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All right, speaking of who's going to fill this vacuum, let's put this element up on the screen, the first of what hopefully will become many co broad lines with my colleague Saga and Jetty. This drop site news article of headline Trump's and a seed director for Israel and Iran previously worked for Israeli Ministry of Defense. That headline is what it says it is. Well, you're like, wait
a minute, you can do that. You can work for the Israeli Ministry of Defense and then you can work for the night I said, well, of course you can.
Why did you think that you couldn't.
Well it's very interesting, isn't it. Ryan, Yeah, let's break some of this down for the audience.
So this is very important.
So, as I explained previously about the NSC, we just talked about power vacuum. So not only do we have Mike Wallace, who we know advocated for war with Iran when the Israelis were here, we now know that he put in charge of the Israel and the Iran portfolio, combined that portfolio under this woman, Marav Saren, now Marev
Saren is the director for Israel and Iran at the NSC. Now, what we know from her own background publicly reported let's put that up there on the screen, please shall we, is that she admits quote worked at Israel's Ministry of Defense, where she participated in negotiations in the West Bank between Israel's coordinator for government activities and the territories and palesinating authority officials. So this is a person, Ryan, who literally worked for the Israeli Ministry of Defense.
Basically we were just talking about the Pentagon.
He Israeli version of the Pentagon who is not working in the United States government to develop policy visa VI that person. I should also mention there that that biography comes from the Foundation for Defensive Democracies. What is the probably single most pro war with Iran organization in the United States today.
Yeah, and so what was so that was previously known. What wasn't known is that she's working at the NSC. There was ever a public announcement made about that, but the NSC has confirmed it to us.
We can read this.
NSC spokesperson Brian Hughes says, the following. Morav is a patriotic American who has served in the United States government for years, including for President Trump, Senator Ted Cruz, and
Congress and James Comer. We are thrilled to have her expertise in the NSC, where she carries out the President's agenda on a range of Middle East issues, because I had asked, do you have anything set up in place to mitigate potential conflicts of interest, because you know, she is overseeing policy with a country where she previously served that country.
And this is why this matters so much.
That country, Israel, is currently trying to blow up our negotiations with Iran and between Iran and the United States. We are involved, and we're going to talk about those more in a moment. We're involved in these direct talks with Iran because the President of the United States has repeatedly said he believes that negotiations are a better resolution solution to our problem with Iran than an attack. Israel disagrees Israel wants us to attack. Yes, Israel has argued
internally that it wants us to attack. So the NSC director for both of those countries previously worked for Israel.
How do you get a security clearance if ver former employee boggles the mind and inevitably ran, what are we going to be smeared as anti semi? It's calling in to question somebody's loyalty. No, I would say this about anyone. I'm Indian descent.
Religion doesn't matter, this about the country.
If the guy running the NSC India desk is a Indian citizen.
Or who worked for the Indian worked.
For the Indian military, I would say absolutely not.
How can you trust this guy's judgment? And then even worse, if you're in charge of the Iran portfolio, that's like taking a former Indian military official who appens to have US citizen and put him on the Pakistan desk. What saying the vice versa, you're gonna put somebody in charge of the mortal enemy of a government if you used to work for and by the way, mortal enemy. I'm using their language, the Israeli languages. That's so they see them. I'm not saying I believe that, but that's how.
They view it.
And in fact, the general policy of the US government, and I've seen this with friends firsthand, is to not send somebody of a particular nationality to serve in a particular country. Let's say you are and I've seen this firsthand. Let's say you're Iranian American and you're born here in the United States. You are as American as I am. They will not have you work on Iran inside the CIA or the State Department, even though you might speak Persian and know the country.
That it's a little too close.
It's it's there's some suspicion in orderline racism. If you're Pakistani American, you're born here in the United States, they will not have you serving Pakistan. Ecuadorian American, they won't send you. I think there are exceptions.
I will defend that's actually a good policy.
I think it's fine too.
I get it, like I understand where it's coming from, because it's like, all right, look, we're all we're all Americans here, and there's a lot of places we can send you. We're gonna send you know, we're gonna send the Iranian, the ecuador Ecuadorian into Iran. Right, But so that's there, like it or not. That is the general approach.
You can find exceptions, but that is the general approach that the American government takes to foreign countries and your place of birth that those are now, those are not people who worked for the Iranian Ministry of Defense or the Equadorians. Their parents or parents are from there. She personally worked for the Israeli Ministry of Defense.
By her own admission again and by the way, at the FD the Foundation for Defensive Democracies whose chairman Mark Dubowitz is the chief opponent right now of any Trump negotiation with Irani. So you have Trump who wants to deal with Iran, and then the person running his White House's Iran desk is a former employee of the organization who wants to kill the American organization which wants to kill an Iran deal.
And of a government which also wants to kill that deal.
Truly, do not preach to me about how you can't say that this is a most obvious conflict of interest, And yes, dare I say an accusation of dual loyalty is in order, because you don't just go work for that government if you don't have at least some allegiance or something to it, and then to come and work for our country, shall we?
You know this is one where they have would be.
Strange if she worked for the Ministry of Defense in Israel and wasn't loyalty of course.
Even weirder So then what what so that the only alternative where this somehow works is that she's a US double agent who was working for secret about that and then going out in the Yeah, something tells me doesn't seem to be true, and that, by the way, inevitably this is going to cause a massive freak out, even just you and I reporting on this.
For our Washington audience that's watching this and wondering, Uh, the answer to your question is she related to Omri Sarah? Yes, that's right, that's her brother.
