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Good morning and welcome to Counterpoints. Happy Wednesday, everybody. We've got a little bit of housekeeping. We're as we've almost got everybody moved over from the old system to the new one. Yeah, we have a little bit of concierge help, right, Yeah, finish it off.
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Whole thing just goes straight to you. So that's the housekeeping for today. Also, Ryan's tie has been straightened out. Yes, we fixed that problem about two seconds before air.
Yeah, we don't want people feeling off balanced watching the show. Well we kind of do a little bit, that's true,
all right. So we're going to get into the fallout from the Rafa masker, followed by a second Rafa masker, followed by the White House twisting itself into to try to figure out whether or not Israel has launched an invasion, sort of like the kind of dystopian version of Angels dancing on a pin, Like how many IDF soldiers and tanks can like dance in the center of Rafa before it's an invasion, you know, bring all the philosophers out to try to.
Figure this one out.
Meanwhile, Mexico has joined the ICJ case that South Africa has brought, and Algeria is now saying that it's going to bring the ICC case before the Security Council. They're circulating a partition, they're circulating a resolution, which means that that could be voted on the next five or ten days. We're going to talk about all the politics around that. We got Democrats absolutely freaking out, finally waking up and
discovering that their nominee is Joe Biden. Yes, if they watched Counterpoints or breaking Points regularly, we could have told them that was going to be your nominee, like it was headed that direction.
And he's not popular.
No, we knew that.
But apparently this is news to them and it's causing a full blown pain in Washington.
The real news to them is that the economy is actually not great. That's what they're like.
People are not tobably happy about that.
There was a poll showing that people think unemployment is the highest in like forty years, when actually it's kind of the lowest in forty years. Very very weird times we're living in. Meanwhile, Donald Trump about to get convicted.
It seems like, yeah, I mean.
Jerry, well, we'll talk about this, but the jury is quite literally out today, so they're a verdict could basically come at any time.
And their good services like scoping out the jail.
Yeah, that's a CEBE News CBS News report. We can get into. They buried that way down at the bottom of their story if you're seeing twenty twenty four on the screen. In addition to Biden, also Robert de Niro is out in the streets talking about how great New York is and how Donald trumpolis to destroyed New York. We've got some really interesting footage from Manhattan yesterday. Jerry
and Barry not a new but not a new band. Actually, Jerry Seinfeld them Barry Wise sat down for an interview Harvard at the same time came out with this idea that they're now going new We adhere to institutional neutrality, so we have some news on the campus front. And Ryan's friend Javier Milae. Yes, we'll plunge in the PESO down in Argentina.
So we'll talk about that.
Yeah, and then Donald Trump with some new comments about
whether or not he's going to pardon Assange. And if you're looking at that little ICC banner under there, under that, we're also or I forget where we were going to talk about this, we're also going to talk about the new Georgia law that was passed to basically make foreign NGO's register as foreign agents, which has the State Department absolutely freaking out, and which has a lot of interesting implications for the Russia Ukraine war and the kind of geopolitics around that region.
And one thing I want to add, just before we get into the news of the day out of Israel, twenty deaths actually twenty five as of a few hours ago. Twenty five tornado deaths just across Memorial Day weekend from tornadoes that ripped through seven states. So a lot of international news, a lot of domestic news. It's an election year, but my goodness, that's a that's a horrible situation in so many communities throughout you know what some folks would consider fly over country.
It's just tough. Yeah. Indeed, meanwhile, we can put up a zero here.
News is emerging that it was actually Boeing that produced the bomb that created.
The fire, the GBU thirty nine that led.
To that led to dozens of Palestinians being incinerated in what they what they had expected to be as a safe.
Zone, and we can put up a one here.
The reverberations of this kind of continue throughout the world, even as the Netnah who accepted responsibility said it was a tragic mistake. I think was his framing. Israel pledges going to investigate itself. There was a there were new renewed strikes on the same area, and actually, I think just eating from the first paragraph of this Associated Press article that we just put up gives you a sense of how the world is covering this and thinking about
this at the moment they right. Israeli shelling and air strikes killed at least thirty seven people, most of them sheltering intents outside the southern Gaza city of Rafa, overnight and on Tuesday, pummeling the same area where strikes triggered a deadly fire days earlier in a camp for displaced Palestinians.
According to witnesses, emergency workers and hospital officials. Hard to think of a more devastating paragraph that a neutral news organization like the Associated Press could put together about.
Anything going on in the world.
People getting incinerated intents just days after they were incinerated, other people were incinerated intense and so this has left the State Department and the White House to scramble for answers. Let's take a look at how Matt Miller over the State Department handled this.
Yesterday when it comes to the continuation of Israel using precision guided munitions in Rafa.
At this point, the US still supports that.
We have made no change to our policy.
So just is it a yes or no.
You made no change in our policy. We have made clear that if there was a full scale military operation there would be some change, but as of yet, it's not a change we do. We do support, as we always have, their ability to go after legitimate Hamas terrorists, and that of course includes using American provided weapons, but we expect them to do so in a way that minimize the civilian.
Arm And then just the last question with regard to the reports of the Israeli tanks that are in central Rafa.
Right now, I know you said you don't you have verified those reports?
Has the US asked Israel about those reports and an explanation for why those tanks might be in central Ruwa?
So we are in constant dialogue with them about their military operations and potential military operations in Rafa. I'm not going to get into any specific conversations, but we are constantly interrogating them about what they're doing and what they're playing.
So it's safe to say Eve interarrogets is not going to.
Go beyond that.
The IDF response, meanwhile, or I don't even know if this was the IDF or some like kind of clowns associated with them, was to release what they said was audio of two gossins talking in rough if we can put this up on the screen. People immediately flagged a bunch of problems with this. A they tried this exact thing months ago, and it was very quickly called out to be a fake conversation.
Some of it just sounds fake in the way.
That people are so clearly and explicitly identifying themselves as and exonerating the IDF. But also if you notice any audio or any phone calls you hear from Gaza since actually before October seventh foot accelerated. Since then you hear drone footage, I mean, I mean you heard in the
background it is just the ever present sound of Gaza. Now, somehow the Israelis, who were doing a lot of surveillance forgot to add in the drone sound in the background to add a little bit of kind of authenticity, uh to that clip. Basically, what the clip was trying to say is that it was a it was a jeep that was filled with explosives, that that was owned by
Hamas and that's why, that's why it blew up. That was one of multiple different theories that has that have been that have been thrown that have been thrown around, uh since then, and you can put up a actually we'll move to.
That in a second.
Emily, what what's your what's your what's your thought on the kind of Israeli response?
Uh?
So so far.
Well, I think it's interesting then that Yahu came out and said that this was quote a tragic mistake, because I think that really is reflective of how much pressure he understands that he's under now. Because their argument is essentially that they have the best civilian to military very ratio of any modern army, and the implication of that is, yeah, a lot of civilians are dying, but it's at a rate that is in some way as just as you know,
can possibly be done. And to an extent, there's been a sort of owning right and owning up to and just sort of coldly owning up to the ratio the deaths of civilians. And at this point, now that Netanyahu is caught between a rock and a hard place with the Biden administration, I do think it's interesting that he came out and so that this was a tragic mistake. When we're going to get to this in just a minute, it doesn't look like if this was just a mistake.
It is reflective of deep incompetence and I think a lack of let's say, a lack of judgment discernment as to what was possibly going to happen in that case. And also just truly I cannot imagine. Let me just put it this way, I don't even care that you know, they say they were trying to hit a different part of this area. It was obviously endangering the lives of civilians. I mean, it was so obviously endangering the lives of civilians,
and many civilians and people. By the way, this makes it harder down the road for Israel to do evacuations of civilians because they don't trust it. They're in areas that they're supposed to be safe, So why leave their homes and their families if the place that they're trekking to is going to be unsafe, if they're just going to get killed in another part of Gaza, if their children are just going to get killed in another part
of Gaza. So I mean, I think Netanyahu is trying to balance all of the international pressures here, but this is such a blatant if it's a mistake that in and of itself is reflective of something horrible. If we even take them their word of that.
Yea, and it didn't seem like it led to much reflection because we can put up a five here at Al Jazeer, by the way, you know, has been banned in Israel, and so their reporters have been yanked. There was that incident where they even took an AP camera from near Gaza, because but then then they give it back because Al Jazeera had a was using AP as a wire service. But so instead they have hin Kadri who's a freelance journalist in Gaza.
