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All right, Happy Wednesday morning, Welcome to Counterpoints. We're now what about three days into Complementum. The world has changed since the last time that Emily and I were here.
That's right, so much has happened in a week.
Well, yeah, and we'll cover new video of the president looking tan rested. Yeah, dull ready, he is alive. Every conspiracy theory was at least momentarily dispelled yesterday, So we'll start.
Without every conspiracy theory.
Lots of them still alive, raging, yeah, fact, but.
The one that he's dead it didn't hold up.
Well, I'm sure people are still finding reasons too.
Look great.
Doubt the video, but yeah, he does not look great. We'll get to that in just a moment. We're going to start with a new video from Kamala Harris in Milwaukee yesterday, where she gave apparently a banger of a campaign speech to three thousand people, largest campaign crowd that Democrats have drawn so far. Still sort of pales in comparison to Trump rallies, but it isn't a big crowd, nonetheless, and she was feeling it. We have new polling numbers
two that are fascinating. We're going to talk about the Republican reaction to Kamala Harris, which will be an interesting conversation. We're going to talk about the possibility of Donald Trump and Kamala Harris debating one another. Baby at Yahoo is in town here in Washington, d C. The protests have begun. We have some video and some thoughts, and Ryan has some original reporting on everything there. So we've got a big show and a guest who left the State Department.
Well, we had two guests today.
We're going to have Mota Salem, who's going to be joining us from the Capitol where there are protests outside awaiting Netyahu's visit to Congress.
And then we're going to.
Have a nel Shaline, who was one of the State Department officials who resign in protest over the Biden Harris administration's policy toward Israel. She'll give us her assessment of where Netanyahu is at this moment, where the war is going from here. Some good news by the way, over at drop Site, the news organization that we started with Jeremy Scahill, we climbed over two hundred thousand subscribers.
Now that's fantastic, which is very exciting.
Yes, so we still have the counterpoints discount going for that drop site news dot com slash counterpoints.
We'll get you twenty percent off a year.
So thank you everybody for signing up for supporting it.
It's really gratifying.
We'll have some drop site reporting that we dropped last night, actually about kind of u N casualties in Gaza. I obtained a leaked report that we'll talk about later.
So I appreciate that you can say you dropped.
New dropped it from dropped it. Yeah, well done, there you go.
All right, let's start with video from yesterday of current President Joe Biden. It feels sort of ridiculous to say that, but you can take a look at him. He was traveling from Delaware to Washington. D C appeared in person, looking really rough. You can see he actually has a mask in his hand. He's had COVID for a week now.
His doctor says his symptoms have mostly faded away into the background, but ryan pretty interesting to finally see the president because nobody has seen him since we've heard his voice. He called into his campaign headquarters, well his former campaign headquarters, no Kamala Harris's campaign headquarters, but since he actually resigned from the ticket, that man hadn't been seen in days. He did it on Twitter or ex and put out a statement that was it. Here we see him, mask
in hand, not really engaging or talking with anybody. He is set to address the country tonight, but that was really something.
Yeah, And the explanation essentially that leaked out of his team for why we didn't hear from him is that he.
Was looking terrible. And the speech that he.
Gives tonight announcing that he's stepping down, will be drained of all kind of climactic energy and suspense. We know exactly what he's going to say, but it will still be a speech that.
Will be played a lot in history going forward.
When documentaries or news organizations talk about what happened in twenty twenty four. They will play a little clip of what Biden is going to say tonight, saying that he's stepping down and handing it over to Kamala. And my take was that he did not want to be a COVID ridden, decrepit creature for that video that he knows
is going to live on in posterity. Just watching him walk or ample struggle from the car to the miniature version of Air Force one, the smaller plane, you can imagine what he would have been like several days ago, while also probably not getting much sleep, while also being at the lowest point, one of the lowest points of his political life. You can imagine that he wouldn't have
given the kind of performance he wanted to. So that to me was always the most logical explanation for why we didn't hear from him.
Well, also, by the way, clinging to office and that's.
Some dignity, trying to try to desperately to some dignity.
Yeah, we'll see if he maintains that tonight. But it's important, and it's actually crucial to everything that they're campaigning on in the next several months. They're going to be hammered. They already have been hammered for this alleged cover up of I shouldn't say alleged. I mean it was an obvious cover up of Joe Biden's frailty. He is clinging to power. He will not resign from office as far as we know as of right now, they're saying that's
not in the cards. So why would he want to give the American people any reason just again strategically to doubt that he can hold on to office. You know, I have plenty of das as to whether he can hold on to office, and I'm sure that they will be on full display or they will be, let's say, validated by his performance tonight, because he's never given a performance that I've been like, this man is at in his prime.
And I think one reason they won't get hit too much for the cover up because to the extent it was a cover up, it was like a string bikini cover up, like everybody could see what was going on. So it's like, Okay, you tried, you'd really try.
It was so close to spending.
Well, let's play comes on, Kamala Harris, so you can collect yourself.
Yeah, that's for the best at this point. Kamala Harrison Milwaukee yesterday.
So Wisconsin, I am told as of this morning that we have earned the support of enough delegates to secure the Democratic nomination.
And I am.
So very honored, and I pledge to you I will spend the coming weeks continuing to unite our party so that we are ready to win in November. He intends to give tax breaks to billionaires and big corporations and make working families foot the bill.
They intend to end.
The Affordable Care Act and take us back then to a time when insurance companies have the power to deny people with pre existing conditions. Remember what that was like, children with asthma, women who survived breast cancer, grandparents with diabetes.
America has tried these.
Failed economic policies before.
But we are not going back.
We are not going back, not going back.
So this is the line they've landed on.
We are not going back feels pretty strong like in terms of political rhetoric, like make America great again, make America greg great again.
We are not going back. So there.
They always struggled in challenging make America great again because whatever they said sounded negative.
Oh, America was never great or.
America was America's already great.
America's already great, which is sounds boring, and a lot of.
People are just aren't feeling that at the moment.
Right, Yes, not a lot of people clashes how with how people are feeling, so they never had a good response to that.
But now we are not going back again.
Still creates lots of room for optimism, like we're going forward, and it's a very strong allusion to abortion policy like that, because you know, overturning Roe is going back to before Row. And of course it also plays into that we're not going back to Donald Trump. Now some people say, well, going back to Donald Trump I had more money pocket, et cetera. But going back still has a negative connotation just rhetorically compared to going forward.
Everyone wants to go forward. Yeah, people really don't want to go back.
So good point.
I thought that was kind of something clever that they landed on. If she can.
Continue to just only give speeches to cheering crowds for the next two months.
Well she's going to be in good shape.
Yeah, she's going to have debates, she's going to have interviews, so well.
Can she maintain the complimentum or whatever you call it, but when she actually has to respond to interviews, it's worth remembering that she had a really impressive campaign launch in twenty nineteen with that crowd in Oakland.
Thirty thousand, massive crowds, surging popularity.
People loved her ads yep.
Speech was good, the look was good, the vibes were good.
And when she became president, right, she was.
She won the nomination.
She was great in Iowa.
So the White House, Yeah, that's how I remember it.
So there's something about Kamala Harris that it just executing on the expectations is difficult for her. She does have one of the highest staff turnover rates. The Trump campaign has been hitting her front on that a little bit, but there's obviously something going on there. When you have a high turnover rate, that's a means that you're difficult to work with.
