, of the Candice Owns discourse from last week, which it's a tough one for the Conserveed movie. You were talking before we started filming about a poll that found what's thirty percent Republican opposition to the ongoing war in Gaza.
Right, Yeah, seventy new Gallup poll after the Flower masker found Democrats now against Israeli.
War seventy five to eighteen. But yes, thirty percent of Republicans.
It was like something with fifty five thirty five among independents against it.
But as many as I think it.
Was, thirty percent of yes, Republicans are against that war. So that's a non trivial chunk of the of the electorate there.
My own guess on the broader level is a couple of things.
One is that I think Twitter actually did the conservative movement of favor by elevating some of the more out there woke stuff and keeping out a lot of these kind of Nazis and pepe frogs. So by suspending and censoring those Nazis and Confederate sympathizers, I think they actually did the kind of conservative Twitter movement generally a favor by not having them engaged, not making them such an element of it. By Musk allowing them not just to come back, but then to pay to amplify their stuff.
Is similar to what we were talking about earlier in the way that.
Liberals have done Trump a favor by getting rid of him, by keeping him off of some of these platforms. So Twitter, by kicking kicking the Nazis off, I think did a favor to conservatives. And so now what's happened under Musk is that almost all of those liberals either have left Twitter, are not posting as much or refusing.
To pay the eight bucks, ten bucks, twelve bucks, whatever it is now, and so.
They're not showing up in the verified feeds of conservatives, and so they're only seeing other conservatives, and it's becoming more like truth social like you go on truth, you're not true social.
Right anyway on true Soli.
It was just a bunch of people accusing each other of being pedophiles because there's no liberals to own, and if there's no libs to own, you just then just fight each other. I kind of disagree, like threads are like on the left, I kind.
Of disagree with the point about the pepees because I think, just like from an inside perspective and the conservative sphere, there was less consternation and handringing about the Pepees when they were on Twitter, because it was easy for everyone to.
Just be like this is weird, like these people are weird. It was just the social.
You. It replicated the social dynamics of regular life, and then you're just like okay, free, like please stop spewing this anti semitism, like outrank anti semitism into people's feeds. I'm gonna mock you, I'm gonna you know, ignore you. Whatever. So I don't I think it's an interesting point, although that's my impulse on that now. I think a lot of conservatives have been in a sort of bubble on the Israel stuff, not just conservatives, like people in general.
And because this is a war that's playing out on social media, there's something very powerful and this is why I encourage, you know, as a again someone who disagrees with you know, a lot of I think our audience on this question of Israel I still one of the things I think has been really detrimental and kind of the ways that Trump was talking about, but even deeper to the like Israel's public relations effort just plainly is when there's a lack of transparency and people find information
that's contrary to what they're being told, that's contrary to propaganda, that's extremely powerful and it makes people think. It makes people question Israel period. So instead of people just saying, well, Israel is you know, engaged in this wartime propaganda and is really wrong about what happened in this instant, it makes you question literally everything that Israel has done because people are like, man, I've been lied to about our support.
I've been lied to about from the river to the sea. I've been this is this is not what I'm hearing. And that's powerful. That's extremely powerful. And I think some of what's playing out in the conservative movement right now.
Is people who follow new media really closely.
I know we have like a lot of conservative viewers of this show, Learning New information that you just don't hear, you know, in in people who certain the circles of people who are ardently pro Israel for some very good reason, you know, descended from people who fled there and found refuge there before the Holocaust, during the Holocaust, after the Holocaust. You know, it's that when there is no transparency, it makes the contrary information even more powerful in ways that
are counterproductive. And I feel like that some of what's playing out right now.
I don't know how exactly this fits in, but I wanted to add because I think it feels related. So last night, there was a special election in Alabama, which you may have followed. It was a house district in the kind of in the Huntsville area. So in twenty twenty two, Republicans won that seat by seven points, and it consistently this is Trump this is a red district. This time the Democrat won by nearly twenty five points.
Then this is just.
Not long after the IVF ruling kind of rocked in Alabama politics, and it feels like there's something related here, that there is a segment of the right that is coming into contact with the consequences of.
Their own rhetoric and.
