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What do we have personal.
Indeed, we do a lot to get to you this morning. We had the final GOP debate last night. It's a bit of it was a bit of a rockets.
Affair, sure is interesting.
I did enjoy it.
It was I think it was actually the best of the force. Admittedly that's a low bar, but we will show you all of the sort of highlights, low lights whatever from that.
Also, we have a lot of updates coming out of Israel.
They are preparing to flood those tunnels, more details about the hostages and the damage that's being inflicted there, so we will bring you all of that. We also have Biden saying that he may not be running for re election were it not for Trump, which is interesting since he's getting exact ass kicked.
By Trump right now.
So let's talking about talk about that as well. We also have Ukraine Aid failing in the Senate. We have Congressman Thomas Massey under fire being smeared as an anti Semite for a meme that he posted breaksat down for you, and Saga is going to do a deep dive into this whole affair with the university presidents, free speech, et cetera, et cetera.
Say about that, a lot to say about it. Anyway, let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. We just want to take this opportunity just to remind everybody. We do have a discount going on for the holiday season on our yearly memberships. If you are going to be able to help us out, it really means a lot. By signing up for a year, you're helping us all the way through the election season. And you know, in order to fund our efforts, our staff was working overtime
last night. All of us got very little sleep watching the GOP debates, So you don't have to. If you appreciate that you can help us out breakingpoints dot Com. And so with that, let's actually get to the GOP debate. What were the highlights the low lights? What do you actually need to take away from this? And the top line is that vivig Ramaswami Ron DeSantis spent a decent portion of their time attacking Nicki Haley because of her
rise in the polls. Destantus in particular using his very first answer to go after Nicki's showing that she really is bleeding not only some of the support, but more importantly the donor money. So we put together some of the attacks from the very first fifteen to twenty minutes or so of the debate just to give people a taste of what it looked like.
Let's take a listen.
Her donors, these Wall Street liberal donors, they make money in China. They are not going to let her be tough on China, and she will cave to the donor. She will not stand up for you. She said, one of the first things I'm gonna do, That's what she said, you can roll the tape. She said, I want your name, and that was going to be one of the first things she did in office. Then she got real serious blowback, and understandably so, because it'd be a massive expansion of government.
It wasn't about the Parents' Rights and Education bill. It was about prohibiting sex change operations on minors. They do puberty blockers. These are irreversible. Talk to Chloe Cole, she went through this. Now she's an adult. She's warning against it. She may never be able to have kids again. That is what Nicki Haley opposed. She said the law shouldn't
get involved in that. And I just ask you, if you're somebody that's going to be the president of the United States and you can't stand up against child abuse, how are you going to be able to stand up for anything?
That is the truth we're talking about that transition and Nikki Heally's campaign launch video sounded like a woke Dylan mulvaney bud lightad talking about how she would kick in heels. At the first debate, she said that only a woman can get this job done. That's what she said after the third debate when I criticized Roni mc daniel after five failed years of leadership of this party and criticize Nicki for her corrupt foreign dealings as a military contractor,
she said that I have a woman problem, Nikki. I don't have a woman problem, you have a corruption problem. And I think that that's where people need to know. Niki is corrupt. This is a woman who will send your kids to die so she can buy a bigger house.
This is the problem.
Using identity politics more effectively than Kamala Harris is a form of intellectual flaw.
And actually needstand there's.
Our donor puppet masters wielding their puppet right up here tonight. This is how this game is played. The puppet masters put up their puppet and I reject the use of identity politics in this party.
And in terms of these donors that are supporting me, they're just jealous. They wish that they were supporting them. But I'm not gonna sit there until.
And Matt Crystal is the absolute state of where we are.
Who's bragging about Wall Street donors switching support? Genuinely grotesque, But thank you to our team, by the way, they did a fantastic up cutting all of that up. As you can see, knives are out for Nicky Haley. Why well, she's quickly coming into the number two position in Iowa and in New Hampshire, and she also obviously has a structural advantage in the state of South Carolina where she's a former governor and she's currently pulling their number two
to Trump. But I think the most important takeaway really was DeSantis and Vivek DeSantis more so suffering because Americans were prosperity that coke back organization endorsing Nicki Haley and giving throwing absolutely billions and billions of dollars behind her bed on top of liberal billionaires people like Reid Hoffman
and others who are supporting her campaign. So she is the she's the new it girl of the Republican establishment, or at least the anti Trump establishment, as we showed people as well with that Paul Ryan clipp earlier this week.
Yeah, that's absolutely right.
And this is most of all an existential threat to Ron de Santis. Truly like a potentially campaign ending threat to Ron DeSantis because he decided he's going to run his campaign in this different way of instead of having most of the money come in directly to his campaign, where you have limits on how much individuals can contribute, that he was going to rely on a few massive donors, billionaire donors.
To contribute to a super pack.
We covered previously how that super pack is now in total disarray, and then when you have donors fleeing him. Moving to Nicki, this is a major issue for him because he's not like a Donald Trump to have like the grassroots support to be able to raise tons of money, or like a Bernie Sanders or you know that type of candidate. He always was very reliant and explicitly from the beginning on a lot of big donor money. That's
not like slam, that's just reality. So now he's trying to turn it around and be like, oh, she's corrupt because all these billionaires are backing her, and in that respect, she's one hundred percent accurate when she's like, well, actually run the problems.
You're just jealous.
Yes, My overall read of this debate was I thought both Nicki and Ron seemed a little more on edge, a little nervous.
Absolutely.
I think because they know this is the last debate, like this is your last chance to change the trajectory. I'm sure it was no mystery to Nikki that she was going to be taking a lot of fire coming in. I think rond de Santis, who in previous debates has been happy to kind of sit back and let other people exchange fire and let other people do the attacking. He knew he really needed to go on the offense this time because his campaign is sort of slipping away
from him. Not to be clear, he's still in second place overall in the national polls, but clearly Nikki is sort of eating into his game here, so he knew he had to go on the offense. I don't think that is a particularly comfortable position for him. That's how it came off. So I didn't think either one of
them really came out as an outright winner here. If the contest was between who did better rond De Santis than Nicki Haley in terms of positioning themselves as the top Trump alternative, it was kind of a wash, which is probably at this point good for Nicki Haley since she's got the donors lining up.
Yeah, I exactly, she's got the money.
DeSantis was not comfortable at all coming out hitting her at the gate. Vi Vega is a far more effective and I think just more comfortable because he's been like that from the beginning as an attack dog against her, and there were some ideological fissures that did open up there was a very long exchange on Ukraine, which we're about to play for everyone because it's very revealing.
In a couple of things.
Viveg asked Nikki Haley to name three oo blasts inside of Ukraine. She doesn't immediately do it. Later on she does and incorrectly is unable to name three. But it was a productive exchange because it revealed also some Chris Christie coming in trying to white night on Nikki Haley's behalf. He tried to pull out some of the old Christie magic, basically calling Vivek annoying, which is look, let's all be honest.
So there were blows exchanged in every direction, and this is definitely, I think one of the most fiery exchanges.
Let's take a listen. We'll give you our reaction on the other side. It takes an outsider to see this through. Look at the blank expression.
She doesn't know the names of the prophecies that she wants to actually fight for. And there's a company movie donors, the donors right there.
Let me just say something here, you know, his reasonable piece steal in Ukraine made it clear, give them all the land they've already stolen. Promise Putin, you'll never put Ukraine in Russia and then trust Putin.