Yeah, omriy is a long time, no long known person here in Washington works for Senator Ted Cruz, one of the most vociferous pro Israel voices probably in the United States opponent of the around you. That's fine, listen, you know, yeah he works her Ted Cruise. That those are tech Cruises views.
I don't have any problem. I don't know problem.
Absolutely, I have no problem with that. Absolutely, even her working for Ted Cruise. Yeah, a little weird, you know previously in my opinion, but you're not running the countries, you know, foreign policy, and uh, you know, to step back a little bit again and just for to explain some Washington terms. So we're in the middle of this Pentagon power vacuum.
Okay.
But the thing is is that the NSC's job is to develop options.
It's genuinely a staff agency.
So when Donald Trump tells his National security advisor in Mike Waltson says I need options on Israel and run, the person Mike Waltz turns to is her. So her job is to coordinate from all of the different agencies CIA, Pentagon, DIA, you know, GEO and Spatial Intelligence Agency whatever, bring them all together and say we need to prepare strike packages or whatever. The person who's in charge of that has an immense amount of power because they're controlling the actual
stuff that goes to the President's desk. Let's say here on the Hooty strikes, things like that, Well, if you have this type of ideology and you previously worked for this government, what do you think the mindset that you're going to bring? And that doesn't even bring into question. Remember there was this huge story. Do we have that New York Times story? I have no inside information around this, but this says Trump waived off this really strike after
Division's emergency administration. The pro Israel side was adamantly convinced right that the America firsters on the NSC are the people who leaked this. I no longer am so sure.
Let's say you're a former employee of the Israeli Mystery of Defense, and your former employer didn't get what it wanted, and you wanted to make it clear to many people on the outside about what your employer, Donald Trump is now currently doing and is stifling some of the ideology that you have now pushed for and believed in for the better part of a decade. Well, I don't know, Ryan, maybe I would leak it to the New York Times, Yeah, and wouldn't I.
And this Times article is fascinating because it includes Tulca Gabbard, Director of National Intelligence, saying that she is against the US striking Iran. It includes Jade Vance, the Vice President, saying that he is against striking Iran. It includes Pete Hegseith, Secretary of Defense, saying he is against striking Iran.
And in it even Michael Waltz.
Acknowledges in the meeting that the Israeli plans won't work without US support, and he offers little skepticism. Now, he and Carrillo, the Stentcom commander, had previously engaged with Israel on these war plans, and and they're they're clearly the most open to it of any of the top administration officials.
And while Sager and I were writing the story, the editor was like, Okay, in this meeting, like who is Who's who's taking this support for Israel side and saying that we should bomb around Because clearly you've got everybody, the head of the Intelligence Community, head of the Pentagon, John Ratcliffe, everybody is saying don't do this. So it's a meeting, there's it's a debate. Tell us, who is on the yes side, And the ironic answer is Israel,
Like there actually weren't American officials in the meeting. Who are as who think that it is in America's interests to launch this strike? Yet the entire echelon from the President across all of his leadership is debating this issue.
Look, who are you debating? Why are you debating?
Like, if nobody inside the United States thinks that this is in the interest of the United States, why.
Are we even having a meeting about it?
Which is Wow, it's completely nuts.
And they might get their way, and yet.
I want to be very clear here, they may win. In fact, I would not bet against these people.
I wouldn't want to be a run.
Yeah, you're living here and working on this stuff.
Imagine you're a run in these negotiations and they're like, you know, you just met with witcough and now you're moving on to the technical side. And you sit down across the table in your trading paper and you look up and it's somebody from the Israeli ministries.
You're like, wait what You're like, you're supposed to be working for them? How does that work? Yeah? I mean, would you be serious?
Would you trust that person to negotiate or develop policy and good faith, absolutely, especially.
After we don't have a great track record of sticking to our deals.
Yes, it's a different things.
It deals with China, deals with Mexico, deals with the run, you name it.
And look, that's why Ryan and I wrote the story.
It's important the public needs to know about the people who are actually working on this stuff. And there are a lot of patriots who still work in the United States government. There are a lot of patriots who look at this and say, I have no idea how you can get a security clearance. I can't believe that you
can to work here. That you and your boss, Mike Wallas, your boss literally caught including Jeffrey Goldberg, and you get to stay right and he gets to continue to be in the Oval, and you know, push for war with Iran, and just to show everyone that's the edifice that is being protected here behind the scenes. America deserves to know. I don't want to war. I don't think most people do either. But people who do, they're in power right now and they could win. They could very easily win.
They could absolutely all right.
So with that, let's get over to the Israel section.
The Israeli military is out with its own report on the massacre of fifteen paramedics in Gaza, which happened on March twenty third, shortly after the Israel broke it cease fire with Hamas and Gaza. You can put this element up on the screen. This is from our drop side of news Twitter account which go through goes through kind of the full report. I put up E three while we're at it. This is the video footage that later
emerged that kind of forced this report out. So what we have from the Israeli military report is effectively a complete whitewashing of the incident. They they they say that it adds up to accountability because one deputy commander was removed from his post as a result of the findings of this. But for those who didn't follow a Hamas, I'm not sorry, not not Hamas. They claimed it was Hamas. Later, a Red Crescent medical vehicle was was fired on by
Israeli forces. We interviewed one of the only the only known survivor of that. He said he said that they're just driving along the road and all of a sudden, gunshots ring out, and the two people in the front of the vehicle killed. He was then he was then grabbed, dragged out, beaten ruth sleeve for many hours, and then he witnessed what happened next which you just saw on that video, which is the other vehicles coming, medical vehicles coming to try to figure out what happened to the
ones that they had lost contact with. The Israelis then opened fire on all of them, and according to the Red Crescent, based on autopsies of them, there are a lot of headshot wounds and wounds to the torso that indicate that.