Success that is causing them then huge, huge fallout.
That's interesting. Yeah, I mean Tucker Carlson recently said that he was wrong. I think he said this on Lex Friedman show, that he was wrong about US imperialism. That he's like a child of the Cold War era and it was sort of doggedly pro us and in that foil with anti communism, like in that binary.
He wanted to join the CIA.
Yes, Putin said.
Yeah, and he recently said, you know, he's looked back on all of that history, and I think that reckoning is happening with about thirty percent of the Republican base.
Like actually it kind of matches up to what that Pole found about support for the war Gaza that I do think that there's this big reckoning that's happening, and I think it's going to push people in some really unhealthy directions into, for example, rank anti semitism, following for instance, Candice Omens down whatever rabbit hole she chooses on any
given day, and flirting with bigotry. I think it's going to lead some people in really good directions, which means that the conservative movement or conservatives more broadly, hopefully at one point the Republican Party would have a more nuanced approach to foreign policy than this sort of Cold War binary you're with us or against us, and any person that flirts with communism in any part of the globe must be eradicated by the CIA or American forces or
we should sick Samantha Powers on them what happens. So anyway, yeah, I think the economics of online discourse though that broader point. I think it's been really unhealthy for American politics. And I have people who remind me, you know, what it was like to cover politics before Twitter, and say, listen, it was actually way harder to get different information in different perspectives, and it wasn't impossible. Just Twitter does make
it easy in ways that we take for granted. At the same time, it also puts virtually every person who works in politics and who is in power in a giant bubble because they're constantly exposed to the algorithm, and the algorithm incentivizes uh, you know, extremness or like extreme perspectives and disagreement division over anything else. And that's warping, distorting the way that powerful people see the world.
All right, Well, up next, we're going to have ashesh Prashar from the No Taxation for Genocide campaign, which has been surprisingly successful in the United Kingdom, is going to break down that for us.
Stick around all right.
Up next is a sheesh for Sharp and they no tax for Genocide campaign, Ashish, thank you so.
Much for joining us here, Thanks for having me.
All right, so break down this campaign for us? What does what does no tax for Genocide mean?
I think it's important to set the stage a little bit on this why this is actually legal for people in the UK. You know, thirty four thousand civilians have been killed, one point two million people have been forcibly removed. These numbers sound eerily familiar, but they're not actually Gaza. That's the Bosnian genocide. And today in Gaza we're seeing
over forty thousand, we passed thirty four thousand number. We've seen two million people displaced, countless number of people injured, as well as bombed and staffed Palestinians and the US is eight and US and UK in this case of aided and embedded in those crimes, the ICJ have ruled it ap plausible genocide and only yesterday I think Francesca Albany is the UN Special Rapperture basically confirmed it was a genocide, and no matter what the State Department says,
it doesn't feel like a reputable source right now because they've in fact been lying for six months, because we've had countless human rights organizations, scholars in this space, and even frankly survivors of Bosnia call this a genocide.
And the reason that's important is because none of.
This works and as that is actually deemed a genocide of crimes against humanity. See the law in we've discovered as power that can be used on behalf of this struggle. It can be wielded in service off this political movement and the actually liberation of Palestinians. So the UK has specifically aided in war crimes. Funding war crimes is illegal
and taxation is not exempt under UK law. This campaign, which launched on the fourteenth of March, a campaign that's based on UK statute law specifically, not going to get overly legal about it, so I'll keep this simple. But the ICC Act which makes it a criminal offense for anyone in the UK, personal organization or institution to engage in war crimes or crimes against humanity. The Terrorism Act in two thousand also does not exclude taxation in its
criminalization of funding of terror and mass atrocities. And that is how people can legally withhold their money. And remember I'm just trying to be clear, they still pay their taxes, they have to put it in a discretion discretionary trust or another bank account. Effectively that the primary beneficiary of that is the UK government.
So they're paying their taxes, they're putting in basically into an escrow account, but UK doesn't have access to that unless they do what and how many people do you have so far?
Who are doing this?