Not to have a relationship with China. Let me tell you something that's no reasonable.
Yes, it's exactly what you said. You do this at every debate. I did interrupt you. Okay, you say this, You do this. You do this at every debate. You go out on the stuff and you say something. All of us see it on video.
We confront you out on the debate stage.
You say you didn't say it, and then you back away, And I want.
To say, I'm not done yet. Well this is look.
Say something. This is the fourth debate, the fourth debate that you would be voted in the first twenty minutes as the most not just blow hard in America.
Shut up for a w.
Want to say something else.
We're now twenty five minutes into this debate, and he has insulted Nicki Haley's basic intelligence, not her positions, her basic intelligence. She doesn't know regions. She wouldn't be able to find something on a map that his three year old could find. Look, if you want to disagree on issues, that's fine, And Nicki and I disagree on some issues, but I'll tell you this. I've known her for twelve years, which is longer than he's even started to vote in a Republican primary.
Chris, your version of foreign policy experience was closing a bridge from New Jersey to New York.
So do everybody a favor.
Just walk yourself off that stage, enjoy a nice.
Meal, and get the hell out of this place.
When it comes to NICKI I think if you're gonna actually send your sons and daughters to go in somebody else's board, excuse me, Chris, I'm speaking and I'm not done yet.
I haven't heard a time we're going to be done.
So listen up to this is if these people want to send your sons and daughters to go die in Ukraine, They've been arguing for it for a year, two hundred billion dollars of our taxpayer money sent over. Neither of them could even name for you the provinces that they actually want to protect.
Wow, so cneitherum could. There was so much I think going on there, Crystal. I will say about this about Chris Christy, the guy who I believe at one point, what did he say he told a voter to piss on their flag at.
Some point during it was in the twenty twelves.
It's been a long time the guy who became popular for being like the hard nosed, outspoken person who would even insult what teachers unions all. Oh yeah, so now he has a problem with going after people questioning their basic intelligence. What are we doing here, Mary, you're lecturing us all about decorum. You're you are one of the people who became famous for rejecting it. That said, the exchange and overall that you saw there is that. Obviously,
there is an intense amount of personal animus. I think at this point between all three of them, Dessant is kind of just trying to sit back through.
All of it.
But I mean ideology also is a little bit below it because the fundamental difference there was on Ukraine, on aid, and really just on foreign policy in general, that it was happening throughout it.
Yeah, and so let's talk about the substance first. I mean, obviously I thought I'm much more in line with the vagus fuse there. And I think when he says about Nikki Haley, he had that line that we played in the other matchup, that's like, she wants to send your sons and daughters to die in a war that just so she can get a bigger house. I mean that
Lands and all the commentary. There's a reason why he's leaning into the attack on her that she's a corrupt, you know, puppet of the establishment, puppet of the billionaire class. It's an attack that he can make much more cleanly and effectively than Ron De Santis, both because of a skill level and also because Nikki Haley is right, he's just jealous that these donors have.
Left him at this point.
In terms of Chris Christy, this was the first debate that he actually showed up for. You know, his performance in this debate was more of what I was expecting from him the entire time, And so I thought, even though on the substance some more with Viveke on this, I did think Chris Christie was effective in that moment of bodying Viveke calling him out to be obnoxious blow hard. If I had to say, you know who did the best in this debate, I would say it was either
Vivike or Chris Christie. Like they were the best performers in this debate, and I think are just generally more politically talented than either Nikki Haley or Ron De Santis. But the problem is that the Republican base just doesn't really like either one of them. I mean, Vivike, I really genuinely think it's not a policy issue, it's a personality issue.
I'm not trying to be mean. I just think that people don't vibe with them.
With Chris Christie, it's obviously his opposition to Trump, Like there's just only so much of the GOP base that wants to hear that. That was very evident in the debate last night, And there were all sorts of things that I that he said that I had a lot of policy problems with.
But I did think he had a.
Good moment at the beginning when he talked about listen he kind of it reminded me of Andrew Yang when he called out the theatrics of we're all up here with our makeup on, like what are we really doing?
He called out the absurdity of we're doing this whole debate, we're living in this fantasy world where one of us is going to be the nominee, when in reality, this other dude, Donald Trump, is kicking our butts and no one's even talking about him, and all three of y'all are too scared to say a negative word about him. And again, it may not be the message that Republican
voters necessarily want to hear, but it was true. And it's always refreshing when you have that moment where you sort of pierce the veil call out the absurdity of the theatrics that are playing out in front of you. And that is part of what has been so surreal about all of these debates is you've had this element in
the room. You've had this preposterous, like fantasy world where one of these people is actually in position to be the nominee when that's just not remotely close to the case at this point.
Yeah, that really is a perfect segue to our next clip, because this is Chris Christie actually really on Ron desandis on whether Trump is fit to hold office and whether he thinks that he's mentally unfit to serve because of how old he is. Christy really tried to get him on the substance here of like actually to answer the question, let's take a listen.
What is he just answer the question? The question was very direct, is he fit to be president? Or isn't he The rest of the speech is interesting but completely non responsive. And if we were in a courtroom, they'd strike the answer and say, Governor DeSantis, the smaller they would they would they would strike the answer because you're not answering. You have a thing we dose. The thing is.
You're talking.
Ron.
Do you think we have an opportunity to somebody in the part you don't have to worry about.
We can get it.
We'll do it. I'm gonna come to you finish.
Look, father time is undefeated. I don't know how he would score on a test, but I know this. We have an opportunity to nominate someone and elect someone for two terms who's going to be spinning nails on day one and for eight years, big result. We should not laminate somebody. You won't who's almost eighty years old. He's afraid to answer.
Well, he's afraid to answer pretty Uh. I don't know, Christal, what do you think that was?
He went?
He went back to this with Rond de Santis a number of times, and it sort of reminded me of the way that he didn't Filet DeSantis as effectively as he did Marco Rubio, but it had that energy of he called out Marco Rubio for having these sort of like slickly memorized talking points, and right as he's doing that, Marco Rubio cues up a repetition of the slickly polished
talking points he'd already recited. And he kind of had that same approach with Ron DeSantis here because repeatedly he went back to this, dude can't even answer the questquestion like it's a basic question. He asked you a basic question, is he fit or not? Will you answer the question?
And he just ends up looking extremely weasily. I mean, I think even people who really like Donald Trump and don't want to hear that he's unfit for office, they also don't like the fact that they can clearly see him maneuvering in real time and not wanting to answer this very direct, very simple question put to him. I mean, what they want to hear from him is yes, he's fit.
But obviously DeSantis is uncomfortable saying that because he doesn't really believe it, and because he's trying to go up against this guy, and so all of the political maneuvering and this like weasley politician e vibe comes out when Chris Christy is calling him out on that, So you know, I thought he bodied DeSantis a number of times on that same point of like you get asked a question and you can't answer the freaking question, typical politician.
I thought, actually it was effective.
And this is again where Christy because he doesn't really care, he's really just running as a foil to Trump. Was good because he was like, these three jokers are all, you know, pretend and then looking past they running against Trump, but they can't say anything bad about him on that. I mean, he's obviously effective, but this is the central
GOP conundrum. You also saw DeSantis there. So there's been some reporting behind the scenes Crystal that he's been telling voters He's like, people just don't want to hear criticism of Trump.
