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Good morning, and welcome to Counterpoints. We have an amazing show today, don't we.
You're talking so quickly.
Amazing.
It's an amazing bug.
Oh wow, indeed we do. I think that's my cue card. It's like SNL, I need to look at the mugs for my line. We do, though, in fact, have a big show today, Bryan. Lots of news obviously to cover out of the Middle East. We have election results from last night. I'm very curious to get your take on some of the election results actually out of Wisconsin. Interesting stuff there. John Stewart hosted Lena Kahn on the Daily Show,
and man, was it a fascinating conversation. Actually gets into some of the reasons in fact that the DOJ filed an anti trust suit against Apple just recently. We're going to be talking about an absolutely wild segment on the view that is probably the most evergreen way to put it. We could say that every single week and.
Come up with some clip.
They asked the question, are you better off than you were four years ago? We'll get Emily to answer that. We'll find out, Yeah, we'll.
Get Annotabaro's take as well for just how the wealthy Manhattan dwellers are doing versus four years ago. Ryan, you ran a Twitter pool that we're going to talk about on the renaming of Dallas Airport, which is a Republican led effort.
House Republicans want us to have instead of a Dulles and Reagan Airport here in DC and Thurgood Marshall over in Baltimore, they want us to have a Trump and a Reagan Airport. We're going to find out if that's actually better than Dulles.
Right, it's important to move beyond.
The Cold War, I guess so.
Yeah, And you're gonna lead us on a segment about Harry Dunn, who some people may remember from the fall out after January sixth. The hearing is the investigations. He was a central figure and all of that.
Yeah, he's now running for Congress in Maryland and bizarrely Apec could end up being his biggest obstacle to get into Congress.
We're going to talk about that. It's bizarre story.
And we have a good guest.
Yes, I'm Ed Cohn who has been on the show before. He's been on my podcast, Deconstructed. Leads relief efforts around the world everywhere from Syria to Rwanda, to Ukraine to Gaza. He's in Cyprus now and he's going to talk about what it's like, you know, trying to get relief supplies into Gaza given the fact that the Israeli military appeers willing to go to extraordinary lengths to make sure that this near famine tips into a famine by attacking aid workers as we saw on Monday.
And that's it.
That's where we can start today.
Yeah, we might as well start right there. In fact, we can put this map on the screen. Ryan, Can you walk us through what we're looking at with a one?
Right?
So this is the convoy that by now infamous convoy that I'm sure if you're watching you have heard of this. This was the World Central Kitchens effort to move hundreds of tons from Cyprus into Gaza into the kitchens that were gradually kind of replacing the work that UNRA had
been doing and has been hobbled from doing. Let's not even get into that situation right now, but it goes to I think intent, the whack a mole effort that the world is making to kind of get aid in continues to meet the hammer of Israeli opposition to simply feeding the Palestinian population.
So the three.
The three cars that you saw on that map there
represent the places where each of them were struck. And we now know from reporting by Aretz, al Jazeera and others that the first car was struck and at that time the wounded in that vehicle were taken to the second vehicle, and the w ck workers had enough time to call their superiors because they had been in coordination with the IDF and so at first, and these are the biggest, most good hearted people on the planet, the fact that they're dedicating their lives to humanitarian relief efforts,
so it's very hard for them, I think, to believe at first that they're being targeted by the IDF. So they're calling, they're cooperating, they are constantly cooperating with the idea of telling them what route they're in, et cetera. And so they call their superiors, tell them call it off, call it off, We're getting struck. They then strike the second vehicle. The wounded that are still able to be moved to the third vehicle are moved, and then the drone strikes the third vehicle.
And so.
The images that everybody has seen has shown the logo World Central Kitchen on the top. So they're there's just no credible way that anybody could say that this was anything other than deliberate. Now, how Reetz reported that the idea of initial explanation was that the drone operators believed that they saw an armed person on the convoy when it went into the warehouse, but they did not see
that armed person when they left the warehouse. Now we know that three security people, I think, one from Ireland, one from Britain, one from somewhere else died in this attack. So the idea just pause on that for a second. So they think that they see a convoy that they know is a World Central Kitchen convoy.
And they just left.
These just left.
The warehouse and on the way in they thought they saw a person with a weapon. They don't see that person with the weapon on the convoy, but let's say they did.
Yeah.
First of all, why would a convoy not have a person with a weapon going through a dangerous.
Area a war zone.
So second, what that's saying is that their rules of engagement suggest that if they suspect that there's a single let's say even a terrorist, a single Hamas fighter within this convoy, that their rules of engagement allow them to light up the entire convoy and methodically chase the victims from one vehicle to another until they're all killed.
That's their own explanation.
Except their premise, right, if you accept their right, yes, you know exactly. And I don't think the israel government has commented on this yet, but Israeli media has reported that yes, there's a suspected militant embedded with the convoy. We don't know exactly what their explanation is, but if you take their premise at face value, it's still outrageous.
Right, and it is incredible they would think that an armed person with a convoy with armored cars.
And everything is a militant.
Is a millet like maybe it's the Irish guy they hired to do security.
And you've you've made this point before that you know when you're part of the big challenge if you are the IDF, and let's say again, in a hypothetical world, do you want to prosecute the most ethical war to the extent that's not an oxymoron, you want to prosecute the most ethical war possible. The fact that Hamas is essentially the de facto government of the Gaza strip it makes it incredibly difficult.
There's no question about that.
The infrastructure, anybody's doing security, it's going to be like a Hamas linked police force.
Absolutely. That's like one of the things with.
The unroduct that would not excuse killing a bunch of AID workers that.
Were with them, exactly, And that's one of the big challenges in the unroad debate. Jose Andres sub Amaru made a really good point about this. Jose Andres was furious at the Spanish government for not being sort of supportive enough of Israel after October seventh. This is Jose Andres is nonprofit World's central Kitchen, as many people know, that's doing the aid work that was destroyed, that was killed. So I mean it's just again, it's horrible.
Right, and so that's why you have we can put up this next element. Here's fran Albinizi un special Rappidoire saying, knowing how Israel operates, my assessment is that Israeli forces intentionally killed World Central kitchen workers so that donors would pull out and civilians and Gaza could continue to be starved. Quietly, Israel knows Western countries and most Arab countries won't move a finger for the Palestinians. So let's see how John
Kirby responded at the White House yesterday. By the way, the State Department canceled its briefing a rare occurrence, and then they were like, let's let John Kirby just handle this one. So let's see how John Kirby handled this one.
Is fighting a missile of people who have been food and killing them, not a violation of international humanitarian law.
Well, and Israelis have already admitted that this was a mistake that they made. They're doing investigation, they'll get to the bottom of this. Let's not get ahead of that. Your question presumes at this very early hour that it was a deliberate strike, that they knew exactly what they were hitting, that they were hitting aid workers and did it on purpose, and there's no evidence of that. I would also remind.
You, sir, that we continue to look at incidents as they occur.
The State Department has a process in place, and to date, as you and I are speaking, they have not found any incidents where the Israelis have violated international humanitarian law. Unless you think we don't take it seriously, I can assure you that we do.
We look at this in real time.
I have never violated the international humanitarian law effort in the past five to six months.
I'm telling you the State Department has looked at incidents in the past and has yet to determine that any of those incidents violate international humanitarian law.
It really raises the question of what the point of international humanitarian law is. If that's true, you could kill hundreds, more than two hundred aid workers, more than one hundred journalists, hundreds of nurses and doctors, leave a population of two point three million displaced and their homes in rubble, and not violate international law. But I wanted to play unless unless you have a respond So this other one another another Kirby clip. So notice his body language there. Notice
how animated he was in defense of Israel. There at the top of the press briefing. He was kind of forced to read a statement that was critical of Israel, and I want you to notice the difference in the body language when he's kind of forced to be critical and when he's voluntarily defending them. There's only one moment that he gets animated in this clip that we're about to play, and it's when he thinks he's going to
be about to pivot into a defense of Israel. But then he realized he's not, realizes he's not and goes back into kind of a mumbling, kind of forced, almost like hostage like reading of criticism of Israel. Here's Kirby at the top of that briefing.
We understand it.
A preliminary investigation has been completed today and presented to.
The Army Chief of Staff and Will.
We'll obviously look to see what they what they discover in this preliminary one, but we expect they brought her investation to be conducted and to be done so in a swift and comprehensive manner. We hope that those findings will be made public and that there is appropriate accountability held.
But I'm sorry.
More than two hundred AID workers have been killed in this conflict, making it one of the worst for AID workers in recent history. This incident is emblematic of a larger problem and evidence of why distribution of aid in Gaza has been so challenging. But what beyond the strike, what is clear is that the IDF must do much more, much must do much more to improve deconfliction processes so
that civilians and humanitarian aid workers are protected. The US will continue to press Israel to do more as well to ensure the safety of humanitarian workers, and will continue to do all we can to deliver this assistance to Palestinian civilians in Gaza.
Thank you, Thanks John.
Do you have any worries regarding Israel and Gaza about the floating dock and how can aid workers be protected?
Worried?
What do you mean by worries? Hmm?
What even say to that?
That was his scripted If you were listening to this, that was the scriptive remarks portion of his appearance at yesterday's White House briefing. That wasn't during Q and A. He actually moved to Q and A right after.
That you may have the first question, do you have any worries? Worries or worries? Goes back into his flip routine.
Let unless you think we're being unfair to Kirby, Uh, Let's let's go to Barack Revid, who is a reporter for Axios. UH former formerly served in the Israeli military. So we're not talking about somebody who is, you know, some kind of radical Hamas supporter here. So let's let's get barakra VID's analysis of this on CNN.
The movement of this convoy was coordinated with the IDEF. This convoy moved on a road that is a humanitarian corridor that the IDEF knows that that cars that are driving on this road are carrying you minitarian aid. The IDF is a partner of the World Central Kitchen in its work in Gaza. It gives security to the boat that is coming from Cyprus and delivering the eight It's not some rogue group that started delivering aid in Gaza.
It was all coordinated.
