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What do we have today, Cristel Oh, We have.
A lot to tackle this morning.
We're going to preview that big Trump putin Alaska summit. We're also going to take an early look at how the midterms are shaping up. We've got some news out of Israel, including netnyahuo embracing the Greater Israel project, so just mask fully off at this point. I'm also going to take a look at Theo vonhad In, American doctor who was just back from Gaz's pretty extraordinary episode. I really recommend that you guys go and listen to the
whole thing, but we have a clip from that. I wanted to talk a little bit about that as well. Marthorie Taylor Green and Laura Lumer in an Absolute flame war break the details down there, and Laura Lum are making a pretty dire prediction about the future of the Republican Party, So that is interesting to dig into as well, perhaps more substantive.
I don't know to dig into as well.
Congresswoman Luna is telling Joe Rogan about UFOs, so Sager has some thoughts.
I guess I have some thoughts there. Well.
She made some crazy claims, but she's also gone after some whistleblower, so we'll talk about it.
It's actually there's a lot going on there, Okay, yeah.
Right, you'll break that down for us. And then Israel might be preparing to go back to war with Iran. So we are going to have Dave DeCamp of Anti War dot COM's first time on the show. I've been wanting to get him on for a little while to break down all of the details there.
We're also going to be doing our AM Live today.
If you guys want to be part of those, make sure that you sign up over at breakingpoints dot com.
That's right, Breakingpoints dot Com. Become a premium member today. If not, no worries. If you can't afford it, just please hit the subscric frye button here on this video and or send your favorite episode to a friend. So let's go ahead and start with that Trump Putin summit.
It is tomorrow. We'll have some reaction on Saturday.
By the way, we'll get to that in terms of our future programming notes. But we actually wanted to start with some of the contours of the debate and kind of where things lie. So we thought we would kick it off with Dave Smith, who was recently on Piers Morgan's show, debating a very pro Ukraine, pro Western NATO sentiment and really revealing some of the core truths I think behind what continues to drive a lot of the NATO support for the war.
Let's take a listen, what.
Are we doing. You're just trying to insult Vladimir Putin, insult Russia. It's like the most childish immature, just taunting. There's an actual war going on right now. Where hundreds of thousands of people have been dying, and there's a meeting coming up between the two leaders of the United States and Russia. As I said before, ninety percent of the world stockpile of nuclear weapons. Let's all take this
down a notch. Vladimir Putin has at least signalled recently that he will maybe is open to the idea of keeping the Donbass region done, asking Lahansk, of getting a corridor to Crimea, and of leaving some of the other territory. Why are we not all pushing in that direction. It is undeniable that the West did a lot to provoke
this conflict. It's just undeniable. Our CIA director through all of Joe Biden's term, Bill Burns, was the one who wrote the NT means NEET memo, who warned Condoliza Rice, do not keep pushing in this direction, and we continued pushing regardless it's resulted in this catastrophe. Like I said before, Pierce, I'm not absolving Vladimir Putin of any responsibility. He launched this warrant, He's responsible for the destruction. But when you start the program by asking a simple question like what
is the exit strategy here? What is the plan. No one really has anything. No one has anything other than maybe we could keep sending weapons and money in and this slow grind of people dying will continue, and Vladimir Putin will then, at the end of that take the territory he wants. Let's try to negotiate an end to this nightmare that never needed to happen.
I thought he did a good job, kind of a laying some of the stakes out. And yes, again I understand nobody's absolving Vladimir Putin a buffer invading Ukraine. Were simply acknowledging the contours of what.
Led to this.
Yeah, I actually find it almost similar maybe to the Israel Hamas conversation. Right, It's like, to talk about October seventh in a vacuum is kind of ridiculous.
I'm like, do you condemn Hammad.
Right exactly? Like, yes, of course on October seventh, and it's like, let's look at the contours of the conflict.
That's part of the reason I think that Daryl Cooper's series on Fear and Loathing in Jerusalem went so viral because people are like I genuinely had no idea about the history of these two actors and what led up to this, and it starts to make a lot more sense actually from both sides in terms of their actions, both October seventh and the Israeli reaction, and you're able to actually be able to down both and then look at it, you know, without some single Israeli covered or
Palestinian covered glasses.
Right, And that makes it what it's called nuance.
It's about understanding how these things don't happen necessarily in evacuate.
It's not an adulting version.
Where it's just like he's an evil bad guy, so he does bad stuff and they're evil people, so they do they hate us because I were free, you know, it's like the cartoon version of it. And I will say there was one person on that panel that was absolving Vladimir pos Ros, a dude in the car.
It was like some I.
Don't know, Russian State TV propaganda's and so that was supposed to be like Dave's ally in the debate. Obviously Dave doesn't agree with him, which he made clear, like went out of his way to make clear, like the things that this dude was saying, I do not co sign whatsoever.
So Peers is more pro Ukraine.
The woman that was there is herself Ukrainian, and then you've got two neocons there who are you know, very pro Ukraine. And so it was basically Dave versus the entire panel, and as you could see there handled himself quite ably just by out you know, reality of where we are, because this is you know, I have a lot of sympathy and continue to have a lot of sympathy for the Ukrainians. In fact, I'm disgusted with the fact that the US was so integral and glowing up
a potential piece deal early on. I'm also disgusted with the actions that multiple US administrations, including the first Trump one, including Biden, including going back, you know, before this war that they took that led to the provocation that created the context for this illegal offensive action invasion by Russia. And so, you know, if you are interested in trying to bring this thing to a close, you have to
live in reality. The other alternative being offered here is just what endless war or you know, if we're actually going to try to get Ukraine to quote unquote win and take back all their territory, I mean that would
require our actual direct involvement. Does anyone want that and that's what's driven me crazy about this conflict from the beginning is there's been a total unwillingness to have an honest debate about what happened in the past, what it's going to mean, what the off ramp is, what the plan is, where this whole thing is going. And now it's just a mess and a quagmire. And you know,
I'm not particularly hopeful about this summit this weekend. I'll just put my cards on the table, and I think we'll have some indications you're about to share of, you know, not great signs going into it.
But you know, I don't know.
I'm just at this point there really needs to be some sort of rational clothes to this thing, and I don't know that we're anywhere close to it.
I don't see it either.
Here's Trump talking about the summit, setting expectations.
Let's take a listener.
Let's your face.
Any consequences if Vladimir Putin does not agree to stop the war after your meeting on Friday.
Yes, they will.
What will they will be?
Cons There will be I don't have to say there will be very severe consequences. Yes, very severe consequences. I'm going to return to that, because basically this thing, at least for now, looks like it's set up fail to be fair. Here's what the Trump people have been telling
me behind the scenes. He starts off from the maximal political place so that he can negotiate down from there, which sounds reasonable in practice, like maybe in business, but in something as sensitive as this, I still remain remains to be seen, I think in terms of the success and part of the reason why is this.
Let's put this up there on the screen.
There's been multiple reports out now, none of it contradicted with the White House. Yesterday, Donald Trump held a meeting both with Ukraine and many of the European great powers ahead of the summit, where they agreed quote on Ukrainian red lines with Europe. Before the Putin summit, the US leader told European peers he will not negotiate territorial issues
during Friday's meeting, but will seek in immediate ceasefire. Now included within that provision for a European ceasefire, and I want to reiterate this are some of the things which are already non starters for the Russians.
I'm going to read it here.