They were executed.
We know then they were buried in a mass grave and tried to bury the even even the vehicles with them. So the Israeli report says that they don't have any evidence that they were shot point blank range, that's one thing, but they make that claim without evidence. They criticize the commanders for burying the ambulance with bulldozers under the sand. They say that they said there was no reason to do that. They say burying the bodies in a mass grave was acceptable.
Now finally at the end, then a UN.
Vehicle approaches the situation and the Israelis fire on the UN vehicle as well. That they say was a breach of protocol. So that is the only thing and everything that I've just laid out, other than the burring of the ambulance by a bulldozer, that the Israelis hear say, constituted something that they were at fault for and as a result, deputy commander relieved from his responsibilities.
One thing that hasn't gotten anywhere.
Near enough attention in the western press coverage of this is a startling video that Israel's Channel fourteen obtained, and we can roll some of this here. So the Golani Brigade, which is known as a fairly reckless brigade in Israel even among other Israeli forces, is the one that carried out this masacre. This is a deputy command. This is a commander speaking to the Golani Brigade. He says, go out, kill a lot of enemy, take a lot of territory.
And that's how up until now we have returned hostages. Everyone we meet is an enemy. We identify a figure, we open fire, eliminate it, we move on. So that is a commander of the Golani Brigade speaking to Golani Brigade forces. This is before this incident with the paramedics. He says to them, everyone we meet is an enemy, kill them and move on. They then encounter these fifteen paramedics, they kill them and they move on. Israel's response is that they are going to remove just one figure.
From this Sagar. This was.
To a global community that is pretty inured to the violence and the carnage going on. This one broke through because of its kind of horror film esque nature of it and because they are targeting people who are just out trying to do trying to save people's lives. Israel immediately came out and claimed that they had killed some Hamas fighter.
His body was not found.
They named the Hamas fighter they said was with them, body was not there.
That was a lie. Then they said that were well six.
Of them were Hamas, Like you couldn't tell these were ambulances, but you could somehow tell it.
These dead people, well, I think it's were Moss members.
Ryan for you to break down the chain of how this all happened. So, if it was not for outlets like drop Site and independent journalists, I do not believe that this would have come to life.
Because the legacy press covered it as is.
They were like Israel says they killed so and so they didn't even remember you flag this. The New York Times did not even call up the Red Crest asked what actually happened with all this and the fact that it was on video and you know, literally there's a horrible video of the guy who died recording his last words to his mother. If it wasn't for that, I don't think any of this gets picked up, if no investigation even happened.
The first Palestine reporter I saw break this was Hin Kaudrey, who I don't think we've had her on the program, but she's a terrific journalist in Gaza who she was one of those those who kind of blew up on Instagram and TikTok very very early on, and she has a huge kind of global following. And immediately on March twenty third, she started hearing what had happened, and because of her, another Palestinian reporter, some of which went on to report for drops the news about this that version
was out there. Then the New York Times comes out finally, like two Times didn't even want to cover it, and there was an internal fight within the Times about whether they should even do an article on it, and they buried it in one unrelated article, and then when they finally did cover it, they said, you know, who's to say what happened? Because the Israelis said that the ambulances were quote advancing suspiciously, which is just an absolutely comical
addition to our new lexicon. How does an ambulance advance suspiciously? The Israelis claimed that there were the sirens and the lights of the ambulances were not on, and that might have been the end of the story if one of the assassinated medics had not filmed his own death. So he had his phone going as he's as he's going through this rafa area, and you all of a sudden and you see, so he's filming the entire thing. You saw his that was his view, that was his video
that you saw at the top of this segment. You see that the lights are on, lights are obviously on, and all of a sudden, you hear the gunfire erupt and you hear him say before he is killed, forgive me, mother, forgive me. All I wanted to do was help people. And you can just sense that guilt, the guilt of a son that is not rational because nobody should feel guilty for being murdered because you're trying to help people.
But you know that his mother said to him so many times, be careful, be careful, and he told her, don't worry, Mom, I'm gonna be careful.
I'll be fine. I need to help other people.
And now in his last moments, he's realizing that these just promised that he made to his mother that he would be fine and that he would come home. Uh, he's going to break that promise by being executed at the hands of these Israeli forces that he hears getting closer and closer and then finally killing him buried by him, burying him in a mass grave, right and if And then they forgot to steal his phone and destroy it.
And so when he was unearthed a week later, because the Israelis were blocking the un from going and get and clearing the scene, uh, they discovered his phone and fortunately they were able to, I guess get through his pass code. And then and they found this video and they're like, oh, everything Israel said about this was a lie. The sirens were on, there was no Hamas fighter, nobody's shooting back.
You killed these people in cold in cold blood.
And you go back and read the drop site interview with the only survivor. He watched them bury these people. He watched them bury the vehicles, which is like what compels you to take a bulldozer to an ambulance and try to bury it under sand other than.
Trying to like completely cover up this scene.
And it also shows the scale of the sense of impunity that is felt by some Israeli forces any other force on this planet. At this point, if you kill fifteen paramedics, you know the world is going to know about this. You're not even like you're cancox some story about what happened, but you're not going to try to cover it up like that, like bur by.