People also want somebody like Kamala Harris to do well, particularly Democrats, but I think a lot of independence too. They would love it to see somebody with Kamala Harris's background become president. It helped Barack Obama immensely like it. Having the first black president made so many people like feel good about America. You know, because it fit into the line that everybody loves that the arc of history is long, but it bends towards justice. It makes people
feel like history is moving forward. And then all of those things you're saying about us, it's not really true. Look look what we did, and so like, there are a lot of hopes and invested in her doing well, and I think that that helped propel her in twenty nineteen when she launched.
I don't know if she has.
Developed into the kind of vessel that can carry those hopes across the finish line.
She wasn't then.
Yeah, she hasn't shown that she has those skills that during this term, but she only it's just two months.
Can you do this for two months?
I was going to say, yeah, she was the three three months, sorry, three months while the male ballots go out in September.
Absolutely, and she her persona Obviously she's been more in the spotlight since she was vice president than senator, but she wasn't seen as quite a laughing stock when she was senator. The memes never materialized then, And actually I think you could go back and look, there weren't a lot of those types of clips. Granted again, she's talking way more, she's appearing way more in public when you're vice president. But if anything, her persona became less well
respected after she assumed the vice presidency. It wasn't a part of her campaign that she was kind of.
A She did not thrive in an environment where she was kind of on her on you flat footed.
Yeah.
One of the first ones that really started going around was go look up her her riff on time.
Yes, that's a good one. That is a good one.
She kept going back to it. Yeah, So anyway, we'll see.
So she's she's feeling herself. She's feeling you can see it in the rally, and I think you can see it in some of the reports that are going to come out, which is what you were just about to turn to here.
Yeah, Selena Meyer and Veep was at her best when she was confident.
We should talk about the New York Times. We don't have to get into it, but the New York Times wrote an entire story yesterday on the Veep comeback, which, by the way, I'm definitely a part of my I've been binging Veep over the last few days just because everyone's talking about it makes me want to watch it. I think it was one of the best comedies in
American history. But all that is to say The New York Times were an entire piece about the revival of VEEP and didn't concede that it was because Kamala Harris is so eerily reminiscent of Celina Meyer. In fact, they just were talking about the Trump administration.
Reporter completely failed that assignment.
Incredible, But so Vice President Kamalharas is threatening to get rid of we put this up on the screen, Jake Sullivan, Anthony Blincoln, and Lloyd Austin, a clean sweep of the kind of national security foreign policy apparatus which the critics of the Biden administration would absolutely delight in. So Jake Sullivan was walking through the Capitol yesterday with the sulliest look on his face that I think he could not mask.
So that's something.
Always kind of looks like that though to be fair, so.
Rough but still rough week for those guys.
And they don't like net Ya who He's coming to town with bags and bags of laundry, which is a hilarious story every time the nt Yah Who's always bring loads and loads of dirty laundry.
Because we figuratively and literally.
Wash it for free.
Apparently the taxpayers do for any foreign leader who comes, which is fair. You know, you come, you Sully, your clothes will wash them, send you home with clean clothes. The who's bring suitcases full of during clothes, which I kind of respect, you know what.
I don't know that I respect that.
I think I would do that.
Is it even worth it to bring all of the clothes.
You're not paying for the gas on the plane?
I guess.
I guess Israeli taxpayers are paying for that, or probably American taxpayers are somehow I know.
And Kamala Harris we're going to talk about this later in the show, obviously has at least we're told privately, we do not know how she would govern, and this is an indication, but we don't know if it's just a leak for the purpose of framing this all in the press, has some major disagreements with the Biden administration on Israel policy. Let's also put this next element up
on the screen. This is a four pro crypto entrepreneur Mike Mark Cuban or Mike I guess says that the Kamala Harris team has reached out with multiple questions about cryptocurrency. I'm getting multiple questions from her camp about crypto, Cuban said Tuesday, So I take that as a good sign. The feedback I'm getting, but certainly not confirmed by the VP, is that she will be far more open to business AI, crypto, and government as a service. Keeban stated, you and Crystal
covered Jim Kramer yesterday. Ryan, but these two reports both that she's ready to just gut the State Department's highest echelons, and she's already signaling that she's more interested in crypto. Biden's been fairly harsh on crypto. She's feeling herself. I think this is projecting an air of confidence and like she is ready to take over. She's been ready, probably for a couple of years, because we've all been kind of on tenterhooks over Biden's health, you know, those of
us who were always concerned about it. We always kind of knew that there was something that could happen in any moment. He's an elderly man. Seems like she's just been waiting in the wings, and now that she's getting a really warm reception from the media, not just in the deep New York Times article. But someone took a screenshot of all the pro Kamala articles in the New York Times homepage yesterday. It's going really well for her,
to the point where she is now openly telegraphing. Fundraising wise, it's helpful to telegraph to crypto people, but there are a lot of people in finance world. Wall Street seen before, had a report about Wall Street Democrats all of a
sudden getting really juiced about Kamala giving lots of money. Again, she's telegraphing that she's going to be a different candidate, not just that she's gonna slide in and take the mantle, yeah, but that she's going to like actually try to make this a different ticket, not just you know, the Biden replacement ticket, a Kamala Harris ticket.
Well, the polls are ticking up for Kamala Harris.
We've got a slew of them that have all been produced kind of post Biden dropping out. We can put this first one up on the screen. So this still has and this is what people need to remember, still has Donald Trump up one point, This Marris Pole has had Biden up even post debate. Consistently, This NPR, PBS Maris Pole has consistently had Joe Biden over Donald Trump by one or two points. Now when it's when they add in Kennedy, we start to see that the drift
of Kennedy's influence is anti Trump. That so they go from forty six to forty five with Kennedy not in the race. Then they go to forty two forty two with Kennedy in it.
This is the Reuters there's numbers.
From Reuters episodes which are similar. In a two way race, it's forty four forty two Donald Trump, marginal erics.
To lead for Kamala Harris.
And the margin of verias plus or minus three percent. So the three way race is where this is interesting. Given the margin vera on this Kamala Harris forty two, Donald Trump thirty eight, RFK Junior eight. The other Poole had them one at seven the NPR Merris poll. So what you see happening there is in the three way race. Both of these polls show a bigger drop for Donald Trump.
Right.
One thing that I read into this is a whole lot of RFK junior voters we're just desperate for a sentient democrat, Like a big chunk of the support for RFK Junior was people who were so disgusted by what the Democratic Party did with Joe Biden, and I wonder, actually, as Republicans start making the case about the coup and the Kamala Harris honeymoon ends, media honeymoon ends. If that happens.
I don't know if the media honeymoon will ever end, but at least the kind of vibe honeymoon, the pop cultural.
Bottle title ends, and the resistance people will be so mad at the New York Times like how dare you democracies on the line, it'll happen, but yeah, go ahead.
So but that's what I didn't say that. I mean, that's a huge opening for the third party candidates, which again might not be a big deal on paper, but then you look at those rest belt states like what chill Stein managed to put up in Pennsylvania really upset Hillary Clinton for good reason. She wasn't wrong to be upset about the fact that people rejected her because they
felt like she was part of the machine. As Republicans make the argument about the machine ordaining Kamala Harris, which happened so quickly in a matter of a couple of days, we played the clip of Kamala Harrison just this morning, I got enough delegates to win Wisconsin. That's insane. It's been what two days. As that argument, I think sort of pierces through the noise about having a new candidate and everything. It could still be dangerous for Democratic.