Quote ceasefire as a prerequisite for any further talks. Quote, any territorial discussion will start from the current front line, quote binding Western security agreements that Russia must accept, quote Ukrainian participation in the talks, and quote support from both the US and Europe, including Ukraine for any deal. Now Already on the Ukrainian side, it's going to be very
difficult to get a deal. Why because Zelensky has a total ability to set the table and to bring anything to some sort of national referendum, which he's not even allowed to pursue any sort of peace on his own accord. He has to bring it to the people. Now, he may not even want to bring it to the people because apparently, according to their own polls, the Ukrainian people
are actually much more pro peace than he is. Whereas his entire administration, remember, he's deeply unpopular already for some of the authoritarian anti corruption laws that he just signed into office. He's already been dragging down in the polls. There's been no election, The Ukrainian opposition has either been banned or jailed inside of the country. Why would you want to give that up if you're already a leader
of that country. His vision for how this thing was going to go is already out of step with the Ukrainian secondary to that is, quote, some sort of security guarantee that Russia can that Russia must accept. The security guarantee would effectively be some sort of NATO style security guarantee outside of NATO. So Trump is trying to play two sides of this coin, where he's like, well, it
won't be from NATO. It's like, dude, if the US has a treaty bound organized or treaty bound obligation to defend every inch of let's say, eighty percent of Ukraine, that might as well be NATO. I mean, it doesn't matter right functionally whether it's America or whether it's outside of NATO or not. If all of the NATO powers have an obligation to come and to defend your territory, then that's basically NATO.
Why would Russia live with that?
And then the final one is that Russia must agree to the current front line and they must not demand any more of their territory.
Well, again, for people who.
Don't even follow the conflict, Russia just had its best breakthrough on the frontline in over a year. Part of the reason why a sea fire for them right now may not make a lot of sense is because they're rolling. Every single day that the war continues, they're doing better. And then finally there's this theory of severe consequences. Russia is the most sanctioned country on Earth by the United States. I actually don't think people know that, more than Iran,
more than any other place. There's not another sanction that can be left. That's why they're threatening these quote secondary sanctions right Well, they've put fifty percent sanctions or tariffs on India.
India has not budged a single inch, not one.
In fact, they're going to Moscow, They're going to China, to Beijing. The two biggest buyers of Russian oil are China and India. China by far, by the way, and it faces no current consequences. The Senate has a bill which Trump is threatened to support, which would put five hundred percent tariffs on any buyer of Russian oil.
But let's think about the consequences of that.
That would mean a five hundred percent tariff on China, which would effectively bring the US commerce industry, retail industry, e commerce, et cetera to a complete.
And shut off trade.
Is everybody willing to shut down our economy and all of our global trade for Ukraine. I mean this is where, you know, it gets back to where we all had to pay higher gas prices because of the Ukrainian conflict. That wasn't popular. Actually, even though a lot of people were like, yeah, sure, I'll pay higher gas, it's.
Like, yeah, I didn't work out the beginning in theory.
Yeah you got you got a lot poor.
Most people paid a big FD Ukraine tax at the pump for years and instead, by the way, they still continue to pay it, at least in some form.
But my point remain.
Oh, I mean, I'm not even talking about the European consequences all of those you know, the summers where their electricity prices were sky high. It deregularly destabilized their entire economies.
The German economy it took a massive hit.
I mean, it basically looked like their entire manufacturing sector was underwritten by cheap oil and gas. Like their whole future of their economies is up in the air right now. All that being said is just to say, you know, Trump would always say we have the cards and he's right.
For Ukraine, on Russia. It's not right.
I mean, absent full blown US military NATO intervention.
What else can you do?
Yeah, this is not a military capable of adopting NATO weaponry.
They've proven that.
They only and I'll get to this in a bit, they only know how to fight in a Soviet way. Would just throw as much manpower into the trench as possible. You think they're going to beat the Russians at their own game. They have millions more people than you.
Yeah, that's right.
I mean, I guess the alternative view with regard to Russia's recent success on the front lines would be, you know, this has been going on for years now and they've basically been stuck in place. There have been minor advances on the Russian side, but it hasn't been like you know, yeah,
they're not taking on Yeah, it hasn't been dramatic. And that these latest games may be a result of them really throwing a lot of force in one area to try to improve their bargaining position going into this summit,
in these negotiations. It's kind of the alternative explanation as far as Trump goes, I guess we're just hoping since he goes back on his word all the time, that maybe he doesn't actually mean anything that he's saying here about just like I'm in lockstep with the Europeans and the Ukrainians and Russia's going to pay a price, et cetera,
et cetera. Very possible, very possible that Trump doesn't mean a word that he is saying about any of this and will completely flip once he's face to face with Vladimir Putin, because famously he's very influenced by whoever happens to be in front of him at that moment.
So we'll see.
I just want to zoom out though, also for a second and talk about how utterly hypocritical and preposterous it is at this point in time for the Americans to posture like they care so deeply about territorial integrity. We're going to cover later in the show how Israel is now greenlit this massive and very consequential expansion of settlements
that basically makes a two state solution impossible. It's directly intended, according to Smotrich himself, who was in charge of such things, directly intended to make a two state Palestinian you know, solution completely impossible, completely.
Off the table.
And of course we are also green lighting the complete annexation of Gaza as well, so West Bank annexed, Gaza annexed, and that we are we are part of, we are green lighting, we are funding, we're providing diplomatic cover for. And then on the other hand, we're going to pretend like, you know, territorial integrity is all is you know, some rarefied sakersang thing. I mean, it's just the levels of hypocrisy are so brazen in your faces.
Yeah, and I mean I've talked about before, but you know, all of the rhetoric that you hear on Ukraine, They're like, oh my god, Russia's killing civilians.
Look, I'm not minimizing any civilian death.
I think it's bad, but Russia has killed, you know, on a daily basis. They'll be like, wow, twelve civilians were killed in Ukraine. I think that's horrible. How many civilians is Israel kill every single day with the US bomb? What do we who are we talking to? You know about this same booka of the massacre. It was a genocide, that's what the Ukrainians say. Yeah, I mean again, look at the death toll and compare it to the Palestinians.
It's like we can't talk out of both sides of our mouth, and instead we just need to all be honest. As a great power conflict, the goal was to try and destroy the Russians bya Ukraine as a proxy state. It failed miserably. I never thought I, my great naivete, was having any confidence in the US global hagienemy on banking. I thought that there was no way the Russian economy
would survive. I have been stu there's a lot of lessons actually in the way that the Russians have been able to It shows you that there's only two things that matter. If you can make guns and if you can pump oil, that's literally all that you need. You don't need America at all. And you know they're doing just fine.
The world is way more prepared to move on from US than we.
It's true, I truly truly underestimated not only them, but I vastly overestimated the power of US sanctions and have agemony. And I kind of wish that we hadn't done it for a conflict which has no bearing whatsoever on the United States. Let's get to President Zelenski, who recently had a press conference in London where he's been meeting with all of the European powers setting the table for the summit.
Let's take a listen.
I told a President Trump and all European allies Peutin is bluffing. Putin is bluffing, that sanctions is nothing and they don't work. In fact, sanctions are hitting Russian or economy hard. That Putin definitely does not want peace. He will occupy Ukraine. And we all understand that Putin can not fool anyone. We need future and further pressure and European and American sanctions against Russia.
So you can see it's like Putin doesn't want peace, and I mean all of the table for that is that I don't want peace either, right, is that we want to continue fighting, throwing our people into the breach. Let's put the next one, please up on the screen, just to you know, continue what I was saying. Trump promises quote very severe consequences at a military level, absent sending troops actually on the ground. I was speaking with some military experts yesterday. There's not a whole lot left.
Biden gave him everything that they possibly have asked for. The critique from that is that, oh, he gave it to them too late. But we are where we are. We're in reality, right, We're in The average age on the Ukrainian front line is probably between forty and sixty years old.
Nobody even really knows what that is.
Horror, it's horrifying what has already happened to the entire population. But you know, as you said, the hope is that maybe he's speaking out of both sides of his mouth and keeping everything up for negotiation. But I'm just not so sure. Considering I would have thought that. You know, in the first month of the Trump administration, we have the Gaza ceasefire.
I was like, wow, I was like, this is amazing.