Burying the ambulances.
But there's so much impunity that they have gotten away with so many things that they thought it was in the within the realm of possibility that they could get some bulldozers out there and bury these ambulances under the sand with the bodies and move on.
At the end, they're correct.
One guy is getting removed from his job and celebrated in the in their report, and there's really report.
They celebrate the guy. He had an amazing career, he was wounded.
But you know, he shouldn't have fired on the They shouldn't have allowed them to fire on this one vehicle.
At the same time, Ryan, we have this story. Let's put it up there on the screen. Can you describe for us what happened here?
Yeah.
So Fatma Hosana was who is a photo twenty five year old photojournalist in Gaza who had also picked up a lot of international attention for her for her own kind of charisma and confidence and courage and all also for her photographs, just absolutely compelling work. She is the focal point of a documentary that was just accepted into Khan So, how you said, a huge achievement in the
world of documentary filmmaking. The day after her film was accepted into Khan the Film Festival, her homes is hit with a targeted strike, which kills I believe at this count ten members of her family.
Of course, they're.
Saying which so they're saying that they were aiming for some Hamas fighter or something.
Let's say that that's true just for a second.
It means that they're willing to kill ten innocent people for one Hamas fighter in his home, which is a violation of the laws of war, like even if a person and was previously a combatant, when they go back to their home, laws of war say you don't attack somebody in their homes, particularly you don't do it with nine of their family members surrounding them. The coincidence to me is too stark. They have targeted so many people have who have risen to global celebrity.
That and target we're not talking about.
They hit a huge apartment building and they happen to be inside the apartment building. Hit her home like a direct hit on their home, just like they hit when they killed the poet ray fat Alarier.
He was in a second floor apartment they hit.
They hit the second floor apartment only with a direct hit, killed him, a bunch of his family, family members, the I forget, I forget his name of the Instagram and TikTok star in the Northern Gaza, who was famous for as a chef cook just cooking for people and because of what he was able to do, he developed his global audience, killed him direct post on Shabot our reporter killed directly. There's not accidental killings. These are people who
sit around make a decision to target somebody. Send that up the chain and it is signed off on and then it is executed yep.
And you know, every once in a while somebody like you, somebody like Trey Yanks at Fox News will try and bring attention to this, but by and large completely ignored.
And they have to now that the director said, they they're changing the ending now, like not the ending, but the end card. The end card said, uh, you know, Fatma is alive in Gaza and continuing her pursuit of photojournalism. They now have had to add a new card to the end of that documentary and there won't be a
dry eye in the house. And when the movie comes out, you'll have pro Israel forces complaining about it, trying to shut down theaters that will play it, and then asking why the world hates them?
Yeah, why is the world so against us?
Right?
No clue, Let's break the Iron deal down? What do you got for us on.
That despite all of the obstacles thrown up in their way direct us around, talks are preceding with some significant momentum. Let's put this treat of Parsi post on the screen says, So the teams met in Rome on Saturday, and what is surprising coming out of this is that they said, all right, the technical meeting coming out of this will be in four days, and we're going to meet just a couple of days after that for political meetings again and to give people a sense of how these go.
So you get the political people in a room and they kind of draw the political outline of what the deal is going to look like, and you don't need
the necessarily the technical experts in there. So in this case, the big fight between and Israel, as continues to insert itself into this into these negotiations, they want there to be zero nuclear program in Iran, no civilian nuclear program at all, Whereas the US and Iran have said at this point we're okay with a civilian nuclear program with the Atomic Energy Agency monitoring it and you know, verifying
that there is no capacity for a breakout. Israel says, if you allow them to have that, that gets them too close to being able to break out to a bomb if the deal collapses. So that's the political argument. So by setting up the technical meeting just a few days after the political one, suggests that the political meeting went well, because now you need the technical folks to come in and say, okay, what does it mean to have a civilian program that is under this level of
you know, enrichment threshold. And it also means that the technical details. The fact that they schedule the next political meeting soon after the textical one suggests that they think the technical dealers aren't that complicated. They should be able to sit down, hash this out and get on with it. Nikki Haley put up He's six here sees this happening as well good sign that things are moving apace that
Nicki Haley is freaked out. She says Obama two point zero because she thinks, I think rightly that the only reason Trump well, Trump ripped up the Iran deal for two reasons. First it was called the Obama Nuclear Deal, and second, his pro Israel hawks insisted that he ripped it up. So Sel Madilson didn't like it. And it's called the Obama Nuclear Deal.
Day one.
Get it out.
And what we just discussed about this former ID, you know, Israeli Ministry of Defense employee, her old boss, Mark Tubowitz. Here's I want to be clear about what these people want. It's not that they object to a deal. Here's what he had to say, just yesterday. The Islamic Republic is weaker than ever, hated by most Iranians, hammered by.
The IDF and mosade that part's true is terror. It's terror.
Army's air defense's missile production capability are in ruins. Never a better time to dismantle its nuke program and finish off the regime.
Will whoa whoa? Hold on a second, So we're not talking about the deal.
Do we have the retchers?
Yeah?
Yeah, yes, yeah.
It's like you're like, oh, so this isn't about the nuclear program at all. This is about finishing off the regime. This is not about Obama. This is about regime change. And they finally are being forced to say the quiet part out loud because they can't even rely on getting the whole right wing ecosystem jammed up around Obama. They have to now counter signal Trump. The way they're doing it is how Nikki Haley is on, Oh, this is all about Obama and all this, but let's not, like,
let's be honest about their goal. They want a straight up regime change war. That strike by Israel was not about the Iranian nuclear program. That was a pretext to suck the United States and into a war of total annihilation and regime change in Iran?