He was twisting himself in knots.
Yeah, he was like, well, we need a new generation, and Chris was like, no, is he mentally unfit or not.
He's like, well, he.
Would be the same age as Joe Biden or whatever. It's look, I think people see through. I would have expected him more if he's just like, yeah, he's too old. He's not mentally unfit. He was unfit whenever he was president because he couldn't get things done, and that's why I'll do it so try not to validate the liberal attack. But the problem is just any time he even rhymes with the criticism of the left has given people are just gonna write you off. I mean, he saw too,
Chris Christy. He was getting booed the entire time, even by these like you know, GOP neo con donors who are pro Nikki Haley, so even they are pro Trump, Like, you're in a tough spot there.
Yeah, You're in a tough spot.
This has always been the bind. This is why I've always thought from the beginning. You could go back and watch our commentary from the early, very early days when it looked like Ronnie d might have a real chance, and we were saying there is a central conundrum here, which is Donald Trump owns this party. He dominates this party, and I do not see a lane for someone to be critical of him that people really want to hear.
I don't see how you're going to be able to make the case against him in a way that is going to move the base significantly off of him. And that is exactly what is played out. You know, the times when he has gone a little bit harder at Trump. There's been a backlash against him. Then there's a reason why Chris Christi is at you know, five percent or whatever he is in the polls, because that's about the size of the appetite for the anti Trump message within
the Republican Party at this point. So, you know, I mean, it's always perhaps in a different world, if there was someone who was just extraordinarily politically skilled, maybe there's a case that they could prosecute against Trump with a Republican
Party base that people would hear. Ron DeSantis is not that man, and I'm honestly not sure that anyone could really effectively do that at this point, especially when there's just such a sense with the Republican base he's our guy, and he's under siege and we've got to back him up, et cetera, et cetera. It's years of conditioning that have gone in to the sense that any attack on him is ipso facto illegitimate.
Yeah, because this is the thing, you Trump is not even really affirmatively running. He is like the anti candidate in that he's the bulwark on which the liberals attack, and so because people hate liberals, they support Trump. Yeah, actually saw I need to see. There was a clip from Tucker Carlson where he said, quote, I became an active Trump supporter when they rated mar Lago last summer.
That just can't stand I'm voting for Trump and that I actually thought that was the perfect crystallization of why people support him within the GOP and why the mar a Lago raid if anything, really sealed his fate as the GOP nominee. They're like, if the FBI is going after him, we have to support. It's nothing positive everything, it's just people who we don't like are persecuting him.
Thus we need to do this.
Also, why DeSantis is a central thesis around why he's like, I'm the guy who get things done. It's like, dude, I wish we lived in that world. People do not Primary voters at least do not care about that. Yeah, one iota. They don't care about that. That's the central They also don't believe it. Yeah, they don't think that he good's and effective. They don't think he didn't get
anything done. I mean, probably the best argument for Rond de Santis was like the electability one, which he can't even make anymore because Donald Trump is winning like every poll. So people, if there was even a question at any point, which I was never convinced that it was that strong of an argument anyway, but if there was even a question at any point of his electability, that shop has sailed. So you know, I mean, it's also like a bed
of their own making. All of these people spent years never criticizing Trump, never calling out when when he was failing to get things done, when he was failing to keep promises that were important to them or report to the Republican base, and so now to turn around and be like, well, actually his term in office was a disaster. I just didn't really say so at the time. Again, people aren't going to really believe you when you were
singing a different tune for so many years. So in a sense, you know, they've sort of put themselves in this box.
Yeah, I think you're right.
And then finally we had to end on this because this is on the Hayley side. People do forget how authoritarian this woman really can be. There were moments around anonymity online and all that, and there's a lot to be said about that, but listen to what she lays out about the censorship regime. On Israel that she would enact if she were president. Let's take a listen.
If this had been the KKK that was doing protest on those campuses, every one of those college presidents would have been up in arms. This is just as bad the idea that they would go and allow that kind of pro hamas protest, or agree with the genocide of Jews and try and say that they needed context on that. There is no context to that. This is what we need to do to deal with it. First of all, we have got to get foreign money out of our universities.
You've got air of money, You've got Chinese money, You've got others. We need to go to every university and say you either take foreign money or you take American money. But the days of taking both are over. The second thing we need to do. The second thing we need to do is we need Biden made a mistake not including anti Zionism in the definition of anti semitism. If you don't think that Israel has a right to exist,
that is anti Semitic. We will change the definition so that every government, every school has to acknowledge the definition.
For what it is.
Okay, So we will change the definition so that every school has to acknowledge what it is. That's basically a national BDS law, which has already at the state level. Crystal been struck down in Georgia when Abby Martin successfully went against him, not stopping her though, from saying that.
So, between the anonymity online.
The calls for war with Iran, the censor to the mass like censorship regime here in terms of compelled speech on campus, there's quite a bit going on. And as Crystal said, I am doing a monologue about this, I have quite a bit disabled.
Yeah, I mean, it's just like a pure authoritary instincts like I'm going to divide, I'm going to devise what speech is acceptable and what speech isn't acceptable. I know I've said this a million times, but Zionism is a political ideology. Okay, it's a political ideology. We have to be able to critique any political ideology. And it doesn't make you a racist, it doesn't make you an anti semi In fact, quite the opposite. To insist that every Jewish person must be a Zionist is in fact incredibly
anti semitic. To paint with the broad brush of any demographic group is like the definition of bigotry and racism. So that's part of why I find this incredibly disgusting. Of course, it raises many Jewish people who have opposed Zionism or had a critique of Zionism, etc. So it's it's completely insane, and it's insane. I know you're going to get into this soger, but I just have to say, like, first of all, it's such a fake moral panic too.
They don't even point to speci cific examples of people that the things that people actually said on college campuses, and for this to be your primary focus while what is going on in Gaza is going on in Gaza, it's so clearly designed to distract from the horrors that
people are seeing unfolding in front of their eyes. So it just it's discussed me on every level, And especially because the Republican Party spent so much time pretending to be against cancel culture and in favor of free speech, and then like that they turn on the dime and are ready to be as authoritarian as they possibly can
in service of their own political ideology. At least Nikki Haley here she also said this insane thing that we were both laughing about, how being on TikTok makes you seventeen percent more anti Semitic.
I'm like, what the hell? Or prohomas that's what it was.
For every thirty minutes they spend on TikTok, you become seventeen percent more What.
Hell are you talking about?
Yes, race is back.
So I found out it traces back to some fake study made of like thirteen hundred people of people who spent time on TikTok at the time that they were then served what is what the researcher is classified as quote unquote pro Hamas and or pro Palestinia content.
So that is the root of this idiocy.
I actually twittered this morning cristal studies show every thirty minute spent listening to Nikki Haley, you become one hundred and seventeen percent.
So check that that checks out.
Now that checks out.
I actually I saw that study you're talking about, and they can. Of course, they conflated like anti semitism with just being yes pro Palestinian are having a critique of Zionism, and in Nikki Haley's brain, apparently, if you're you know, anti Zionist, you're also anti Semitic. So that's where this complete absurdity comes from instead of just looking very clearly at the demographic numbers and going, oh, a lot of
young people are on TikTok, and guess what. Young people don't agree with your decades of propaganda on this conflict, and that's what's actually going on here. But that you could have such words come out of your mouth and not realize how preposterous and absurd they.