Here she is reporting.
From one of the areas that is supposed to be a designated safe zum. To Emily's point, let's let's play this interview with hint.
It went back just right now to the last leaflet that Israelis dropped andre and the place that was targeted right now was Block two three hundred and sixty. In this leaflet, the Israeli forces mentioned that they're calling people to evacuate to all the areas, the humanitarian areas to Del Bala, Hanunis and Almasse area. And one of these areas that men was mentioned is Block two three hundred sixty, which has been targeted right now. So yes, this place
was us safe. This place was designated as a humanitarian area according to the last leaflet that was dropped by the Israeli forces on people in And the.
Other key point that we can put up a six here is that no matter what you think about, you know which leaflets.
You know which ones are included in the.
Safe zone which aren't, Like as you were launching these missiles, as you're dropping these bombs, a drone is able to see what's below and here's some images of what you see below. Like you can tell that you're dropping them basically onto a tent city. Yes, obviously like setting all the complications aside.
So if you're listening to this, there's a map up on the screen where you see the just complete proximity to what Israel says it was targeting to red tents and to the area that ended up being hit, and it is I mean, words can't do justice. It's just so close. You should look up the map because this is by their own sort of emission. This is their own explanation for what happened. And you know they say
that in the this is their words. The precision attack in northwest Rafa, they killed the chief of staff of Hamas, they killed the senior Hamas official to deaths. That's according to the IDF. Now, I think if the ultimate goal is eliminating Hamas, even this precision strike apparently that killed
two Hamas officials according to the IDEF. Again, when people are seeing everything else on their screens and they see and they think through the likelihood of Hamas being fully eliminated doesn't feel right.
The calculations don't feel right.
To people, right, And it's and it's fine to criticize HAMAS for you know, having its officials within civilian populations.
Absolutely, that's great, But that is the case.
It's the reality all guerrilla armies from an American revolution Army up until the Vietcong through HAMAS.
That's that's what they do.
The question is what does what does their adversary do and does the adversary respect in the national humanitarian law or laws of war. If you have a couple of Hamas figures surrounded by civilians and tents, that doesn't that two wrongs don't make a right. Doesn't mean you drop a bomb and blow up all the tents there and incinerate people within them.
Well, especially when the ultimate goal of court eliminating Hamas, right, that is not an attainable goal, right.
Right, exactly. Set aside the morality of it getting rid of two senior officials who can be replaced by other mid level officials will and then and then creating enormous global backlash against yourself and and leading to the recruitment of you can only I would imagine that HAMAS has more people trying to enlist, you know, from Gaza than it has the capacity to kind of arm and structure into an organization at this point, like you could kill
they start out with thirty thousand, they could kill all thirty thousand. But if you're living through that, you're probably just going to be like signing, sign me up?
What like why not?
I think there's a really serious argument that none of this is making is really safe.
Right.
That's the counter terror argument that people like David Petraeus always made, that you can't kind of kill your way out of it. The old every terrorist you kill creates two or three like do we take that seriously or not? And so Nikki Haley certainly doesn't. If one of the more psychotic things that I've seen in this war, and it's not unique to this one, but it does. You know, social media puts it in our face a lot more. Is this phenomenon of tourists going over to Israel and
signing and putting messages on bombs. So Nikki Haley boasting here, she wrote, she writes finish them like she's signed a year book. She writes, America hearts Israel, Yes always, Nicki Haley, it is like a yearbook.
That's exactly what it looks like in her loopy cursive America hearts Israel always. Nicki Haley finished them, you know, Ryan, she should have signed the GBU thirty nine, the Boeing.
From South Carolina, right, I mean Boeing's like main headquarters is in her like she was on the board, right, She was.
On the board of Boeing until she ran for president. And that GBU thirty nine is what was used. As we mentioned earlier, the element is as well, if we put it back up in the street at the screen, that's the one that was used by Israel in the tent city attack in Rafa, as Jordanald points out here. So really, Nicki Haley should have been signing that that old GBU thirty nine.
Yes, And Nicki Haley saw her wealth explode after being governor of South Carolina, largely by joining Boeing, Yeah, and using her political power to make sure, you know that they can sell more weapons to the United States, which weapons that were then sent to Israel, weapons that were then dropped on this Rafa tent encampment that then incinerated a lot of women and children while she was there signing other bombs.
I bet she.
Didn't anticipate that. By the way, I tried to pin down the exact timing. It's hard to know when the picture was actually taken, because when it was posted and taken is different. And I actually did try to chase
down the bottom of when that was happening. It was pretty it's pretty difficult to know for sure what the timing was on that, but certainly, I mean it reminds me actually of a lot of what happened during the Cold War, where my fellow Conservatives were sort of doing something very similar and reveling in the brazenness of you know, like the Contras, a good example of the Contras, and you know, because they ultimately believed this was a just war,
that this was Manichean good versus evil. And I actually respect the position of completely owning it and being honest, and so to some extent, respect to you, Nikki Haley for putting it all on display, all on display.
In that's for sure burned in a tent camp.
And I mean it's clarity if anything.
Yeah, politically, she's not like she's actually putting herself at risk, but it's.
Yes, but yes, absolutely, but yeah, but she's actually like totally aware of the scene on the international stage, aware of all the social media images of children, of women, of the just utter destruction, and she's saying, I don't give an f. Basically, finish them.
The US apparently doesn't give much of an f about building things. If you want a metaphor for the entire policy, you can put this element up from CNN. The US peer constructed off Gaza has broken apart. Images that were floating around the internet. Hall Flow had one of it. Just it just sinking and people fail me, just like kind of laughing at oh my god, like just the dark, the dark comedy of it all. Looks like Mack was saying an X ray of a broken pinky there.
I was told by.
Sources there that a now that now the US military is contracting tug boats at massive expense to try to fix a bunch of this.
Uh.
There were workers stranded on the on the on the
beach basically with not even not even sleeping bags. I mean it's you know, all suffering is relative, but you know, workers who signed up to build this this pier did not sign up to sleep overnight in Gaza on the on the beach with no tent, no sleeping bag, no no real certainty of what was going to happen next because there's this huge fear among American policy makers that they can't ever have an American soldier boot on the ground, so they have to try to figure out how they're
gonna not build this or build this.
Without that potentially happening.
So it's work for the workers end up taking the lumps and the.
Three hundred and twenty million dollars.
But that's going to say that's that's only what's been spent so far now fixing this two months.
By the way, people remember he kind of caught the Pentagon off guard by announcing.
This very politically in his State of the Union speech.
So that's March. It's operational by I think the date was May seventeenth. So three hundred and twenty million dollars, three hundred and twenty million dollars for a thousand metric tons of aid that got into Gaza. Now whether that was actually distributed was another question.
Has been distributed.
Sabrinas thing, Yeah, said a thousand metric tons. That's our government's own explanation for that's their own number for how much was brought in in a two month, three hundred and twenty million dollar project that saw people being fired at that broke apart that had just the most embarrassing saga. It's the most embarrassing life arc and was damaged by rough seas, as The New York Times put in a headline.
Right they claimed rough seas what I was told us that it was basically high tide. Like it's not even like there were no real rough seas, Like there are rough seas in the Mediterranean.
Who could have seen it coming?
But apparently this was just basically high tide. Yeah, there's some.
Very gentle spring breezes which it just couldn't couldn't stand up. So and all of this just because Israel wouldn't let in sufficient amounts of aid.
Through just over land. It's like, why are we building up here?
Aren't there isn't it connected by land to Israel and Egypt?
Like we could just move aid in through trucks, yes, And.
Are you still going to have a distribution problem when the aid gets to the land and.
The other The other idiotic thing was they're like, oh, well they won't let aid in through these choke points here, so we'll build a We'll build a pier over here, and then that will move things faster. Instead the IDF sent all of its inspectors over to Cyprus and just blocked everything at Cyprus, so it couldn't even get on the ships and get over to the Peer. It's like, your problem was not a lack of entry points into Gaza, it.
Was a three hundred and twenty million dollar public relations effort, right.