Right, well, you know, now we are where we are where Wick cough is used talks with Iran as cover for a strike, where on the Israeli side we just keep saying things like, well, it's up to Netan. Yahoo. You know, It's like, well, here, it seems like we've
done a total about face. From the initial days of the administration, Trump sending two hundred and fifty million dollars in additional military equipment, Trump continuing, you know, these via European arms sets, but still fueling the conflict, sending patriot batteries, threatening Russia with sanctions. This is straight out of the Biden playbook. The India thing is literally out of Lindsey Graham playbook. Has been wanting to do it since day
one at a military level, just to underscore that. Let's put this one, next one please on the screen, just to show everybody what the military reality is here. Excellent piece written by some people were actually military experts, and they say, quote, Ukraine's once nimble army is mired in
Soviet decision making. I remember reading this over the last couple of years about how NATO tactics and others were encouraged, NATO weaponry and a lot of these other things training to try and get the Ukrainians to fight that way. But their response is basically, look, we don't even know how to do that. But also this is just the way that we're trained, and we've found some level of
battlefield success. But attritional warfare favors the great power, not the small power, especially the one that has no industrial base, that has no capacity to wage war on its own and would basically be giving up in a single day twenty four hour p period. If the United States and Europe pulled the plug from the conflict, big person who is able to sustain that on a long enough basis is the Russians. And there was also this theory that lots and I also got this wrong.
I'll admit it if I look back.
You know, one of the things that brought down the Soviet Union, or at least stirred up a lot of internal descent was the death toll in Afghanistan during the Soviet War. And you know, the Russians have nobody knows exactly how many troops have been killed, but it's a lot, hundreds of thousands probably, you know, the Russians will claim. Otherwise, there doesn't seem to be very much. There just doesn't seem to be a whole lot of descent. They somehow
seem to have solve that problem. I guess the population just supports it, unlike they did in Afghanistan.
I really have no other explanation.
I also read that they're paying very generous salaries to a lot of the draftees or a lot of the people who will come in from the Caucuses or these other regions, much more than they could ever earn otherwise, and so even the widowers and the families are like, well, it sucks, you know, to lose your husband, but I'm getting a pension for the rest of my life. I don't know how they did it. I'm not an expert or anything, but what I thought that this could be an Afghanistan type situation for them.
It doesn't appear to be.
People. They seem willing as a polity to accept hundreds of thousands, if not millions of casualties in Ukraine. There has been zero actual internal descent since twenty twenty two.
Yeah, and a lot of the draft.
In fact, it may have worked out for them because the Western style elites they all just left Russia and so everybody who's left is like, yeah, we're on board, We're you know, we're on the train.
Let's go.
Yeah.
They have a large, you know, relatively poor, rural population that is committed, that believes in the war goals, like believes in the aims, and you know for whom those those salaries are quite appealing. And so I, you know, I'm I don't know, but that's my guess as to why they've been able to sustain this high rate of casualty without having any notable significant societal backlash as far
as we can tell, you know, as outsiders looking in. So, you know, with regard to the ongoing war tactics, there was actually a great quote in that piece. One of the said, you know, big Soviet army beats little Soviet army, basically saying like, yeah, they use these same terrible tactics of just throwing men into a meat grinder and never wanting to retreat even when it makes sense, letting their
troops get encircled and slaughtered. But they have a lot more people than we do, so in the end, how do you think that that is ultimately going to work out?
You know?
There was also some some quotes in here from a guy who's fifty years old wanted to go fight, signed up. He was like, you know, he'd never handled a weapon before, had zero training, never been in the military before, but wanted to serve and thought that he could go in and get some training and go do something that wasn't
really on the front line. I mean, again, he's fifty years old, he's never been in warfare before, he's never fired a weapon before, and they didn't even give him a gun before they send him to the front lines, and he you know, he laughed, he was he was like, I'm not doing this.
That's the Soviet thing.
I've everything, I'm not doing this.
And apparently they have a lot of deserters because of exactly this. They're like, you didn't give me any training. You're sending one in the front lines. The you know, guy who's in charge here is just willing to, you know, let us get encircled and slaughtered, like we're not doing it. And so, you know, you also have that dynamic unfolding on the ground here too. But you know, your point about us having all the cards with regard to Ukraine
is a really important one, really important. You know, the party that we really have the most ability to pressure is the Ukrainians.
They are very dependent on us. That's just the reality.
And so you know, pressure needs to be put on them, and it needs to be done in order to secure a deal that yes, they're going to be unhappy with, right. It's it's not like in order to bring this war too close now it would require territorial concessions.
There's just no doubt about that.
Certainly, crimea you know, Eastern Ukraine and what needs to happen is there needs to be some ability to create face saving for Zelenski, Like, if you're interested in actually bringing this thing to a close, you put pressure behind the scenes, You try to resolve the underlying issues that led Russia to, you know, create to launch this illegal invasion to begin with, and you try to create some sort of face saving pretext for Zelenski so that he
has because his ego is massive, clearly, and he's backed himself sort of into a rhetorical corner, so that he has some sort of an out And it just seems from the beginning the complete opposite policy has been pursued. You know, the pressure has been on the Russian side,
so Lencia gets publicly humiliated. That actually doesn't help you in terms of trying to get him to back off of his egoistic position, which you should be doing is pumping him up in public and then putting the pressure on behind the scenes to force an outcome that again is like not ideal and is going to be deeply painful, but increasingly the Ukrainian population is actually open to Yeah.
I think that look all well said the prop the summit, you know, the initial by the way, as you know, I loved the initial office meeting.
I thought it was great.
I was like, he needs to be put into his place, and finally that we can break you know, in terms of our so called special relationship, we could force him to the table. But since then it's like I said, Trump totally about face and this is not an advisor's thing. I really believe that he seemed to think that he could just use his relationship with Putin to bring the conflict to an end, and I did not understand the
fundamental spot in Putin. The thing is about Putin is he's crazy, but he has very rational objectives from within his worldview. If you look at it, he disregards which is insane, you know, the existence of all of these outs, like these breakaway republics. He thinks the Treaty of Breslatosk is like one of the greatest disasters to ever befall the history of Russia, and that the tragedy was the fall of the Soviet Union from the demise of a great power, and that they've been bullied by the West.
Like I said, he is a czar through and through in his security, defense or depth vision. Well for him, if you look at him in that you know view. It's personality has nothing to do with it. Yes, he will use you as a personality to get relations or any of it, but he only cares about one thing. He invaded Ukraine for a reason and he will continue, you know, along the same reason path. They've committed their entire country towards this end. They will not simply give
up because of a nice phone call. Sanctions don't matter anymore, none.
Of this stuff.
It's all about territory and if and with the current side, I mean even on the Ukrainian side and the Europeans, they're like, we will never recognize diplomatically any of this territory. Maybe we can live with it, but we will never diplomatically recognize it. I'm like, I just don't see a scenario where any of this stuff is going to fly right where there's no How can you normalize relations or
any of that in the future. I guess the Korean model, you know, some of these you know technically Koreas, you know, state of war with a treaty and all of that. It is possible, but it's very difficult to see with the emotions and the way things are right now. And you know, I come if I tie it back to Israel, something I love that you said in one of our last shows. You're like, Israel exists. It's not about right to exist. We have to deal where we are today.
That's it, you know, we just have to look and it's not just it's not nice, but that's geopolitics. It's you know, there's no rights to territory. There's simply the ability basically to take it or not. In Israel context, it's kind of flipped because we're the ones enabling the Russia of that region, and then out two sides of our mouth, we're speaking differently. Yeah, and I get that it's.
Sometime more to blow up that international law consensus of like territorial integrity, integrity and human rights than any other country on the planet.
So yeah, again, it's like the country that invaded Iraq based on the Coalition of the Willing, is going to go around telling people about territorial integrity. What are we doing here? You know, the country that toppled Libya and turned it into a failed state, Syria. Look at where it is right now, led by literally al Qaeda. You know, it's like one of these where this commitment to democratic norms or any of that stuff. It has never been
US policy. And in fact, I think that you know, by by holding that up and continuing to act the way that we've done, it's exactly why we are where we are with Russia, with Ukraine, with so many of these other different conflicts, and yeah, it just really holds us back. So anyway, that's the table set. We'll see what the hell happens. Yeah, it could all go otherwise. I remember hell Sinki where it was totally different. Yeahright, so it could be very pro putin.