And this is why the claim that this was quote unquote unintentional raises a.
Lot of questions.
Yeah, to go back to Kirby's point, his claim that there's no evidence that Israel knew that this was an AID convoy.
Is a lie.
Like I don't use the word lie often with these spokespeople because usually they're usually they're gas lighting, they're spinning their bsing, you know, and they're tethered somewhat to like a little piece of the truth.
Their job is to be very clever and avoiding a lie.
There is lots of evidence that they knew this was a convoy, like A, the fact that the convoy was communicating with the Idea like B, the fact that it said World Central Kitchen on the rooftops, see that Haretz has reported. They knew it was a convoy, but they thought there was a militant associated with it. So just a flat out disgusting lie to cover up a war crime.
And so net Yahoo responded, and we can play the video of that. This is if you're watching, you see Yaho's response and the translation is here. Unfortunately, a tragic instance of our forces unintentionally harming innocent people in the Gaza strip.
It happens in war.
Will investigate it. We're in contact with the governments, and we will do everything so that it doesn't happen again.
Just so we can be as perfectly fair as we can to Netanyahu in this clip, in the first half, he's talking about how he himself has left the hospital and has recovered from his procedure that he that he underwent. He thanks the people in that cared for him. And then the second half he transitions to talking about this tragic incident. He says, this is war, but will will
investigate it. And people have slammed him for, you know, the kind of joyfulness with which he's delivering this message, and it's understandable to talk about the joy of you know, thanking those who treated you.
But he's he remains.
That that effort vescence kind of remains as he continues to talk about the tragedy and that this is this is war and we're going to investigate this. He doesn't quite. He doesn't. There's no there's no there's no solemnity, uh. There there's no there's no suggestion in the body language that there's any disappointment or sadness uh from the Israeli
leadership that this has happened. Because the if, if the intention was to tighten the grip of starvation on the population, it's working like a charm.
I think it's also worth mentioning a Jerusalem Post headline. This is from earlier this week, friendly fire idea of helicopter pilot shot at Israeli soldiers after pressing wrong button. It's not just again, this is like if.
You are a stop seentic weapons. I think to these this army, this military And.
John Kirby, he had a quote where you said the IDF must do much more, and that was in reference to protecting civilians and aid workers, and it's ryan. It is interesting to have the American government in a defense of Israel saying that actually the IDEF must do quote much more, not some more, not more, much more to defend civilians and aid workers, while at the same time maintaining the posture that you just mentioned that that's a really really difficult.
Position, right, And if you're Israel, why would you if your goal is to ethnically cleanse the Palestinian population from Gaza and the United States is willing to arm you no matter what you do, Like why would you not kill aid workers, kill healthcare workers, like attack every hospital in Gozen, make the place unlivable and expect that the American government will continue to support you all the way.
So this is what's especially like for net and Yahoo, that question of what comes next, like day after, what do you actually want to do with a Gaza strip. That's why all of this continues to be an untenable and position period because they don't know what they have no agreement consensus at all on what comes next. There are people that don't want to take any control of the Gaza Strip in Israel, that don't want that to happen.
There are people who very very very much do and don't want to give up an inch of it, want every last inch of the Gaza Strip back under Israeli control, whatever it is. So that's how the war ends up being prosecuted in just an utterly bizarre and tragic way.
And what predictably came next is we can roll this clip. Relative to the AID shipments, this.
Is about the killing of seven AID workers in the Gaza Strip with World Central Kitchen, the charity. We're now hearing from Cyprus that the AID ships that have been traveling from Cyprus into Gaza. Of course, this was a big development for those in Gaza that the AID was able to come in that way. AIG ships are now
being turned around still carrying aid. Two hundred and forty tons of undelivered AID is now heading back to Cyprus because of this attack on a car killing seven AID workers, because the charity obviously unloading the ship and distributing that aid in Gaza. World Central Kitchen, one of those charities involved, has now suspended its operations because of this apparent Israeli.
S stripe, and so the UAE has also suspended AID operations, saying that it can't keep it can't guarantee that its personnel won't be killed by Israel. ANERA has paused its relief efforts, The World Center of Kitchen pause its relief efforts. ENRA has been banned by Congress and President Biden from getting any from the United States, and Israel has banned
from operating in northern Gaza. The predictable and intended consequence will be a rapidly expanding number of deaths bymount nutrition and starvation and disease.
And again this brings us back to the questions before we move on of you know, if this is if Israel wants to admit that it's engaged in total war, that's the if that's your tactic, If that's your strategy.
They are not owning up to it, and I.
Know, the most moral army in the world.
It's partially because there's disagreement in their own ranks and there's disagreement with the United States, which is funding it. To the tune of like we've heard so many people in the Israel government say, we could not continue the war without the unconditional support basically of the United States. The United States is attempting to kind of condition it with gentle guidance from the White House. Hey, let's, you know, pull back on killing AID workers, and that's where you
end up. So it's like, not only is it awful and tragic, it's also just glaringly dishonest and disorganized. The level of like incompetence when you have a helicopter firing on their own soldiers, I mean, it's just and.
If the if the AID community believed that it was a fluke kind of tragic accident, they would not be withdrawing all of their personnel from this situation.
Like their their blunt reaction to this, Yeah.
That's true, shows that they believe that this is deliberate.
As Barack Revied wrote in that Axios article, the Amoradi's handled much of the coordination with the Israeli government for the humanitarian mission, which has delivered tons of supplies to the enclave Viership from Cyprus over the past few weeks. So the emioradis backing out. Is it's not just you know, some random country that said no, I mean, there's a huge component.
Yeah, And they're the ones that Israel's always thinking is going to bail them out in the end, like, oh, well, who's going to reconstruct this after we've destroyed it? Oh,
we'll get the Amoradis in Saudis to do that. You know, you've got Sullivan meeting with the Saudis now, pushing this delusional fantasy that they're going to come to some mega deal that involves Israeli normalization without without any progress toward resolving the question of the Palestinians, beyond simply annihilating them all.
Rent, here's some interesting actually reports with about the press. Actually, so this is net and Yahoo. We can go to this is eight net and Yahoo again. This is translated by Google said al Jazeera, this is a tweet harmed Israeli. Israel security actively participated in the October seventh massacre and exided against IDF students soldiers. It is time to remove the soho far of Hamas from our country. The terrorist channel Al Jazira no longer broadcast from Israel.
I intend to act immediately in.
Accordance with the new law to stop the channel's activity. Ryan, you know whatever I mean, It's true. Al Jazeera is absolutely an arm of the Katari government. There's no question about it.
Funded by the Katari government. R.
Yeah.
Absolutely, And that doesn't mean I mean I actually read Al Jazeera a lot throughout this conflict.
I found it fairly helpful.
It's somewhat interesting that NETANYAHUU is just now cracking down on Al Jazeer because it kind of gets to what we were just talking to talking about and how Israel wants to sort of maintain the moral high ground and puts a lot of effort into even just naturally the propaganda of maintaining the moral high ground. I can't believe they allowed Aljazeera actually to operate in Israel this long to be honest.
Well, Israel wants normal relations with the wealthy golf countries. Yeah, and so just banning one of the most popular news channels in the world is a step is a step against that. Israel has already basically made it impossible for Western media to operate inside Gossa. Al Jazeera is to the extent that it's it is a Western news out in the sense that people in the West are familiar
with it. People in the West go on it. It has it has an office here in Washington, d C. You know, it's it's it's kind of a known quantity in the way that some other kind of Middle Eastern news news networks aren't. And so Al Jazeer was really the only well resourced news outlet with that was watched by Westerners in Gaza. And now the CONEZA has passed this law and you know who saying is going to
enforce it, that's gonna aband them. It's not entirely clear how that affects their ability to operate inside Gaza.
Uh.
Al Jazeera reporters do coordinate with the I d F when they're going to go, you know, to different areas. Sometimes that coordination UH has led to them being killed as the intercept we've we've reported on on some of that and that, and the id F has then also you know, dragged its feet in allowing kind of rescue personnel to get to in the case of the Al
Jazeera cameraman and reporter that died back after December. Back in December, does this mean that Israel will now consider it all Al Jazeera correspondence kind of like fair game in their in their kill zones in Gaza.
I've reached out to Aljazeera.
I don't have an answer back on what they understand the new laws effectively, But people who have not been following this clothes you might not realize that Israel, which continues to call itself, you know, the only democracy in the Middle East has some of the h has has censorship laws that are as aggressive as anywhere in the world.
Like you can be arrested for reading different news outlets, but you can go to jail for reading different telegram channels, for commenting or liking or even just being subscribed to a particular channel anything. And that's what what they describe as kind of terrorist sympathizing or terrorist supporting. But they consider anything basically affiliated with Palestinians to be terrorist sympathizing.
It's absolutely also true that Cutter has housed some hamas leadership.
Well they do. That's where the negotiations are happening.
Yeah, right, but even before I mean that you had Hummas leadership.
The Taliban's there, like Cutter is like the Switzerland of the Middle East. When there's a crisis, that's everybody goes to Doha. And like the US begged actually Doha to allow the Taliban, for instance, to have its headquarters there so that we could negotiate with Taliban, like you need somewhere for that to happen, and so Kutter has been the country that's been willing to do that. It also has a base of ten thousand American troops, so it's not as if it's like a just a nest of terrorists.
It's exactly what well.
Actually it is a American once.
Yes, so the Israeli law interestingly, and again they're making this argument that it al Jazeerra poses a significant threat to state security, and it's just I don't want to bring TikTok into this, but it does sort of echo some of the conversations about obviously they're involved in a hot war and we're sort of involved in a cold war with China. But yes, cracking down on speech when conflict boils to the surface, is.
You understand from.
The perspective of security, why yeah, oh sure, free speech is harmful to security. You obviously have to have red lines.
And to show that this is really not about who's funding it, and it's about what they're saying. We can look at this Channel thirteen report that aired yesterday, absolutely unhinged and hysterical. So if you want to read it, you can read the translation of it here. This is a Hebrew language report about a young reporter named Eunice to Rawi, who if you are following this conflict.