So so far, I mean there has been a trial run of a bunch of people and businesses that have done this on the pledge. Right now we have up to just under seventy thousand people effectively engaged and that's ready to go. The goal for me is to get up to one hundred thousand people because that would eliminate seven hundred million pounds close to a billion dollars from the UK's budget and look to be transfer everyone's going to Oh, those numbers might seem small, for the UK
is not the United States. It doesn't have a trillion dollars budget. It is only sixty million people thirty eight million people which pay taxation. You would one hundred thousand knockout of that and even go as far as we think engagement will be up to a million, two million, three million, that's nearly ten percent of the population. If they stop paying taxation, you will cripple the ability of the Treasury and the UK government to move forward in
any policy. Frankly, and to answer your early question about who's doing it already, we obviously tested this. We had a couple of small businesses and partners who also i wouldn't say prop personally, who just don't want to see children blowing up every morning when they wake up on their phones. They don't want to see their government and themselves participate in these actions. And we work with these businesses.
They're small in the UK. They have fifty to sixty people to tell the HMRC inform them through this process that they won't be they will continue.
They don't want to be complicit.
They don't want to be complicit in these war crimes that the UK is actively engaged in. They don't want to be personally culpable for these war crimes, and they don't want to collect tax that will be funding those
war crimes. So they send that out to HMRC with all the statute stuff that I mentioned earlier on showed up the trust that they're actually setting up to put the taxation in and the UK would only get the money if it could prove it's no longer aiding and embedding and supporting these genocidal acts.
The system just like from the perspective of democracy, sounds like so enviable from the United States, Like being able to express your politics through removing your tax funding in this way is just like amazing. Has the at testament to get really impressive organizing on your part and other
people who are involved in this. Has the right flirted with us at all and said, for example, if the UK is funding UNRA, funding the un which is funding UNRA, which has Hamas connections, I'm not paying taxes because I don't want to fund Has there been any like counter effort or are you guys really like uh? Completely? And maybe this is reflective of where public opinion is in the UK too.
Yeah, I mean, it's really interesting. It's a really good question.
I think that the funny thing is we were very specific about the ICC Act, right, I mean, because somebody gets me, couldn't I change?
Is that not a massa truscity? Could I not do this?
For there's so many reasons you could possibly. The language around the icct ICC Act really was designed to stop war crimes, to stop genocide, to stop what we're seeing and what we're seeing in Gazan and what happened in Bosnia and Rwanda and everything else around that. So we've been very specific about why you couldn't do this around everything out there.
And then also terrorism.
It's complex, right, right, we put people in the Terror Watch this we the United States, the UK, even Europe, but not everyone sees every organization as a terrorist group.
So harmas in it itself.
You know, you don't have to speak to just me, but the guy who negotiated the Good Friday Agreement between Northern Ireland, UK and Ireland, Jonathan Powell, ha MASS is not recognized as a terrorist organization to about one hundred and sixty other countries. You know, it's literally, to lack of a better term, white countries in Europe and the United States and Israel. So it's complex, right when you have like a genocidal act that's been really enforced by
and That's why there was rulings are really important. That's why the plausible genocide, which is effectively genocide by international standards, and having a Franciscalbinator's report to the UN all enforcing the fact that this is the genocide, really makes this possible.
It's really difficult when you have an individual act. You know, you can have an act of terror, and you can have an act an act of violence and say, well, that was that's done by terrorism organized is surely I should be able to remove my funding from this right now. And it's you know, you could argue and you know that they're freedom fighters for some reason, and you could talk about how people felt of the ira and all then iland whether their freedom fighters are not terrorists.
So it's complex there.
But that's why all those other rulings are really important to make this possible. And it really doesn't matter what the US and the UK say. If the Top Court, which by the way, they fund through the UN, is making these rulings.
What's the effect been so far on the politics back at home, if any.
Not.
We haven't had a direct response. I definitely know that they are worried. We've had a bit of a blowback from I think government tax people who've gone on air in the UK say this is not legal, you know. And the interesting thing is here, they've sent accountants out to do this, right, they've sent tax experts. There's no tax person that you work with that's going to recommend you do this. This is based in international law, and the problem with tax lawyers and tax specialists is they don't
understand international law. We're using laws that are written by the UN and the Hague, but also your laws that are written by the UK government to address terrorism, to address war crimes, to address genocide. To do this, we're not using tax law. The only tax part is the trust.