Yes, you know, she has all of the vulnerabilities that she has had, you know since the national public was introduced to her in twenty nineteen. We talked about it on Monday. She does not prepare well. She doesn't handle questions that are obvious that and that she knows are coming at her. The big knock on her in all of these reports that were done by The New York Times and Politico and others that delve into her the staff complaints about her, the key one was that she
refuses to prepare for obvious questions. And so in January twenty nineteen, when she launched her campaign, the New York Times came out with a piece by Lara Basilon. It's kind of member of this the Basilon family, which is like democratic legal royalty, really calling into question her bona fides as a progressive prosecutor, saying that she'd worked she'd worked actively to keep innocent people in prison, and on
and on, like really devastating peace January twenty nineteen. It was July of twenty nineteen when Telsey Gabbert hit her with that in the debate, basically regurgitated that Times op ed, which had been widely circulated in democratic circles.
Kamala had Kamala Harris.
Had read that op ed, Her team had had six months, seven months to prepare for attacks on that, and when she got hit in the debate where it she had absolutely nothing. Same with that famous Lester Hold interview where for days the media was asking when is Kamala Harris going to go to the border. He asked her, when are you going to go to the border, So she knew.
The question was coming, of course, and her answer was We've been to the border. He's like, but you haven't.
We doing an awful lot of work here and she's like, well, I've never been to Europe either.
That's an amazing answer.
I rewatched it recently and that was Felina Meyer, like perfect.
That was a Selena Meermo where you'd be watching even like nobody would actually say that.
Oh, even for a politician. It's insanely bad. Because she's the one who brings up though we've been to the border, and Holk goes you have it. She's the one that invokes the we unnecessarily is just I understand why her staff will complain about it, because it seems to be the case. Meanwhile, though the picture is not at all rosy for Republicans, let's put a seven up on the screen.
This is jd Vance. Harry Enton on CNN yesterday made the point that jd Vance is the only candidate in modern political history vice presidential candidate that comes out of the convention not with a bump. Apparently. The average, according to Enton, is nineteen points.
And what I love about this clip is that Harryton is genuinely like angry.
About he seems mad.
It's a negative net territory. Look at that negative six points. I will tell you, Aaron, I have gone all the way back since nineteen hundred and eighty. He is the first guy after immediately following a convention of VP pick who actually had a net negative favorable rating that is underwater. The average since two thousand is plus nineteen points.
JD.
Van's making history in the completely wrong way.
I mean, it's amazing plus nineteen. And I know people talk vps don't usually matter, but they're usually.
Usually not a usually the popular. In this case, he's dragging Trump.
Down, all right.
And then there's also Ohio, which I you know, have been around long enough to have been there on an election night. And the reason I was there because the person who wins Ohio wins the White House.
Right.
Ohio's a red state. Now, so what does the jd Vance pick do for Trump? Obviously he is the senator from Ohio.
There's this whole idea, Oh jd Vance is, you know, going to help out Ohio, perhaps perhaps help out in those russ Belt, those great lake battleground says, But if you look at Ohio, if you look, yeah, jd Vance won in twenty twenty two, but he only won by six points. That's worse than Donald Trump did in twenty twenty. It's far worse than Mike the Wine did in twenty twenty two. He is was the worst performing Republican candidate in twenty twenty two, up and down the ballot in
the state of Ohio. He has nothing there, all right.
So Trump does very well with white working class voters. That's one of his superpowers. So what does Vance add?
Yeah, what does Van say? Look, he won white working class voters. He won white voters without a college decree.
In the state of Ohio.
But pretty much every Republican wins white working class voters. And if you look here again, the margin that Vance put up was the weakest performance of any major Republican. It's worse than Trump did in Ohio. It's worse than Mike the Wine did in Ohio.
The jd.
Vance pick makes no sense from a statistical polling perspective.
Earon, he's mad, Yeah, he says at one point, it's strategic failure. He's a guy. I don't understand it. You know, the best way to un understand that jd. Vance pick is that Donald Trump needed somebody who wouldn't, let's make this a verb, pence him. Right, He wanted someone who wouldn't pence him in the eleventh hour when you know you need to do the elector vote on January sixth.
He needed to stay in power despite losing the election. You better better have somebody who doesn't care.
And JD.
Vance did say that he would have not done what Mike Pence did, Yeah, which was his duty.
I would say, I know a lot of people see JD. Vance as somebody who's sort of a flip flopper, because he quite literally flip flopped. But one of the things that struck Trump reportedly is that Vance is a true believer and Viance is a true believer. If people are you know, I get Democrats attacking Trump or attacking Vance for flip flopping on Trump, but that like, the truth of the picture is that he is a true believer.
He is a true convert to the Maga world, and for a lot of interesting reasons, he converted to Catholicism. But one thing I understand about Jady Vance is he is a true believer. And you usually after the primaries tacked to the center, that's the old saying, and they're not with JD Vance. I don't know. I mean, I know they tried to do. I was at the RNC, I was listening to them. Unity, Unity, Unity. We talked underconstructed last week about how Sara Bamari and other people
are trying to say that JD. Vance is the new center or could be. You know, a smart argument for him to adopt would be that he's the new center so far not working, clearly, if you're down six because he's a really I get why that's off putting, but it's also because Trump is very off putting to a lot of people still, and I know Trump is his
favorability is unfavorable. Favorables aren't super high either, So if you're sort of claim to fame is becoming a big Trump convert, that's not going to be super appealing to people.
And somebody tweeted that jd Vance is what you would get if some tech bros in California trying to grow a redneck in a lab And it's like, I kind of get what that argument is saying because his his mother struggled terribly and it's and it's wonderful that she has recovered and is now approaching I think what twelve years of sobriety. He was raised by his grandparents, who were pretty well off in a pretty middle class area
of Ohio. His Appalachian roots are ancestral, and he's clear about that in the book.
I'm not calling him out here.
His family moved before he was born to this region of Ohio, and the book is kind of about that migration out of Appalachia into the kind of rust belt suburbia, but so that that was his actual upbringing in a pretty middle, upper middle class area with his wonderful grandparents. Yes, And I think it's hard for them to kind of construct the the redneck meant the redneck kind of image out of it, especially after years spent on Wall Street and his venture capitalists and in those in those circles.
It's just not the beard isn't quite doing it.
The beard doesn't make it work.
Yeah.
And in fact, one of the best hits on this entire maga kind of thing that's going on, I think was by Tim Walls, who I wish there was more, wish we had.
More time in this world.
Because Emily and I talked about, I pitched Emily on doing this story where we look at both Minnesota and Iowa. Because Minnesota was won by Democrats, a trifecta by like one percent, like just thousands of votes divided this purple state between Republicans and Democrats.
Democrats took control.
Iowa was a purple state most of both of our lives. Republicans want a trifecta in Iowa. Iowa is now as deep red a state as you can get, and they've pushed They've pushed as far as hard right and agenda as you can with that type of majority. Just across the border in Minnesota, Democrats did something very unusual for Democrats, which was to actually deploy power and enact in an agenda.
And Tim Walls, with that very slim majority, has pushed through basically you look at the Democratic Party platform, they pushed everything through from from minimum wage to pro union stuff to all the cultural stuff.
And it reminds me of the inverse of Wisconsin when it went read under Scott Walker, both legislatures Senators Scott Walker. They pushed the full cirlate of Republican priorities.
Right, and Tim Walls is a sleeper of a VP pick yes, and so anyway, check out how he communicated his differences with Republicans here.
These are weird people on the other side.
They want to take books away, they want to be in your exam rooms. That's what it comes down to it. Don't you know, get sugar coating this. These are weird ideas. Listen to them speak. Listen know they talk about things. Listen to how your previous guests were right, like you said, They've told them that they shouldn't talk about race. They can't help it. It is built into their DNA because there is no plan. There's no health care plan, there's no health care plan, there's nothing to do on that.