You have problems his work.
He and others have done absolutely essential work of just following IDF soldiers, tiktoks and other social media accounts and finding the evidence of war crimes that they post themselves and then reposting that but taking it out of the context of them bragging about it to their friends. So they did this long investigative report naming this guy, essentially
trying to put a target on his back. And what's amazing about the report, and you can find it on Unic's Twitter account, is that they don't identify a single
fact that he got wrong. Ever, like, no, you would think that, okay, because he's done dozens and dozens of these at this point, most of the ones that you've probably seen, these tiktoks of them wearing women's underwear or blowing up a mosque, or riding around in little bicycles or grabbing a trophy, or as the one we just showed, the French National admitting to having just tortured to detain eee like.
Those those are those are his?
You would you would think that there'd be one case of mistaken identity or something that an entire investigative news outfit at Channel thirteen could find to kind of undermine his work.
They found nothing.
Instead, what they found are IDF soldiers who say that they have been bullied as a result of him posting the evidence of their either war crimes or despicable behavior, because what they quibble a lot with the definition of what a war crime is. Fine, call the like parading around in the in the panies of you know, a displaced person. Call it despicable, they call it. Call it
whatever you want, and we can play this the second part. Here, here's the here's the French National complaining, says, complaining that like his his his mission of torture is now causing people like to say mean things to him online online. I'm being threatened with all sorts of lawsuits and an international court, but I know it's one big bs. They marked my nephew who lives in France and his family because it's easy to turn.
The hate towards him.
Now, I'd say, look, leave his nephew alone, leave his family alone. But this soldier himself to be complaining that he's now potentially facing prosecution in the international Criminal court or prosecution back in France because Unice exposed his admission
of torture. And also, all units did is take a public post and share it elsewhere, like the French national with the IDF is the one who decided to commit torture and then post about it, or if he didn't torture the guy, he then lied about having just tortured somebody on his own social media.
And so.
I think what this shows is that yes, they don't like Al Jazeera, but it's not because of how Al Jazera is financed.
Unus is not getting cutter funding.
He's just He's just a guy who's good at using social media and has been dedicated in an impressive way to this craft. I've I've worked with him in the past. We've we've worked on some stories together. We haven't ended up publishing any yet. Over at the intercept that I
hope we do. He's done, He's done incredible work, and as a journalist, I think we all need to stand by him and condemn these uh, these this type of Channel thirteen threat unless they've got something like they have, they have nothing if they if they said, okay, this
reporting was flawed in these ways, then fine. But to say it's unfair that because of unice AS reporting, the International Criminal Court is looking into this French national Yeah, that's you know, your consequences actions meaning your consequences or whatever.
Yeah, to your point about Al Jazeera, I mean, I think they may genuinely care about the source of funding, but it seems as though the priority is cracking down basically ran on dissent like it's a it's a question of and again, like like I said before, yes, from a security pure security perspective, speech and reporting and journalism
is sure. It's a threat to security. Right, that's you know, what we have though, are in democracy is red lines that protect your ability to speak, even if so that it doesn't allow for fascist total control of everything, and so, yeah, huge concern. It'll be interesting when John kirbyes to answer
questions about that going forward. I think the White House, I think Matt Miller actually said basically, they support freedom of the press, and basically the implication was that they don't support cracking down on al Jazierra from Israel's point.
Back here in the.
United States, at least voters have a way to express their anger.
That's a good what's going on here?
So Hillary Clinton appeared on a late night program to talk about the way that here in the US, the world cradle of democracy, we have a way to work through these very complex issues.
Let's let's roll Hillary here. It's Biden versus Trump. We know that is it is.
What do you say to voters who are upset that those are the two choices?
Get over yourself, those are the two choices, right, and yeah, you know, it's kind of like one is old and effective and compassionate, has a heart and really cares about people, and one is old and has been charged with ninety one felonies.
Yeah, okay, I.
Don't I don't understand why this is even a hard choice.
Really, I don't understand it.
But we have to go through the election and hopefully people will realize what's at stake, because it's an existential question what kind of country we're going to have, what kind of democracy we're going to have, And people who blow that off are not paying attention because it's not like Trump has an his empowerers, his allies are not telling us what they want to do. I mean, they're pretty clear about what kind of country they want.
So if you are not planning to vote because you don't like either choice, or maybe you're planning to vote for RFK Junior, according to Hillary Clinton, you're simply not paying attention. She doesn't understand why this is even a hard choice. That's a direct quote from her. I had the pleasure of watching the entire interview Ryan just for the sake of hashtag journalism. And towards the end of it, she's promoting this new.
Broadway place that.
She produced about the Suffragette movement, and Jimmy Fallon is lavishing her with these kind words, noting that you know, when she goes to a Broadway place, she gets a standing ovation. This is a direct quote from Fallin. He says it was a pleasure, it was an honor to sit next to you at some Broadway production and it's like total State TV, like North Korea, while she's patronizing voters who don't want to pick between Donald Trump or Joe Biden as people who are just they're simply not
paying attention. They don't you get why this isn't a hard choice. It's very very easy to choose between Joe Biden and Donald Trump, don't you see? They're so very different, And.
A huge portion of the Democratic electorate disagrees. And we had elections last night that showed that we had polling going into those elections that showed that it was going to be ugly for Democrats. So we can put up this piece from my colleague Prem Talker over at the Intercept.
I checked.
People should go check this one out, but the headline here so you can find it. One in five Wisconsin Democrats said Gaza war will impact their primary vote in that he has an amazing cross tab of a poll. I've never seen anything like it. It said voters under twenty nine supported an immediate and permanent ceasefire by what one hundred percent?
I had to double check that one because I've never seen it. Not that I doubt that that's true, but I've ever seen it, Like you.
Said, I've never seen anything like that, not even a one, not sure, like just one hundred, one hundred percent.
And so so last night, if we can jump to although.
By the way, that poll was commissioned by listening to Wisconsin. As the intercept story notes, it's a campaign to mobilized protest votes during the battleground states primary in order to push the White House to change course. The other thing the Intercept story notes is that in twenty twenty, Biden one was constant by some twenty thousand votes, which is actually a smaller margin than Trump won by in twenty sixteen.
Right, And so if we can actually control them, jump to jump to B five. With a decent amount of the vote reporting, last night, it looked like that the uninstructed vote was going to at least hit thirty thousand, which, as you said, is fifty percent more than the entire margin by which Biden beat Trump in twenty twenty. Now that fuller results are in, it's much closer to fifty
thousand people came out and voted uninstructed. So these are people who are paying enough attention to know that if they vote uninstructed.
This is what it means. That's enough people to throw the election to Trump. People who are screaming warning.
And what the organizers have said here is that despite all the heat that they're taking from Democratic Party officials for what they're doing, most of these folks might you know, we're very close to lost by what they're seeing Biden do in Gaza. What this is doing is giving them an opportunity to have their voice heard one last time. And I don't know if there's anything Biden can do at this point to act on it, but at least
they're giving him a chance. They're saying, look, we're still participating in this process that is leading to genocide at the moment, but we're still participating it because we have some hope that our voice is going to lend some power to the that is fighting to end this genocide.
You know, whether it.
Can happen between now and the election, I don't know, but you know that it wasn't just Wisconsin either. This is in the context of new polling showing Trump with a fairly comfortable lead in six of seven swing states, So it's not as if Biden is sitting on a comfortable margin where he can say, you know what, fifty thousand people in Wisconsin can go pound sand right.
And that's where to your point, you know, whether or not Hillary Clinton agrees on the sort of definitional question of genocide or Joe Biden agrees on that question, they are actually hurting their chances by again Hillary Clinton going out there and being incredibly flippant about how people don't understand, they're not paying attention. It's not a hard choice. Since twenty sixteen, that has been exactly what has screwed Democrats over and over again in some of these close competitions.
That's exactly the wrong way to treat voters who do feel and for some genuine, intellectually defensible reasons, that the choice is absolutely a difficult one between Trump and Biden, between Trump Biden, RFK Junior, or between just not voting. So to treat people like their concerns aren't serious is how you alienate them further and further. And it's something that Democrats have been doing for almost a decade now.
On that Trump question in particular, that Hillary Clinton once again brought up about how, yeah, he's just he's so unhinged.
Well, people think that about Joe Biden too.
For what it's worth, that Trump might be temperamentally transparently more of a mad man, but that Joe Biden policy wise acts just as much, if not more, like a mad man. And that's a perfectly intellectually defensible position. She could have a long, interesting conversation with someone about it, but instead, when she's in public, she's just saying.
Nope, you're not paying attention.
You're too dumb, You're too dumb and lazy to figure this one out. It's just idiotic as a strategy, and it's going to make things much much worse for them.
And in New York, the organizers were pushing people to do a blank ballot.
Probably a bunch of people watching this did that. We don't have final results on that.
New York takes several years to count its votes.
So the traditional year's long vote count.
Yeah, we'll know by twenty twenty nine. You know how that went yesterday. But let's talk about two interesting, actual non symbolic elections. One we'll get get Let's let's get to the Zuckerberg one in a second. But first, you did you see the one in where Milwaukee and the surrounding area was asked if they wanted to spend hundreds of millions of more dollars on education. Tell us about this, right they won? Yeah, I mean it's looking like it's
gonna win. Right, It's like fifty to fifty one percent right now.
I don't think we can. I don't think we can call it yet.
But basically it asked, you know, for the purpose of, you know, maintaining high teacher quality, arts, sciences.
Et cetera.
Are we do, you know, can the Milwaukee and the surrounding area kind of bust its budget and spend more on education?
Fifty one to forty nine is the number as of right now.
Team J four pretty solid at this point.
Yeah, they'll pay two hundred and sixteen dollars more in taxes for every one hundred thousand dollars of their homes value. That's Milwaukee Public Schools. Milwaukee Public Schools as a Team J four story rightfully notes it's facing a two hundred million dollar budget deficit for the next school year. That school district is an abject disaster. I'm not from Milwaukee. I'm from outside of Milwaukee, but just about everybody can
acknowledge the deep, deep problems in Milwaukee Public schools. Milwaukee in general is not in a great place right now, and Milwaukee Public schools are suffering enormously. Obviously, there's some real fallout from the pandemic in terms of learning.