I could absolutely possible that we're eating Crow by Monday, and we would be happy to do it. US programming note, we are going to forego the Friday show in order for Saga and Ryan actually going to cover the results of the summit on Saturday morning. So we're going to have a Saturday show and Friday show, so everybody look for that.
That's right, because the powers that be decided that Alaska is five hours behind, and so by the time we even get all the news and all that, it probably won't be It could be midnight or something like that if it all runs late, which, by the way, having covered some of these diplomatic summits, they always go way longer than they're supposed to. The meetings are scheduled twenty minutes. The last an hour and fifty minutes the pressentforate.
Ways to get the translation of what happened.
Yes, the instant readouts.
They're going to hold a just joint press conference, which that's gonna be kind of fun. Actually, that's one of my favorite traditions from the Washington Press Corps is it's called a two and two where the American Press Corps, when you get called on by your president, you actually have the opportunity to ask putin a question. And so whoever gets that, please do your homework. Don't ask some
dumb ass question. Actually ask something which is useful for both for the Russians and for ourselves as well, So you know, don't try and make yourself a dou hero looking at you, Jim Acosta or any of these other people.
So we haven't done a lot on polling and where we are.
As we head into I mean, I know we still have a good bit of time before the midterms, but trust me, these things are already taking shape, already heating up. So we wanted to do spend a little bit of time on the horse race and taking a look at where things stand as best we can tell as of today. Harryington did a breakdown civically on the issue of inflation and how Trump has really fallen off a cliff on the issue that voters continue to say is their number
one concern. Let's go ahead and take a listen to that.
Look voters on Trump and inflation. He won the twenty twenty four election because he was more trusted on inflation than Kamala Harris was led by a margin of nine points.
Look at where his net approval.
Stands today though on inflation, my goodness, gracious, on the issue that got him elected. He led on by nine points on it last year, and now he's twenty five points underwater. As I said, this is a complete and total disaster for the president of the United States. Trust which party more inflation? You go back to the twenty twenty two mid terms. Look at this, Republicans led by thirteen points on which party was more trust in inflation. Look at where we are now, nearly a fifteen point
shift in the Democrats direction. It's within the margin of error, but the Democrats up by a point, This just looks totally different from where we were back in twenty twenty two, when, of course Republicans took back the House. That's what Democrats are trying to do this time around. What is the top issue for you right now?
It's a run of way.
It's inflation. It's thirty four percent compared to the economy, which is basically very similar at sixteen percent, Medicare and Social Security at fourteen percent. But the bottom line is voters in Paul after Paul after Paul say that Donald Trump has taken his eye off the ball, off the big issue of the day, which is inflation. And that is why Donald Trump is way underwater on this issue, and it's why Democrats have caught up to Republicans on the all important issue of inflation and.
Tager In some ways, I think that last piece about which issues are most important to people is maybe the most devastating for Republicans because, as Harrynton points out, Trump is now very unpopular on any economic issue, but inflation, you know, certainly so inflation is the number one issue.
Economy in general is the number two issue.
I don't think just like firing the BLS person and not putting out jobs report is really going to fix that for them. And then number three is Medicare and Social Security. Well, what do you think that's about. That's about the Big Beautiful Bill. That's why people are concerned
about Medicare. And I do feel like the Big Beautiful Bill is that, Like I don't, we probably need to talk about it more because I think for average people it's factoring into their perception of this presidency much more than it's sort of given credit for.
Because just think about the numbers.
You have millions of people or now have to be concerned about whether or not they're going to have healthcare going forward. And you pair that with the fact that the way that's being financed is a giant tax cut, predominantly for the rich, and it is an utter political disaster.
Especially on the Medicaid front. Right yere, You're going to see some impact. And I mean, by the way, part of the problem with the messaging or whatever around this is that you know, for a lot of people, they didn't necessarily read Medicaid.
They thought maybe it's aid Medicare.
Yeah, and there are changes to Medicare as well, but the bigger changes is certainly medic.
Your Medicaid snap, any of those types of programs. By the way, just as you and I were talking, there is a new report out that shows that the core producer price the PPI inflation came in at three point seven percent versus two point nine percent, and the stock futures are diving literally.
Oh really, and I are talking right now.
The wholesale price rose by point nine percent in July, which is much much more than, much more than expected. Quote, the Producer Price Index, which features final demand goods and services, jump point nine compared to the Dow Jones estimate of zero point two percent. That's excluding food and energy prices. So that's particularly wholesale goods, which is going to show up at the grocery store. I know, point nine doesn't sound like a lot, but it's much more about the
impact of the overall rise inflation. It's almost three times higher. It's as high as has been since April of twenty twenty one in terms of the jump. So that is one where it could be a precursor to higher inflation. Just again, though, that's going to be something that if the economists, stock marketing, all these people are worried about,
that could be something that's showing up for you. Combine it with the Social Security, that Medicare, any of this stuff where again look, I mean social Security didn't get touched, but the medicaid stuff, and in particular the tax cut, because again, the thing about the tax cut that everybody doesn't remember is that that's when the Trump presidency in
twenty seventeen went off the rails. The first six months of the first Trump administration was an outright battle inside between like Paul Ryan and Jared Kushner and Steve Bannon. Remember Steve Bannon had his white board for all the things that they wanted to do, and there was even the theater about the border wall. There was this floated tax called the Border Adjustment Tax, which by the way, would have been a great tax which went after remittances
and trade. It was supposed to be an initial kind of trade imbalance way to correct with Mexico, and that would have financed immigration enforcement. And the entire GEOP was like, yeah.
We're not doing that.
They're like, we're cutting taxes for rich people and that's it, right. And so by the time that came out with the corporate tax, the reduced taxes not only for corporations, but for the highest income brackets that is really where Trump sank to his lowest ever level of support. It makes total sense to me. It's very similar to Obamacare. You know, if you think back to the coverage of the twenty ten election, the anger that was bubbling up in the
town halls was over Obamacare. But the country, even national media can kind of moved on from there by that point. They were talking about various different things, but that is what slammed them at the ballot box. So it's very possible that inflation and in particularly the capriciousness around trade policy. What I have found is that Americans don't want to tune into the news on the economy. They want it
to just run. And so when they have to check every day, not only are their portfolio or businesses have to pause deals and unpause, have to pause hiring and then maybe reduce salary or if you have to think about policy when it impacts their business.
That's when people get upset.
They don't want it to They only want to pay attention whenever it's good, but when it's bad, that's not what they want. And by and large, that's mostly where things.
Are right now.
Well, and you point it out to there are certain certain key items where you can really see that price hike directly as a result of tariffs. In fact, I sent us this morning, Rocan is doing something smart. He's introducing legislation to roll back, specifically the tariffs on coffee because because we hit Brazil so hard, you know, because we're mad at them over their court decisions with regard to bolscenario, that is causing coffee prices to spike dramatically.
It also is causing beef prices to write to spike dramatically. Good probably for American cattle ranchers, but if you're trying to include steak in your diet here in the US, you know it's going to become much more costly. So in any case, I thought that was a clever tactical move from him and.
The coffee the pressure off yet, look is something I think the vast majority of Americans drink coffee every single day. If not, it's probably like seventy eighty percent. I need to check the data. But the point is actually is that if you look at the way it will really impact you is if you buy it at a retail chain like Starbucks or anything. By the way Starbucks are anything, has anyone been recently? I never go to Starbucks or whatever. It's like five dollars, So what the hell is going on here?
Yeah?
Exactly. I was like, I was like, whoa. I mostly brew almost entirely all my own coffee. I'm pretty much, you know, immune from whatever the retail market. But every once in a while you'll just check and you're like, what the hell is going.