They want to take away our alliances and leave Russia to do whatever they want. Look, they are bad on foreign policy, they are bad on the environment. They certainly have no health care plan, and they keep talking about the middle class. That, as I said, a robber baron, real estate guy and a venture capitalist trying to tell us they understand who we are.
They don't know who we are.
Not bad, it's pretty po politically not bad. Republicans, by the way, are also we're going to talk about this in the next block, are also borrowing the weird line of attack, and arguably not even borrowing it. I feel like Republicans were making this argument for a long time, that you know, they'll talk about the suite of cultural issues.
But at the RNC last week, multiple times speakers on the stage framed this as the election versus of weird versus normal, and so both sides are now calling each other weird.
Maybe our whole country is just weird. So speaking of weird, let's move on to this great jd Vance clip that has been making making their round, So let's just jump right into that one.
It is the weirdest thing to me. Democrats say that it is racist to believe. Well, they say it's racist to do anything. I had a diet mountain dew yesterday and one today. I'm sure they're going to call that racist.
Too, But it's good.
I love you guys.
But we're effectively run in this country via the Democrats, via our corporate oligarchs, by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they've made, and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable too.
And it's just a basic fact.
You look at Kamala Harris, Pete Boodhaje AOC. The entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children. And how does it make any sense that we've turned our country over to people who don't really have a direct stake in it?
Famous cat lady Pete Buddha Judge.
All those since then ye have Buddha Judge and.
Actually had a kid? Well it happened a month before that clip.
Oh really, he hadn't even like updated his talking point on that one.
It wasn't updated at that point.
But the Mountain Dew, though you wanted to defend.
It, I think I actually think diet Mountain Dew is one of the better diet sodas. I think it's diet Doctor Pepper and diet Mountain Mountain Dew. Diet coke is in a league of its own. But Diet Mountain Do, I'll defend. I think it tastes closest to the original product of many diezotas.
As a concept is just so ridiculous, Like if you take Trump's famous line that he's never seen a thin person drink diet coke.
Which, by the way, he was drinking diet coke, and that golf interview the dropped.
Yesterday's well in it, mountain dew is like one of the least unhealthy things you can put in your body, and it's obvious you just look at it. Adding diet is not helping on a family text chain. I had to explain what was going on with this clip here, because like he's trying to insult liberals, but they're just they're actually like they're not getting it, so that the question is like and maybe a lot of viewers who are actual normal people are watching that clip and be like, wait, wait,
I don't understand. Why does he think drinking diet mountain dew is racist. It's like, okay, he doesn't think it's racist, and actually, no liberals think it's racist either.
Well, there might be one or two and they all have like big Twitter platforms.
But what he's saying is that they will somehow they think everything is racist, and so they will somehow concoct a way that diet mountain dew fits into the schema of racism, and therefore he's racist for drinking a diet mountain dew. It's very online, it's very online, and it says something poor about me that I kind of understood what he was trying to do.
Well, yeah, even though.
He absolutely did not. Now, everybody flops a joke.
I flops several every show, but wow, he flopped that one badly. Plus with the afterwards like hey, I love you guys. It's like this stuff matters. Style, style matters because people are siding like who they want in their face. So for the next four years, which you know, we're going to do a lot of criticism of Kamala Harris as she continues to introduce herself to the country over the next three months, and and we'll get into her
in a weird ven diagram and stuff like that. Very fair to say that Jadie Vance is not wearing well.
Either that speech was at his old high school or middle school.
I want to show say either.
Yet high school, and he was really familiar with the crowded on to the making jokes about specific teachers. So I think he may have lost and this is not a positive. He may have lost track of the fact that he was giving an address that everyone around the country was going to have access to that was going to be eclipped. And that's obviously one thing to keep in mind when you're suddenly thrust onto the national stage
like this. It's not always going to translate as well when things are eclipped and tossed around the internet as it might in person. And the joke is based on something very very true, which is, you know, you can go down the line if you just type in blank is racist some you know article ten years ago, and Slate will come up or BuzzFeed will come up from like twenty fourteen saying yes, diet mountain dew is racist. That specific article probably doesn't exist, but maybe some.
I'm just gonna I'm gonna look clear. The first thing Google asked me what was bad for you? Yes, it's bad for you.
So it's not, you know, entirely off face. And this is something that wrinkles a lot of ordinary Americans that you know, you can't do anything without being Atlantic.
Sabe Advance has a point about Mountain dew.
Okay, that's written by me Atlantic.
This is this, You've got to be kidding me.
The sub headline in The Atlantic, the soft drink has long been associated with the joy and despair of white America.
Oh, that's definitely.
Something that's really something. Anyway, we probably shouldn't go too deep down the dim Mountain dew rabbit.
All I gotta go, but I can't.
Let's put the next element of the screen. Speaking of things Ryan loves, here's Laura Lumer. It's time for Republicans to start talking about Kamala Harris's sexual history and the reason why she likely doesn't have any children of her own. Oh gosh, im Melina bet she's had so many abortions that she damaged her uterus. A woman who has no biological children of her own should not be allowed to make decisions in the White House for your children, So
abortion point aside. That is why people who are very much a figment or very much involved in online right wing politics and are fluent in that language, which Jadvance is one of. It's why the online right likes jd Vance so much. That sort of meme of people who are childless shouldn't make decisions about the future of the country is why Jade Vance felt comfortable saying that on Tucker Carlson a few years ago. It's something we've heard
from Tucker Carlson. Jd Vance Personally, I detest that line of argument because it is so off putting to people in those situations that you should be trying to persuade. I'm not a parent. I imagine that there is something that changes about your politics when you realize that there's a
future for your own offspring that's on the line. The stakes are obviously higher, but it is the Republicans, from my perspective, at least should be offering a positive message if they want people to vote Republican, if they want people to become a Christian and conservative and share their views. The insults are just coming across as bitter and counterproductive.
So the Laura Lumer line, I think it's interesting to see it from her because it seems like it trickles down then to more mainstream Republicans.
It's also not believable at all in the sense that a lot of Republicans, if she did have young children, would be saying, why aren't you at home taking care of your young children?
Then she doesn't have children.
It's like, you know, how could you actually care about the future you don't have children.
So it's sort of like the fillish life think you.
I think you're just going to come up with a reason that you don't want this woman to be president. Some people might be wondering, why on earth, you know, put up something like as as bonkers as that that Laura Lumer post. She has one point one million followers on Twitter, and she and she helps to kind of drive and craft a lot of conservative narratives.
And I wouldn't sy I would say Magan.
Narratives, Magan narrative narratives, and this I think there's a there's an interesting kind of Elon Musk point to be made here. Like Lumor has been a notable member of the fringe for a very long time. When Elon Musk took over Twitter, uh drove out all the progressives for the most part except me, I'm hanging out there, uh, and then elevated the fringe to center stage on this massive platform where journalists are still hanging out and watching,
even if they're not all participating it. He took the break show and made it the main event. And I think it actually hurts the Republican Party. It does because all of us are then seeing like, oh, this is y'all.
Really, it really hurt Democrats when Jack was in charge, because that's the basis for the It's the basis for the JD Van's argument. There you had mainstream writers journalists on the left who were making absurd arguments about why everything was raised people.