Well, a lot of people thought it was like this was the beginning of the US occupation of Gaza. So I guess at least the upside is no, Yeah, that's true. I can't even get it to keep floating in fairness.
I mean, there were people fired on and had someone gotten had an American whether a contractor or troops gotten like actually severely hurt killed, which easily could have happened, easily could have happened. So to some extent, it's just it's just luck, cher dumb luck, even in this ridiculous arc of the Peer, that it didn't become something bigger.
Yeah, And we did want to take a minute to talk about this incredible story over at nine plus nine seven two magazine that they wrote in ordination with Israeli news organization Local Call and The Guardian. If we can put up this first element of the b block here surveillance and interference.
Israel's covert war on the ICC exposed.
Just incredible reporting here showing the way that the Israeli government has done exactly that, spent the last ten years basically surveilling top prosecutors at the ICC, monitoring their communications, following whoever it is that they're talking with, and also directly threatening them and their families in the most kind of over the top, mob like kind of way.
Most odd cracking people. Yeah, well, ran another part of the story. It reminds me what we talked about earlier in the show, about this sort of difficult position from a PR standpoint, and I don't want to talk about this just as PR. I'm explaining PR to get to
the moral question. If you're NET in Yahoo, if you're sort of hawks or your coalition depends on hawks in the Israeli government, you have a hard time not just owning that ultimately you have contempt for this, this concept of international law, and I do think to some extent it has been weaponized against Israel by Partisans anti Israel partisans over the years, and that's built up this resentment and content towards the concept itself, which was obviously developed
after World's War two, well not just developed after World War two, but codified in a lot of ways after World War two. And I think ultimately what the story shows is that you know, this is where they are. That's yeah, and it's just hard to be morally. The answer to this is just to say we don't respect international It's like the Biden administration suddenly respecting the ICC and Ukraine. But well, you know, we have we're not
a party to it. And when it comes to Israel, nobody has a consistent position on international law except perhaps Israel under the surface.
Right, Yes, indeed, it's quite clear.
I just would encourage people to go read that story, a great, great piece of great piece of journalism. And relatedly, Algeria is now circulating a resolution if we can put up this next element, basically trying to push the Security Council to enforce the ICJ's most recent order decides that Israel quote shall immediately halt its military offensive and any other action in RAFA demands in immediate ceasefire, demands that the parties comply with their obligations under international law and
relations to all persons they detain. If we have the Algerian Ambassador to the United Nations here grabbed by some reporters yesterday.
If we could put up b B three.
Resolution here that you have assumed circulated, that might happen tomorrow.
For sure, Algeria will circulate this afternoon draft resolution on.
And what's it gonna say?
What's the moving What do you want a.
Short text, decisive text to stop the killing?
Will you invoke the ICJ?
Short decisive texts will invoke the ic J decision. Not only did Mexico join with South Africa in South Africa's case, you had France, a member of the Security Council, come out and support this.
Here's here's the French. I always love to hear from the French.
There is no safe zoon for Palestian civilians in Rauffa. Prisidon Macro has expressed his indignation at the Istralian strikes which have claimed many victims among the displaced persons in Rafa. Yesterday. Another strike against the camp kill civilians this morning as well. These Israeli operations hast stopped immediately as requested by the International Court of Justice.
As Emily was pointing out, it's impressive to kind of reunite Algeria and France a question of international law and order.
Okay, well, that's a good point.
At I asked treat A Parsi for a sense of his timeline on this, and he thinks there could be a vote before the Security Council in five to ten days. The vote will obviously be overwhelming in favor, but the United States has a veto, and so will the US
veto it. Certainly they didn't veto the last thing, because there the calculation last time was that it's it's a question of what's more embarrassing on the one hand, vetoing something the entire world wants to happen, on the other hand, letting something go through over their kind of objections, and then just slow looking at not letting anything actually happen, right, and further showing that the UN doesn't actually have much enforcement mechanism unless somebody like France is going to take
it upon themselves to go and force it. Like you know, as Andrew Jackson said about Supreme Court, you know they made their decision, now let them enforce it.
I also think the so like all eyes on RAFA has been going viral this week. I think there are different pressures just because of the incursion into Rafa that are going to weigh on Biden. But that's also pressures from people who are digging their heels in and continue like Nikki Heeley going over there and signing shells finish them fing to Moss. That's I mean, I think it's a You're right, I shouldn't have been so quick to
say that. They'll almost certainly veto it. We'll have to see what Biden decides.
I mean, certainly that's the smart money that they would veto. Yeah, for sure, all of this is happening while there are renewed peace negotiations underway, or negotiations towards some type of a ceasefire. And so we talked last week about Egypt getting blamed for scuttling them. We've got kind of an update on that, but you can put up this Middle
East Eye article, you know. So, So basically on Friday, Burns see director Burns met with UH, went with Kutter and Israel to try to hash out some some terms.
UH.
Then on Monday, Israel submitted what it said was its counteroffer back to Hamas UH, saying that they were going to they would be flexible in the number of of hostages that they would take in the first phase. Uh that, and they would be they would be more willing to entertain Hamas's idea of what what Hamas is calling a sustainable calm, because Israel doesn't want to agree to a permanent ceasefire.
So and Hamas is saying, they're.
They'll only talk if there there is a something close to a permanent ceasefiren Yahoo's advisors have been telling him, look, because Nnya says, I don't want to agree to anything that ends the war, and they keep telling him, look, Hamas is going to do something. They'll shoot off a rocket or something. They'll they'll give you a pretense to start the war again. Just take the pause, take the hostages that that you can while the deal is on
the table. Uhtyahu is not willing to go for that, because Hamas is also demanding that there'd be some type of plan for the day after that. They like, they genuine genuinely like they they they have been sending signals. They understand it's not going to be Hamas. It's going to be in control at the very end of this. But they also don't want to be the palace an authority so like, how are you going to organize this?
And Hamas is saying they want Israel out of Rafa and off the Rafa crossing and the previous administration Hamas for now to be put back in charge of the
Rafa crossing. And they've said, as that headline said, they're not negotiating until Israel ends its slaughter in Gaza and and withdraws its tanks and stops bombing like that, that's that's the precondition for negotiations to get going because and analysts are saying, well, because of the way that Israel is continuing to draw so much global condemnation for its actions, that Hamas is willing to let Israel continue down this path which is just hurt which is hurting them, hurting
Palestinian civilians, also hurting Israel in the global stage.
When in the peace process, if there's to be a resolution that's in the interest of the safety of israelis you know, we talked about this earlier, but that's what really I mean, at the end of the day, that's what Israel's interests are to its own civilians and their safety, and so it doesn't I mean, I'm pretty skeptical that the way this war is prosecuted is ultimately and even even in the interest of the Israeli the safety of Israeli citizens.
And the Middle East side has some good sources inside the Middle East, as you can imagine, and they follow up on this reporting. If you didn't watch the show last week, what we were reporting on is the way that Hamas had accepted this deal, which Israel then said no, Hamas changed the terms of the deal, so we don't accept Hamas's acceptance of the deal. There was reporting that the US had signed off on what Hamas had agreed to, that Hamas believed that it was signing off on the
actual offer. That was followed by blaming an individual member of Egyptian intelligence that they even named in CNN as responsible for tweaking the deal and blowing the whole thing up.
According to the new reporting.
That was just as and as we suggested last week that was just pure scapegoating, that everybody had actually signed off on it. But then Israel did not accept the kind of acceptance in response, as Middle East I writes.
The source added that.
Egypt was scapegoaded for a breakdown of talks even though the America had quote agreed to the two amendments by Hamas, and then because they were unable to oblige that Yahoo, they accused Egypt. So it's not that Israel had signed off on the two tweaks that Hamas made.
It is that the US did.
And Hamas understandably believes that if the US is good with it, the US can get Israel to go along with it. And it is a shameful dereliction of leadership on the part of Biden that the Director of the CIA, William Burns, can get to a peace deal with Hamas that he believes is acceptable to the United States, that is accepted in the United States, and they can't get Israel, country of like seven million people just dependent on American weapons, to accept the peace deal.
Yeah, what are you doing if you can't do that?
Yeah?
What else?
Yeah?
What else? Could? What else could they be doing?
Poorly?
It's a great question how much worse could they be at this?
Good Lord?