I mean, even if you're not going to Starbucks, Like how many you know, blue collar guys are going out, you know, early morning, they're stopping at seven eleven getting their cup of as they're on the road how to do their job. I mean, this is very common, you know experience, cross class experience, and those would be the people who will be most sensitive to those price increases. And so even if it's not five bucks at Starbucks, you're still going to notice.
That price increase.
Absolutely.
Let's go and get to this next slide that shows you where the generic ballot is.
So this is just if you ask people.
Would you vote for the you know, whoever the Democrat is or whoever the Republican is in your congressional district without specific names attached who comes down on top and you can see. Listen, let's all take the polls of the grain of salt at this point in our lives, at this point in American history. However, you have a very consistent trend here in favor of Democrats. The overall RCP average has them up three point five percent on the generic ballot. You've had one poll from Yahoo News.
Actually this Atlas Intel one is the highest one up on the board of plus eight for Democrats. More common is more in the two three four type of range. But you know, a significant edge, especially when you consider that Republicans have a very narrow edge in the House. Now, what is going to happen with all this redrawing of the maps in Texas and California, New York and whatever's
going on there. I don't know, maybe Republicans, but I mean, I think the very fact that they're pulling the fire alarm to potentially do a new sense is to redraw these maps, et cetera, shows you they don't feel real great about their position going into the midterms either. Now, on the other side, on the flip side, let's put this next piece up on the screen. I think this is what Republicans are kind of comforting themselves with. The
Democratic Party is wildly unpopular. Net favorability plunges to near three decade low according to polls, and to me, Sager, I think this reflects a lot of things. I mean think there's just like a lot of mistrust of the Democratic Party overall. But the reason it's reached this historic level of unpopularity, you know, and this is reflected in the data, is because there are a lot of Democrats
that are disgusted with the Democratic Party. And I do think Israel is a big part of that because it's just such a you know, moral atrocity, it's such a there's such massive divergence in you know, the numbers are starker than maybe any other issue I've seen, the distance between Democratic leadership and where.
The base is.
Then you add to that that they feel that they aren't fighting the Trump administration. They aren't you going to the mat to try to fight for democracy, fight against their legislation in the ways.
That they want to see.
And then you see like Chuck Schumer and King Jeffrey's not even willing to endorse their on mom Donny. I mean, they're just an embarrassing, pathetic mess, especially like the higher up you go, the more embarrassing and cringeworthy it becomes. So I think that's a big part of why their favorability has sunk to such historic lows.
I saw it actually in the DC context. Dave Weigel was like, you know, because the DC mayor and the politicians were all caught off guard, and Wigel was like, oh, you've only had seven months to prepare when he said he was going to do it on the campaign trail. It's like, so, if you're Chuck Schumer, fine, you know you're not focused on Washington, d C. If you're Mayor Bowser, it's like, what you.
Never thought about? It was like, you guys literally never thought about it.
He had no plan for how this was all going to go and police chief embarrassing yourself on national TV or anything. It's like, so, what's happening? Yeah? Right, It's like I think that's what's so frustrating Ryan for.
A lot of a councilwoman who was who's more on the left, who was disgusted with her, and like, you know, you're not even going to like try a lawsuit to you know, may at least force them to say what the emergency is like, at least go through that process.
But instead it was just like, eh, okay, what are we going to do?
Yeah, I just thought it was crazy the way that well. Actually, DC another good example Eleanor Holmes Norton. If you live in the Washington is your not she has a non voting power in the House of Representatives. But it's symbolic. But I mean, you have your politician, you're popularly elected. What is she eighty eight years old? She has not made a single public statement on what's happened, and is running for really and is running for reelection and by
all accounts is basic. Look, I mean, you know, to avoiding libel or whatever, hasn't showed up to a lot of events. Yeah, a lot of questions by her some of her constituents about her health, the DC political machine doing nothing about it. And it's like, you look at that. If you're watching a d C lib which statistically ninety five percent of you are, you should be really mad about that. I mean, you know, if everyone on license plate says no taxation without representation, but it's like even
your representation is doing nothing. Again, I'm not saying you know that I'm that if you're a Republican you should be like, yeah, that's hilarious, But if you're a Democrat you should be mad. I mean, you should think about it in the Republican context from back in nine. That's exactly why they voted out so many of their leaders in nine, or in twenty ten and again in twenty fourteen, because they felt completely abandoned on the issues that were the most core to that.
Yeah, and that's what is different is that they do feel abandoned. Democrats do feel abandoned by their leaders in a way that is very different from any other time you know that I've seen in modern history. And if you play on that Tea Party twenty ten wave analogy, you also had Republicans unpopular with their own base.
But that didn't mean that they didn't do well in the midterms.
There was you know, a massive way of Obama called it a shellacking. You know, so many Democrats swept down of office. That ends up being incredibly consequential because then you had the twenty ten census, then you had redistricting that helps to lock in the political era that we're in at this point in time. But in any case, so I don't know that this number of Democratic unpopularity is going to be the saving grace that Republicans hope it is.
Now.
What I will say is if they were doing a lot better, I think they would be poised. You know, if they were fighting in a way and had a clear and compelling message and had people who were younger than eighty years old making that clear and compelling message on a day to day basis, I think they would be in position to truly romp and have you know, an opportunity and maybe take back the Senate or things
like that. I think the fact that they are not particularly trust will limit the gains, but I still think they're probably in well possession, and history would indicate that in this midterm you're likely to get a backlash against the incumbent party in any case. The other thing that to keep an eye on that's coming up more rapidly here is there are two states this year that have
their governor's races, New Jersey and it's Virginia. New Jersey obviously more of a democratic state and Virginia, more of a swing state, can put be four up on the screen.
So this race is.
Going to pit former undercover CIA agent Abigail span Burger.
Why are these spooks?
The Democratic Charity loves any like national security police whatever.
They love that this is a rama manual thing.
Actually recruited all these like veterans and you know, cops and whatever. So anyway, that's who Abigail span Burger is. She's very centristy kind of a Democrat. And the Republican is win Some Sears, who is the current lieutenant governor, and she right now Spanberger has a pretty wide and as far as I can tell in the polls, quite consistent lead.
Now, again the polls can be.
Wrong, but I will say in Virginia she has Winsome Sears has a particular problem because of Doche So many
federal government employees live in Virginia. And I'm not just talking about northern Virginia, although Northern Virginia is where a lot of the political power in the state is at this point in time, you also have a lot of federal government jobs throughout the state, surrounding many military bases, etc. I mean, the little town I live in is based around you know, civilian scientist naval research center called Dalgren And so this is a very key issue and Winsome
Seers has not availed herself well when she's talking about dough. She's been unable to separate herself in the Trump administration, unable to separate herself from the DOGE federal government worker cuts, and so you know, I think that has significantly hobbled her chances, and I think it was going to be a difficult race to be with. I believe I saw something about the RGA basically like, Okay.
She's not funding.
Yeah, it's all a question how much she's going to. I mean, I think Spamberger might been what he thinks seventeen eighteen points.
I don't think that's too far. So what's nine and one by two the previous Well, what was the.
Twenty seventeen Spanberger by seven?
Spanburger by seven?
Wow, that's still actually lower than I would think, because I mean, all indications right now are just a blowout. Put B five up there on the screen. I sent this because this is just shows you how crazy things are. The Virginia Police Benevolent Association, which four years ago supported every Republican in the state, is now backing Spanberger over win some series.
They're like, yeah, she's done. We don't even have a choice.
Well, I think yeah, and I think that's what it is. First of all, Spanberger did try to vote for like police funding. She was certainly never a defund the policer, right, But they they endorsed against her when.
She ran for Congress.
And so now I read it as they see the writing on the wall and they're like, we may as well endorse her and being good with her because it'll put us in a better position to advocate for whatever it is we want when she's governor. That's how I that's how I read the endorsement.
I think that's the right way to see it.
But the point is just that it's always been a precursor this one. I think, as you said, it's more of an outlier just because Doge.
Is going to be so impactful.