Are is disgraceful.
She just drives me crazy on every level, Like her policy is terrible, but it makes the right. She's completely corrupt to do whatever the donors want her to do, and so it disgusts me to see the way that they're all lining up behind her arms happy to see your take on some water here. Do I think it'll stop her? You know, marginal rise in the polls.
No.
And this is the last thing that I'll say.
I've been thinking more about because previously I said, you know, I think DeSantis this is probably still true, but he'll probably stick around through Iowa. If he loses, Io will probably drop out. I do think that there's a possibility that he drops before that. And here's why I was thinking about, you know, Pete Bootagie in that moment when Obama calls and everybody circles away and everybody drops out except for Elizabeth Warren very conveniently, and that's how they're
able to hand the nomination to Joe Biden. They're not idiots, you know, the donor class of Republican Party, or you know, even liberal donors like Reid Hoffman, who are just very anti Trump.
They realize that if they have multiple.
Trump opponents in the race, this is a problem for them, and any prayer they have of defeating defeating him as a GOP nominee is shot if they've got even just Ron and Nicky still hanging out in the race. And Ron DeSantis is very dependent for his political future on whatever that donor class thinks about him. So they definitely do have some leverage with him. So it's not crazy to me to imagine they don't have a kingmaker the
way that the Democratic Party has Obama. But it's not crazy for me to imagine some group of donors getting together behind the scenes pressuring him, you know, providing some sort of incentive for Okay, after you've done with governor, this is what we're gonna you know, what we've got lined up for you. These are the types of things that will be possible for you or you could get this gig in a potential Nicky Haley administration or whatever.
It's not crazy for me to imagine that that could happen, because he is dependent on them, both for a political future and also for a private sector future after he's done, you know, being governor.
Soide I could see you too. It's certainly possible, certainly possible.
All right, let's go ahead and move on to the very late out of Israel. So go ahead and put these pictures up on the screen. What we're hearing is that there is a plan to flood the Hamas tunnels. You can see these sort of like you know, big tube hoses whatever being attached from the sea and run along the shore here. And this is something that has been reported. There are a lot of problems with this.
Put this up on the screen. A lot of people who are sounding alarms about the way that using the sea water to flush out the tunnels could harm Gaza's fresh water for generations. Multiple academics saying this, because I mean this makes sense. You have basically one sweetwater aquifier that Gaza has access to already. It has been pumped effectively dry. It's already been contaminated with seawater, so it's basically brackish at this point. So already it's not in
great shape. If you additionally pump all of this seawater into these tunnels and it further contaminates that aquifier, you could really be in trouble in terms of the water supply in Gaza for years and years to come. There's another issue here, which is counterpoints reported on the fact that some of the hostages who have been released at this.
Point just went in on Netanyahuo's.
Screaming at him for not doing more to get them out, for the fact that they're ignorant of where they're being held, for how much risk they were exposed to that they actually said, we were terrified that we were going to get killed by an IDF bomb, and then you're going to blame it on Humas. So one of the concerns
here I'll just read from you. Swiman says, my husband was separated from us three days before we returned to Israel and taking to the tunnels, and you're talking about washing the tunnels with seawater, You're shelling the root of tunnels in the exact area where they are, an unidentified former hostage told officials in that private meeting on Tuesday. So effectively, they're saying, you have no idea where that hostages are. You've never had any idea where the hostages
are being held. And if you're talking about drowning these tunnels in seawater, you are putting them at extreme risk at this point. So that's one of the dynamics that's playing out.
You know.
The other thing that I would point to here sober and let's put this up on the screen is Human Rights Watch has now documented via satellite imagery that Israel has raised orchards, They've destroyed greenhouses, they've destroyed farmland, all in northern Gaza. This has been raised since the beginning of Israel's ground invasion, compounding concerns of dire food insecurity and loss of livelihood. And you can see those satellite images of this agricultural land in the greenhouses and the
way that's now completely been destroyed. And you know, no justification has been given for this in terms of, oh, this is Hamas is hiding in the greenhouse or whatever. It seems to track more with that report from nine to seven to two about how the real goal is to shock quote unquote the civilian population and hope that maybe they'll turn on Hamas if things get hard enough
for them. So destroying the groundwater, destroying the orchards and farmland and greenhouses, etc. Is very consistent with that approach that has now been documented at this point about what Israel's real goals are right now.
Yeah, the orchard thing actually attracts It's interesting.
So Kissinger's death has prompted me to go back and reread a lot of stuff on Vietnam, and there's actually quite a lot of parallels between the initial actions of the United States and Vietnam nineteen sixty four through sixty six before the mass infusion of ground invasions during.
The bombing campaign.
The bombing campaign on North Vietnam and on South Vietnamese territory that was against Vietcong was built on one strategy. We're going to have US advisors, They're not going to
be directly engaged in ground combat. We're going to bomb the North Vietnamese population into either submission, degrade them militarily, and then we're also going to target as much of the countryside of South Vietnam as possible that the VC are using so that the population will rise up against the VC and join the South Vietnamese.
Does anybody want to guess how that turned out?
And that was similar campaign in terms of the bombing, in terms of what type of targets were selected, both military and civilian. And what most reminded me of it though, was the over reliance on air power and the under
reliance on any sort of sustainable strategic policy. For people who want to check my work, you can go and read all the debates inside the Johnson administration at that time when they weren't lying to our faces, they actually were admitting some of this behind the scenes, and it is eventually the failure of that strategy is exactly why President Johnson unfortunately decided to send hundreds of thousands of
American troops there and go in a different direction. But the point being that the bombing to compel the population itself and specifically to try and get the population to turn on the VC or the North Vietnamese to turn against their regime did not work, actually at all.
Not only did it not work there harden their support, it has literally never worked. And we skip forward to b five actually to give you a sense of the scale of destruction that we're talking about here. This is the Financial Times tar sheet. So they did an analysis. The headline is military briefing the Israeli bombs reigning on Gaza. Devastation of Northern Gaza comparable to Allied bombing campaign of German cities.
So in Northern.
Gaza, approximately sixty eight percent of buildings have been damaged. For comparison, in Dresden, which has been brought up a lot in which Netanyahu has used, by the way, is justification for their indiscriminate bombing campaign, something like fifty nine percent of the buildings were damaged during that infamous bombing. And just as in you know Vietnam, as you're discussing Saga, where it did not turn the population on, you know,
the rulers there, same thing in Germany. There was an idea that by bombing these cities and hitting the civilians and causing them pain and inflicting damage on civilian infrastructure, that the population would turn on the Nazis. What political scientists have documented is that it had the exact opposite effect. Same thing when the Germans bombed London. Yes, that was Part of the idea there too, was that they would
demoralize the civilian population. Same thing with Russia bombing Ukraine, bombing Kiev, etc. The idea was, oh, this will demoralize the population and maybe they'll turn on Zelenski.
Guess what.
It has never worked. It has the polar opposite impact. It causes people to rally around the flag and whoever the ruling class happens to be, and so in Gaza. And this gets back to you know, the key point about what Israel is doing here. I mean, the keykey point is the horrific loss of civilian life, which is just unbelievable to watch unfolding before your eyes. But even if you put that aside, the strategy is completely stupid
and ahistorical. There is no doubt at this point that they have already even if you accept their best estimates of how many Hamas fighters they have killed, they have one hundred percent created more support for Hamas, more potential Hamas recruits.