You know, the factors. We're saying you can withhold all your funding because it's in the international law and our own domestic laws, the ICC Act and Terror Actors say you are culpable right now if we are supporting this, and I.
Think that's the I feel like they've approached this wrongly.
You know, have an expert who is an expert in war crimes and an expert in international law to call this illegal. Have an expert who understands the Terrorism Act to call this illegal. They haven't been able to muster that, yet they've only had accountants basically go out there and say that, And no accountant is going to tell you Ryan, you know, or anywhere on the show that you should withhold your tax.
Well, I was just going to say and to like ask that question about how this does the success of this reflects on our public opinion on the war is among people in the UK? Do you see the success of this as being a reflection of you know, kind of what we were talking about earlier in the show with Ryan and I were talking about what Donald Trump said about Israel's public relations problem? Do you see this as reflecting like real, real deep fissures in public opinion about that question?
One percent?
I think the I mean, you only have to look at the public opinion here where it's like over seventy percent want to see spirits point in the UK is I don't know the numbers off the top of my head that's surpassed that. I mean, you even have you asked the question for people on the right. I think people are generally sick of waking up to those images. Generally can't understand how our governments are okay with this, generally, like why are we still sending weapons to help this.
I think public opinion. I think across you know, somebody said to me, Oh, it's just the global South or at least that cares about this. You only have to look at your streets every weekend to realize how many
people care about this. You only have to look at the reason they're trying to ban things like TikTok here and in the UK because so much engagement around how how atrocious all of this is, How we can't believe that we're okay with this, and we can't believe you know, that this is happening and we can watch it, you know.
I think people are over our institutions continuing this map, continuing these massacres, and millions of people across the UK at the west of the world want killings of Palestinians by Israelis to just end, just simply end at this point. And whether you are pro Palestinian or you have a side or whatever, I think the majority of people want
it to stop. And that is something you can't I think I think most people agree with right, Like, you're seeing people who are like not even engaged in these politics, not engaged in Palestinian liberation, out there going look, I just want kids. I don't want kids that look like that could be my kid, bomb shot or starved.
And you may have seen this video recently, but if you didn't, there was this a French national who was kind of caught on video down in Gaza talking about and actually like engage and basically torture of a Palestinian detainee. And then there was an effort online to identify like who this who this person was, which was successful people who people who were friends with him.
So wait a minute, I know who that is.
And now there's kind of an effort underway to prosecute this guy when he comes back to France after this. What sense do you have among people who are trying to, you know, bring accountability to people who are engaged in this, either at the leadership level or on the ground. Are there any efforts that are proceeding in any ways that are kind of worth exploring at this point.
Yeah.
And the interesting thing about that is that obviously, you know, we're working on something like that, which we'll get into. But I think the public don't want these people coming back and being that teacher of their kids. The public don't want these individuals to sit next to them in
the office. The public don't want to engage with these individuals who've killed children and celebrated killing children, who've taught should other human beings and just sit next to them in the coffeehouse like nothing changed and and talk to them. I think people are deeply uncomfortable with that and the
fact that they will potentially slip back into society. So you know the reason, the big the reason that the taxing just one second, The reason people want to do this is because you've had protests after protests, millions of people in the United Kingdom March and everyone's always asking what more can I do? This is a way for them to actively get involved now to answer your actual question.
Because the public can't do this, there are lawyers across the United States, across Europe who are trying to hold these individuals accountable.
Right now.
There are a set of cases being worked on to go after the Israeli administration but also the American administration.
For their war crimes.
There is a movement of lawyers also across the EU going after individuals personally IDs soldiers responsible for those war crimes too. They're arrogant enough to do it on video it's not that difficult to bring charges against them.
The French government even cleared the way.
The Justice Department earlier this week cleared the way for prosecutions if anyone could identify people, right, there is always a will the will the government actually get in the way, Will the government actually stop us prosecuting these individuals.
Well, that's all been clear.