Even more fringe than that with whoever could say the craziest thing and say it in like academic language would then get five million views on Twitter that day, and Democrats would be tearing their hair out being liked, this is not this does not represent the mainstream of our party. Twitter is not real life was the phrase that everybody would kind of throw at them. And now he's done the reverse.
Well, I think we just landed on a really interesting point because you, despite our best efforts, because you started this by saying, maybe America is just weird. Maybe America is just weird, And because Twitter and social media has gamified our politics, the fringe is obviously.
Maybe we're just attracted to like engaging with weirdness. Yeah, even if even if fascinating, if that's not actually where we are, it's much more interesting.
And the politicians mistake that for affirmation or for some sign that an argument they want to make is going to be more potent or mainstream than it actually is, which are politics then are further distorted from reality.
On Capitol Hill, you had a ton of Republican members of Congress repeating these talking points, despite an effort by Mike Johnson and others to say, guys, stop talking about her race, stop calling her DEI candidate, stop talking about her gender. So here's here's some of the efforts to use kind of normal talking points against hers.
Here's Mano over at CNN. I don't think it matters too. The Democrats run can't change the facts.
Facts are.
In three and a half years, we went from a secure border to no border and she's the borders are that's.
Her biggest liability.
I think, I mean, I think it was their biggest liability to begin with, and she was tasked with fixing it and that has not gone well.
It should be tougher to beat.
She will not be tougher to be No, not at all. We're excited abou Kamala le bean at the top of the ticket.
So I was listening in PR on the way over here and they were questioning Bob Casey about Kamala Harris on immigration, and he had a really hard time answering the question that even NPR was asking to defend her record or whether that will be I think the question is whether it would be a problem for her in Pennsylvania. Energy and immigration in ross belt states are a huge, huge vulnerability for Kamala Harris. There are a lot of old clips for her when she was trying to run to the left of a lot.
Of people dan fracking, yes, and plastic straws.
If Republicans can make that argument, it will be devastating to her in rost belt states and could be devastating for them in the election. That said, you know those states also have big suburban populations that can be driven to vote on the weirdness and if they're you know, running to out weird each other or to let's say, out what is how do you even say what they're going to be doing in terms of like running away from the weirdness charge too, like they're trying to out
normal each other. Let's say that unsuccessfully. Probably in fact, let's actually put this this is before we'll put befour up on the screen. This newsmas openly advocating for Kamala Harris seems unfair to the Trump campaign, wrote, Matt Bender supports massive corporate tax wanted to cap rent and utility payments, backed tax funded medicare for all investigated fossil fuel companies. Those are the news mes chirns will Kamala Harris spoke
yesterday in Milwaukee. Now B five is a memo from the nr SC, the National Republican Senatorial Committee that has this section on Kamala Harris's kind of like an OPO document where they're just listing some of the most potent lines of attack what they believe to be the most potent lines of attack on Kamala Harris for Senate candidates. Republican Senate candidates, and under the one section, it's just weird that Kamala Harris has a habit of laughing at
inappropriate moments. Going through some of the bullet points here, she's pleasured of ban plastic straws, favor in favor of banning certain behaviors like eating red meat, loves ben diagrams, loves electric school buses because she went to school on a school bus, recently discovered that electricity doesn't smell so ryan.
Then you're going to be juxtaposing jd Vance, who has said whatever about cat ladies and diet mountain dew, and Trump's weirdness, which is in another league and is actually much more funny than the weirdness of Kamala Harris or jad Vans with the weirdness of Kamala Harrison, perhaps whoever she picks us her vice presidential candidate. And that's what you know, voters are going to have to choose between, in addition to the broader issues like immigration and energy.
Yeah, you're different versions of cringe. Yeah, yes, this is the one we just put up. Yeah, it's like, yeah, you have two flavors of cringe with these two.
With these two.
Meanwhile, Donald Trump This is pretty funny. We put up this next element B six. Trump just cannot let go of Joe Biden, crooked Joe Biden, and tum Biden has left the stage. So everything Trump has been truth socially has been about about Joe Biden and not about Kamala Harris. And Joe Biden is now leaving the stage with this crooked Joe Biden never landing.
I love that one in the bottom left. If it's like such a non sequitur Biden never have had COVID. He has a threat to democracy.
He's just throwing stuff against the wall. No, it doesn't mean that he's afraid to run against Kamala Harris, but it means he's having a hard time processing the events.
It seems like, yeah, well, I mean it's been a big week for him.
It's been a big month death experience, yeah.
Plus then a convention, plus then losing his opponent and getting a new one, getting a new one, and his son talking into choosing jd Vance, his son whose judgment he doesn't really respect, and yet followed. You can you can just be certain that the fact that he listened to his son is gnawing at him as he kind of contemplates the JD Vance pick.
Well, again, I think what he valued in the JD Advance pick more than anything. We've talked a lot about
JD Vance in the show. I just don't see any evidence, like Harry Anton can put up that graphic that actually showed Vance's favorability is still higher than Trump's, his net favorability still higher than Trump's, which RCP at least has around like negative nine somewhere around there, and their average Jdvance could go down to like negative twenty, and I don't think it would have a meaningful outcome or a meaningful effect on the outcome of the election. Honestly, just
don't think people vote on vice presidents. All that is to say, it does affect the vibe, no question about it. It affects the vibe. So vibes are weird. The vibes are weird. And whether Republicans use Joe Biden as a line of attack on Kamala Harris Donald Trump clearly is there is something to be said on the cover up angle. You said, you give good reason for why that might not work earlier in the show. But we'll see what Republicans end up sticking to.
And we're going to get a debate. It looks like or at least at least one. Donald Trump is saying he'd be willing to debate Kamala Harris more than once.
We can put c one up on the screen.
On a call with reporters from President Trump says he will commit to debating Vice President Harris, but it's not thrilled with ABC. As debate host said he'd be willing to do more than one debate as well.
Let's see who would ABC be? That would be Stephanopolis.
It could be Stephanopoulos unless they're I think they've kept him out of debate moderating before because of that, but it may have been just a pure Republican debate. Monitors reading that they've replaced him with what Margaret Brennan.
Yeah, so how do you think? How do you think Trump would do against Kamala Harris?
She is a Ted Cruz type, Marco Brennan's on CBS, So I take that back, but I think she's a Ted Cruise.
I disagree with this, but I want to hear you Ted Cruse type.
In a very generic sense, not in a specific sense, but in a generic sense, which is that she is a talented well she was at one point of talented politician, and she was until she became vice president and there was a camera on her all the time, and she said it insane. But she's sort of talented on paper. You know, has has the right education, the right political career, and you know, can talk about the issues, et cetera.
It doesn't matter when you're up against Donald Trump. She's just a generic politician, and Donald Trump eats generic politicians for lunch. Just you can be Hillary Clinton whatever. Joe Biden is a pretty general politician, but he's kind of got a folksier part of him. For what it's worth that he always at least pretended to have these populist, folksy instincts in a way that Hillary Clinton, Kamala Harris, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Chris Christie, they just could never
pull it off. And so Donald Trump will eat you for lunch if you're like that.
So the reason I say I disagree is that I Ted Cruz is a meticulous.
Uh prep guy, and Kamala Harris isn't.
He's gonna he's gonna have all his lines memorized, He's gonna have all his arguments laid out.
He's a debate bro. He loves to debate. He loves to pick out what somebody said, would challenge them.
Uh, and he has a really thorough, kind of maybe surface level, but a but thorough surface level grasp on issue so that such that he can talk about them long enough to sound educated and eloquent throughout the length of a debate. If you had to go for you know, days with actual policy experts, then it's obviously he's going to fall apart.