Than they have been able to destroy. They claim they've taken out.
This is a new claim, by the way, five thousand Hamas fighters.
Maybe it's true, maybe it's not.
They have killed at this point close to twenty thousand individuals. There is no doubt we saw the polling coming out of the West Bank. The West Bank is different from Gaza, but even in the West Bank, support for Hamas's skyrocketing. So if your goal is actually to undercut Hamas, you have to drive a wedge between Hamas and.
The civilian population.
You have to give the civilian population some hope that there is some sort of process that's going to lead to a better outcome without this violent terrorist resistance group.
And this has created the polar opposite impact at this point.
Yeah, I mean, I basically agree with all of.
That, and that's what the Alba been saying and here from the very beginning, and I think that they're going to fall into the same trap that we eventually fell into in Vietnam, which is you're going to end up spending in the troops anyway, if you're Israel, or you can abandon the mission you have either you are very likely going to do that, and you should have done it in the beginning, because then you.
Probably could have avoided all of this in the first place.
Hamas also has been releasing some combat footage which highlights something we've also been trying to show people from the beginning. This might also be why Israel's reluctant to commit more of their forces to the ground. Urban combat is a full blown nightmare. Now, let's be clear here. What we're about to show you are Hamas videos there, but we also showed you.
Right up Hamas propaganda.
However, we don't have too many journalists who are on the ground there embedded with are these troops? Is the best indight into what some of the combat actually looks like. It's straight out of Stalingrad, it's straight out of Iraq, it's straight out of the Battle of Mosul. For ISIS videos that basically were edited and looked exactly like this.
So let's go ahead and play some of this, guys, And what you can see here is you have people Hamas fighters again who release this popping up out of tunnels, who are then showing how close they are to IDF installations, to the IDF camps that they have that are nearby. This is just to show the vulnerability. It looks like there's ivy bags that are hanging up as well as soldiers who are just sitting around. This is the craziest stuff.
And of course they edit it very favorably to them, and it shows you a bombed out you know, like moon type landscape where they have Hamas fighters who are weaving in and out. They're not even dressed in military uniform, using anti tank munitions and others in order to fire against Israeli tanks and to try and disable them.
They claim they were disabled. Nobody knows.
We have approximately one hundred or so IDEF soldiers now have been killed. Multiple more released actually in the last couple of days, which highlights some of the fight.
But the truth is.
That they are not committing a significant ground force into this and they are relying much more on strategic bombing and that, as you said, I think aptly to point it out, we're probably interview or we're going to try to somebody who wrote a great foreign affairs piece actually on all of this. But it does at this point they're not going to abandon this strategy. They are going
through the same motions as we did in Iraq. They will eventually come to the so called mission accomplish and I think that's actually when the real nightmare begins, especially.
For it for them. Yeah, for God's obviously, the nightmare is and full of.
Get worse, I can honestly probably get way worse.
So to that point, the Secretary General of the UN put this up on the screen. Secretary General Gutierras has invoked something called Article ninety nine, so the first time he's done it in his tenure. He says, facing a severe risk of collapse of the humanitarian system in Gaza, I urged the Council to help avert a humanitarian catastrophe and appeal for a humanitarian ceasefire to be declared. Now, this is seen as like the strongest diplomatic tool that he has in his toolkit.
This is effectively Gutierra's.
Pulling the fire alarm with regard to the human catastrophe that is unfolding on the ground at the hands of the Israelis and is triggering a meeting of the Security Council to debate this potential ceasefire. Now, do I think that the US is going to allow a ceasefire to pass through the UN Security Council at this point?
No, I do not.
But it shows you the gravity of what they see unfolding. And you got to remember, I mean, you had the specter of Matthew Miller, the State Department spokesperson who when he was asked where should people go to be safe.
He's like, oh, go to these UN facilities.
The UN comes out and says, there's literally nowhere that is safe in Gaza. Their own people, their own UN workers have been killed by the dozens. I believe there's over one hundred UN AID workers who have been killed here.
That is an extraordinary, unprecedented number in any conflict. So those are the facts that the Secretary General is looking at here when he says, Okay, I'm going to pull the fire alarman to do whatever I possibly can to draw attention to this catastrophic situation because even the ability to provide any sort of AID trucks through the RAFA crossing that has been severely curtailed since the end of
that temporary truce. So you know, diseases are spreading. We've shown you the footage of the high rise apartment buildings being bombed. The area that they've told people to go to, that Theose Raelies have told people to go to that's supposed to be the safe zone is literally the size of Lax Airport. It's like a couple of miles wide and there's nothing there. It's a deserted wasteland. I mean, it's a cruel joke to tell people that they could go there to find any sort of safety or any
sort of aid. All of the civilian toll that was
taken in northern Gaza could easily be magnified. We see no change in terms of tactics and their approach to Southern Gaza, because now you have almost the entirety of the whole population clustered even more densely packed into Southern Gaza, including in Communis, which is the major focus of the IDF at this point, where they say Hamas leaders are fighting, Well, this is one of the places that people fled to because they were told this was one of the places
that would be safe. So the potential civilian catastrophe here looms extraordinarily large. And the last piece saga, which is you know, really wild and I don't even know what to make of it. It's just unbelievable the level of failure on the Israeli side on October seventh, based on what we've learned at this point.
Put this up on the screen.
So the IDF actually knew that Hamas might attack, They knew that they might target this music festival, where hundreds of people were slaughtered in some of the most horrific scenes. This is an article from Haretz. They say, quote this massacre should have been prevented. Despite Israeli intelligence warnings about a Hamas attack, the army did not evacuate the Nova festival.
That was that Rave music festival.
Top defense officials held urgent consultations the night before October seventh about a possible Hamas attack, but no one in the IDF notified the Nova festival organizers.
Or the partygoers.
Hundreds of whome were mown down and for nine hours no one.
Came to save them.
And if you read the details of this, it's horrific to contemplate that this could have been averted if there had been proper warning. The music festival organizer said, if you even gave us an hour notice, we could have evacuated everyone. This festival, we also learned, had been extended, actually longer beyond the original timeframe, so they had gone beyond the link that they had originally petitioned for, and no one raised a flag about anything, even though they
were watching these preparations taking place. And you know, we also have all the details about how they had the attack plan more than a year in advance, but they dismissed it as aspirational. They had these female spotters and intelligence analysts who were saying, no, we see them preparing for that. This was also completely dismissed. And then the night before when they're starting a panic, saying, I think
something might be going on here. They could have warned the festival and avoided so much carnage and yet another just catastrophic failure.
Yeah, it's very it's such a tragedy because when you read it, you as you said, it's just look. I think it highlights the incompetence of the Israeli security state at that time, the shinn Bet, the Mozad, their multi level failure, their distraction. More questions in Neta Yahu and his government all need to answer. Also, why are these
people even still in their jobs. Every single one of them should be fired on the spot, and yet they're actually more empowered in Israeli society than ever before, which is why these Israelian media outlets are covering it like this. They're in shock. You can't believe it, I mean truly, and it's basically what happened here too. After nine to eleven, the people who failed most actually got even more responsibility. And we're on a plane in Afghanistan two weeks later.
How do the hell does that make any sense? Still doesn't twenty years later, and yet you know it still continues over there.
Yeah, well, we know Bbe's plan. It's let's drag out this war as long as possible, because he can say to Israeli people, yes, we're going to do an investigation.