If you saw yesterday Emily and I covered the layoffs higher since twenty twenty one, a massive portion of it is government employees. Yeah, massive portion of those are going to live in Northern Virginia, and so those people are just I mean, I get these are my neighbors. They're irate, they hate They probably hate Trump more this time than last time because of Doge.
You just can't stand it.
Here's the other thing is it's not just the direct federal government employees.
The contractors here right with They all so.
Many of these contracts, like the funding was cut. And you know, even if you're not losing your job, okay you don't, you're not on with this particular client. I was actually just talking to a woman about exactly this. She's like, well, they cut our contract over at a camera, but I think she was at USDA. And so now there's not really a place for me to go internally, So I'm just going to be working at like booz Allen Hamilton, you know, doing the whatever in the office.
And so it's it has a wide ranging impact. And if you drive around this area, you know, within a forty mile radius, it's contractor after contractor after contractor. And this has been a huge upending of their lives. And you know, it's it's the having to come into the office, it's the you know, the the change to lifestyle, the commuting, the pay cuts, the contract loss, the actual job loss, just the chaos and the uncertainty, which is very stressful.
So that will definitely weigh on the Virginia race. I mean, in some ways, It'll be interesting to watch the New Jersey race. Even though all expectations are that the Democrat Mikey Cheryl, who's another like Centricty type of Democrat, all expectations are that she will end up prevailing, but the margin there will be interesting to see as well if there's some sort of Democratic over performance, especially since New Jersey was a state where Trump sort of overperformed.
So yeah, that's right. I mean, I still wonder how much of that is A twenty I think the twenty twenty four election will be the high water mark for Republicans and Republicanism for quite a long time. There's a lot of reasons for that. The popular vote, you have the popular vote, you have the vibe, you have Kamala like. There are multifaceted reasons for why it was. I think it could either be a flash in the pan or they could have built on it. I think the built
on it has passed mostly at this point. I mean, they could still.
Possible. It's very possible they could do it again.
It would have to be I think, a total change both in the way that the two parties come into the twenty twenty eight election. But yeah, just looking at where things are trending right now, and in terms of the way that they've handled themselves, it does not look like the midterms are going to go all that well, all jerry mandering or redistricting or whatever, withstanding, which is still such an same story the way that.
They can also screw themselves with that if yeah, I tried it, if they try to be too cute and make the districts a little too tight, they could like it's not you know.
Yeah, Rian made that point.
If you go fifty two forty eight in every single district, you can find yourself in some serious upsets, which happens in Texas all the time.
Especially because Trump as this particular unique pull pull. So the numbers that Trump pulled, let's say, with Latino voters in you know, the Rio Grand Valley in Texas, you can't rely on another random Republican to be able to pull the Ted Cruise or whoever to be able to put.
Texts when in South Texas, you know, yeah, they probably hate him. Yeah, HiT's that absoually Sorry, I'm sure John Cornyn is going to clean up down in Laredo. You know, It's like that's not.
Happening exactly, And so I think, you know, I think that's that makes it even diceier is that Trump is sort of like his own entity, so you don't have as much predictability about the way individual like voting groups are going to behave So anyway, will continue to track that. That's an interesting story in and of itself. Agreed, All right, let's go and throw this up on the screen. A little update about some of the full mask off that
the Israelis are going on at this point. So Netanyahu says he is on a historic and spiritual mission and that he feels a connection to the vision of greater Israel.
Let me go ahead and read this.
Specifically, He was asked if he feels a connection to that vision of greater Israel. Not now who says quote very much that question about a greater Israel. After he asked a premiere if he feels he's on a mission on behalf of the Jewish people, Netanyaho answers, he's on a mission of generations. There are generations of Jews that dreamt of coming here and generations of Jews who will
come after us. So if you're asking if IY have a sense of mission historically and spiritually, the answer is yes, And this has been a pretty consistent theme here. Sager that, like from the beginning, if you listen to either the most hyperbolic leftist or the most psychotic settler, you would have a much better understanding. Certainly, don't listen to the
Western press. Certainly, don't listen to the US politicians who just pretend they have no idea what's going on, even as you have words directly out of the mouths of the Prime Minister or the Minister of Defense, like the you know, smoke Chrich Ben Givier, the members of his coalition, et cetera. They just pretend they don't hear or see
any of that. But at this point in time, Netanyahu is feeling so emboldened thanks to a combination of Biden and now Trump, you know, enabling every atrocity and allowing him to do literally whatever he wants apparently that he is just out and out saying, yeah, greater Israel, I'm into that, just so people if they don't know. Now, in fairness, there are apparently different conceptions of what quote
unquote greater Israel might mean. Some of them mean just from the river to the sea, you might say, including quote unquote Judae and Samaria in the Israeli which is the West Bank in with Israel and Sagaza strip. But
there is a more expansion, expansionative vision as well. We can put this map up on the screen that looks like this, you know, includes Egypt, includes part of Egypt, part of Saudi Arabia, part of Iraq, part of Syria, all of Jordan, you know, the Sinai Peninsula of course, all of Israel plus the West Bank plus Gaza.
So you know, just putting it out.
There that this is a potential vision, and certainly the actions that Israel has taken, given that they have been bombing almost all of these countries over the past couple of years, again with our support and arming them, makes it much less preposterous than it felt at one point.
We can put this up on the screen. C three.
Saudi Arabia very unhappy with these comments from Prime Minister net Nyahuu Foreign Ministry, expressing the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia's condemnation in the strongest terms possible of the statements made by the Prime Minister of the Israeli occupation government regarding the so called vision of Greater Israel, and expresses its outright rejection of the settlement and expansionist plans adopted by the Israeli occupation authority.
So, Sager, what did you make of these comments?
Well, uh, well, the Saudi Arabian ones are interesting because the entire theories, the Abraham.
Accords and all of that.
But the whole point around Greater Israel is just the ideological vision and divorcing it from the things that they say as in like, look, we're just about dismantling Hamas, we're just about occupying Gaza. We're not going to stay there, we promise, even though we said that there was going to be an indefinite presence. I mean, the reason why KSA is so upset about the map is because did you see the map that we put up like country?
And the reason why you are forced to take it seriously is because of the actions of the Israeli government under Nata Yahu. If it was just Gaza, it would
be part of the Greater Israel project. But you have to contextualize it with the current treatment of the West Bank, of the two tiered system of justice, of the indefinite presence in Lebanon, of the indefinite presence in Syria of the overthrowing of this series government and then if basically trying to establish a druze Israeli free zone inside of a country outside of the goal on heights of the
sixty seven you know recognized bards, right. So, like all of these things point to an expansionist rogue power and we're going to get to a little bit later on in the show about the potential war with Iran. But it all fits together as part of something which is just destabilization, regime change everywhere else in order to serve this smaller nation which could never do any of this without the backstop of the United States for America.
Yeah, that's really the point.
They recognize the historic moment that they're in where support for Israel is plummeting off. I mean, we're the only country that really matters to them, and support for them is plummeting off a cliff. They've already lost the Democratic Party.
It's gone.
I don't think you're going to get a twenty twenty eight Democratic nominee who holds the same positions that Joe Biden and Obama and every other you know, bipartisan politician has on Israel and modern history. I don't think you're going to get that in twenty twenty, and I don't think it's going to be possible. And certainly the Democratic base is disgusted and horrified by what our tax dollars have done. On the Republican side, as we've discussed, you
have a younger generation that thinks very differently. I think they know that, and so that's why they are really going for it, trying to secure this greater Israel vision, abandoning the pretext that this I mean, just think of how preposterous it is at this point to pretend like, oh, this is all just in self defense, and we're doing these limited targeted strikes against Hamas and this is just all about going after the bad guys who got us
on October seventh. Utterly and completely preposterous when you consider the number of countries that they're bombing, the territory that they've annexed, the actions in the West Bank. You know that we're going to talk a little bit more about that. Jasper Nathaniel has been highlighting. I mean, the West Bank annexation is all but complete, and this is all in
quote unquote self defense. For October seventh, you'd have to be a fool to believe that at this point, or a liar, which you know there are many of those as well. Just to take it back to what the settlers have been saying, because they've long been pushing this biblical vision quote unquote of greater Israel. Let's go and take a listen to Daniella Weiss explaining why this is central to her conception and her ideological goals.