But no politician really has to do that in public.
So whereas whereas Kamala Harris is much more of a kind of riffer and off the cuff person who has phrases that she goes back to sure as kind of crutches, Well.
That's Marco and I guess it was Chris Christie because Trump wasn't at that debate, right, Trump would have Let's be real, Trump would have had a field day with that too.
Now, the reason I think that it could it's it could be an interesting debate is that Harris is at her worst when somebody is pressing her directly on a vulnerability that she should be prepared to respond to, but she isn't and that Trump just doesn't do that because Trump is all about himself and the debate and exuding his own kind of set like that that's him. He doesn't tactically kind of try to pin somebody down. Instead,
he uses his own buzzwords, you know. You know, he'll say, like, you know, laptop wrong, hunter wrong, and you have to kind of be kind of in the mix of his train of thought to understand what he's what he's saying, and which means that whoever he's saying it to doesn't have to like respond directly to any anything because Trump doesn't say anything directly. Trump just kind of throws a whole bunch of stuff against the wall.
Which is why nobody can compete with him.
But at the same time, he'll have a hard time exposing Harris's big vulnerability, like because he'll he'll just say, like, you know, he'll say border border, border chaos, energy and benefit, immigrants raping people, and by the end of his answer, like it will be very clear what tru was trying to say, but he won't be but it'll be so out there that it will let Harris off the hook so that she can just give a speech about immigration or something.
Say what you will about Joe Biden, at least when he's conscious, he is a charismatic politician, and he always has been. That's actually something that's to his credit. He's able to. He can riff and sometimes he really shouldn't riff, but he does, like when he talked about seven eleven's in his state in an interview, which if you haven't seen, go ahead and look up Joe Biden several champions. Yes, very trumpy in moment circle like two thousand and seven,
but he's charismatic. Hillary Clinton is not charismatic. Kamala Harris is not charismatic. Both of them try very hard to be, though, and that I see standing up to Trump very poorly, just because he is so absurdly charismatic that he just drowns it out.
I think, I mean, maybe it depends on yours, then it's subjective, but I kind of feel like she does have some charisma, certainly personally Cringema.
I tried to make that person. She does exude a charisma.
And I've I've never talked to her.
Despite and maybe that maybe it doesn't come through on the screen.
I kind of think it does.
I think it kind of is evaporated by like the looping sentences where you start to like get really worried for her. You're following the sentence, You're like, oh god, where is this going to go?
And is she stuck in the loop.
Talking about time or whatever else and just hoping that she can find her way out of this loop, out of this loop, and so then you forget that there's some charisma there.
Well. It's interesting because I remember covering her son a campaign and thinking I actually was pretty impressed with her as a politician because the Los Angeles Times back then had gone with her to a fundraiser and she was, you know, in front of this room of California Democrats, pushing them. It became her three am policy or whatever.
But at the time, she was like, listen, the identity politics stuff is not what people are thinking about when they're laying awake at three in the morning worrying about their families. And that was a this was what twenty eighteen something like that. It was a pretty brave thing to say in a room full of California progressives back then, and I remember thinking she actually might have something like there's you have to have charisma. I feel like to
be making points like that. So it just seems that being vice president totally broke her brain. I thought she had charisma. In those Senate Judiciary hearings. She was going viral all the time. For those who you completely disagreed with her, most of the time, she was going viral.
She handled her well.
Yeah, but it's like being vice president just caused her.
To melt or running for running for president too.
That's true, right, she had a lot of I mean, Christma didn't necessarily come through during those debates, unless I say, by the way, is Trump in this call with reporters that was mentioned in the element we put up on the screen, he said that he absolutely that was his quote, absolutely thinks he should be debating Harris. He said multiple times you mentioned that earlier, and he said he thinks that people have quote an obligation to debate, which was
on the table before he agreed to these debates. Whether or not either candidate felt obliged to stand on the stage and debate one another, I think because of what happened with Joe Biden, I pray that we were approaching this norm of no debates for primaries or whatever people were saying it doesn't really matter Trump skipped a debate. It was becoming more and more of a talking point.
I pray that this is finally disabused us of the notion that it is okay to forego debates, because if Joe Biden had had to debate in the primary where he did have serious opponents, he would have crumbled and we could have done all of this earlier.
And the irony is that if Trump had refused to debate him, and the first debate wasn't until September, by then it would have been too late for Joe Biden to drop off the ticket and he would have lost in a Mondale level of landslide. So Trump, by accepting the debate hut the whole put the whole thing at risk, for his whole his whole campaign at risk.
Sure did. He also said he thinks it'll be quote no different debating Kamala Harris than it would Joe Biden in again, because.
Trump doesn't care who he's debating. It's just himself, right.
And it gets the point you were making earlier in the show that you can turn Biden migrant crime into Harris migrant crime crime, or Biden inflation into Harris flation. That's something Republicans are really banking on at this point because they have spent months preparing the case against Joe Biden and end of the almost before the convention, right at the end of the road, they had the rug pulled out from under them.
We're joined now by independent journalist Motaz Sliam joining us from Capitol Hill.
Motaz, thanks for joining.
Us, of course, thanks for having me, And.
So Benjamin Etna, who has arrived in Washington, d C. We can put this vio up of the screen as you can see smiles all around as he lands here and in the DC area. He'll be addressing a joint session of Congress at two o'clock this afternoon. At least twenty Democrats have so far said that they will be boycotting the address. Almost all of them will be meeting, you know, willing to meet at some point privately, either on Capitol Hill.
First saw a picture of the entourage in.
The White House. There's the entourage.
There, including Noah Argamani, which the picture was pointing out former hostage now released, has become really the face of or one of the most prominent faces of the you know, the war. It's in support of the war that Israel's prosecuting.
Yes, yes, yes, Indeed, yesterday ahead of his speech, protesters kind of took over the Canon rotunda.
If you can, we can roll some of this.
Yeah.
So motas you were there at Cannon yesterday, can you tell us what the what what the demands of the protesters were and what what the mood was there.
The demands ultimately are for permanent ceasefire in Guzza as well as a arms embargo on Israel.
As well as there was a very it was very emotional in the sense that.
You could tell people really really don't want, for very justifiable reasons, Natan Yahoo to speak or to even have been invited. But ultimately, the I think the central demand is an arms embargo and to bring an end to the genocide.
And you're on Capitol Hill right now, as the Capitol Hill police and other law enforcement have prepared with what looks like the leftover fence from the January sixth barricade that they put it on the Capitol afterwards. So tell us what the mood is like. They're what you're expecting to see today and if it's groups like Jewish Voices for Peace, which is who we saw yesterday and who
we just saw in that video. Basically, what's happening outside the capital in the morning of Wednesday as we're talking to you here.
Yeah, so right now it's around nine point thirty. It's still like there are people congregating. There's this sort of central area. We are on Pennsylvania and kind of a few blocks out of the Capitol, So there's a central area.
Where people are kind of planning to meet. And the actual meeting.
Time is eleven o'clock and you have like a medical tent, you have a lot of water supplies, signs and whatnot, and people for now are just meeting. I know that there was a protest in front of the water Gate happening earlier today as well, because that's where neatsan Yahoo and his whole like entourage is saying.
Do you expect any lawmakers to come to the protest today?
If so, who?
None that I know of so far?
And what are you what are you hearing from the from Democrats about how they're handling his his the decision by Democrats and Republicans to invite him here.
Well hearing for the I mean, for the most part, it seems like and I think this is like a really awful thing. The fact that only about twenty or so Democrats have outright said.