Yesterday's State Department briefing that was fascinating was the first This was their first briefing since the massacre in Rafa.
But I want you to notice what they.
Started out with, which is an indication of what they consider to be the thing that they care most about in the moment.
I'm going to start with comments on a couple of things before going to your questions. First of aull Off as it relates to Georgia. Earlier today, the Georgian Parliament voted to override the Georgian President's veto of an anti democratic foreign influence bill that fails to conform to European norms, effectively turning the bill into law. The United States condemns
this action. In passing this law, the ruling Georgian Dream Party moved the country farther away from the European integration path and ignored the euro Atlantic aspirations of the Georgian people, who have taken to the streets for weeks to oppose this law. The Georgian Dream has disregarded the Council of Europe's Venice Commission legal assessment and that of George's closest partners, who made clear their concerns that the law would stigmatize
civil society and media and limit fundamental freedoms. The ruling party's actions and anti Western rhetoric threatened Georgia's democratic trajectory, future economic security, EU membership, and also put the US Georgia relationship at risk. Last week, Secretary Blincn announced that anyone who undermines democratic processes or institutions in Georgia, as well as their immediate family members, may be found ineligible for US visas under a newly announced policy precluding travel
to the United States. The United States has also launched a comprehensive review of bilateral cooperation between the United States and Georgia. As Secretary Blincoln said last week, we will take Georgia Dreams, Georgia Dreams actions into account as we decide our own. The United States continues to stand by the Georgian people as they work for a democratic and
western future. It is unfortunate that George's leaders are choosing to forego the steps needed to advance Georgia in the western direction that its people want.
Learning to Gaza, that is the State Department angry, and so let's let's unpack what that heck is going on here. So Georgia dream Is is a kind of hard to define political party, which is basically the governing governing party in Georgia. And they're harder to find because they were
built in opposition to this neoliberal party. That that had been dominant in Georgia before, and so because they were kind of a popular front against a thing that brought together a bunch of disparate entities, sort of like the way that here on this network, we all hate neoliberalism. So imagine we put together a political party that was like me, Crystal, you and Sager because we hate the neoliberals, and we get them out of power. Then we've got
the problem of we got to govern. Yeah, and there's gonna be some things we disagree on.
What are we going to do about the pronouns.
Yeah, we agreed that we did not like the Georgia neoliberals, but yes, now we got a government.
So some of what.
The Georgia Dream has done is really cool, like lots of social welfare stuff, universal health care, also some progressive social stuff, certainly relative to the area. At the same time, they've got some victor orban allied elements as well. There's some you know, some far right elements that are kind.
Of saying they're pro women and family.
There you go, but there, yeah, exactly, So they're hostile to.
Hostile to neoliberalism from the far right, and so it's the power inside that coalition kind of seesaws. So setting that aside, all of those elements are ones that the State Department doesn't like. Separately, they're considered to be friendlier to Russia and relatedly than the Neoliberals were. The Neoliberals were very lockstep with the EU. It's not as if Georgia Georgia dream is like radically pro Russia. But for instance,
when Russia invaded Ukraine, Georgia supported Ukraine. They said, we you know, we think this is appalling, but they refused to take part in the sanctions against Russia. They refused to arm Ukraine, and Ukraine kept pushing Georgia to quote unquote open up a second front against Russia because the Neoliberals when they were running Georgia lost South Ossetia and
some other pieces of Georgia to Russia. If you remember that war fifteen years ago or whatever, and the world still says that's Georgian territory with Russians.
Russians control it.
So the arm was, hey, you know, pick a fight with Russia over on this border over here, you know, don't they deserve it. They stole your land, Like fight them, and that will also help Ukraine because now Russia will have to be fighting on multiple fronts. And the Georgi's Dream Party was like, no, like, we're not doing that
like that. Yes, we understand that would help you, we understand that, we're mad that Russia did this to us, but we would get absolutely annihilated and it would destroy Georgia's so we're not no, we're not going to do that. That really ticked off the US, that ticked off the EU.
They start riling up protests in the streets and so then they come forward, this actually breakaway kind of socialist faction of Georgia Dream comes forward with this plan that now the state departments really angry about, which is saying, look, if you get if you're an NGO or a media organization and you get more than twenty percent of your money from foreign sources, then you have to register basically as a foreign agent. Georgia legislator says, look, we're just
modeling this after FARA, which the US has. We say no, no, no, you're modeling it after Russia's of course law, which Russia has used. Russia has genuinely used to crack down on dissent.
And so.
Is the response from the State Department pretty wild like this. You say whatever you want about it. They're passing it democratically through their own legislature. And it's not a unless I'm missing something, it's not a terribly unreasonably even if it is aimed at, you know, cracking down on dissent from some organizations and media outlets that they don't like. It's kind of George's business if they want to do this, isn't it.
But you see, Ryan, democracy is on the line around the world, which is actually what we're going to talk about in just a minute in the next block. And it's the Biden administration's line. I forget who who posted
this recently. It's not a new line, but basically that every time they say democracy, what they really mean like substitute the word oligarchy when every time the sort of neoliberal leadership refers to the need to save democracy, just substitute aligarchy and everything they're saying makes way more sense.
And there's oligarchs everywhere, because the Georgia dream is literally a product of an oligarch in Georgia, like a flat in one of these kind of flamboyant culture personality oligarch types.
But they which is interesting because it's like this idea that we're going to fight.
Oligarchy with oligki, right, So.
Like if you want to make the argument that Donald Trump is an oligarch and then you're just like the party of Joe Biden and Hunter Biden and like actual oligarchy. If your answer is to say, we are, so America needs to purge allarchy, oligarchy, we need to fight back against the blah blah blah, and your answers, Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton.
Well done.
And it was pretty incredible see them saying that they're going to take they're basically going to sanction like people involved with this going to.
Strip their visas.
After covering Pakistan, where Pakistan just completely changes the numbers of their election, right, like one party wins, the military goes in and literally changes the numbers so that a different party wins, and the State Department, you know, doesn't do anything remotely close to what they're doing here for a piece of legislation being passed through their kind of constitutional normal process, as the president, under pressure from the
EU vetoed it, the legislature overrode the veto yesterday.
That's you know, I mean, you don't like that, go out and I don't know.
Pour some money into Georgian elections. The vote people are gonna have to register, but register and vote.
If you don't, go vote in the Georgia elections if you like. It's just so weird.
By the way, the way Farah works is such a good and we're gonna be talking about this kind of on the Friday Show, I assume. But it's such an example of American oligarchy, and the oligarchs like Tony Podesta just thought they didn't have to register. Well, they knew they didn't have to register until by some crazy circumstance, Donald Trump, the host of Celebrity Apprentice, gets elected President.
Paul mannifort goes to the chopping block, and this drags Tony Podesta into a scandal that ends the Potesta group. He's still lobbying, but really just never legister register as a lobbyist on behalf of Ukraine, even though you know there are people were talking to CNN at the time, being like he was obviously having these meetings on the Hill as a representative of Ukraine, not the shell organization
he set up to disguise it. So Even if you have a democratically passed legislation like Farah that requires registration, oligarchs will still find a way to put holes in it.
Yeah, it just feels like a real who do we think we are kind of moment.
I mean, Georgia should just do whatever Georgia wants to do.
Yeah, let's talk about Joe Biden. Let's talk about twenty twenty four, Donald Trump. Actually, just a lot of updates from New York City yesterday, Ryan, there was so much stuff going on in the streets of New York. So we will start with this first. It's important. This is the This is c one. This is an article from Politico about how Democrats are in full blown quote freak out over Biden. Now, the subheat of the story is
and also an interesting part of the school. It says one advisor to major Democratic donors keeps a running list of reasons Biden could lose.
Someone pointing to an interesting fact.
Out to me yesterday, which is that the debate on June twenty seventh is suspiciously early, meaning did Democrats want like a two month cushion if Biden absolutely bombs between then and the convention in Chicago In mid August. I
think that's actually an interesting question. There are contingencies, contingency measures that could be put in place, although they're really really difficult, and there's no consensus candidate other than their fantasy of Michelle Obama that they could replace Joe Biden with. At this point, Kamala Harris's favorability is not great. I know a lot of people want to Gretchen Whitmer or
maybe even Gavin Newsome. It's unclear if those are answers to the problem, because it seems right now at least like it would just be a very difficult replacement effort, although it is possible. There's like some Charlie Kelly math that you can do on a talk board to figure it out.