Yes there'll be accountability.
I'll answer questions for what happened, but not until after the war. And that seems to be working for now. I mean, there are certainly calls for him to resign. His support is at like literally eight percent. Everybody basically hates him and wants him gone. But he's betting that the longer he keeps this going and the more he satisfies the desire for revenge, the better chance he has at holding on to power. So that is the political
bet that he's making at this point. There you go, All right, let's talk about a little bit of domestic politics. Here some extraordinary comments from our current president Joe Biden about why exactly he is running for re election again in spite of the fact that his approval ratings are really low and no one really wants him to run again, including Democrats. Will take a listen to what he had to say.
Would you be reading Trump's reading?
I expect so, but look he is running and I just have to run.
No, not now.
So he's saying, you know, if Trump was running, maybe he wouldn't run.
Yeah.
He also Chrystal said that to donors behind this, it drives me absolutely insane. How he drops all of these nuggets two donors that then leak out a quotes, and then he tries to walk him back when we all know the way that he's speaking freely amongst donors is what he actually thinks. That's whenever he said that we were on the brink of nuclear war, I forget he made another comment to which was like worldwide consequential to these donor, it's an outrageous practice by the president.
Think about the level of disconnect. Think about the bubble you have to be in. To look at your approval rating, which is in the thirties, To look at pole after poll coming out that says you're losing to the dude that people also overwhelmingly hate and who has been indicted multiple times, You're losing to him in basically every swing state and every national had to head at this point, and you're saying this is the reason why you're holding on and why you're going to and again, like just
your level of delusion at that point is insane. So and if he really, you know, if he really is just committed to defeating Donald Trump, then why not have a democratic primary process where people have a chance to evaluate whether they think you're the best guy or whether
they think somebody else is the best guy. But no, he's terrified of that because he knows he is not fit to actually go up on a debate stage against anyone, and yet he thinks he can beat Donald Trump, who, you know, for whatever you think about him, is certainly skilled political performer and in spite of his advanced age, certainly seems to have a lot more sort of on the ball and certainly a lot more energetically than.
Joe Biden does.
It's just amazing to me the delusion and the bubble that these people live in.
Yep, that's incredibly well said Crystal.
And it's just one of those where it's almost too on the nose, because that is an admission. He's like, I wouldn't be running if well, then you're not affirmatively running on anything. And I just again high likes the negativity, the negative effect of American politics, and everybody is running for everybody is running basically against something.
There's no positive reasonative part. The same time, that's the smartest thing he could say.
Right, two thirds of the people voted for Joe Biden voted because he wasn't named Donald Trump.
That's it, period, end of the story.
And it's one of those where now Trump, Trump and Biden do really need each other in many respects because Trump also loves to play off of this liberal hysteria of who think of him as like some grand Mussolini style dictator when in reality he's more like Selena Meyer from Deep whenever.
He was in office.
He both likes to play into the dictatorship meme, and then the Biden campaign is like no, no, no, see, that's why we have to run against him because of the big bad Trump. He actually addressed some of this in a town hall with Sean Hannity. Let's take a listen.
I want to go back to this one issue though, because the media has been focused on this and attacking you. Under no circum stances. You are promising America tonight.
You would never.
Abuse power as retribution against anybody except for day one, except he's going to pray, except for day one, meaning I want to close the border and I want to drill. That's not all that's real, that's not that's not retribution.
I'm going to be.
I'm gonna be. You know, I love this guy. He says, you're not going to be a dictator.
I said, no, no, no, Other than day one, we're closing the border and we're drilling, drilling, drilling.
After that, I'm not a dating Okay.
That sounds to me like you're going back to the policies when you're president.
Why does Hannay keep trying to clean up his answer? Say, what are you his press secretary?
Yes, let them, let the man speak.
He knows exactly what he's doing, Okay.
He knows that he's about to trigger Biden, and he's going to trigger liberals. And Rea can read the New York Times op eds and the Atlantic op eds as much as anybody, and he obviously gets a kick out of it. So I thought, Hannah, the way he conducts himself is just so ridiculous. But I I actually thought what putting those two things together crystal does demonstrate how
both of these like industrial complexes, need each other. Trump needs to trigger, you know, the so called liberal hysteria, the idea that he's going to be some insane dictator, and then Biden needs those Atlantic headlines. Like Bob Kagan, I don't know if he saw this, wrote this long thing about American democracy is under attack, which you know, given Bob Kagan's track record, that means he wants to invade it. But that's what the Biden campaign is then immediately fundraising off of.
And there I don't know if he saw this. There's a new whole Atlantic.
Series of articles about the dangers of what a second Trump administration would look like, and they're all, you know, they're all just complete, like an old style twenty sixteen, almost like clap trap.
Uh.
The only thing one I do think is legitimate is on the criticism of election in January sixth, Okay one. The rest of them, it's like, yeah, the guy who literally could get nothing done first fourth four years has miraculously changed and transformed in his old age and is now to be the most effective, you know, GOP dictatorship president in history.
It's like, what are we talking about here?
I think two things can be true. One that he's a cartoonish buffoon and Keystone cops veep whatever you want to say. And also that there is a genuine danger because of what we saw unfold with the fake electors and with January sixth, et cetera. I mean, that was a genuinely destabilizing moment. He genuinely wanted to hold onto power even though he'd lost, and that is genuinely dangerous. So I can't look at what unfolded there, and especially what we've learned about.
All the maaschinations happening behind the scene, all.
The fake electors who'd been pulled and the slates created, and all of this that was going on, and just sort of like handwave away all of the concerns about Trump.
Now.
On the other hand, liberals do themselves no favor when they're trying to pretend like they're all about democracy while they're actively behaving like authoritarians, like in the state of Florida where they just decided we're going to make Joe Biden the nominee and we're not even going to have a process like you can't end democracy to save democracy. It doesn't work that way. And so you know, when I look at that Hannity Trump exchange, there's a few things.
First of all, Hannity clearly hands him the softball, and he does it twice by the way he asks him. Once, he's like, you're not going to be a dictator, are you? And Trump dodges and says, oh, you mean, like the way that they were towards me. And then what we showed now is he comes back around is like, no, no, I just want to make it clear you're not going to be a dictator. And Trump's like, well, after day one, right,
the audience loves it. Why not because they just think he's joking, but because there's a genuine desire for authoritarianism and for a dictator in the American public. And it's not surprising. It's not surprising for a couple of reasons. Number one, because in times of tumult and chaos, the instinct towards or desire for a sort of like daddy figure who's going to make it all better. And I'm not even talking partisan with this one. I was talking
blanket statements about the American public. At this point, there is always a consistent rise and desire for dictatorship, authoritarianism. Some daddy figures come in and do the things that you think need to be done. Get it done, trains run on time, et cetera, et cetera. That is a
consistent theme throughout history. And number two, you've had for years now cynical operators in the news media and cynical political operators, cynical pundits, cynical elite class members who think that the best thing that they could do is to convince one half of the country that the other half of the country is truly evil, demented, and you know, an existential risk to them. Do you think democracy is
going to thrive in such a circumstance. You can only have democracy thrive when you accept that your brothers and sisters that you're in this project with are basically good people, are trying to figure these things out, and you may have some fundamental differences with them. That's fine, you'll work it out, but they're not an existential threat to you, your family, your way of life. And so that's why on the Republican side, when Trump says things like oh
I be a dictator. On day one, he's giving a large chunk of the base what they want to hear.