How big is that lan, Because it's very big.
No, this is the promise of God to the patriarchs of the Jewish Nation. It's three thousand kilometers. It's almost as big as this is it?
So this is the biblical Israel.
Yeah, so, and this is what's and so which countries artists.
And which country don't mention? I think it's Iraq and Syria. So you thought of Saudi Arabia.
This is a holy place.
It's a place, one part of the universe that was chosen by God. It's a kind of a stage for the Jewish nation to express the ideals, the ideas and ideals of the Jewish nation.
So there you go. It's very large, she lays out for you.
It's a rock.
It's Syria, it's part of Saudi Arabia. This is God's promise to us. This is also why like theocracies are really bad, because if you believe that your religion justifies a genocide, rogue wars against all your neighbors, this incredibly you know, expansionist, aggressive foreign policy.
If you believe that.
And you know, obviously net Nyahu is sort of embracing that, even though himself he's like more of a secular figure, but he's allied with these hardcore religious figures and you know, who have absolutely psychotic ideas about what the state should be and what they should do to effectuate it. You end up with absolute horror, which is exactly what we do have.
And it fits actually with this next piece to put it up there on the screen. This is very significant and inside of Israel is actually getting a lot of play. So after a twenty year freeze, the Finance Minister Besilosmotrich has approved the construction of new housing units in an
area where the development has been blocked. The reason why even these psycho settler movements and others have not allowed settlers to go and be there is because doing so would quote effectively block the establishment of a Palestinian state due to its strategic position separating areas south of Jerusalem
from those to its north. And actually they followed it up this morning Prosmotrich in a press conference in the country, where he said, by doing this, we quote bury the idea of a Palestinian state.
Just again.
To understand exactly while all this is happening, and even in the Israeli press, here's what they say. To understand the significance, we have to go back to nineteen forty eight, during the War of Independence, the Arab malicious place to siege on Jerusalem. After they broke the siege, the Holiest site has now been under Jordanian I occupation until the
IDF liberated it in nineteen sixty seven. The siege left a stain on the consciousness of Israeli leadership, but they've kept it open for the potential establishment of a Palestinian state. So now by green lighting, yes, even this small settlement of thirty four hundred people, the strategic location of it is a is a signal to the Palestinians, to the Arab States, to the Jordanians and others it's not happening.
It's also meant as a counter diplomatic signal to all of the Western countries which are talking about recognizing Palestinian statehood. You can't recognize statehood if it doesn't exist in any sort of conception.
Yeah, that's what people say, is like, okay, point to me on the map where the Palestinian state is, because this is you know, this is an extraordinarily provocative and I think significant development in terms of blocking any future Palestinian state Smotriche again, he says it. You know, this isn't us just like theorizing or making it up. They put it out there and make it plain what is going on here. And this is what Jaspernathdaniel wrote about
in that piece that we interviewed him about. He actually talked about this specific development and how consequential it was in terms of locking the possibility of a Palestinian state. So this is what's going on. This is why annexation of the West Bank is de facto complete, because the Israelis have in real life, like in what's actually happening on the ground right now, they have complete control over everybody's life who lives in the West Bank. They are
living under Israeli government rule. And it is truly you know, I mean, any thought that this wasn't an apartheid system goes out the window when you realize that, yes, the Palestinians who live in the West Bank are fully under Israeli government control, and we know that they don't have any rights whatsoever. We know the settlers are encouraged to go and murder them, and then you know they get the settlers get off scott free and are just sent more,
sometimes American made weapons. So that's the reality of what's happening in the West Bank. And just to again tie it in here, because it's not only the religious extremist terrorists running Israel that are a problem and part of what has created such an insane situation, you also have some plenty of religion being invoked to justify our continued, endless support of Israel here in the US as well. Let's go ahead and take a listen to Lindsey Graham.
I am tired of the word genocide. Let me tell you about genocide. If Israel wanted to commit genocide, they could, They have the capability to do that, they choose not to. To people in my party, I'm tired of this crap. Israel is our friend, They're the most reliable friend we have in the Mid East, there's democracy.
It's not a hard choice if you're a Christian.
A word of warning, if America pulls the plug on Israel, God will pull the plug on us.
Israel is not the bad guy. They're the good guy.
The bad guys or the rag wal Islamis who would kill everybody in this room.
They could.
So I haven't lost my vision of right and wrong when it comes to foreign policy. President Trumps stood up for all the right things, and he stood up against wrong things.
Yes, the government that is starving babies to death, they're the good guys.
Those are the good guys.
But he says if Americans pull the plug on Israel, God will pull the plug on us. And Soger, perhaps you want to weigh in on his statement that Israel's the best friend.
We could ever have. They're great.
I can't weigh in whenever it's rooted in your biblical ideology, which you know many of your own believers say is Harris.
Look, I'm not Christian.
You know it's not my job to sit here and critique dispensationalism or whatever.
I can only just say I think.
It's crazy and not really the way that you should conduct foreign policy based upon the particular interpretation of the Bible, which is a much more recent development and divorced from any sort of national interest. But that's Lindsay Graham and the Republican Party for you.
I don't even know.
You know, that's the other thing here with him. Does he really believe this or does they just use it as a cudgel. I actually don't know which one it is. I kind of think the latter, because you know, look, Lindsay Graham, he has crazy beliefs.
I don't think he's a dumb guy.
I think what he does is see clearly to preserve his like neo conservative ideology that the one last bastion of pro Israel support is these Kufi John Hagy evangelical Republicans.
South Carolina is full of them.
And so that's the one way that he can message himself as like the upholder of their religion in terms of their foreign policy priorities. That's the only way I could possibly see it and to hold on to any sort of like grasp organically at a political level. But that is a window. And two is real support. Now, it's all biblical, biblical.
Yeah, I think I think you're right that it's probably cynical. I mean, not that really makes the difference whether he does or not. He has really certainly used it cynically of course. You know, they see this long cultivated the you know, evangelical Christian right in order to you know, make sure that they have this solid base of support in the US. And we have to say it's been very successful for a long time.
Yeah.
Absolutely, all right, let's go and get to this next piece. I listened to this entire Theovon podcast. I really recommend that you guys do as well. You know, THEO made a lot of waves when he came out and said, listen, guys,
I think this is a genocide. He asked jd Vance about it when he was on the show, and he went a step further now by hosting a doctor, an American doctor who is just back from GASA, you know, for a full episode to discuss what this doctor saw when he was there on the ground at NASA Hospital. Let's go and take a listen to a portion.
Of this Saturday, they had the MCI it's called a mass casualty incident, and they basically pull a fire alarm. What the hell's that? Oh, every doctor come down to the er to try to help, and so I was like, okay, So went downstairs, got in there. There's just a brain
matter coming out of people. There's guts coming out of people's abdomen, there's people's legs blown off, and someone's carrying it in next to the you know, one of the family members bringing it in for the doctors, and you know, they think you can just reattach it and.
It's just like absolute chaos.
There's family members, security in the hospitals trying to push out the family members so the doctors and nurses can take care of the patients. It's it's absolute chaos. And then US American physicians are just like looking at it here, They're like what is going on here? And you know that was that was that's when reality hit and I was like, okay, this must be like a one off, and it just kept happening every day and sometimes multiple
times a day. Essentially, basically, we can we found the pattern related to when the GAHF sites were opening up.
So he's there backing up the claims which we heard directly from a doctor who was just recently back. We of course heard from Anthony Aguilar GHF whistleblower that when the sites are active, you are going to have mass casualty incidents. You were going to have, he says, hundreds of people showing up in the hospital wounded, you know, in the conditions that he describes.
There were a couple other.