Any thing is if they would listen to me, not that they ever would, I could end this problem for them immediately. And with Biden still as president, you make Obama his vice president. People still love Obama, they absolutely love him. The constitution says that you can't serve more than ten years and you cannot be elected more than twice. He is eligible to be elected as vice president. If Biden died, he would be eligible to elevate from vice president to president.
Go ahead, go google the Constitution, read it yourself.
Google the Constitution, It's right in there.
He could do it. He would then have to resign within two years.
So let's say, you know, Biden dies in like March of twenty twenty five, then Obama could only serve until March of twenty twenty seven. So then whoever he would name a vice president, just like Nixon named Ford as his vice president, and then Obama would have to resign within two years, and then that person would become the president for the rest.
Of the term. I think if you had Obama as Biden's VP.
That people be like, you know what, okay, Like tons of Democrats really I like, we know him.
And then you've got the nostalgia voters who were like things were good then and things were good Trump.
This is a good example of why I think there's intentionally a two month cushion, because there are all kinds of solutions like this that people can get on board with. Now, I wouldn't be so worried about Biden's performance at the debate because whatever they do to Joe Biden drug, whatever they do before those debates, seems to work. Like he's good for an hour and a half and then it starts to go downhill. But I wouldn't be too worried about the debate in particular. It'd be much more worried.
Bama just showed up instead, just like I'm pinch hitting.
Yeah. But I would be much more worried about the campaign strategy, which is has been I think clearly focused on the question. We were just discussing democracy, civility norms, all on the line, very very similar to the twenty twenty campaign. This is what was on full display yesterday in New York. So while Democratic insiders are freaking out in quote freak out mode to Politico. So these are people that probably aren't running the day to day campaign,
but presumably are big donors, are strategists. While they're talking to Politico, here's what the Biden campaign was doing yesterday. The Biden campaign, not some pack or not some special interest group, not a media thing.
This was the Biden campaign.
They actually put Robert de Niro out in This was timed with Donald Trump's trial and the hush money case with Harry Dunn and I think Michael fanone to January. Six Capitol police officers who've been high profile opponents of Trump since January sixth, Robert de Niro, take a look at some of these clips from Manhattan yesterday.
The city is pretty accommodating. We make room for clouds. We have them all over the city. People who do crazy things in the street we tolerated. It's part of the city. It's part of the culture. But not a person like Trump who will eventually run the country. That does not work. And we all know that. Anyway, we make group of clowns to each his own, but no one takes him or took them really seriously. They take them seriously. Now, of course democratic you are, you are, you're talking.
There are nobody.
Your movie suck.
You're trash, You're trash, You're done.
You're so right.
This was just a peak New York you and Roberts and you were talking about how great New York is because we have clowns in the street. As those clowns in the street, all due respect, are shouting at him, and like in the background of the first clip that was a little bit more quiet, there were still people shouting at him.
And in the second clip, he was being.
Escorted away from a mob and the guy in a maga hat saying you're nobody. Your movies are trash, like just classic behavior.
The hate his politics. Movies are great.
Well, it spends on which movies you're talking about. Some of the movies are trash.
Do enough movies. I guess some are going to be trash.
Well, actually, this particular Trump voter might want to take another look at Taxi.
There you go.
It was just a perfect New York scene. But I think also Ryan just this strategy we have seen since literally twenty sixteen of taking celebrities out to talk about how horrible Donald Trump is. And this was outside the trial, which Joe Biden is he again, this was leaked to media. He's ready, he's prepared to address it at the White House so that whatever the verdict is, he will finally address this trial when the verdict comes out out whatever it is, but he's going to do it from the
White House so that it doesn't look political. That's an actual contention.
As opposed to a rally, like, yes, does he do rallies?
I mean he's I think he's in campaign in Philadelphia something like that. But because again the verdict could come at any moment, the jury is quite literally out today, So we could have a verdict in you know, it could be days, could be today. I suspect it will probably take a little bit of time.
But uh, they got to thirty four votes, right, thirty four charges?
Yeah, and so yeah, it could take a while. So the Biden administration is saying, you know, we don't we don't see this as political.
This is just about democracy and decency.
And then they're trying out Robert de Niro in the streets of New York, like outside the courthouse where we saw all kinds of Republicans doing the political speeches last week too. It just, you know, I think their campaign strategy really sucks, to be honest, but there's an argument that it could. You know, it's the thing that gets the suburban housewives to turn out. I don't know if Robert Niro is the answer to that, but.
One of the top quotes from that political article was quote, you don't want to be that guy who is on the record saying we're doomed where the campaign's bad or Biden's making mistakes. Nobody wants to be that guy, said a Democratic operative in close touch with the White House and granted anonymy to speak freely, but Biden's stubbornly Portpoli and the stakes of the election quote are creating the.
Freakout, he said, yep.
So I mean it's a bunch of quotes like that
from people who are freaking out. But it's hard to take the freaking out seriously when all of these people had a year plus to publicly freak out and then actually change the reality and have an actual open primary by putting pressure on Biden to not run for election, but none of them wanted to do so because all of them would pay some little tiny cost, So collectively they all just decided to let the party make a catastrophic decision with according to them, the fate of the
free world yes at stake.
And so it's hard.
To take them seriously when they say that they really believe the fate of the free world is at stake if you're not willing to take a little tiny risk yeah to defend it.
Yeah, And especially, I mean it really does ring hollow when you have a Hollywood multi millionaire actor being trotted out in New York outside at courthouse for a case that is not political but about democracy and decency, and yet there's an extremely strong argument, even from people on the left, that is a trumped up political case that Alvin Bragg did some intended to do, some intended to do, some novel legal maneuvering to make it a felony and
a campaign finance violation because the statute of limitations had elapsed on the financial Like the what's the best way to describe the crime that's alleged to have.
Been the sanctity of business records must be upheld?
Yeah, in New York. Yes, the sanctity of business records must be upell in New York, which, by the way, I'm on board with if it's going to be a blied and a truly non oligarchical partisan manner. But when you have Robert de Niro and you're in your strategy is bringing out Harry Dunn, who just lost in Robert de Niro to talk about this outside of courtroom while you are pretending to take the high road. It's a ridiculous strategy, I think. And it's approaching ten years of
Democrats talking about nothing serious to voters. I mean, obviously they do sometimes I'm speaking in somewhat hyperbole here, but it's like ten years of Democrats fixating on these ridiculous arguments against Donald Trump himself instead of policies, and there are problems, like there are actual substance of problems with Donald Trump. I get it. With the style of somebody who's tweeting about Mika Brazinski's facelift as president, I get it.
I think there are substance of questions about the style. But it's been their fixation for approaching a decade, and it's clearly a crutch. It's clearly become a crutch for Democrats because they're uncertain of how to win the argument.
They're unwilling to I think even try to win the argument with some of those Obama Trump voters in the rust belt, even you know, black voters who are moving towards Trump, not just away from Biden, but towards Trump, and not an overwhelming numbers, but in historic numbers according
to some polling. It's much easier for Democrats to try to just turn out with educated, suburban voters through stuff like this instead of, you know, trying to win on the merits of policy stubsms for people who feel like this economy sucks for them.
And I still think Trump could lose, Oh absolutely, The part I can't quite figure out, and maybe you can help me with this is how so the end of democracy argument would require Trump to then get a third term.
Right, In order for Trump to get a third term, he.
Would need either the support of the Supreme Court to do that or the military.
I understand.
I guess why Democrats think the Supreme Court would support him in that, because he appointed a bunch of them and it's a right wing Supreme Court. But a closer understanding of this Supreme Court does not have them in this. They haven't been coalition together, but not not in a sense that they want Trump to kind of be some permanent dictator like John Roberts would prefer the Reagan era type of republican Mitt Romneyer.
The same with somebody Neil Gorsich, same with any Amy Coney, Barrett. And you can maybe make an argument about Alito and Thomas, but the others.
Oh yeah, I think Alito and Thomas would be there for the revolution perhaps, but that's that's two votes.
Perhaps.
I think you, I think you would.
You can legitimately worry about them absolutely from the left, Yeah, definitely the military though, Okay, that's a very pro democracy.