Period? Now, did you sign up for that? Do most people want that?
I don't think so. I think it would be a complete disaster. And it's pretty clear the agenda that's happening inside. And while I want to hold these up, I just don't think you can or you can understate how colossal the campaign against this is.
So for example, let's put this up there on the screen. Please.
Trump has now appointed Mark Levin from Fox News to quote lead the Homeland Security Advisory Council. Now, Mark Levin is one of the most anti Iran deal forces in the American conservative commentariat. This guy is straight out of the FDD playbook. He's somebody wants regime change. He attacks anybody who previously is not like Holy subservient to the State of Israel, who's been appointed previously to the Pentagon. He's actively led that against him. Trump of course respects him.
Why because he's on television and now he's putting him on this advisory council with more access to Trump. Well, this individual that's a very strong voice. Mark Levin has also targeted Tulsi Gabbard. Why because Tulsi Gabbard had the audacity Ryan to present US intelligence saying if we bomb Iran, if Israel bombs aren, we're going to be drawn into a war. And he said she needs to be fired and retract that evidence. This is the Iraq war level shit.
You know, this is Dick Cheney going to the CIA to meddle with the national intelligence estimate about Iraq's nuclear weapons program. That's what we're dealing with here. And again I'm not betting against them.
I think they're going to win. That's the terrifyable.
And there was just an intelligence assessment that came out. And remember when Tulsi and Ratcliffe were testifying before Congress recently and the whole hearing devolved into fighting over the Jeffrey Goldberg signal chat. So the reason that those were scheduled were actually to talk about the new intelligence assessment
for the annual Intelligence Assessment. The assessment that they presented to Congress was that Iran has made zero move toward a militarized nuclear program, and that their intelligence assessment is that they have zero interest in moving to a military
nuclear program, a weaponized nuclear program, none whatsoever. They did say that because of all of the bellicost rhetoric from Israel and from the United States that there were some hardline figures in Iran who advocated for a military nuclear program in ways that they had not done so before, so that the politics were changing a tiny bit as a result of all of the pressure. They said from the Ietola and elsewhere, there were no interest at all.
That's that's the American intelligence assessment. And what Dubs is saying is, how dare you? I want different facts again?
This is this literally is out of the Iraq War like. It's not a joke, it's it's reality. This is exactly how it all went down, with the politicization of the intelligence and the meddling and making sure that it said exactly what they wanted so they could present all this bullshit the Congress and the Secretary of State. This is the same playbook that's happening right now. I would be remiss if I didn't at least give like some good news. Let's put this up there please on the screen.
At e eight.
Adam Boehler, who will all recall, was sidelined for several months for having the audacity to what was it again.
Talk with oh right, that's to say that we're not a audacity when.
On television and said we are not a client state of Israel, and for that was benched for several months. Has now been appointed to an expanded hostage on V royal role after the Hamas tawks uproar. Allegedly he has put in for you know, an application or whatever to try and restart some negotiation with Hamas or or continued
cease fire and you know, hostage release. We wish him the best of luck, but also if that happened to you, Ryan, are you ever going to open your mouth again about the usum band fines that it is?
No? Yeah, okay, sorry, so correction right, they are, we are clients my fault.
Yeah, oops, yeah, so you know that.
Look, Steve Wikoff lives, He lives to fight another day, Bowler survives. These are all good things, but there's a lot of other.
Bad stuff that's happening.
They have everything.
I think the danger is what they want to do is because Trump wants to get this done quickly, and Trump also is not paying that much attention. So for example, on the Ukraine thing, well he told us to be wrapp by day one.
Okay, well's day ninety whatever.
Marco Rubio just the other day goes, hey, if Russia and Ukraine don't sign a deal soon, America will lose interest. So they're trying to do bilateral trade negotians with seventy five countries, wrap up the largest land war in Europe, and wrap on Irani nuclear all in a three month period.
Well, if all.
That happens is it just drags on, right, then the more political capital that the pro Iran war caucus has to say to them, Hey, we tried negotiations, they're not coming to the table.
Let's go ahead and bomb them. That is the real danger here.
Yeah, Trump wants an accelerated timeline. Maybe Iran will give it to him. I'm not so sure I would. If I were there, right, I would. I would have wanted a lot of trust and a lot of verification before hour ever in or something.
The number one thing that iron is asking for is an ironclad guarantee that they will not rip up this deal. Yes, and are you gonna You can't really blame them for doing that, like they they interestingly abided by the terms of the Iran deal for a significant amount of time after Trump walked away from it. And remain in the deal with the Europeans and the Russians because it was this, you know, there was a large global deal that with
the on. So they're like, just promise us you're not going to break it this time, and we're like.
I'm not so sure about that, right, that's right?
Have a hard bard, guys. Yes, you know, not not an ideal situation. I'll just put it that way.
But listen, we remain relatively optimistic here, and we'll continue to track it. Finally, final segment or actually, no, we still have to cover the pope too, we'll get that later. Let's start with Douglas Murray catches some straits in the latest Joe Rogan podcast episode.
Let's take a listen.
Have you been there? Right?
That's a good point.
Have you even you haven't been?
By the way, how is he and all these wars?
Can I just go to wars?
By the way, how are you let Are you allowed to just go to wars?
Can you just go to what to see of going?