The Justice Department announcement going if you can under if you have that, you have the evidence, those charges can be brought to court. But yes, to answer to answer your other point about what's happening. So I am working with a coalition of lawyers with other partners like Noorder, earlcat who's a famous human rights lawyer here in the United States, which Palestinian, bringing cases against both Israel but
the United States. And the focus and the lawyers that I'm working on have is the United States, because we this wouldn't be possible without them. We have funded it. We have literally sent cash, just cash. We have We have sent all the weapons that have been used for this genocide, the amount weapons as well as used. They'd be out, they'd be out of bombs in a week if we weren't continuously restocking that The amount they've dropped this shocking, and they wouldn't be able to do that
without the United States. So we are complicit, and we've made it embedded than that, but also the political cover we've provided, the amount of vetos when we've already known since the middle of October it's and ethnic cleansing, it's a genocide.
We've provided all of that. So we have a coalition of lawyers.
Specifically, the countries where these cases are more towards the end of actually being submitted are in Ireland and Spain. They will happen this spring where there'll be cases brought against not just Biden, not just Blinken, not just Austin.
Our targets are the entire administration, and that includes those press secretaries from Matt Miller to koreemj KJP and John Kirby, who outwardly promoted genocide, who outwardly said this is okay, who outly also butcher international law when saying things like Israel has a right to defend itself. I guess every state has a right to defend itself, but from another state, not from people they occupy. In fact, resistance is the actual thing that is lead goal from occupation in international law.
So the gaslet and lied to the public blatantly about all this stuff already. So they are culpable. Every press secretary, every member of the war cabinet, every staff member from Jeff Science, they are culpable in these cases. And they are all being named in these cases because it's important that they don't know any more. They don't know any
peace going forward. We accept that the president, through maybe international because of diplomatic community, might not be able to be charged immediately, but hey, he might not be in office in November, and I might lose the election, so there might be a potential for him to be justice to be sought against him. But none of those staff members have immunity from prosecution anywhere else in the world.
If they go abroad and these cases are brought, they will be named and there will be warrants for them to appear at court.
And Ashe's last question, Neil, you personally, you've had an interesting journey to this place. Who worked in some conservative circles in Britain, worked for work for Tony Blair when he was minised envoy. You know, can you describe a little bit of your journey, how you got to the place where you said, you know what, I can't allow these these folks in a moment of sleep, and I'm gonna do everything I can to bring an end to the UK involvement in this as quickly as possible.
Yeah, honestly, just knowing being taught what horrors like this are, Like, I think we do a disservice to our education system by not teaching things like we want to talk about the Holocausts. Yeah, we teach it properly in the UK, and we're taught that this should never happen. We're taught that we shouldn't indiscriminately watch the massacre of children, babies, grandparents.
And you know, I am also the descendant of someone who had to go through that in Kenya with the British and learning and having my own family talk about that stuff.
Having seen a part like firsthand.
When you work in the mid East End Boys office is really hard to see and you know, and the reason I left that job was what seeing a part at first. And I think people have said much better things than I'm ever going to say about what they've seen when they went there, but it's unseeable after that, and then watching this indiscriminate killing and watching that this could be our future.
Also, I think this is the part that.
I think people who are not engaged you need to understand. If we tolerate this, our children are next. The way they are policing and brutalizing Palestinians, the way they are massacring Palestinians. I've only learned from Iraq, you know, myself and everybody else, that everything we've done abroad comes back home. You know, there was a time where no one believed drones would be over the skies of NYC monitoring us, and then swat teams would rade your home. Well, we
did that in two thousand and three, four five. Now we do it in Brooklyn. You know, there are things that we're doing in Israel that if we tolerate, they will happen to our own people. And we must and the only thing standing between us and that is Palestinians right now, and we must do everything we can to stop mad these atrocities. This isn't just about me coming to this. There are millions of people across the world who've come to this and seen something that they don't
want to live with. It's something that they understand could happen to them.
Well, she's well said, and thank you so much for joining us, really appreciate it.
Thank you.
All right. Well, that'll do it for today. You're here tomorrow, is that right.
I'm just gonna say I will be here with Crystal tomorrow and we will be back here with more counterpoints next Wednesday.
There you go, all right, see you guys then