They're not upset about this.
They want him to be that strong man and do the things and protect them in the way that they feel they need to be protected. And that's why in the democratic side there's very limited outcry when they do things like, you know, just decide in Florida that it's going to be Joe Biden, or when they tell people that we can't afford to have a primary process, we
have to subvert democracy to save democracy. Why there's very little outcry because people feel that same sense of existential dread on the democratic side as well.
So that's what I see going on.
I think you're right, and I think why are the reason I get so angry about this, oh leadership and all this is because to me, it's actually anti democratic in that why is Trump beating Biden.
Let's actually look at the polls.
It has nothing to do with democracy or any of this.
People are pissed and angry about the economy. So if you believe Dave Trump is a threat and a dictator, then you need to beat him on an economic answer for why people should vote for you as opposed to him, and I have seen nothing but an onslaught from the democratic press, from the liberal establishment, absent very very few examples, people like Jeff Stein and others who are honest, who are not like, why are these idiot voters complaining prices are I just saw a Financial timespiece.
I'm not sure if you.
Saw that where they ridiculed American voters for thinking that prices were higher today than they were in twenty twenty two. And they were like, well, see inflation is fake, and it's like, okay, well, yeah, it might be marginally true, but zoom out. From twenty nineteen to twenty twenty three, inflation is running twenty two point three percent. That is three times higher than inflation from twenty fifteen to twenty nineteen.
So when people are saying prices are too high, they don't mean prices are too high in twenty twenty three. Prices are higher twenty twenty three over twenty twenty two. They feel that way because at everyone remembers where the bag of groceries costs not that long ago, and they didn't have that amount of inflation in their lives for decades, as opposed to the fast pace that we've seen under the Biden administration.
Now, it's not all Joe Biden's fault. I think a lot of it is.
But the point is is that if you cannot address and speak to that, you're going to lose. And that's what actual democracy looks like. So for me, it's all of this trying to browbeat people over the head about trying to gin them up and be afraid is just as bad on that other side when they're not actually trying to engage in a small, de democratic argument over why you should vote for them.
People are not stupid.
The main reason that a lot of people are gravitating towards Trump on the economy right now is just comparison. They're like, well under in twenty nineteen, Gas was X, Y and Z. He's also got the great talking point of there was no rush in Ukraine or Israel or whatever while I was president. And that's a compelling pitch, especially if you don't have something to fill the vacuum, which Biden does not.
I mean, when's the last time he even did anything about this? Nothing?
He said something about price couch closest you should come. Yeah, Well, to me, there's three major factors. There's the economy, as you point out, and the fact that you know, people actually had more money in their bank accounts during COVID, when you had all of these social safety net programs that were genuinely helping people in the child tax credit and checks coming in, et cetera. Under this Democratic president,
those programs have all been stripped away. So at the same time you have inflation, you have a diminished ability to you know, to survive that inflation, be able to pay for the things that you need to pay for, and people racking up massive credit card bills, et cetera. It's so that's one piece. Second piece is just you look at the.
Guy and you're like, God, yeah, that's a massive part.
Can you can you make it through four years?
Like I'm I'm struggling to listen to you put a single sentence together, Like I'm holding my breath hopeing you get to the end of this thing and it's not a catastrophe. How are we going to do for more years like this? That's one piece and then the latest piece. The reason you've seen a huge deterioration recently is because of disenchantment with the Democratic base over his unconditional support for Israel, which has really hit key democratic voting blocks.
Young people first and foremost Arab Americans, Muslim Americans, people of color in general actually have a very different view of this conflict than most white voters, just judging by the polling. These are key democratic based groups. And so the recent decline for Biden has actually been mostly among Democrats who are very unhappy with what's going on. Now, Are they going to vote for Donald Trump?
No?
Are they going to stay home? Very possible. They're betting that going back to the well of Trump is terrible. Trump is bad, and you cannot vote for Donald Trump, and staying home is a vote for Donald Trump. Shaming, cajoling voters is going to work another time, and I'm
just not so sure that it is. I could be wrong, but I think, like you said, Zagur, you have to actually make an affirmative case at this point for why four more years of you and your program and what you're going to do is going to leave people better off, because you know, I mean, people look back at the Trump years and they're like, yeah, that was chaotic and it wasn't great and it was terrible, but we survived together.
We got to the other side of it.
So maybe this all of this is not as is not as extraordinarily existential as it seems. So in any case, speaking of delusions, Liz Cheney has also decided that perhaps she will throw her hat into the ring, the presidential ring, and make her own bid for president. Let's take a listen to how she explained.
That whatever, whatever you do, whatever you think about, you know the possibilities that Donald Trump might present, He's not an acceptable option. He's not an acceptable alternative. I hope that he is defeated in the primary, but if he's not, we have to defeat him in the general.
And people need to.
Take seriously and literally what he's saying, which is that he would infect unravel our democracy, potentially terminate the Constitution.
It's a risk we can't take.
So she's saying that she may run for president to help defeat Trump. And when you talk about it, I mean, Biden's level of delusion doesn't.
Even compare to this level of delusion.
Because even though it shouldn't be this way, because Trump has become the central question in American politics, the fact that Liz Cheney has put herself on the anti Trump side of the equation means that her favorability ratings are entirely on the Democratic side. She has very few Republican supporters left, which is why she left Congress. So the idea that she would take more from Trump than from Biden if she were to one for president.
Is completelytely absurd, completely preposterous.
Absolutely posters.
I want more.
I want as many people in this thing as possible. Chaos needs to be full blown like eighteen oh seven election. All this other stuff might finally destroy so many of the vestiges of the establishments that remain.
I don't know.
I mean, this level of delusion is when I almost genuinely admire. I think my life would be a lot easier if I was at delusion and less neurotic. I guess this is one too, where I do think it highlights as Biden gets weaker, the chaos element of the no labels type candidates. Yeah, people are already floating Nicki Haley against Trump for no labels. Now we could have
Liz Cheney versus Nicki Haley for no lebel. Joe Manchin is doing whatever the hell Joe Manchin is doing out there, Joe Lieberman and all these people are not screwing around.
They really could actually mount somebody.
Then you've got RFK Junior, who will be I mean, who knows how much bigger he could get. You've got Cornell West who's still hanging out there. And especially for people like RFK Junior, he says he's going to get on the ballot in all fifty states. It's a serious problem, a serious problem for both.
Of these candidates.
And you're throwing a no labels person like that who has so much money and could easily get the petitions. Now you're in to for almost five people on the presidential ballot. That's extraordinary, not to mention the libertarian candidate will probably be there as well.
The only one of those candidates you mentioned that could take more from Trump than Biden is RFKG. Yeah, and I think it's a real toss up, and the polls seem to show that it's kind of a toss up, that it's relatively split between the two of them. I think it depends on who he picks as VPO, what he focuses on, how effective the like Fox News hatchet job against him is at this point, because man, they
turned on a dime. They used to be pumping this guy up like crazy, and now every time he goes on, they've gotta they've definitely got their knives out for him, so you know, they want to convince everybody that he's, you know, really truly like Hillary Clinton loving liberal and
using whatever they can to make that case. Of course, a lot of his focuses in recent years have aligned more with Republicans and more with the GP base, which is why people like Steve Bannon were building him up for so long when he was an effective cudgel against Joe Biden. So with him, I think it's kind of a toss up where he draws more from I think it could potentially be that he takes more from Trump
at this point, but hard to say. All of the other ones Liz Cheney, Joe Manchin, Cornell West, Jill Stein, etc. Definitely draw more from Biden than from Trump, and so it just further complicates his reelection path, which was already very complicated. I think you're right to sager that the more that we see him decline, the more that opens the door for.