Can I just go to wars? Or do I have to come back and say what people want me to say about the wars? Can I go to the wars and have my own opinions or do I have to have the opinions?
Not if you want to go back.
That's right that it's very interesting this war tourism. How do I get all this war tourism. I'd like to go to the Ukraine.
I want to go. I want to go.
I want to go to all this war tourists.
Do you have any awards that they can melt down and make bullets out of?
Joe, think about this. Do I seem like a guy that has a lot of awards.
Didn't you get one of those.
YouTube plaques when you hit a hundred thousand?
I don't even know where they send it. I don't know where.
I don't know where they're sending those YouTube plaques those. But I like this idea give your tourism. I like the idea of going to a war and then coming back having having a very black and white views. I been there, I get it, and I know and and interesting.
Okay, I like that. I like that.
I love that you feel better than the other people.
Well, of course there's a lot of people. It gets very murky. Most people I know that have been to war have a very murky.
Complex view of things.
But it is good to go to a war and then come back and be as sure as you were before you came. You don't have to go for very long.
No, you go for an hour, a couple hours.
It's a lunch.
Yeah, it's lunch.
On flack jacket that says press. That's rough there, Ryan for Douglas.
If for anybody who doesn't get the photo reference, let's put that one on the screen. Our producer Griffin's been dying to show everybody this photo for quite some time now. This is the chair where sinwar what was killed by and Israeli drone And as you could see, Douglas there on an IDF sponsored tour with his big press flack jacket, not really in danger because again he's on a you
know you IDF military sponsored thing. TI Tim actually made the best point, and that's something that I immediately texted Dave about is I was like, dude, he keeps saying, you've never been there. The only reason he gets to go is because he's a pro war propagandist, and so the government is allowing him to go. If you or I tried to set foot in the crossings, we're done,
all right, We're done. I don't even know if they'll let us in the country, all right, And having been to Israel before before I was ever made any public statement, Holy shit, I have never been put through the ringer any other country in the world.
Why are you here? What are you doing?
What is your dad in Muslim? You know it's wild and that's just a normal visitor to the country that's not made up those actual questions.
So nowadays, oh.
Man, Yeah, if you and I try to set even one hundred miles foot in Gaza, not gonna happen.
A lot of people who've been come back with a far worse impression of the situation on the ground than they have been than they had before.
But yeah, it was.
It was quite strange to hear Murray say it, because anybody who's casually followed the conflict knows that Israel has banned Western journalists from getting into Gaza.
So then how on earth did he sneak in?
Oh?
It turns out the IDF, you know, put him in their own little flat jacket and drove him to this scene for this this photo.
Op.
I don't think you should be able to wear a press vest in that circumstance. In what way are you press you're not You're not You're just completely.
You're just play acting. It's you know, Tim made a funny joke about Ukraine.
I mean it's the same thing, like what you think you are getting anywhere close to these really to the Ukrainian front line.
And obviously the same thing about Russia.
You know, if Russia was like, hey, you want to come in to it, it's like, no, I'm not being used by you, you know, to show me what you want in your little dog and pony show. And this is the same for anybody. You know, as you and I know covering the Pentagon beat, you only get to see what you want, what they want you to see. You get to ride around with the secretary. Yeah, that make you feel important in a humvy or whatever, but you're never going off the base. You don't get to
go in bed with troops. Actually, one of the interesting things is that in the early days of the war, during I Rock in Afghanistan, they actually did let journalists do that, and they started to pull back those you know, so that you don't have Remember that documentary Ristreppo, I mean that changed a lot of people's minds, where that book generation kill having the guy literally in the front Humby and people were like, oh, this is a clusterfuck.
I can't believe that this is what's happening. They shrank that stuff way down. So and it's our military, which is relatively relatively more open. Now we're talking about the Israelian military, Ukrainian and other things. So that was the preposterous nature of his argument. But there's also like a personal thing happening there where Douglas he opened his segment with Joe by being openly antagonistic, being like concern trolling him over not having enough people.
Came to the expert there.
The specific moment that he was challenging Dave Smith about have you been there? Was about when Dave Smith said they're not letting in humanitarian aid. Yes, and he's and he said, well, have you been been to the crossings? And what's so insane about that is that Israel has announced that since March second. I don't know when he did his little tourist trip there, but Israel announced on March second that they're not letting in aid. They said
it publicly. They have repeated that many times since then. They have publicly said they're not letting in aid in order to put pressure on the Palestinians through starvation to get them to reach a different deal than the ceasefire deal they've reached before. All you need is you don't even need a subscription to new papers. You can just read the free versions and you can read these quotes from it. You don't need to go to the crossing.
In fact, if you go on a an Israeli sponsored trip to a crossing and you observe anything different than what they are saying they're doing, then you are being lied to separately. The idea that you could just stand at a crossing and look at some trucks and that gives you any indication of what the humanitarian condition is inside of Gaza is also preposterous. The idea that you could sit in Sinwar's chair and know what the prices of eggplants and tomatoes are at the market is absurd.
The way you find that out is you talk to Palestinians who go to the markets. There are more than a million of them. You can talk to them. So reporting can be done without going inside there. Reporting can be done by Palestinian journalists who are inside Gaza. But the notion that you have to be there in order to see that is undermined by the fact that what he was saying that Aid was getting in was a lie.
He was wrong.
So yes, he's been there, but he's either a liar or an idiot, exactly right.
And yet him and Bill Maher had to further concern troll together on Bill Maher's show, Let's take a listen.