That increasingly is obvious.
Ryan and I could probably debate the question of what teachers unions have done to Milwaukee Public schools. I'm sure we disagree on that, but it's another really, I mean serious, The school district isn't a world of hurt, so it's not party surprise, right.
Money alone doesn't solve the problems, but taking money, taking significant amounts of money away certainly doesn't help.
You'd see where I mean, it's obviously close, but you can certainly see where people were favorable to it. And interestingly enough, Wisconsin as a whole, not just Milwaukee, but the state as a whole approved Question one last night.
We just we just had that one up, so we can put question one back up.
So, yeah, question is amendment that stipulates quote, private donations and grants may not be applied for, accepted, expended, or used in connection with the conduct of any primary election or referendum. Question two, which also again you can see
Question one, you can see. The Milwaukee area, which voted on the MPs question voted against question one, but ustion two is that it requires that quote only election officials designated by law may perform tasks in the conduct of primaries, elections, and referendums.
That one also passed.
And Ryan, I am really curious for your thoughts on this, because I was trying to like the election issue, even though my own publication covers it really closely. For me, it always just made my eyes kind of glaze over, And it seems like it's one of those things that is owned in many cases by like outright crazy people are talking about it all the time. You're just like
calm down, like it's just everyone relaxed here. But when you dig into what happened with Mark Zuckerberg's what's the it's like CTCL the acronym the group that he at least ostensibly was founded to help people vote during the pandemic.
When you look at what they did with that billion, those billions of dollars, I imagine if the Koch Brothers, at the height of their sort of limited government giving during the Tea Party era, had done what Mark's Zuckerberg did, or another like as Sheldon Adelson er, now a Miriam Adelson had did what Mark Zuckerberg did, if she did
that in twenty twenty four or twenty twenty eight. For example, just in Wisconsin, Mark Zuckerberg's group gave out thirty one grants, twenty eight went to cities, Twenty of those cities voted for Biden, and only eight ultimately voted for Donald Trump. So basically, he's flooding the zone with money and with aid to counties that are almost certainly going to go for Biden, not like necessarily swing counties, but overwhelmingly counties
that are going to go to Biden. And as Katie Porter said cal about her own race in the California Senate primary, looks a whole lot like rigging an election where you can just have billionaires flooding the zone with money to swing different districts. I don't like it. So I thought this was actually fantastic. I thought it was worded. Both questions were worded very tightly. Ryan, What did you make of it?
I mean, I agree on the principle that the public should be funding at elections, not not private folks. I don't have a whole lot of sympathy for the tears of Republicans in Wisconsin because you know, they jerrymannered, they took over the state, they jerrymanner the heck out of it, and then they tried to basically defund the election apparatus and make it really difficult for people in Wisconsin cities to vote. And then they're like, hey, wait a minute,
goes back. We're trying to make it really hard for people in cities to vote. Now you're coming in and making it easy again for them to vote.
That's completely unfair.
So yeah, I agree the public should finance elections, but also kind of Republicans brought it on themselves with their like really really partisan gutting of the election, of the election system, election apparatus, and kind of it like made space for somebody like a Zuckerberg to come in and try to fix it.
So let's just let's just have.
Functional elections, Like we're more than two hundred years into this democratic experiment here, because in the United States of America.
Let's let's just like in Brazil, they know the.
Results by like nine pm every night, well on an election night, and and they're like and they're they're audited they're checked like it's it's legit, like this can be done.
Of course it can be done, but we're so Yeah, to your point, we're so owned by private interests that have co opted the system, whether it's from the left or the right. And you know, I actually think this is a great measure in and of itself, just because it prevents people from the left or from the right from doing this in the future. Zuckerberg replicated what happened not just in Wisconsin, but actually in some of those swing states that we were showing are really really tight
races right now. So to some extent, you know, if you're declaring, you know, unlimited money and politics, and you have the way that like the CTCL operated, and you're saying, we're not going to put any limits on that, and you can just sort of.
Do it, it could.
Happen in different ways than just what the CTCL did. There could be different that can be exploited. I mean, they really pioneered a new method of kind of electioneering in twenty twenty. So I think to your point, yeah, it's there have to be dramatic questions about how the elections are run in this country.
Second, the second one, I don't know anything about it. You can't have poll workers who are volunteers. Now, like that feels that can't be right.
Well, so it was about curating ballots, and that's a kind of a different can of worms. If you're sort of funding ballot curation.
Correct, is that when you go door to door and pick up ballots? Yeah, for people?
Right, So if you're doing it, and you're allowing some states allow volunteers to do it. Actually, my boss Molly having Way wrote a great book about this called Rigged, which a lot of people would would look at and be like on the left, they woul look at them and be like this is crazy, like blah blah.
You read the book.
There's basically been no substantive pushback to it at all. It's super interesting, and you see, yeah, some of these processes like ballat curation that you heard nothing about in the media were being funded in heavy dumb districts by things like Zuckerberg and by people who are not election
officials that are volunteers. And just if you're uncomfortable about the process of somebody who's vote actually making it to the counting position, or even if you're not that book the book made me personally very uncomfortable with the laws and the way that it's run in some states. But Ryan partially that's also the problem is like our system of government and federalism means that we have a patchwork collection laws based on different states decisions to run their elections.
So it's just a blast.
Lena Kahn appeared on John Stewart's show, The Daily Show.
Finally, she appeared on John Stewart's show now that he's not at Apple, which is what we're going to get into.
And so John Stewart revealed on during this interview with Lena Cohn that Apple had effectively blocked him from having her on. Let's play a little bit of this this back and forth with John Stuart Lena Khan.
It's already being consolidated. Apple has bought thirty AI models. Microsoft is pride bout, Google has bought They all buy AI startups and put them behind their paywell, and they're already having an arms race to see who will be either the monopoly or this will be in oha. Godly, I got to tell you I wanted to have you on a podcast, and Apple asked us not to do it.
To have you.
They literally said please don't talk to her having nothing to do with what you do for a living. I think they just I didn't think they cared for you, is what happened. They wouldn't, they didn't, They wouldn't let us do even that dumb thing we just did in the first Act on AI, Like, what is that sensitivity? Why are they so afraid to even have these conversations out in the public sphere.
I think it just shows one of the dangers of what happens when you concentrate so much power and so
much decision making in a small number of companies. I mean, going back all the way to the founding, there was a recognition that in the same way that you need the Constitution to create checks and balances in our political sphere, you also needed the anti trust and anti monopoly laws to safeguard against concentration and economic power, because you don't want an autocrat of trade in the same way that you don't want a monarch.
Apple disagrees, Yes, exactly so. First of all, Lenakhon for President. Second of all, Luther Lowe, you can put this up here, point it out that part of the DOJ's suit against Apple says, quote Apple's conduct extends beyond just monopoly profits and even affects the flow of speech. For example, Apple is rapidly expanding its role as a TV and movie
producer and had exercised that role to control content. This was filedbas This was filed before they knew the lengths to which they were going to control what John Stewart was able to put on his podcast, which he's talked about a little bit since since.
Then in reference to China, right, China.
And yeah and just yeah, it sounds like anything that was encroaching on their interests.
And I think it was Matt Stoler obviously who made the point about you know, here's here's John Stewart on Paramount on Paramount Network then saying what he couldn't do on Apple. So you know, some might say, oh, this is this is perfect competition. You see how it works. But imagine if John Stewart wasn't John Stuart would Paramount allow John's a lesser known John Stewart who wanted to interview Alena Khan to interview Alena.
Con I thought Paramount is for sale. There's that I'm going to buy that Apple.
Yeah, it's a good question, but I think there's There's also something even more interesting, which is what happened with Parlor in the App Store after January sixth, is that in terms of Apple monitoring and controlling speech, the app Store is unquestionably to do oppoly. That was hilarious, I mean, arguably a monopoly. If you have an iPhone, you have to use the app store.
January sixth was basically organized on Facebook, Facebook groups, and afterwards, right there were a couple of Parlor images that circulated to a Facebook app WhatsApp, which is just text messaging in a band, text messaging. And so yeah, then they just the Apple just kicked kicked Trump, you know, they all kicked Trump off their platforms, and then they kicked Parlor off, which was hilarious because a like I said, it was mostly organized on Facebook, not Parlor Parlor also, but it was tiny.
Like it would have happened with or without Parlor.
But the other ironic part of kicking Parlor out was that the entire argument about cancel culture had been that, Okay, look, you got kicked off Facebook. You don't like it, go start your own platform. Facebook's a private platform, they make their own rules.
So some naive folks.
You know, took them at their word, and we're like, Okay, we will go build our own platform. You don't you don't want us on yours, We'll go build our own. And they're like, oh yeah, not like that. We're nuking your entire platform. Yeah yeah, not defending the people on Parlor or anything like that.
That's not the point. You don't have to Yeah, the point.
The point is they were told to go create their own platform if they didn't like the rules of the other private platforms and then were new anyway, and that.
Had nothing to do This is the point in the DOJ suit. This is the point that Stoler makes, and this is the point that Lena Khan is making that had nothing to do with Apple's business. Apple didn't get rid of Parlor for business reasons. They might have thought it was good PR, better pr than allowing Parlor to sit there and get questions from Ben freaking Collins over at NBC about how they're just you know, fueling disinformation because they allow a tiny app to remain on the
App Store. So maybe you can make the argument I think it was.
For business reasons, because I think the business reason was deflect attention to face, defect, regulatory attention away from Facebook and their own platforms over to Parlor so that we solve the problem.
I mean, there there's an argument, but they're doing that ultimately. That's even that is rooted in political reasons, I guess.
But once you're a monopoly, politics and business are the same thing, exactly.
Yeah, And that's exactly the point that John Stewart and Lina Kahn are making.
And Lena Khan.