Institution, very anti Trump institute, very.
Anti Trump institution, very pro civilian control of the government institution. And I don't think enough people there aren't enough like sergeants that you could make four star generals to take over the military in four years, Senate, it's not going to.
Let you do that. I don't. I just don't. I don't see the path.
Yeah, I think the freak out over American institutions somehow being easily swayed by Donald Trump is absurd because, if anything, our institutions have hardened themselves against Donald Trump. Even if the Pentagon, for example, supported Trump era policies that felt very neo conservative to some people because John Bolton's of the world in his administration. Even then, the style substance of Donald Trump is abhorrent to a lot of top brass and the military, and over at the.
Pendentmon I don't think there's enough time to get rid of all that top brass and put in because the path to that type of dominance would be replacing the entire leadership of the DOJ and the military with nothing but Trump loyalists.
Yeah, it's not something you can do with schedule a foot.
Well, I'll try to get rid of that.
But like, but even that's I just think physically, they don't they don't have the they don't have the bodies.
Yeah, and maybe.
I'm wrong, Maybe Democrats will have the last will laugh when I'm up against the wall.
After Trump's revolution, We'll see.
That was a really dark turn. All right, Let's move on to some news actually out of Harvard that we wanted to pair with the interview Barry Weiss conducted with Jerry Seinfeld over at the Free Press yesterday. So just to contextualize this, we're going to be talking about Harvard starting to say we are going to have a policy of institutional neutrality along the lines of, you know, something
like the University of Chicago. Although important observers or observers have pointed out something important, which is that we don't know how Harvard will interpret this yet. But obviously Harvard has been reeling since the Claudine Gates has the morning after October seventh, then the encampment, and it's been.
A hell of a year for Harvard.
Now, in his interview with Barry Weiss, Jerry Seinfeld, who just gave a majorly viral commencement address at Duke University addressed some of what he sees among young people.
Let's roll this clip, and so you yourself have become politicized in a way.
A little bit.
Yeah, do you feel that?
I do you comfortable with it?
It's so dumb. It's so dumb.
In fact, when we get protesters occasionally, I love to say to the audience, you know, I love that these young people, they are trying to get engaged with politics. We have to just correct their aim a little bit. You know, they don't seem to be understand that as comedians we really.
Don't control anything, right, right, right, No one's really uh no, you're pulling.
The strings over the war in Gosnel. Yeah, that's how I think of it. Yeah, yeah, you were in Israel. Yeah, since the war started.
How is that.
Trip the most powerful experience of my life?
Really?
I'm sure? Yeah? Why you know it? Just yeah?
That clip was shared by Israel's official Twitter account. Yes, and then the conversation went on from there. We could roll this next clip from it.
A huge part of the way you think about comedy is how the audience never lies, m right, But what happens if a lot of people are wrong? In other words, there is a I don't think Jews do well in an age of mobs, and I feel that right now in our culture, it's really easy to form mobs.
Yes, really easy.
And what's the difference between the audience never lying? But when does the audience kind of tip into the mob? Do you see where I'm going with them?
I do?
I do? There's something they Yeah.
But I really have been wanting to ask you about, Like for someone that relies on the truth telling of the audience to tell you whether or not something is funny?
Hm?
What does that same principle apply to a massive people?
Do you see what I mean?
Hm? Well, you can't act like we don't see this every day in many realms. Let's just talk politically, left and right. You're watching mobs, their mobs, their mobs, believing their own crap. Right, Yeah, that's what a political party is. We're going to make up a bunch of nonsense and we'll all agree to it, right right, Okay, let's print up some bumper stickers and get out there, kids.
That's politics.
So we're tribal animals, we're social creatures. We look for agreement and consensus. We're driven by agreement and consensus and mob rule gives us comfort, gives us certainty. It's all bs.
You know.
I can actually say to the point about Seinfeld explaining that his trip to his October seventh was the most powerful experience of his life, I can imagine that's true basically no matter who you are. I mean humanitarian tragedy, catastrophe that unfolded after October seventh. Your point about Israel sharing the clip, the Israeli government sharing the clip on X I think is really interesting as well. But you know, the second part of that is what you added that
to the show. You wanted to hear what he said about mob rule. There was a walkout in his speech at Duke actually people just walked out of it, which it seemed like he was alluding to what stood out to you in that argument about mobral And.
My view on the whole Seinfeld thing was that I think it was like, so the reason that the propile sign protests started going after Seinfeld is that his his well a, he was kind of outspoken in supportive of the Israeli war effort, but also his wife was directly funding the count the campus counter protests, and those counter protests like actually genuinely got violent and weren't quite vile in their kind of Islamophobic rhetoric and sometimes anti Semitic rhetoric,
so to protest against like you know, you're putting yourself in the arena if you're financing counter protests, and yes, but my view on it was people as a billionaire, yeah the way, I'm sure, yeah, she's got that Seinfeld money, yep.
But my view of it.
Was people don't really know that, and they're just going to think you're just protesting Seinfel because he's Jewish, which isn't what you know, isn't what people were doing. Because they had this organized a specific reason for it, I was gonna, I thought, would blow up in their.
Face if they if they went forward with it.
And then I thought it was interesting to hear kind of Seinfeld's own kind of political analysis, just to show how vacuous it is, like to say that that all political parties and political formations are just mere tribal associations of people organizing together just to make themselves feel good and and get that sense of come camaraderie ignores everything we don't know about, like political movements and political parties, like there are actual agendas and there are things that
people are fighting for materially, spear virtually, and so to like ignore that just shows like it kind of makes his point in some ways that that he really is not anybody who's like really deeply, you know, thought about politics ever, so it's like, yeah, he is kind of he but so many comedians, of course, are very political.
Comedy is very often political.
Yes, if there's any comedian who's been a political it has been Seinfeld, you know, just talking about you know, how but not so much just how it sucks to like fly on airplanes.
It's not so much a political is transpolitical and that it's it's transpartisan, I guess, you know, it's It sort of reminds me of the Johnny Carson approach, which was really popular in the era of mass media. Like that's the example when I talk to students about this that I always use is like Johnny Carson was constantly political, just it wasn't partisan humor wasn't like Stephen Colbert, who is now the number one host in late like in the Johnny Carson slot. Because we're not in the era
of mass media anymore. And I feel like Seinfeld is really struggling with that the new reality that people in these niches, you know, maybe they represent twenty or thirty percent of the country now have abolish a lot of gatekeeping and are ascendant. And you know, when people walk out of his Duke commencement speech, that gets a lot of headlines because a lot of the gatekeepers are gone, and new media can write about it. We can talk about it here, and I think that's a It's a
really new world for him. In fact, he said in the Duke speech, the slightly uncomfortable feeling of awkward humor is okay, It's not something you need to fix. I totally admire the ambitions of your generation and create a more just and inclusive society. I think it's also wonderful that you care so much about not hurting other people's feelings and the million in one ways, we all do that every second of every day. It's lovely to want
to fix those things. But all caps. But what I need to tell you as a comedian, do not lose your sense of humor. You have no idea at this point in your life how much you're going to need it to get through. Not enough of life makes sense for you to be able to survive it without humor.
I think you and I both agree with those sentiments exactly, but it's it's not arguing against the point that his opponents are making, which is that there's there's just nothing funny about like that was The way they're arguing is they're talking about genocide and they walked out of a speech because of genocide. They opposed the speech because of what they see as genocide, and so coming back at that by saying, ay, just let your hair down.
Yeah, And I don't even I don't really even think his show was transpartisan in the sense that he take him out his word, like he was saying it was a show about nothing, and in the nineties, the country really was ready for a show about nothing.
But he didn't.
There was political He would make jokes about political things. It wasn't in your face, but like there were jokes about history and politics, and they would you.
Know they were I guess. But it's just completely shorn of any meaning whatsoever.
Yeh, that's absolutely true. And I think that's what's.
Interesting as Larry David has continued the theme of like just a completely trivial show, but he dives into political issues. Yes, because he I think because you have to now because of the polarized political climate we're in, and Seinfeld is on this belated kind of anti woke.
Theme now, although he was there early, like I think in twenty fifteen sixteen he came out and said, I'm not doing campuses anymore, and it was like Seinfeld and Chris Rocks.