You were on Joe Rogan a couple of days ago, a week ago, something like that. I got a lot of press, and I'm glad you said what you said, which is I mean, I mean, I like Joe, but he has on people who entertain these crazy conspiracy theories and doesn't really push back on them. It's okay to have I mean, I'm a free speech absolutist pretty much, but there seems to be no pushback on this.
The reason I did this pushback, I mean, you just have to. I mean, you just have to. In my view, it's basic social hygiene.
If you've got somebody who's coming along who pretends to be a historian, who then can always do the thing of saying, oh, I actually don't call myself a historian, it's just other people I allowed to call me a historian. I'm not a car mechanic, but if I kept on being introduced as a car mechanic, I would say, oh no, you got the wrong guy. So they don't mind it.
They don't mind it. They have this slipout. These people that are trying to call out on Joe's show, they are doing things like Hitler wasn't that much of an anti semi main problem in the twentieth century was Winston Churchill. Winston Churchill was the warmonger. Adolf Hitler wanted peace, and I just look, it's a matter of social hygiene. Don't
feed me this shit. What they're watering and what's going to come up underneath them are going to be people who believe this Rod and a lot of people you can clearly see on the right at the moment, are very happy if you can denigrate the tradition of Winston Churchill and pretend that Adolf Hitler wasn't so bad, because then you can do things like Christian nationalism. You can do really really tough nationalist stuff.
They basically by Kane album.
That's the lost stage.
So straw maning, he's like equating Dave Smith, Darryl Cooper and Ian Carroll all in one. As he showed on the show, he did not even really know that much about Cooper and nor Ian Carroll whenever he was trying to denigrate them. But you know, let's just come back to the final point about having been there and about gatekeeping.
This is a guy who, again when he was in is what mid twenties wrote neo conservatism and why we need it in six when the Iraq War was a disaster, has since written books about migration, about wokeness, and now about whatever. His latest in Defense of the West book is he is just as unqualified and as lack of an expert as any of those individuals, and to be honest, actually less informed obviously from you know, his public comments that are all on the subject.
They're so reductive.
And then finally, you know, for these two free speech non gatekeepers and all those people bullshit, you're obvious you're indicating right there for gatekeeping. And you know, when's the last time anybody interesting was on Bill marshow be serious, Like, let's be honest.
And on the point of him not being informed, he's really playing weird games with this line where he was saying that people quote unquote downplay or Hitler's anti semitism. So apparently, like what he complained about on Rowan, He's like.
You were going to get into that, we can, but yeah, we should just do.
A second because like what he's saying.
So Darryl Cooper and others have said that at various times throughout Hitler's rise to power, he downplayed his own anti semitism and his true designs for the Jewish people in Germany and throughout Europe because those views were unpopular with the German public and abroad in particular abroad, and he had to smuggle those views in and then once he got power, then he carried then he and people say, well,
he wrote my comp Yes. So it feels like this shouldn't have to be explained to people, but apparently apparently it does. Politicians often will say something earlier in their career that is the truth, and then as they rise through power, they downplay that correct say, I don't really
believe that. You know, I'm not for not for one hundred and fifty percent tariffs or not for pure free trade and whatever is that in your interest in the political moment, you say that he's not saying that Hitler was not a thorough anti semi through and through with designs on a genocide, a holocaust.
That's not what he's saying.
Let me just lay this out for people. Chapter one.
I was doing a rereading chapter one, Volume two Ian Kershaw's Hitler nineteen thirty six to nineteen forty.
Five, called Nemesis.
There's a citation chapter one about the nineteen thirty six Berlin which year was the Olympics, I think it was six, Yeah, nineteen thirty six Earlian Olympics. They took down all the anti Semitic signs specifically to do what to make sure to downplay the antizis. So this is a matter of empirical.
Fact because they thought it was embarrassing.
This is a matter of fact fact that they and they even admitted it in documents that her Kershaw is able to review.
And by the way, Kershaw is about as like. Kershaw is not a quote unquote objective biographer. He hates it. So he hates and he makes it very quick.
And you know what's funny is he actually does the same thing in his introduction of his book that Daryl does, where he goes I am I detest Hitler.
I find him disgusting.
However, I want to view with an objective, as a lens as possible as to how this person is ideology was able to rise in Germany, and with that we must have some empathy and to try and to understand from which this arose so that it may never happen again.
Right, And if you listen to Douglas Murray, ye, then your view of Hitler is that he always was from his chest expressing his full anti Semitic viewpoint, and he
came to power anyway. The reason that Douglas Murray's view is dangerous is because it is wrong, and because it would lead you then to say, Okay, a future Hitler who we're going to try to prevent from coming to power is only someone who was always screaming their anti semitism from the rooftops, and that if they downplay it at any point, that's not Hitler, and so we can then it's okay, Okay, they've toned down some of their rhetoric,
so let's give them a second chance. What the actual reading of the actual Hitler is is that you have to figure out what they're going to do on your own, not just from their own rhetoric. Because if you allow their rhetoric to control what you think of them, they're just going to fool you, like Hitler fooled the German public. So Murray's interpretation, which is a historical and illiterate, is actually the dangerous one because it could cause people to then miss the next person totally.
Yeah. I mean yeah, I could go.
On this forever, but it's just ridiculous to me that somebody who is supposedly an expert, I mean, this is you know, what makes them It's funny. I'm talking about this book as if someone No, I'm reading.
The that's the most possible.
That's the historical that is, like.
Yeah, that's like reading Band of Brothers for the first time about World War Two.