Really, I'm sure we have some listeners and viewers who are in businesses where Lena Khan is like treated as public enemy number one. If you talk to people who work in those sectors, it is the specter of Lena Khan. Khan looms so large. There's fury at Lena Khan and people who work in like M and A businesses.
There exactly people who do the mergers, the people who do the mergers, and the executives who benefit benefit from the mergers hate her.
But everybody else, even at.
Those companies, is better off because what are those mergers lead to enormous amounts of layoffs and then and then consolidation of the company, which means workers get treated worse and customers get treated worse, and suppliers get treated worse.
And Lena Kon lays.
All this out in a really aerad way in that interview with with John Stewart, and it also hurts. It turns out shareholders like shareholders, are noticing that when these mergers are blocked by either by Lenacon or by the specter of Lena Khan, that both companies' share prices go up and there and there are so many cases of this that that people are able to point to now that it is becoming clear that, oh, it turns out it is a collusion of executives who are defrauding workers, customers,
suppliers and shareholders and just hoarding wealth for themselves.
There was an amazing sort of green light for M and A during the Obama administration the Trump administration, especially in taking media, and man, is it amazing how sensitive people in those positions have been about It's not amazing.
I mean, two of my job was to do mergers. I would probably not like Lena Khan. On the other hand, she's making a lot of defense business for you.
And people might wonder, people might wonder, you know, what, hey, why is it? Why is Lena Khan's interview on John Stewart like Newsworthy, Well, Lena Kahn's tenure at the FTC has had pretty sweeping consequences on the economy, and that's why they're so sensitive about it, obviously, but the pendulum swinging back and sort of having a chilling effect on M and A. There are people who hate big tech on the right whose offices on Capitol Hill are super
opposed to Lena Kahn. This is one of the things we didn't have enough time to get to with Ted Cruz back in the holiday season, because he wrote a book basically about about tech, why big Tech. There were a lot of parts in the book about why big tech is bad and overly consolidated. Ted Cruise is a huge opponent of Lena Khan because from a limited government perspective, the FTC. I mean, I think a lot of like hardcore conservatis would just.
Get rid of the FTC.
But the FTC is, you know, very very much a sort of encroaching regulator. And you can quibble around the edges with what Lena Khan has done, but ultimately, if you're worried about consolidation and big tech in baby formula and meat packing and all of these different price problems that consumers are having. I find it very difficult to make the argument that in the big picture, Lena Khan
is a net negative. I think that's basically insane. I think the effect that she has had is clearly in that positive, even if from a conservative perspective you can quibble with some of the regulatory approaches.
Yeah, and Cruz has flirted with supporting her in different ways in the past, and if he has recovered from his last interview here, he's welcome to come back on the program.
I think I don't think you had a problem with that interview.
It was their shilling books and podcast.
Who who would ever show books aggressively? Not you, Ryan, not me.
The ladies of the view have some thoughts on whether or not they're better off than they were four years ago, whether you were better off four years ago. A viewer of this program flagged this for us and it was like, I think you guys will enjoy this one. So let's roll a little bit of this clip. Want to get Emily's reaction to this.
I think the Democrats need to do more in getting the message out that yes, we actually are better off right now because of all of the things that Biden has done.
But I will say this.
You know, while Trump.
May have you know, came up with this operation warp Speed, which I don't know why he came up with that term. I do believe that he is responsible for mishandling the pandemic so much that million, over a million Americans died, including.
My in laws.
And it is in large part because he had his son in law, who shouldn't have been in the White House in the first place, handling the response someone with absolutely no medical experience, and the one person, doctor Fauci, who you think very highly of and he thinks very highly of you, was basically silenced by the White House.
I know we all vividly do every picture in a mask, from work to school to not being able to see family. My parents don't live nearby. I can't fly. I mean, you couldn't go on trips, and not trips like for fun, I just mean literally to get to people you love. It was isolating, depressing. So I laughed that someone didn't catch that part when they said we're going to go out and ask people how were you four years ago? That is the time my brain is trying to completely block out, like I'm.
Going to have better reproductive health rights.
Yes, listen, as black people, we were not in this insanity of trying to figure out why our history is no longer welcome in the educational system.
For the record, four years ago, bro hadn't been overturned yet, although the judges put in place would be and abortions actually have gone up.
We did make two good points, uh that you know, four years ago a Roby Wade was still a long land and we didn't have this this this bizarre backlash with the books and the like in Florida, Like you've got these permission slips, where is it okay for your children to be read a book by a black author?
Stuff like that.
And there's also like clear pornography in some of those libraries that.
Was there four years ago.
That's true.
That true.
What did Donald Trump do about the porno seem probably.
Not just fine? So I thought she made some some good points on on that one.
But I think I think the the Democrats effort to to do this four years ago thing ah and point to the pandemic as a gotcha isn't quite gonna work because of, like I think significantly because of people's amnesia, like will Full amnesia, like they want to forget what that was like April twenty twenty, Yes, horrible, like and they as they talk about that program, people couldn't find paper, towels, toilet paper, like basic they were there, people like the
people were dying, people were scared for their lives. Everybody was getting hammered by like two in the afternoon. Which is fun for like a few days, but then after a while, it's like like if you look at if you look at alcohol consumption, like it's still up rights the data, right, I didn't know that it was.
It was still up yeah, related the massive spike.
Yeah, over the last five years, it's still up really high.
Makes sense. It's a bitual, habit forming type of thing.
Well, and you're talking about a different amnesia than I think the Biden campaign is talking about. So that's this whole segment was in response to s both the Trump and Biden campaigns sparring on this reaganary question of ask yourself where you better off four years ago? Because and there's polling data, we can put D two up on the screen here. This is a Fox News poll from just economic conditions you personally, sixty four percent of people
said negative. Only thirty six percent said their economic conditions personally were positive. And that's even higher when you ask about the country as a whole. We can move to the next element here. Yeah, December, have you been helped by President Biden's economic policies? Once again? In December, only seventeen percent said they've been helped thirty eight Oh, this
is December twenty twenty one. Now, last December, forty six percent of people said they've been hurt by President Biden's economic policies.
Only fourteen percent said they've been hurt.
Now a Fox News poll actually from just a couple weeks ago, so March twenty second to twenty second to twenty fifth, over half of voters they asked directly, are you worse off than you were in twenty twenty? Are you better or worse off financially? Was the exact question people were asked. This is a registered voters, and only about one in five voters Foxting's reported today answered yes. According to their latest survey, just twenty two percent said
that they're better off than four years go. Well more than twice that many. Fifty two percent say they are worse off. So when you put that question to actual voters, not the multimillionaire hosts of the view. The results are totally different, and the view was sort of conflating the pandemic and all of the other kind of cultural issues. The Biden administration, I think, is sort of doing the same. I think COVID amnesia, I agree with, is totally real.
On the other hand, while the rate of inflation may be slowing, inflation on some of those prices in and of itself is still higher than it was four years ago. So I know the Biden administration and I think they're not wrong about people having some amnesia about the early days of the pandemic. Trump's mismanagement of the pandemic most COVID does, I believe, actually occurred during the Biden administration, although they would argue that that was set up by
mismanagement during the Trump administration. I think most voters, though, aren't. They don't have COVID in mind. They don't want to think about COVID. To your point, they're voting on their financial situation, right.
And to the extent they're looking around the world too. Trump was creating kind of an international incident every other day and size and yeah, and leaving people, you know, nervous that he's going to like accidentally get into nuclear war with North Korea, which currently which apparently gain pretty close to happening, but Biden is in you know, too hot actual wars in Gahza and in Ukraine. But yes, the economic question is is is what people.
Are thinking of? And I think it just goes back to housing and rent.
Housing and rent is unaffordable and basically food prices went up significantly in twenty twenty one and two have that has moderated and now wages are generally outpacing the growth of inflation. Where it's it's although it's getting close again now, but it hasn't. It hasn't gone on long enough so that you're better off, so that basically you're further behind
today than you were four years ago. To me, the tragedy of that from a political perspective is that the US did better than any other country around the world and getting out of the COVID recession and getting out of that all with the American Rescue Plan and the ira you know, we went from a potential depression to
the economy surging. The cost was driven primarily by you know, supply chain, you know, interruptions from COVID and from the from corporations recognizing that they had an opportunity to raise prices. And we were pointing that out at the time and
called conspiracy theorists, but it happened. But the downstream effect on people is the same, Like, prices are up and Biden's president, and so they're going to link those to My fear is that the next time that we face a recession or depression like situation, that you're gonna have politicians like, wow, we didn't get any credit for that, and there was some inflation associated with our response.
So just let it burn and see what happens.
Yeah, I mean, that's certainly possible. And the thing I want to add there a couple of different quotes on a Navarro at one point during that segment said, you know, now she's back to playing words with friends, but during the Trump administration she was getting death threats.
So she just again this was in the.
Context you can do both today, you can do.
Both, amazing, but she was this is in the context of her talking about voters like your average voter and like that there's any resonance between on a Navarro's.
Experience during the Trump administration.
Where she just didn't have what like the psychological comfort to play words with friends, but now she feels comfortable playing words with friends. The idea that she thinks that's resonant with other people in the country, I think.
It's I think there's tens of millions of people are well a, they were terrified during the pandemic generally, but are terrified of Trump.
No, I think people are genuinely terrified of Trump. I don't disagree with that. And you know, there's obviously something to the argument that the chaos in the Trump administration that was in some ways fieled by the media, but in many ways feel directly by Donald Trump made people uneasy. But Ann Navarro saying that she's back to playing words with friends because Biden as president kind of for the reasons that we talked about in the Hillary Clinton block.
I mean, maybe there's some wine moms around the country with whom that resonates, but I think a lot of people are like actually just as scared now under Biden, maybe because of the hot wars, maybe because they feel what's happening in Israel amounts to ethnic or what's happening in Gaza amounts to ethnic cleansing. Maybe because they're terrified about the war in Ukraine, dragging American troops ultimately into it, or maybe because.
Respond to the Israel striking its consulate Damascus.