That Seinfeld was getting cancer. Like what was Seinfeld saying?
I think he was saying people didn't have a good sense of humor.
So I feel like he's been on that, but he's not realizing that.
Maybe they do have a sense of humor.
I mean, I could probably there are some people I think probably do need a sense of humor, but it's just a better sense of humor. But it's just that the things that he wants to talk about, people aren't seeing the humor in those particular.
His post Seinfeld stand up was like, I'm not saying anything controversially, it just hasn't been that good. It's not like he hasn't been that like great, and it's made a lot of people say, wait a minute, was it really Larry David the whole time that was the genius behind that show the whole.
Time You know, I've never been a huge Seinfeld person. I love Curb, never been a huge Seinfold person, But I think you can He's obviously very smart, and I think I agree with you that.
I don't thing's thought through some of this stuff.
But yeah, maybe where we agree on this is that he's I really think he's struggling to deal with the new reality of the country, Like it's not the country of the nineteen nineties when his show was like extraordinarily popular and Seinfeld is still popular. Barry made that point in the Free Press post, it's so extremely popular, but that doesn't you know, we're so nichefied that it's not the same thing as people all sitting down at nine pm and tuning into Seinfeld and talking about it at
the water coil the next day. He really has to grapple with the lack of gap of gatekeeping and what that means for a culture that's going in a million different directions.
It's not like, hey, we can all have a.
Good laugh about this, you know, joke in regard to silly, crazy conservatives. It's more like, hmm, people are on wildly different pages.
And he's got a grapple with not having Larry David, that's.
Probably the real handicap that's really struggling. Yeah, probably the real handicap there. All right, let's move on to Argentina, where I sent this to our producers earlier, where you had Hoavier. A headline from Bloomberg April twenty fifth, twenty twenty four, Javier Melee fuels wild rally that makes payso number one in world, with a headline recently from the Financial Times. Just in the last week, Argentina's Payso plunges in warning light for Melay. We could put the first
element up on the screen here. Question, Ryan is what's closer to the truth. So Melee actually swapped a cabinet chief in what Reuters referred to as a major government shake up. There's sort of a wild ride done in Argentina right now. He's been covorting with Sam Altman and
talking about the importance of artificial intelligence. And if you take Mela at his word, he will say, and any libertarian engaged in an experiment like this, a lab experiment like this sort of trying to come back from Peronism, as he says, would say that it's going to You're going to have your ups and downs. You know, necessarily you're going to hit some obstacles just when you're doing things like trying to fix an economy that was stagnant, if not.
Worse, for years and years and years. So what do you think is closer to the truth on this Ryan?
Is this an amazing recovery or is this the peso plunging and Melay being thrust into chaos in his own cabinet.
I mean, Argentina is like a giant mess. It's fun.
It's maybe we can have fun at Mela's expense, you know, through three inflation.
And that's not his fault.
The country is.
The country's political structures make it almost ungovernable. Like you, it's it's very hard for anybody to get elected in Argentina and then actually implement an agenda because of the way that different power centers are able to stop anything
from happening. And I think one reason Argentine voters elected him is because they thought, well, maybe maybe this will shake like they didn't necessarily think he was the answer, but it was like a Trump light ninety three kind of thing where it's like, maybe this will shake things up so much that something something has to give.
And so you can put up this first vo here.
Basically, now he's trying to slash university university spending is what's going on. So in three hundred percent inflation, he's trying to hold university subsidies.
Flat, and he has slash a lot of the governments already the first five months here, So that means.
You're facing what a you know, three hundred percent cut basically because because now you know, it costs three times as much as it used to, and you're getting just the same kind of subsidy towards it as you were getting before. His his argument is that this would bring inflation finally under control. You know clearly that markets don't necessarily agree with that. The police are now joining in with the student protesters. The universities said that eight hundred
thousand people were in the streets protesting. Mele said it was one hundred and fifty thousand people of people either way, right, And so yeah, they're just kind of locked in the standoff. We knew would be coming, and we also know where this heads is towards violence. And so the question then becomes, do the police do the libertarians bidding and crack down
on these protests? Or did the police end up siding with the protesters, and then you're kind of back to square one of people being able to protect some of the subsidies that they have, but not being able to then actually enact anything rational more broadly.
Well, and on the other side of this, the argument.
Is going to be that his big reforms that you're just talking about are stalled and that could potentially be affecting the market. I'm sure that is affecting the market, that his package that he wants to get through to address this nearly three hundred percent inflation has been stalled, and you know, maybe that's why his cabinet chief is being switched up again within the first five months here.
So I mean, I do genuinely think that it's hard to judge what happens under me Lea by the first five months here based on if you're comparing it to what his claimed vision is. It just you don't really know.
Unless the economic reform package he can take all of the things that he can do by himself as an executive, and if he doesn't have them passed through Congress, if he doesn't have additional things passed through Congress, you know, then you're just bandaiating things in an effort to bring down three hundred percent inflation and potentially hurting people along
the way. Now, if his economic reforms go through and you see an adaptation in the private sector, all of this is like really wishful thinking on behalf of libertarians.
And you, I mean, you.
Still have fairly sophisticated economists and disagreement about the effect of the Reagan tax cuts and versus defense spending and all of that. And we can get into those arguments about you know, Liz Trust and all of that good
stuff about whether true libertarianism has ever been tried. You know, My particular opinion on that as a conservative is that these true libertarian experiments really I never work in the real world because you're not in a sort of perfect Petrie dish environment where there's a way to say, yeah, we'll just slash the government and things will be great.
It'll bring inflation down.
But it seems possible to me that a course correction could be in a good direction when all is sudden done. But I don't know that that's what we're seeing actually play out, although I would say that from my perspective at least, it's too early to have a conclusion on what will happen.
I think you put up the third element, this article from Reuter's.
You know, economic activity down eight point four percent year over year in March, and if you dig into it, the biggest collapse was in construction, a thirty percent decline in economic activity. And so that's not inflation, that's thirty percent less construction getting going.
Although Mela retweeted someone who said everything within expectations that about these numbers, he said everything within expectations after a strong initial devaluation. So again, this idea that we're on the it's almost like a material dialectical materialism like Gailia and like we're on the plan is preceding a pace.
There you go, and it's manufacturing down twenty percent. Argentina's a mess. But he's a rock star, right, so yeah, you gotta check this. The real reason we wanted to cover this is so that we could play this clip of the president Milaie up on stage.
Incredible passage. There you go, leaving it all on the field.
There you go more do you want?
Okay, Well, while we're on international topics, let's talk about Julian Assange, because Donald Trump here at home, actually on the sidelines, actually speaking of libertarians, on the sidelines of the Libertarian Party convention this last weekend here in Washington, d C. Dave Smith talked a little bit about it on Breaking Points yesterday, but on the sidelines, Tim Poole
interviewed Donald Trump and asked him about Julian Assange. Now, viewers will remember we had Gabriel Shipton, Julian Nosange's brother, on the show last week, and he fleshed out a bit about how the Assange case is becoming a real wedge issue in geopolitical negotiations between the United States and Australia, which an important alliance if the US is to be worried about Taiwan and what people see is the China threat.
So all that is to say, Donald Trump's comments to Tim Poole are pretty interesting and I think of some serious, some real consequence. Here's what Donald Trump told Tim Poole about whether or not he would pardon Julian Nossange. Will you pardon Julian Nosange.
Well, I'm going to talk about that today and we're going to give it very serious consideration, and we're going to have a couple of other things to say in this speech that I think you're going to love.
I've heard some rumors and you've gotten so much out of me.
I should leave a little bit for the speech.
Don't you get that, mister President, is an honor and a privilege.
I do appreciate you saying you're I have to.
Say when I I did a little research. Yeah, some of my guys said that I met you before, but they said, just a very respected catch, my honor.
Temple also related to Donald Trump that he recently said he had a nice face, that Tempoole has a nice Yeah. Then he said that Temple, Donald Trump said that to Tempole that he is a nice face.
Does he have a nice face?
I think all faces are nice.
Yeah.
There you go, now to unpack Trump's thoughts on a sound and also Edward Snowden. He was asked about this also by Cannis Owens, and see if you can almost kind of see the trembling in his voice as he talks about.
This, like it's like the deep State is really in his head.