Moments Soccer that I also thought were really interesting, I mean horrifying. He said that he heard of people who were basically trying to commit suicide by GHF, where you know, in Islam, suicide is banned, and so people would talk about, like listen, if I lose my family, like I'm just going to go to one of these GHF sites and hope that they take me out. Like that's how grim and dire the situation was. And yet he was really inspired, you know, but of course by the people he saw there.
He was really man doctors are cut out of a different cloth, because he felt so energized by just getting to go and help care for people and like be in this situation where he was able to do something and not just walk from watch from Afar, so, I mean, it's just remarkable to see the way these people operate. And then there was also a moment that I thought was pretty interesting from THEO because he explained more why he felt the need to speak out on this and
come forward, even he felt some pressure not to. And he's like, you know, from the time that you're a kid, you're taught endlessly about the Holocaust and this idea of like this genocide and can never happen again, and then you see it happening and you're supposed to stay quiet. So he, you know, he sort of really took in at face value this idea of like we can't be
involved in that. We when we said never again, we really actually should mean it, And that's why he felt the need to say something and speak out, even though that's obviously, you know, sort of an uncomfortable place for him to be.
Yeah, I mean, I think for him, he is just naturally found out about the issue.
He's horrified by the issue.
He's not boxing into politics since he's like, this is how a normal person reacts.
So it's actually a.
Good barometer I think for a lot of you know, yeah.
Because for most people, they're not coming in with all the baggage of Washington and the social consequences and they're like, yeah, I think this is really messed up.
That's it.
And then actually it's when you get the backlash that you're like, WHOA, am I crazy? And then that's the battle test for THEO and for Miss Rachel. It's kind of fascinating the track of Miss Rachel, if you go and you look at it is. She started out with a single thing where she's like, my heart weeps for the babies of Israel and Gaza boom, I mean mass attack. Then she did her hop Little Bunnies song with a three year old girl who got her leg blown off.
Same thing. Now it's like anti semi anti, and she had to decide, I've actually been listening to some interesting episodes and stuff where she talks about this, and she was like, look, I mean, by the way, look let's not tony.
Miss Rachel's filthy rich, right, So at this point, you don't need to do it for the money.
You're one of the most watched YouTube videos Netflix and all that.
You're a brand.
And so she's like, okay, so if I'm the next mister Rogers, which she considers herself like in that vein, she looked back to a nineteen sixty nine episode that mister Rogers did where he hosted a black man and they both put their feet in the same pool as a statement against segregator. He didn't make he didn't make anything about it. It was just one of those things by doing it treated as normal statement against Jim Crow
and against segregation. So she sees herself now in that vein where you've made enough money that you don't care anymore,
and then you set yourself at the standard. And what I think that a lot of these Zionists and pro Israel supporters don't understand is that when you bring the full hammer down on people, especially if you're independent like THEO or Miss Rachel or places like this show, you don't have the tools of control, you actually make us be like no, actually screw you, Like we're going all in,
going all in. Yeah, we're going all in. We're talking about intermarriage, We're talking about Jewish supremacy, like we're we're putting it all on the table now. And I think that's what they underestimated in terms of us popular culture, is that for the Internet and for people who don't have their ties to all these think tanks or whatever, you can speak very very freely and say whatever you want.
And so you know and acknowledge reality.
And that's part of the consequence of how this has all gone about, and it's actually really pushed people and made them feel as if they have a responsibility a certain point to be like, no, I need to counter you know, all this other bs that's out there.
Yeah, and it's why the tactics become increasingly heavy handed, where it's like, Okay, we're going to deport you, we're going to arrest you, we're going to you know, block your block, We're going to install an IDF sensor at TikTok.
You know, they've become increasingly desperate. And it also ties in back to what we're saying about you know, them really grow going for it with the Greater Israel Project and the co Fleet annexation both of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, because they recognize that there's a limited runway here for them at this point. One other thing I wanted to highlight is Emma Biggeland interviewed over on the Majority Report, UH doctor who was talking about you know, what what he saw in the ways in
which he believes uh. And this is backed up by you know, a Lancet study and other other studies of the death count. Why he believes the official death count is such a wild understatement.
Let's go ahead and take a listen to a little bit of that.
The numbers are a wild undercount.
That's perfect.
I can tell you, for example, about malnutrition. So I work within the Ministry of Health System. Right we as what are called emergency medical teams, international doctors and nurses and allied health professionals. We go in in solidarity with medical teams, and so we sort of follow their lead in terms of how they do things. When I document what the cause of death is for somebody, everybody receives
a piece of paper that says how they died. What our directive is is that if there's anything other than simple malnutrition that's causing this death, don't write it down as a malnutrition case. You can write it as secondary tertiary, but don't write that this person died for malnutrition. Similarly, Palestinians do not count the debt unless they have been to a hospital. So, for example, there have been many AID massacres, which by the way, is another kind of
depravity we haven't even touched upon. When the AID massacres have been happening, there are many bodies that people tell me. Lots of my patients will tell me their bodies stranded there that we couldn't get to. We don't count those debts. We don't count them even really as more than missing, because we don't know for one hundred percent sure that that person is dead. Like look at the lists the Palestinians release. They release only the bodies they can identify
with the ID numbers attached to them. Of course, it's a wild undercount. Think of how many people are under the rubble, how many people are still in red zone, how many people are thrown around laying dead in the sun, including at GHF sites.
Of course, it's a wild undercount.
Really, credible organizations that have done these counts for other places like Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo estimate the number at this point to be five to six times more easily. That's three hundred thousand people who were very likely dead. And of course there's another concept in medicine called excess deaths. So for example, I've seen numerous number of people DIACIS patients. So I saw diacis patient too.
We worked on yesterday for a number of hours who ended up dying in our account that person died of a kidney related cause. But obviously that person who was malnourished, they couldn't receive dialysis care the way they were supposed to. They were killed by Israel, they were killed by the occupation, but we don't count those as direct conflict related deaths.
So I thought that was a really effective explanation of the ways in which and the very you know, rational ways in which this is likely a very wild undercount. And you know, I also think about Amir who was killed at a J eight side and now just quote unquote missing. You know, how many other people were I mean likely what happened is Israelis came in with their bulldozer and he is buried somewhere under the sand thereby
that GHF. It's very likely the case, you know, as they come through and they use the bulldozers to destroy all of Gaza city, Like how many bodies under the rubble will never be recovered? And then he talks about, you know, people who have other conditions, they're not able
to get the medical treatment they need. Their bodies are incredibly stressed by hunger and a lack of clean drinking water, and the endless displacement, and now they're exposed to the elements with there's been extraordinary heat wave in the Gaza strip and those deaths don't get counted in the official war death toll. So you know, I don't know if we'll ever know exactly what the count is, but I think we can say with a lot of confidence now
it is wildly higher. The number of people who have been killed by Israel during this genocide is wildly higher than the official number. And if anything, the news media downplays that number. Its oh the Gaza, you know, the Hamas run Gaza health ministry.
We're not doing that anymore.
Yeah, you know, health ministry, trutherism or whatever. Look, eventually one day we'll know. I actually that is point about Rwanda and all of that was very apt because the death soll did take a while for it all to come in. It would make sense that you can't have accurate accounting of the dead. I mean what you think the Nazis had a very accurate account right of who they killed and when. It was more accurate than people thought.
But you know, people had to go back and look to actually assemble all the records to come to the numbers that they eventually did. So it's just one of those where you know, you really have to just think about that, both the death toll and the way that it's being messaged. But I do broadly think that the theovon Miss Rachel phenomenon on all of that is very impactful on the culture in a way that a lot
of people in Washington are underestimating. I really think America, American politics is way too captured by Twitter, where Israel is wildly overrepresented, and that if you look at any other social media platform, it's ninety ten. I remember thinking that with the Milk Boys episode, and that's a real lesson for people just in terms of media consumption and kind of where the country is going. And I think it should be internalized by people in power, but they don't want to listen.
No, they certainly do not