Or maybe because these pocketbook issues, and you know, also could possibly be because of abortion access, abortion lights, which.
Biden is going to drive so many peoples.
Yeah, agree, agree. And the other one I wanted to highlight was Sarah Haynes saying basically that a recovery. She said, at one point, you're not going to feel the recovery after the Great Depression. It took eleven years. Not super comforting to voters in the moment, of course, although.
That was thanks to Obama like tightening the belt and the Tea Party insisting, you know, taking over in twenty ten.
Oh. She said, great Depression, not recession.
Oh, great depressions.
Okay, Yeah, And then will By Goilberg said, if you were coming from another country, you were not welcome during the Trump administration. I don't think that's how most people are voting when it comes to the border this time around.
Yeah, certain, Yeah, a new NPR poll, then we'll move on, a new MPR poll.
Marist poll came out this morning and found that yes, the top top far and away issue for Republican voters was immigration and surging within the po although and that poll, by the way, had Biden up two and when you put this nationally and then when you included RFK Junior and Cornell West and others, he maintained his two point lead.
So despite the fact that you've got this.
Wall Street Journal polls showing him Trump up in six of seven swing states, you also have this NPR Marris poll showing Biden up by two.
Nobody likes either of these people.
The NPR poll found that people disliked Trump more than they disliked Biden. But also polls are consistently showing that people don't think Biden is up to it.
Yeah, well there's that too.
We didn't even get to that by thirty points or so.
Another reason people perry Trump how pathetic is that your your opponent is Trump, and the question is he was more fit to be president and you're losing it by double digits.
And that's another reason to the words with Friends, the silly words with friends point. I actually think that's another reason that people are super uneasy when there's all of these clips of the leader of the free world, an office that you maybe they felt until Trump came with at least some dignity. And we can go back and argue, you know, who initially soiled the dignity of.
The presidential office.
But you know, at least until Trump, people felt like, you know, this was a sort of sacred space. But now Joe Biden's in, they're like slurring his words and mixing up everyone every other day. That makes people really uneasy too, in the same way that Trump tweeting about the size of his nuclear button made people uneasy. So yeah, yeah, I mean, I think they're they're so ardently in Biden's corner,
partisan lee in Biden's corner that it's a bubble. Not that it's surprising to anyone that the view is a bubble, but and.
The answer that question would have to be James Madison, right, you think James Madison. I mean, the guy like basically eliminated the government. Hell yeah, put together a little tiny militia uh so far that then got whooped by the British and had the Oval office burned.
Yeah, that's true, that's true.
That's sullying. Sully the Oval Office.
Under Trump, the capital sort of was sacked.
I don't I don't understand how this small government like limited Ryan ever, limited government ideology like survived the burning of the White House.
You couldn't eat.
That's how you limit the government.
The British Ate literally ate his dinner. His dinner was hot on a plate in the White House. They ate it.
Speaking of the sacred dignity of our offices. Dallas Airport, facing the legacy of John Foster Dallas is now coming under target for bro Trump Republicans who have introduced legislation Ryan to rename Dallas Airport named for John Foster Dallas under to Donald Trump. And as you point out, this would be meaning that the two major Washington area airports would be Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport and then Donald Trump Donald J. Trump Donald J. Trump Airport DJT J. Yeah,
you're going from JFK to DJT. So clearly Ryan's already in favor of this. You ran a Twitter pool.
Yes, let's see, how are the how are the results looking?
We can put this up so, uh, you have to get rid of that thirty percent.
So we've got to do a little math here.
Basically, five to one or six to one. My followers said, uh, that Trump that the Dullest Brothers have done more harm to the world than Trump. Now, in Trump's defense, the Dulls Brothers had a little more time to do to do all of this harm. Emily was telling us before the show started. Your mom just read the finished reading the Brothers book.
Everybody read The Brothers.
If you haven't read, if you haven't read The Brothers like great book.
It's it's it's incredible.
You can, you know, add on to that Jakarta method, which I think pairs really well with it, which which brings in Indonesia. But yeah, I mean, should we do some of the should we do some of the Dullest Brother's greatest hits?
I mean it's hard to find don't have time.
Yeah, it's hard to find somewhere that they that they didn't send the world spiraling in a more chaotic direction. But everywhere from overthrowing you know, so overthrowing our benz in in Guatemala and overthrowing the Shawn in Iran. Uh, which in a pretty direct link led.
To nine to eleven.
I've I've got a piece of at the Huffington Post that I have read that will explain how you can you can draw a really direct line from from that to there. Then uh uh, then you've got La Mumba in Congo.
We did a whole long interview on that.
Carno and uh Indonesia.
But but then also just setting the stage for this interventionist kind of coup regime attempt. Now, one thing I would add is that what what Trump doesn't get enough credit or discredit for, depending on how you feel, is his his interventionist policy in Central and South America during his his tenure. And we should we should, I don't. I don't know if anybody's you know, fully put this
all together. But you know, Trump talks a big game of isolationism, but was surrounding himself with kind of the most interventionist John Bolton types that that kind of haunted the Reagan White you know, Reagan era Republicans and still haunted Republican Party today even like the so you know, they tried to overthrow uh Medora and Venezuela. They they did overthrow Morales for a while in Bolivia before he
came back into power. Uh they basically overthrew Correa in in Ecuador, but all, all of these are much more complicated for the most part, uh than the kind of military backed coups that the Dulles.
Brothers would do. What what the US.
Really learned is that this this kinetic kind of overt you know, killing a prime minister or a president and putting in a new one just clashed you know, too squarely and fundamentally and hypocritically with American values that they had to find a less kinetic way to do it.
And so the Bolivia example is a good one, where they they basically rigged the election and then put people into the streets and then take power by kind of kind of streetforce used, you know, using kind of propaganda everats in Ecuador, you know, a similar way, they kind of flipped the guy that followed Korea and then they create this alliance of narco traffickers and right wingers in Brazil, similar situation, Well.
It's basically happening right now in Haiti, I mean, the Biden administration.
Like we've covered this for.
A couple of years, the way that they manipulated the Haitian government while publicly pushing it to be democratic, et cetera, et cetera. But basically backed the government on re because they wanted them to accept migrant flights.
And port of Prince Yeah, exactly.
And then of course Trump and Cuba, which Biden administration has completely continued Trump's Trump's Cuba policy. So I think it's interesting that the Dulles brothers, if they came back to life and were brought to Langley and we're told the God to see your briefing, as they would be entitled to about you know what the Trump administration did to make sure that it's favored governments either got into power or remained in power throughout Central and South America.
I think they would be very impressed and.
Say, Okay, I'm glad to see that you guys are carrying on the tradition and in a more sophisticated way, so sophisticated.
Trump probably doesn't even know about half of it. I think that's true and care about it. The point, but you be fine with it.
The point that was with me is it's completely bipartisan. This is is a tradition that was carried on by certainly the Obama administration, the Clinton administration. There's some you can have arguments about the Carter administration, but John Foster Dulles. The airport is named after the Secretary of State throughout the in the Eisenhower administration basically, and he passed away
in nineteen fifty nine. This dedication was in nineteen sixty two, right after I think Alan Dallas had been pushed out in nineteen sixty one, after Kennedy was furious with the Bay of Pigs, which had been engineered before he took office by the Dallas brothers and by that sort of early CIA establishment that continues to the mentality, the ideology continues to have major influence over our foreign policy today.
Tucker Carlson made such an interesting point recently that he's basically the more he's learned about recent decades and Cold War history, and to be fair to Cold warriors, not ones that were in the government, but you know, Cold War activists and voters. Over the last half a century, we are learning a lot of new reporting about what was happening just in the last ten twenty years. I mean Devil's Chess Board by David Talbot. A lot of
that is like new reporting. That book came out what in twenty nineteen, A Marria a couple.
Of years ago. Yeah, there's a couple of years more than that.
Yeah, So, I mean, obviously people knew what was happening with the Contrast because Congress ban funding of it at the time. But still some of this information about different coups, we're just getting it now, like we're only now getting declassified stuff. We're only now getting people to admit, you know,
basically what happened. So as more new information comes up, perhaps these remarks from John F. Kennedy at the dedication where he even mentions Alan Dalles I think he was there, He says, I want to say how appropriate it is that this should be named after Secretary Dallas. He was a member of an extraordinary family's brother Alan Dallas, who served in a great many administrations, stretching back, I believe to President Hoover all the way to this one. Kennedy
had basically just pushed Alan Dallas out of office. John Foster Dallas, who had the age of nineteen, was rather strangely the secretary to the Chinese delegation to the Hague, and who served nearly every presidential administration from that time
forward to his death in nineteen fifty nine. Also served, of course, the clients of Sullivan and Cromwell where he was in and out of So it's just your point is a really apt one that a lot of this is still continuing today, the ideology, the mentality is still continuing to this day, and I think hearteningly a lot of people on the right who used to dismiss this as a hippie nonsense have come around to it actually really being the excesses of our shadow government.
Maybe the Eric Trump compromised Eric Trump Airport.
The Eric Trump Airport. Well, so some of the chief Deputy Whip, he's a Republican from Pennsylvania, sort of the southwestern corner of Pennsylvania's one who introduced this. Co sponsors are Michael Wallas, Andy Ogos guy I don't know how to say his last name Russian Thalar okay, but so also Paul Goser, Troy nell Is, Chuck Fleischmann, red state Republicans for the most part. So I don't well, I don't think the Trump name is going to catch on at Dallas.
May pick another one.
Everyone's ready to get rid of it.
I would hope that Democrats would be ready to get rid of the Dallas name. So they just need to find somebody other than Trump and Democrats probably go for.
It, are they though, because literally Biden is doing like Dallas type conduct in Haiti.
That's true, but yeah, but it would it would.
It goes to kind of show how sophisticated the new conduct is if we can kind of publicly claim that it's different, like we denounce our past crimes against humanity as a way of signaling that we don't we don't commit those crimes anymore.
But we do.
Yeah, so at least publicly, right exactly, All right, Ryan, you have some interesting reporting on the race in it's from a Maryland seat involving Harry Dunn, a prominent figure Capitol Police officer who's now running.