But here's Jared, here's the here's this back and forth he had with Canda Owens.
A name that comes to mind in the news recently is Julian Julian Assange. You know, he was exposing this corruption early on. He's had his life ruined because of it. It's a really sad story. Edward Snowden, I mean, think about that.
Bravery for me.
I was quite young when that was going on. But I mean the idea of saying, hey, whistle blowing, Actually we've got some corruption going on. They're not being honest with the American people. You could have had a chance a part of these individuals. Why do side not to in that moment?
You have two sides of it. In one case you have like sort of a spy deal going on, and in another case you have somebody that's exposing real corruption. I feel a little bit I won't say which one, but I feel a little bit more strongly about one than the other. Right, But and you probably understand that. But I could have done it. But I will say, you have people on both sides of that issue, good people on both sides, and you have some bad people
on one side. But I decided to let that one ride, let the courts work it out.
I love that.
One of the biggest controversies of his presidency was the good people on both sides moment, which I still take issue with a lot of the reporting on that, and he's just still going with it. Very good people on both sides are totally unfazed. But you did see him get a little phased in that. Not to be a hacky cable news bodyline gouge expert, but you really don't see Donald Trump like cross his arms and get uncomfortable
like that very often. But you're right, Ryan, I think to read discomfort into that question with Candicellens.
And which one is he talking about here? So it seems like so Snowden.
I don't think he knows what he's talking about. I think he's just talking.
Sounded like yeah to me, it sounded like he was not thinking about commuting or pardoning Snowden, Yeah, who is
in exile in Russia. And because he said this thing about wow, there's secrets and if you're going to have a country, you've got to be able to keep your secrets, and which is really the fascinating thing that people should absorb, because if Donald Trump is like okay with the things that the NSA was doing and that Snowden exposed, and he thinks it's wrong for Snowden to expose those that really cuts against this whole idea that that Trump is
deep state actually going to do anything to take on Yeah, the military intelligence establishment.
Which I think is a debate we should have on the Friday Show this summer. Is Donald Trump the guy to actually.
Yeah, we should do that because.
It's a fascinating question. I asked his NSA one of his essays, Keith Kellogg, about how he saw Assannge. This was a couple of years ago, and Keith Kellogg told me that he felt like Donald Trump saw a little bit of himself in Assannge, and that from an NSSA in a very torn administration, a John Bolton Mike Pompeo administration, the administration that actually ended up bringing charges against as Songe.
I just find that super interesting that he would even go so far as to say that from a Republican president, let alone a Republican president again like staff by the likes of John Bolton and Mike Pompeo. Genuinely interesting. And I don't know that Trump would necessarily go through with this. Biden has talked about whether he would maybe just drop
the case and that's all it would take. By the way just dropped the case, and there may be some geopolitical advantage to you know, assuaging the concerns of people in Australia and internationally, especially at a time when the United States is under fire internationally. We're talking about potential Security Council veto coming up, So there may be some advantage to Biden politically in dropping the case. I could see Donald Trump actually dropping the case because you see the.
Duality of Donald Trump.
Every once in a while, he knows that he's been targeted by the same people who targeted snow Snowden and Assange, but at the same time he revels in the respect. You know, he filled his cabinet initially, and he staffed his cabinet initially with military people.
It's just he's never picked a lane.
Yeah, Right.
And Obama initially contemplated charging Assange and decided not to because it would be an encroachment on freedom of the press.
Right, Trump, urged by Pompeo, did so.
Biden has continued it and is pushing to have him extradited. Now both of them are saying they're thing about dropping the charges. It's kind of a ridiculous situation. Both of them probably too cowardly to do it.
Yeah, And I mean you'd love to It's a question you'd love to have Trump talk about in private, because I don't know if he's team Pompeo or if he's team Assange. I really don't know. I'm honestly curious.
And what people on both sides.
Yeah, well exactly. I wonder if he is himself split on that. I wonder if Obama himself like how he thinks about it now. I think he's still probably very anti Massannge. But it's the case is so absurd that I think it presents them real questions for these leaders to grapple with, especially if you're Donald Trump and you came in to clean house.
And then he also at the Libertarian Convention said he would said he would commute the sentence of Ross Olbricht. Yes, who is it cause to lab on the libertarian in the libertarian world, for he was a Silk Road founder. I know there was a lot of pressure on him from people close to him while he was president, and there was hope that he would do that. Then he
never did it. Does does Ross? It does seem like she should like it seems like Ross got the book thrown at him for the same thing that like a lot of websites do, like they have illegal activity on them. He was probably a little bit more okay with it, yeah, than others.
But it is.
That a cause on the right beyond the libertarian movement, just the libertarians.
I think Trump has the power to elevate it beyond libertarians. But it's such a I think it is genuinely a more complicated case than the Assange one is, Like, it's it's a little bit.
Less clear cut, some weird stuff.
The trumped up hacking stuff with Assange is just Blayton.
It's not a free press thing really, it's just a more like, yeah, Justice Department overreach.
And Thomas Massey has said that it's the greatest affront to the Eighth Amendment that he's aware of, basically, So, like, I think there is a pretty ross case, yeah, the Albert case, and I think there's a pretty big there's there are huge glaring questions about the length of the sentence.
I think we're talking it's like he has a crazy, crazy.
Role yeah, yeah, yeah, which I think he's forty years old around there and this all happen now. Yeah, it's just it is genuinely ridiculous, and some of the charges I think are ridiculous too, but it's just more complicated than the Assauge ones.
So if Donald Trump really takes it up.
I was actually surprised he even dropped it at the Libertarian Convention, just because.
I don't I actually think if you explained it to.
Donald Trump, he would be like, you know, I feel like someone just wrote that into the speech. But yeah, who knows. I think he was in the Candicellens interview sort of talking to avoid the question a little bit, and I don't know that i'd take what he said too seriously, but I could see him potentially pardoning Assange if he felt like he was getting a good deal with Australia. I don't think he has a strong sort
of neo conservative position like Pompeo does on Assannge. I think he could be persuaded to sort of use it as a bargaining chip in a way that you know, a lot of Republican presidents NICKI Haley, for example, certainly wouldn't.
Yeah, oh for sure, let's preview the Friday Show a little bit.
Yeah, I'm really excited about this one.
We were going to have Meddi Hassan debating Ben Shapiro. Meddi agreed could not get Ben.
I don't know.
We heard back, and then we went to find somebody else and basically could find nobody who was willing to debate Matty.
I was gonna say, in fairness, I don't even know that Ben got We emailed him, but I don't know that he actually won't got it. So if you take your email, yes, we'd love to host that.
But well, yeah, he'll he'll come back whenever.
We had a really hard time, yeah, a really hard time putting.
Know way you want to go to toe with Matti, which I don't blame them for. I wouldn't argue that the world is round in a debate with Meddi.
That's true. Producer Mac, Producer Griffin put in a lot of hours.
The last week.
You and I were like pinging people and dms and email and it was even a week's time, which is like a lifetime in the world of news. It was hard to stitch that one together. But we're still holding out in hope that we can get someone at Meddi on the ICC specifically, but this Friday show we actually
are putting together a reporter. A friend, Ryan's a reporter who wrote just a fantastic new book on a deep dive into the world of lobbying, the sort of secret, shadowy world of lobbying that has changed a lot in recent years.
Since the point of the book called The Wolves of k Streets. Till Friday to read it.
Yes, oh good luck.
It's a long book book with a top lobbyist, one of the top lobbyst spenders. I think in twenty eighteens, Sam Goodaldick, who's been on the show before. This is going to be fantastic. I'm really excited about it.
Yeah, this will be fun and we hope you come out of it like knowing more about lobbying basically anybody else like you.
We want to pull the curtain back.
Yeah, and I don't think any of the shows that I can imagine and like elite media spaces would do that or would get people to be able to come to a place where they felt comfortable having that discussion publicly.
So it's pretty exciting.
Yeah. So I guess come back on Friday for that.
Come back on Friday or Thursday night if you're a premium subscriber, if you're having any troubles again. You can support it email support at locals dot com and copy Breaking Points Premium at gmail dot com. That pings producer Griffin who is here to help. No breakers left behind. The YouTube and Spotify links will be in the episode description and in your daily email. Again you get the
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See you then,