That they are going to boycott.
His speech, and you know, you saw, like, for example, Representative Nadler gave a whole statement about how Natanyahu is this worst possible human who's responsible for the atrocities and.
Whatnots leader in Israel for in like three thousand years or something.
Yeah, worst leader in Israel for three thousand years. But I'm still going to attend it.
And it's it's really like I run out of words.
Especially as as someone Palestinian, of how like how much cover they're giving him. They're trying to rehabilitate his image. They have police forces coming from they got NYPD coming in, they got all of this effort just to protect him when he is really just the you know, the man respects constable for a modern day genocide.
It's really awful.
Who is participating in this protest? So again yesterday I was Jewish Voices for Peace was a part of that big protest in the rotunda of the Cannon House office building. You know, I think that's an important component obviously of how people will interpret what's happening outside the capital. Are there Jewish protesters? What's the kind of coalition outside the capital today?
I think it's really a mixture. There's a variety of different contingents.
I know there's going to be a Jewish contingent here joining the protests.
You have sort of.
Palestinian led organizations. You also have a lot of labor organizations that have mobilized in order to join the protest today because.
Influenced a lot by.
Labor organizing in Palestine which has been potting out, a lot of calls, a lot of messaging.
Two pressure organizations.
At all levels too, not just boycott and that's in Yahoo, but really put the pressure on Israel to put the pressure on the US to actually implement an arms embargo on Israel, because that's kind of the main leverage we have. But to answer your question, it's a variety of many walks of life and different backgrounds.
Let's just quickly put the element D four up on the screen since we just referenced it. Their seven major unions just sent a letter this is July twenty third, so yesterday to Biden calling on him to immediately haul all military aid to Israel ahead of it now who's visit to Washington? So that included the s CiU, the UAW and some other big unions.
Yeah, and the s c IU extremely close with Kamala Harris, which could be interesting and raises the question motaz of how people are how people there and people talked to yesterday and in the in the movement more generally are feeling about the switch from Biden to to Kamala Harris. How how much has the door open for people to consider now supporting a Democratic ticket given you know, the the complexity of this question is that Harris is part
of the Biden Harris administration. She's also represents potentially a new path forward. Where where are people coming down on this?
Yeah, I mean it's I think, looking at it.
And in an objective as as objective sense as I can.
It does definitely.
I mean, the chances are much higher for Kamala to receive votes from people who are very concerned about what's happening in Buzzo, what's happening in Palestine, especially from like the Arab American population here.
That being said, I think.
This is anecdotally speaking, I mean my understanding from a lot of Palestinians I've talked to and Muslims is we they want to see first what if she is actually going to change any of the policies that Biden has kind of toad so far, because Biden has pretty much given a green light to Natanyahu and his administration despite all the different god knows how many red lines for different things there have been that Yaho has passed, and then.
Really there was no consequences.
For any sort of the atrocities, the massacres, the war crimes.
So, I mean, you do see this rhetoric from a lot of people.
In like a lot of liberals saying that, oh, like we need to push her left. I personally am am doubtful of that because it's you know, she's she's received a lot of money from the pro Israel, pro Israel lobby groups in her career, and it's seems pretty clear she's trying to have like a harsher rhetoric. But it's been ten months of genocide and rhetoric is not enough anymore.
I'll say that as a.
Palestinian first and foremost, like we need to see an action plan and things put into place to use our leverage as the US to bring an end to the genocide.
Instead, we're going to hear from Prime Minister Benjamin Netyahu addressing a joint session of.
Congress later today. Quite quite a moment.
Motas, thank you so much for joining us, and welcome back anytime.
Thank you appreciate it.
Up next, Nel Shaline, a State Department official who resign in protest over the US's unquestioning support for the Dyahu's war on Gaza.
Stick around for the.
What We're joined now by someone who actually resigned from a post at the State Department over the way the Biden administration had prosecuted the war on a war on Hamas. We're joined by doctor Anel Shalen, who is now a researcher at the Quincy Institute. And now thanks for coming on the show to talk about this.
Thank you for having me.
And so Anel.
You may have seen this Politico article and we can put this up on the screen here. The headline was Biden resignees are more hopeful.
What was the exact happen.
More hopeful about Harris's Israel policy? That is a July twenty first Politico story. And as we are talking to you and now you are, we can put f one up on the screen. You're one of those resignees, but I think there's an open question about whether you're one of them who's quote hopeful.
So many of people have resigned in the State Department over this policy that there's an entire now group of people that can have differing opinions, So curious where you fall down and the question of a change in a potential change in policy toward this war.
I mean, there is an opportunity right now. I think the question is who is in touch with Kamala Harris's team, And again open question. Obviously it's not yet totally solidified that she'll be the nominee, but assuming that she is, I know that several of my fellow resignees, you know, we're in touch with each other. It's such a great source of support to get to work with them. We released a joint statement the week of July fourth where we were calling for a different policy. So absolutely there's
an opportunity now for a new approach. I think I'm just a little bit less inclined towards optimism just knowing the strength of the Israel lobby in US politics. You know, I think that we are seeing a generational change. I don't think we'll continue to see this bipartisan support for this unconditional support for Israel. But I don't know that that political change is either here yet or that politicians are really plugged into it yet. I don't know that
Harris and her team are plugged into it. I do think I hope they would be, because that could help bring young people who are completely disillusioned with this policy. It could bring really critical voters, Arab American voters, and critical parts of the country the progressives. But I won't be surprised if she maintains a lot of these same policies.
Can I ask you a little bit about how the lobby actually works. So I've spoken with some State Department officials who have said that the way that it works from their perspective is.
If they if they push a little bit too.
Hard, let's say, in a meeting with Israeli counterparts, all of a sudden that will be told, Hey, so the boss got a call from Ron Dharmer, you know, said that you're a little bit off the leash. Why am I hearing from Ron Durmer about you chilling? And they just tighten the leash there a little bit.
Is that.
Have you experienced that or have you heard that type of kind of influence or in general, how does it actually function in practice as you're trying to do your job.
So I was with the Bureau of Democracy Human Rights in Labor or DRL and then their Office of Nearest Affairs, and I wasn't working directly on Israel Palestine. You know, my portfolio was different countries. But everything I was doing and trying to advocate for human rights was absolutely undermined and made essentially impossible by Israel's war on Gaza. But what I observed wouldn't have necessarily probably risen to that
level because I was, you know, working level. But what I would see would be if there might be a shared document and you're working on it with a bunch of different people, different offenses, and you're suggesting comments and someone might put in your comment, you know, if I had said something that was like more critical or pointing out something about Israel, someone might say in the comment you know that that's not that's not going to work, or they might just erase it. And so then it's
a question, well do do you escalate it? Where are the Human Rights Office? So os sensibly and to be clear, you know, my superiors in DRL were trying to, you know, within the sort of marginal space that they could to push for human rights. But human rights are never the first priority of US foreign policy, and so we were always outranked.
We were you know, we.
Never really got to call the shots when it came to human rights in Israel or you know, any country other than countries that we just routinely call out, like Iran and Syria. So what I observed would probably be less. You know, our boss got a call about you because I was too junior. It was more this internal self censorship of other people just knowing that like, yeah, you can't say that, got it?
So something interesting. You resigned in March, and in your CNN A bad you wrote about how some of your colleagues said, please speak for us. What are you hearing if you can speak to that from people who maybe are still inside official Washington capacities or working in official capacities now that you know, we talked about how people like you had already resigned, are looking at a potential
Harris administration. What are you hearing if you are from people who are still inside the government about what that might look.