Okay, that's it.
That's the research historiography that it takes to be able to cite something like this, and he's not even aware of a basic reference. Okay, all right, Finally, let's talk about the Pope, Pope Francis. We'd said at the beginning with the Pope sadly passed away this morning, eighty eight years old. Just yesterday met with Senator jd Vance. I believe we have a sorry for Vice President JD.
Vance.
A matter of habit, we've got the Vice President, who himself is a practicing Catholic, meeting with the Pope. Vance put out a statement today about his passing. Let's see what he said. He said, I just learned the passing of Francis. My heart goes out to the millions of Christians all of the world who loved him. I was happy to see him yesterday, who he was obviously very ill. I'll always remember him from the below homily he gave in the early age of the early days of COVID.
It was really quite beautiful. May God rest his soul. So, you know, unfortunate timing. Therefore, the Vice president, I think we can say.
That, well, there were reports that the Pope had snubbed him and said, well, now it's obviously he was just like sent his deputy out to give him a lecture about morality and particularly in the context of the creeping authoritarianism and the treatment of migrants. And yeah, so I think you can forgive the Pope for not making the broader we for our meeting. You know, this was a pope who I'm sure from the right people are not
a big fan of. You know, he came in at the beginning of the kind of greater Wokening, the global great Awokening did and one of the so he you know, he he had a lot of left wing instincts well back like that for the you know, support for the poor, support for migrants. What really ticks people off is when he came in and said nice things about gaining lesbian people, and towards the end allowed the Catholic Church to even bless you know, gay marriages.
Did he? I forget exactly. It's there's always controversy.
And then uh loosened the loosened the rules for divorced Catholics.
Yeah, I mean there were there's a huge debate inside of the Catholic By the way, I know non Catholic I'm friends with some and they me doing some secondhand, you know, explanations.
So if I get this wrong, I'm sorry.
But I know that there are a lot of fights within Catholicism and this we we were talking earlier about the show The Young Pope, and there's like a big debate about modernization of Catholicism versus like returning to some sort of like Latin service and you know, Vatican two and some of the previous edicts that was meant to modernize the church and make it more accessible to millions of people, like quote unquote meeting people where they are as opposed to like sticking to the dogma and to
the long held teachings and the structure. Now, I do think that the conservatives have been validated in that Catholicism remains down. You know, across the world, the number of practicing Catholics continues to decline. So the idea of like meeting people where they're at and being more socially transformed or whatever has not really worked.
Out for them.
Maybe the decline would be worse.
It could be worse. It's unfalsifiable. But what I'm saying is like, for a lot of the more conservative elopments in the church, their belief is that their belief is that by trying to modernize, you've both betrayed like the base of like practicing conservative Catholicism, while also not even preserving what you meant to, which is like the throngs of people coming into the church, and also making sure
that you have more people who are practitioners. Again, this is just my like outside analysis, but I do know it generally reflects like big fights within it and about who gets blessed or who gets cardinalship or whatever. And so within that that is the dynamic heading into what will inevitably be the next papal conclave and how they then respond to kind of the way that this pope decided to both guide the church and make himself obviously
the face you know, as the Holy Father. And so what the policy is that flows from that is actually pretty interesting because it's also a direction that a lot of Christian churches in America are grappling with. Right, You've
got Methodist Church. I mean, this is a huge schism about like BLM and pro gay friendly churches, and some people are like this is auretical right, and so there's like big fights and splits within the same argument I'm talking to you about right now, is like liberalization has not increased a more Christian country or any of that.
There's fight.
I mean, obviously it's Protestantism, so they can actually fight about the Word of Jesus. But it is interesting, you know, we'll see, I'm curious see which direction they go into.
And I have a ton of Catholic family members, cousins really mostly like Oklahoma, but they've spread out, spread out from Oklahoma. Uncle who moved to Oklahoma to be in the Air Force converted and and so the Grim, the Grim family out in Oklahoma now. And my my, my sense of it is that there's more room room to move in a liberal direction because the more conservative Catholics they're kind of dug in, like like they're going either way.
They're gonna grumble about it, but but they're they're sticking with it.
And while we're doing it.
One of my cousins, Christy, her boyfriend now Garrett, is a huge fan of the show Shadow. He like, it didn't even believe, No, what that's your cousin because her last name is not Grim.
That's cool.
It used to be.
I know, it actually didn't used to be so anyway out the Garrett.
Yeah, we love you guys.
Okay, Oh one other, one other thing.
The reason I'm here today and not and Crystal will be in on Wednesday is that my wife is getting surgery tomorrow. So I just wanted to say, you know, thank you uh to everybody for all the warm wishes, the prayers. Everything is as we've as we've gone through this. So her chemo is now all done. The battle is going well. Uh, we'll find out more after after the surgery. Then there'll be a little bit of radiation. And you know, the thing I've learned is like it's obvious, but this
stuff is hell. And there's a lot of people who are going through this as we speak, or have have gone through it, and you know, we're we're with you. There are setbacks, there's uh, but you know there's there are triumphs and you know.
It's it's helpful to have that that the community and so really appreciate it.
Dude.
Everybody is behind you, the team, the audience. It's inspirational, your data or mother for fighting cancer.
I'm gonna tear up even talking about it.
Having a kid, it's like even thinking about what you guys have to go through, it's it's crazy.
So you're you're an inspiration to me and slush, So thank you, man.
I'm looking forward to welcoming you into the Land of the Father.
Yes, I'm excited to join. All right, We'll see you guys later.