Yes, yes, indeed so apax super pac has launched a major air campaign to block a congressional candidate, Harry Dunn, from winning a Democratic primary in Maryland. And you've probably heard of Harry Dunn. He's known for his work as a Capitol Police officer. On January sixth, two thousand and one, and he's become a hero within Democratic Party circles for his testimony before Congress and his regular media appearances slamming
Donald Trump and warning of the threat to democracy. He won a Congressional gold medal, and even published a book called Standing My Ground, A Capitol Police Officer's Fight for Accountability and Good Trouble. After January sixth, Here he is on Jake Tapper's program announcing his run for office.
At this moment, right now, I don't think any of us have the luxury of sitting back and waiting for somebody else to do something else. You do until there's nothing that can be done. There's always something that can be done. And I feel like my role as a Capitol Police officer, I did all I could do to meet this moment that we're in now, to fight, to
try to seek justice, accountability, defend democracy. But now I'm stepping into a new role, and I think that I'm up for the challenge to represent the people of the third District of Maryland in.
A deep blue district.
For your typical Democratic voter, he's an absolute dream of a candidate for APAK. Apparently he's a nightmare because they're on track to drop three to four million dollars backing his opponent, a standard issue Democratic state senator named Sarah Elfreth. She's one of more than a dozen local candidates running for the seat vacated by Paul Sarbanes and done until the past few days, was considered the clear front runner. Dunn has raised three point seven million dollars so far,
according to a campaign source. Of that, two point seven million dollars has been reported. Elfreth, meanwhile, had raised roughly four hundred thousand dollars, largely from high dollar donors, including corporate packs. How much he raised in the first quarter of twenty twenty four, though, has yet to be announced. The irony for anybody who knows Paul Sarbine's career is that he dedicated his life to getting.
Big money out of politics.
Now, as he leaves Congress, a Democrat hopes to take his seat with super pac money largely coming from Republican supporters of Israel. Elfreth appears to have known, or at least hoped, the super Pac support was coming. Her campaign put on its website what's known as a red box on March twenty first. Now, redbox is a method of
coordinating without legally coordinating with a superpack. Campaigns are barred from directly coordinating with super packs, but they get around the prohibition by posting information publicly on a campaign website. Typically inside a red box that a super pack can then use. If you need a primer on that, go back and check out my twenty twenty one story on the red box put out by Nina Turner's opponent Chantel Brown, aimed at attracting pro Israel money.
Hers worked too.
Eightpa's new ad on behalf of Elfred does indeed rely heavily on information and footage posted in her red box. It focuses on her record supporting abortion rights, quote the environment, and quote our democracy, not once mentioning Israel or any policy related to the Middle East.
Here's their first ad surat.
Alfred gets things done.
In just five years, She's passed eighty four bills like affordable childcare, expanding prenatal care, and enshrining abortion rights in the Maryland Constitution.
Now Elpha is running to bring.
That same get things done approach to Congress. With so much at stake, abortion rights, the environment, our democracy, we need a congresswoman who will deliver. That's Democrats. Sarah alfrith UDP is responsible for the content of this ad.
So Apax superpack is called United Democracy Project, which refers to an alliance between Israel which its backers routinely refer to inaccurately as the only democracy in the Middle East and the United States. Harry Dunn, of course, has organized his campaign to attract support from Democrats nervous that former President Donald Trump is a threat to democracy.
Democrats have heavily criticized Apak.
For endorsing more than one hundred Republicans who opposed certification of the twenty twenty election, taking on a high profile January sixth officer suggests Apak has not been bothered by that criticism. UDP's ad campaign costs nearly six hundred thousand dollars last week. The primary is scheduled for May fourteenth, with six weeks until the election. The pace of spending suggests Apak is willing to drop some four million dollars to lift Elfreth and block Done from getting to Congress.
But why, Here's the crazy thing nobody knows.
In mid February, the news outlet Jewish Insider, which covers congressional primaries closely with an eye toward policy toward Israel, flagg Done as a quote wild card in the race. Dunn provided a comment to Jewish Insider, saying he supports the legislation to fund Israel's war effort. Quote, Israel has a right to defend itself, and I support the goals of returning all the hostages home and eliminating Hamas. I am glad President Biden has advocated for an approach that
reduces unnecessary civilian casualties, and I support that approach. Dunn said, the crowded congressional primary will decide who replaces outgoing representative Sarbines, and the district is solidly democratic. There is no serious Republican challenger, so, Emily, if you ask people in this race, like what.
Did Harry Dunn do?
Joining us now to discuss the fallout of the World Central Kitchen massacre is international humanitarian relief Organizermed Khan Ahmed, thanks so much for joining us.
Hi Ryan, Hi Emily. Nice to be with you, Unfortunately under these circumstances.
And I just wanted to set it up by reading a piece that you published March twenty third. In the intercept to give people context for the work you've done. You wrote, I have organized airlifts of women, legislators, judges
and journalists out of Afghanistan. As kabl Fell delivered ongoing aid to Ukrainian frontline villages during Russia's invasion, worked on efforts to build runways, roads and highways to deliver aid to Rwanda refugees after the genocide, and delivered aid shipments to enclaves besieged and under attack by the Syrian army. None of it prepared me for the challenges of trying to bring a few trucks of food and medicine per week into the Gaza strip. But this was late March
before for this massacre. Can you talk about you know, what has happened to these relief efforts in the wake of it.
Well, it's immediately after, of course, so we'll have to wait and see what happens. But at the moment, many international organizations have paused their activities, mainly because of the local staff does not feel safe. I mean they haven't been safe for any moment, as we've discussed before, for the last six months, but now they're being killed in such numbers that they do not feel comfortable doing distributions and going to meet the people where they are to
distribute them. So we're in a bit of a stand still. I'm actually in Greece and I have a plane full of virgent medicines that are sort of urgently required in Gaza, and I'm waiting for clearance to bring them there. And it's a very slow process. It was a slow process before and now it's basically grind to a standstill. And essentially it's indicative of a situation where no one in power, none of the decision makers really actually care about the
humanitarian situation. There's been plenty of lip service, but the reality on the ground is it is very slow, and there are a number of factors, but it's slow, but essentially nobody in power actually cares at about the issue.
Can you you mentioned it's like still the immediate aftermath of what happened with the World Central Kitchen workers. But can you walk us through a little bit of what so far additional layers of red tape look like to get aid into Gaza. What are some of the big barriers that you're encountering already or that you expect to encounter just to again get aid medicine into Gaza to the people of Gaza.
Well, essentially, the major blocking point is the checkpoint system and the checking of actual physical trucks that come in to Gaza through Egypt, and that's been since day one, since I was first in Rafa on October ninth, and trucks were already backed up then, and it's gotten worse and worse. They're miles and miles and miles of trucks
backed up at every checkpoint. So whether it's Rafa on the border or a Larish about forty five minutes from Rafa, or Ismayula another couple hours away, and the trucks are backed up essentially because they don't go through in the numbers they need to go through. And that is I mean, I've had any number of things happen. I've had incubators taken off trucks because I was told they needed to be on ambulances. I've had blood pressure monitors taken off
trucks because they needed to come in ambulances. I've been told that the crates were in pact correct, there were too many creates in the truck, so any number of excuses to not getting stuff in. And essentially, you know, the United States government is fully aware of this. They've been fully aware of this since day one. Senators Merkley and von Holland came to Rafa. They saw exactly, they spoke to truck drivers. They've been very vocal since about
the situation. So it's a there's no there's nothing new here. It's it's been like this since the beginning. Essentially, the powers that be don't want to aid and significant numbers or the numbers needed to enter.
And let's say that they find something on the truck like the blood pressure medicine or too many crates or you know whatever else and they say, oh, this is this is flagged. Do they let the rest of the truck through or do they send what happens to that entire.
Shipment, depending on where you are. If you were at one of the Israeli chick points, they'll send the truck back. The whole truck comes back, and it couldn't come back to a certain check point where if you have another truck available, you can take some of it off, replacement with this with the stuff that they'll allow in, and then send it back. But essentially you get back in the back of the line. So there's no telling how
long it would they take. You know, for example, there are trucks that have been sitting in Rocker for three months, literally three months, and and you can go through the list and this is you know, stuff that I wish,
you know, I could make public more widely. I mean, the you go through everything is literally before it enters, everything is you know, you send, you submit invoices, you submit the packing list, you submit the weight, the quantity, the origin of where it came from, and you just wait and you wait and you wait and you wait, and so it's, uh, it's truly soul shattering what you have to go through to get to get stuff in that you know is desperately needed and literally is helping
keep you people alive, and you know it's it's it's part of this strategy that I think, you know, the Israeli strategy since October seventh or October eighth has been very clear that their goal is to ethnically cleanse Gaza. And that doesn't mean they want to kill everybody. It means they want to get everybody out. I think internally probably there's discussion on whether that means they want to clear out the north part of Gaza or all of Gaza.
And that means they want you know, people out, and there we have hundreds of data points that prove that and to make that a reasonable deduction. So I don't think that's kind of and they've been open and honest about it. I mean, many members of the Prime Minister's
Cabinet and Kinnescant members have said the same. And so if you look at any of the things that have happened, it looks like a pretty you know, sort of strategy, a pretty obvious strategy of meeting the end goal of ethnically pleansing Gaza, including the attack on the World Central Kitchen staff.
So this is exactly what I was to ask you about next. Basically, having gone through all of these protocols, which as you just described, I mean, are incredibly detailed.
From the perspective of Israel, the IDF, and from your perspective, having been involved so closely in all of this, it seems pretty clear that they should have confidence in their own processes to clear all of the aid that's attempting to come in that basically they're doing everything possible, if not more than necessary, to ensure there's nothing involved in the aid deliveries that's going to be used against them or that's going to you know, have any sort of
capabilities capacity for Hamas to kill IDF soldiers or Israelis. And it seems like you've seen that up close that their own processes are very sound. They should have all confidence that what's coming into the country or attempting to come into the country, for the most part, is safe.