Like people in government think Trump is going to win, and they're really scared of that, especially worried about Project twenty twenty five and losing their jobs. I think that they're also pretty cynical about Harris, at least the folks that I'm in touch with, they don't anticipate a shift here. You know, these are people who've spent their careers in government and they've seen right and go, and this policy doesn't change.
This is the third vale of American.
Politics, and so there are people now inside government who are continuing to do what they can. I know a big contingent are going to be at the protest today against bb probably you know, obscuring their appearance to avoid.
Yeah, their state lanyard zone. Yeah. But you know, I do think that.
Many people inside government are really worried about about Trump coming back, but they do see it as kind of an inevitability.
So, speaking of human rights, if we could put up D three on the screen here, I don't know if you saw this. This is a piece I published last night at drop site News leaked you own report Israeli Worse called three hundred and sixty six UN staff and family members ASNA who prepares to address Congress. And this is the first it's a confidential report from the UN that was the was leaked to us. It's the first one that has laid out the number of dependents of
UN staff, so not just UN staff. And you know, people have been killed from UNISEEF, the UN Development Program, UNRA, the World Food Program of the World Health Organization, and also from this un like It department. So, as somebody with a human rights record since World War Two, have you ever seen so many UN workers and their families targeted and killed in a conflict before? And what does it say about what's going on the ground?
There?
Never never, And you know is the kanesset I think just designated UNRAH a terrorist organization. This is a UN agency and they are targeting you know. Not only did they level these accusations against the twelve UNRA employees such that the US withdrew funding, as did much of the rest of the way world. Other countries have now reinstated some of that funding, which is good. But without US funding, UNRA does not have the money it needs to function.
And so the way that Israel has targeted the UN and designated UN agency's terrorist organizations is completely dismantling the supposed legitimacy of the UN system in ways that will have repercussions around the world. I mean, if we don't have a set of institutions, and certainly there were already issues with UN. It's not perfect, but it is what we have, similar to international law. International law, it's not perfect.
But the ways that Israel in the US have so directly undermined it and even used it kind of to justify what they're doing, this is going to have massive repercussions for conflicts going forward.
I mean, it is, it is.
It's going to horrifyingly I run it because so many of these institutions were set up in the aftermath of World War two to try to prevent another holocaust, and you know, I think we can't even know yet what the damage from that will be.
So that's something I think is really underappreciated in this larger conversation. And you write in your cna AP ed about how American credibility on human rights has I think the quote has almost vanished from your outbed over the course of the last six plus months as this war has transpired. Can you talk to us a little bit about that and what it might look like down the road in future conflicts or for example, there's a war in Ukraine right now, how is this affecting other spaces?
And I want to be clear, advocating for human rights on the behalf of the United States in the Middle East was already not easy, do you ways imagine did not have a lot of credibility there, but it was still able to engage with civil society organizations. There's you know, work that was done in these deeply authoritarian spaces in ways that really had an impact for people on the ground.
And so it was so.
Depressing to then meet with some of these individuals, not from Israel or Palestine, elsewhere in the region. We'd sit at a table with them, start, you know, open the conversation about what it is that they're dealing with the way that they're being attacked by their government, and they're like Gaza, Gaza, Like we want to talk about Gaza.
How is this happening?
How can you you know, this person that I have a relationship with, that I know advocates for human rights, how are you letting this happen? And we'd kind of she bishally have to say, like, I mean this is coming from the very top, like you can't. This is what the president wants and you're some you know, working level person at the State Department or even an under secretary, w sister secretary. You can't change that. So in terms of thinking about Ukraine, it.
Is this sort of it's it is such.
Cruel irony that we have what Russia is doing to Ukraine in such direct juxtaposition of the US reaction to that and rightful condemnation.
And then.
The complete opposite when Israel does even worse things to the civilian population of Gaza, and we have the US saying, you know, the v's international institutions, our right and just in the condemnations of Russia, and then they're trying to go after like the families of the ICC or the ICJ prosecutor when they are called, you know, have accused
net Yahoo and was it gallant of war crimes? That just the hypocrisy is so blatant that I think the only thing that the US could try to do to re establish credibility on human rights would be to work to establish a state of Palestine, to actually make that happen, not pretend that that's what it's you know, that's been the official policy for years, but the US has done nothing but provide this unconditional support for Israel, which keeps
moving US further away from that and towards more violence.
In the meantime, if we can put up this F three one of the more I mean, I don't want to rank the shockingness that's been coming out of Gaza, but the headline here from the BBC is a World Health organization quote extremely worried about possible Gaza polio outbreak. There were reports in Israeli press about Israeli soldiers being vaccinated for polio before heading into assault Assault Gaza, reports of the virus that causes polio being detected in sewage.
You know, this is a throwback to something that the world had, you know, felt.
Like it had defeated.
What does it say to you that the who is now extremely worried about this potential polio outbreak?
I mean, like you said, polio, you think of FDR, you know, you think of a bygone era before we had vaccines that could prevent these these completely preventable diseases. And you know, if they're having a polio outbreak, who knows what else could happen. I mean, there's it's completely there's no water, it's completely untreated sewage. There could be all kinds of you know, the population of Gaza. Who knows what else, what other diseases might be circulating there
that we're just not even aware of. But you know the fact that the who had gotten so close to eliminating polio and now we're worried about an outbreak. It's I think it's just like you said, it's just one more example of how shocking this conflict is.
Is there anything about the conflict that you think people maybe aren't as aware of as somebody who actually worked in the State Department, worked in human rights issues that we haven't covered yet. Is there something people just don't understand should understand better.
I think a lot of people aren't sufficiently worried about the war expanding and the US getting dragged in. I'm fairly sure that Bibe is going to ask certain he's
going to ask for more money and more weapons. But I think he wants Congress to sign off on him going after Husbullah in Lebanon, and I think his objective is to enter into a war that gets Israeli civilians killed that will try to shift this global condemnation of him and his actions against Palestinians and Gaza and try to claw back some of that sympathy that Israel had
after October seventh to then justify expanding the violence. And what I'm worried about is that this will drag in the United States because the US continues to pledge this unconditional support, that US troops will get dragged in and that this in some ways could be seen as election interference. That Bbie will do this right before the US election. Americans are so tired of unnecessary wars in the Middle East.
This could hand I mean Trump's already Trump could win by himself without this happening, but that could really tank the chances of whoever ends up on the Democratic ticket.
Yeah and so and now thank you so much for joining us, very much, appreciate it, Thanks for having me and so. Yeah, at two o'clock ya who will address the Joint Session of Congress At eight o'clock later tonight, Joe Biden will give his address where I guess he'll and he guesses what he's going to announce.
I mean, he already tweeted it. He did tweet it he's been posting.
It's you're going to confirm that he is not going to be the Democratic nominationing He'll confirm, little whole scoop here.
You heard that here first.
Yeah, it's a great thing. You post something on X wait a few days, jump on video, more content. You can just keep minding it for clicks. So well to the president, sitting president of the United States.
Indeed, all right, well you guys enjoy that at saga. We'll actually be back with Crystal tomorrow.
So he should have just taken tomorrow off. What did he should have just taken the whole week he couldn't. Yeah, that's so good, so true. So you'll get another I guess dose of Sager before the week is over. Great wedding, by the way, super fun. We had a lot of fun, breaking points, career, had a lot of fun.
Ryan was dancing a lot, very happy for the couple.
Yes, all right, well we will be back next week with more counterpoints. See then,