Yeah. They they have a very good system. They've had a system for years and years of clearing stuff, and they know what they're doing, and they could clear many, many more times tons of food and medicine a day than they're doing. They have the capacity to do it, and certainly the United States government has the expertise and capacity to do it, and certainly the UN agencies do as well. They could assist, but it's just not happening
because it's never been made a priority. They talk about it, They talked about it over and over and over again, about caring about civilians and humanitarian assistance. But they don't. They literally, they just don't.
I want to read one more passage from your recent piece in the intercept. Write it's easy to point the finger at Israel, the country that is implementing the blockade of God's two point three million residents, half of whom are children, yet trying to work the issue from every angle on a daily base to get urgent medical and food. Eight in I've come to the conclusion that President Joe Biden, for whom I hosted fundraisers and worked to elect in twenty twenty, has signed on to Israel's end goal of
the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in Gaza. So what I'm curious about is when you came to that conclusion. You and I have been in conversation since since the beginning of this war, and I'm curious when you moved from this is heartless incompetence to this is an actively malicious effort on the part of both the Biden administration and
the Israeli government to ethnically cleanse Gaza. Was it accumulation of the days of it, or was there a specific moment where you were like, no, this is this is deliberate.
I don't know that I had an aha moment. It was some time in October. I was in and out of Sinai two or three times in October at the border, and it was very clear that AID was being slow rolled. It was very clear that they were targeting certain sectors, and you know, sort of some time in October I came to the conclusion, which I think is a reasonable deduction, that there were no mistakes and there are no mistakes. And you know these really, the IDEF tells us all
the time. You know how precise they are. So the hundreds of doctors that have been murdered, the hundreds of teachers that have been murdered, the hundreds of AID workers that have been murdered, I don't think their mistakes. The hundreds of children, the thousands of children, but actually I know of literally tens of babies that were simply guilty
of being in their grips. And so these are things that are well known to the US government for many, many years as a military term called command and control sort of any US government official that's been stationed in the region know the IDF has a problem with command and control. If you wanted to, you could go out and dig up any number of US government officials who've been fired on by the IDF over the last you know,
thirty years or so. So what happened yesterday, for example, it will come out at some point that it was an issue of command and control and local commanders decided to pull the trigger once twice and a third time on three different vehicles. But this is not anything new. And again, when to come back to your point about the White House, this is nothing that the United States government doesn't know about IDF activities over the course of
thirty years literally and probably more than that. The thirty years I referred to as those are the years that I've been, you know, sort of affiliated with the US government or working alongside these issues.
So my last question is just going to be something you told Politico back in December. You were basically dropping out of the Biden twenty twenty National Finance Committee, like the Biden Victory Funds or twenty twenty four. Yeah, I think is what's Oh actually, yes, but you said this
is bullshit. You make moral compromises being involved in politics and ethical shortcuts, but this is a bridge too far, and Politico wrote, Although Kan has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for Democrats and previous election cycles, he admits that he doesn't have a limitless wealth as top to Biden donors, but he hopes it serves as a wake up call to the White White House. Since December, do you think your decision there has served as a wake
up call? Do you think that maybe now after the World Central kitchen situation, that will be a wake up call are you hearing from other donors, people involved in democratic circles that they're also fed up with us? It's a red line for them with Biden. Basically, what have you you heard since then?
Actually, I'm so far disconnected from the you know, sort of Washington political scene that I have no idea because I'm literally twenty four hours a day just trying to get humanitarian aid into Gaza and help get injured citizens in Gaza out to get medical aid where they can. So I really don't know. I don't know if anyone cares that, you know, I dropped out. I doubt it.
You know, it's it's just a matter of literally doing what you think is right and hoping other people will come to similar conclusions when when faced with the facts. You know, it's the reality of the world we live in is and and it's very very sad. And I worked alongside many colleagues of the seven who were murdered. Zoby Frankom, you know, a tremendous person, Damian Sobil, an
incredible person with years of experience. But the reality is Palestinians have being murdered in the same way for six months. They've been targeted, they've been identified, and they've been murdered. They've been hit by snipers, they've been hit by fifteen's, they've hit by Apache helicopters, and they've been hit by drones. As it wasn't the case the tragic case of the w c K staff. So I don't know, you know,
I don't know what it is. What what will wake people up to the reality of what's happening and what's been happening in Gaza. But you know, you you hear what I hear our excuses sometimes, uh, you know, this is war and the fog of war, you know, Ryan, like you said, I've been to I've delivered humanitarian aid and every single war zone the last twenty five years. And this has nothing to do with war. This is the targeting and the murder of innocent civilians. And those
aid workers are innocent civilians. They happened to be expats. But essentially the Palestinians, the Palestinians, as I said, the doctors, the teachers, the midwives, they've all been they've been all executed in the same way and targeted.
The Guardian published an investigation yesterday, uh speaking of Palestinian civilians that uh, that concluded that it appeared that Palestinian children were being targeted by Israeli snipers and that for that, for that type of investigation to get into the into the Guardian, you know, shows the level of the evidentiary standard that had to be meet to get get it past those editors there. Yet here in Washington wanted read you one last thing. There's still this this belief that
this is these are just unfortunate moments. Here's David Ignatius writing in the Washington Post. He writes, Monday illustrated the spectrum of outcomes we have seen from the i DF astonishing precision in targeting some of Iran's most toxic commanders at a secret meeting in Damascus in a consulate by the way, and then he says an appalling sloppiness in an apparently accidental strike on a humanitarian team in Gaza.
When you when you see something like that in the Washington Post, what what what do you think?
Well, I mean, you know it's David Ignatius, So he's a member of the establishment. To longtime member of the establishment. Probably spend too many, too much time and you know, dreadful Washington d C Hotel bars At this point, so you know, you sort of roll your eyes. You know, if you're looking at the situation through a prism of the Hamptons, it's different than if you're looking at it from out here in the world. And you know, to call it an accident is you know, it's just embarrassing.
You know.
An accident is when you sort of trip over a cable. An accident is not when local commanders give authorization to fire three separate times over a geographical distance over a series of minutes. That's not an accident. And uh, you know, with regard to the Guardian story, yeah, that's I'm unfortunately very aware of this reality. I've been in touch with many families live trying to get them out, and they've been killed in that process, and it's hard to imagine
that they weren't targeted. And children as well. There was a three month old baby I was trying to get out of Her parents had already been killed, and we had managed to get the birth certificate and then she was killed, you know, so in her just sleeping in her in her in her crib, in her in her in HER's apartment, you know, and it's it's just very there's no there's nothing imprecise about it. I've said it and I believe it, that every one of these murders
has been targeted. And you know the answer would be, oh, if we wanted to kill everyone, we could kill, you know, five hundred thousand, and I just think they they've killed the number they think they can get away with, you know. So whatever that number is, whether it's thirty five thousand or forty thousand, or fifty thousand and seventy five thousand who are severely injured, it's the number they want it
to be. And that number is significant. That means that literally every single Palestinian, every single Palestinian in Gaza, as a member of their immediate circle, whether it's friends or family, who have either been killed or severely injured or injured, will never recover from And this is aside from the two point two million people who have gone through trauma.
No one else in the world has experienced them. And again I've been to every one of these situations now, Sudan, Congo, nobody on earth can even comprehend of what's going on side of Gaza. Relentless bombardment from land, sea and air. So literally it's two point two million people and the few of us who actually been inside of Gaza since
October seventh, And that's that's about it. Because it's actually beyond the scope of human comprehension to be under constant bombardment, to have to move your family four or five, six times, to lose members of your family in that process, you know. So I think you're like the people in DC are obviously just you know, they're so disconnected from reality, so out of touch that you know, that's that's probably what you would expect.
Yeah, I think that's right.
So last night there was an earthquake in Taiwan, which which produced tsunami warnings in Okinawa, where my mother in law happens to be on in like an old old person's like bus trip, and so I was texting her and she was sending me video of her right next to the ocean as the tsunami is is predicted to be coming, and like there there was this moment of a half an hour to an hour where it was unclear if she was going to be able to get
to high enough ground in time. And it was a terrifying moment, and it made me think that everyone in Gaza has been living through that moment, you know, every minute of the day, you know, for the last five months, without any hope that the tsunami wave is going to creston and foll Because now the wave has passed Okinawa
and my mother in law is safe. The wave has not crested through gaz In fact, it seems like it's only crashing harder as a result of this World Central Kitchen masacre, which, as you said, has to be the intended result. We started the show with John Kirby claiming there's absolutely no evidence that any of this was deliberate, so we'll leave it to viewers to decide. Ahmed, thank you so much as always for the work that you do and also for joining us on this program.
Thanks very much, Brian, Thanks Emily, I appreciate it. Thank you. You're very right that that moment that you went through is exactly what they have gone through every minute of every day and every night for the last six months.
You can't imagine what that leaves your psyche like after that, if there ever isn't after it.
And your mother in law is now safe, right, So I.
Don't know about the boat. We'll find out about that, that's right.
The boat was Yeah, because she was a boat trip that goes around Japan, bunch of Miami seventy somethings. Sounds nice taking Japan in and then all of a sudden there's a tsunami.
Sounds less nice. Yes, that sounds much less nice. Ryan, that was a fascinating interview with Ahmed. Thank you for setting that up.
I think Griffin took that one up. Thank you, Thank you Griffin.
Pretty sure, Griffin. We'll be back here next Wednesday with more Counterpoints. Remember to subscribe at breaking Points dot com. You get the full episode of Counterpoints uninterrupted right in your inbox. And we know krystalin Sager tis this in an AMA for premium subs last week. So remember you get the AMA access to with a premium subscription. But we have some plans for the near future. Only if you subscribed, Yeah, only if you subscribe. Promo code Ryan's tupey.
That's right, don't use that. It doesn't work.
No, an apostoph will break the link.
It's also not a t pey. It's not you can well, we'll have someone do the Jimmy fallon someday and grab your head. But not today. Today's not today.
For that.
But anyway, we'll see you guys next week.
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