Just total absolutely.
Chaos, because people like I mean, I don't think Mark Cuban actually is going to run even though I wish that I kind of wish that he would. But people like him, who have huge name ID, who have lots of money to spend, et cetera, they got to be looking at this thing and going, you know what, it wouldn't take that much. I actually think I can have a shot at this thing. Everybody hates these two dudes.
If I jump in there and mix it up, you never know, it might only take thirty percent of the vote to be able to win this thing out right.
Hey, I'll say this too.
The Rock has been making a lot of appearances here in Washington. Yesterday he put out old video. He was at the Pentagon. He's been on Capitol Hill twice in the last month. Nobody actually really knows what he's doing, why he's receiving classified briefings at the Pentagon. So he also on Joe Rogan, he said people have approached me to run for president one of the two major parties. I'm not sure how true that is, but at the
very least he's floating it. He's floating something out there, so it could be any one of these people could do it. I think The Rock would cream Joe Biden in a primary, just to be clear, but anyway, we'll see some big news whenever it comes to Ukraine. There was a major vote in the United States Senate last night, and with the Senate aid package for Ukraine, Israel and other military appropriations failed with the majority vote, let's go
ahead and put this up there on the screen. Forty nine to fifty one, Senate Republicans blocked the Democratic bill to fund Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan, and border security over their demands for tighter border restrictions. Bernie Sanders also voted no. Many now fear the aid package is stalled for good. So there's actually quite a lot to say about this crystal,
because it illustrates two separate political dynamics. The Republicans all voted against this aid package because it doesn't provides a to Ukraine but does not fulfill the border demands not only of Senate Republicans but of the.
House of Representatives.
And this is where I want to spend a little procedural time, because it does show you how difficult it will ever be to get the Ukraine package through the House Senate. So Speaker Mike Johnson put out a letter where he said two things in criticism of the administration on Ukraine. Number One, you have to not yet provided us with a strategic path forward to what victory looks like. Aka, you're just funding an endless war. So yeah, eminently fair.
Number Two, if we passed this sixty one billion, the legislation that bordered, legislation that is attached to it has to look like HR two. HR two is a Republican bill that was passed earlier in this Congress, which is a absolute nonstarter for basically any single Democratic lawmaker because it not includes a major.
Reforms to asylum.
And now, to be clear, I support HR two, but I'm saying from a political perspective, is never going to happen whenever it comes to the democratic lawmaker.
So a lot of the.
Constituencies going on and behind the House were negotiating on the border. Even if they do come to some sort of a deal, it has no backing in the House of Representatives, which shows the political future for this two. And this explains that Bernie Sanders vote. Sanders voted against the package because the Israel aid is not conditioned to
Israel to make them comply with international humanitarian law. And I actually think that that going on in the future could be a major impediment because there's growing calls for conditioning Israelite.
And all that.
It would make it only even more difficult to try and pass some sort of border pack or some sort of package through the House when you're packaging all of these together. This is a lesson too, by the way, on why maybe we shouldn't be bundling all these things together.
But that's a whole other separate cousy.
Well, the original idea for why you put these things together is because the White House really wants the Ukraine Aid right, and they thought, okay, we can throw in this like border security suitetener to get the Republicans to come along. Now the Republicans are saying like, no, no, we don't this border security thing. We don't even want to vote for U. It's not good enough for us.
So blows up that rationale. Then there was another assumption that like, oh, everyone will vote for the Israel piece and still overwhelmingly like Bernie's the only one who's voting against it because because of the aid is not conditioned. But there has been even Joe Biden, you know, dressing openness to the idea of conditioning AID. And you've had some mainline run of the mill Democratic senators saying the same thing. Chris van Holland just recently came out and
said he thought it should be conditioned. So even the Israel piece of this has now also become a little bit more fraud and caused at least Bernie Sanders to withhold his vote from this thing as well. So the original logic of putting all these things together has kind of already come apart. Every single piece of it is controversial, So it's hard to see at this point how they're able to reform and change it to make the whole thing, you know, make this cake bake.
Yeah, there's a lot of problems that are happening for them. And at the same time, I mean, the situation in Ukraine is just crumbling. The political architecture of the Zelensky regime is falling apart before all of our eyes. He's at open war with his top military commander because that guy told the truth and said it was a stalemate.
Who, by the way, I did a little looking into the polling, is more popular, Yeah, has higher favorability. Zelenski's still very popular from what we can tell from the polls. But this head commander. Guy is more popular, has more trust with the population.
Right and now the mayor of Kiev, let's go and put this up there on the screen, is speaking out against Zelenski. You know, this is absolutely shocking. And he did it also in a New York Post interview, turning you. He says, Zelenski is turning Ukraine in an authoritarian state, just like Russia. This is a Fatali klitschkoh He's with a famous boxer and is very famous inside of Ukraine, very well revered and was a previous opponent actually to Zelenski.
But the mayor of Kiev is obviously an incredibly important position inside of wartime Ukraine. Right now, it remains a city that's probably battered the most, you know, by Russia, and it's their overall capital. And again, let me read the direct quote. At some point, we will no longer be any different from Russia, where everything depends on the whim of one man. There is currently only one independent institution, but enormous pressure is being exerted on it local self government,
he said. So he is obviously speaking out against the command and control of Zelenski, who's trying to tighten down actually on all of his opponents as the war starts to crumble underneath from him. And if you think about it too, his sole real purpose in this war was to be like a hype man and to basically, you know, emotionally pressure the West to keep funding him. Well, if he stops being able to get the checks go, then what is his purpose as the head of Ukraine.
This is exploding too.
And again, just to cover some more of the domestic politics inside there, let's put this up there on the screen. They are now actually reporting Crystal that Poroshenko, who is one of Zelenski's major opponents and who.
Though has been you know, kind of a quiet ally of.
His ever since the invasion, was blocked this week from leaving Ukraine. He had his passport confiscated and he was not allowed to leave the country, specifically because Poroshenko was set to meet with Hungarian president or Prime Minister Victor Orbon. They believe that Orbon has been blocking EU military aid and he's also been outspoken about allowing Ukraine and to NATO.
They call him pro Russia. I think he's actually much more of a pro realist.
But anyway, he's a He is very dissonant from the way that the rest of the Eastern Europeans nations speak. The sheer fact that he was meeting with him was enough for these Zelenski people to cancel it, to block him from leaving the country. That's not something that a person who's confident in their leadership does. So things really are beginning to fall apart from him. You have the
aid that is now canceled. They you know, continue Actually just yesterday some of his representatives were here in Washington. They went on Fox News. They said, we have no plan for negotiation all of that. So we continue to fund much of their delusional dreams. But from a sheer military perspective, they are, you know, I mean, they're on their last ropes. They've got an average age of forty three,
six hundred thousand and so off. Their troops have fled, hundreds of thousands of their men are they're dead or maimed, you know, permanently from the battlefield.
And even if we were to provide.
Them at this point with every military piece of equipment that we're asking for, they have had zero proven ability to properly employ Western style tactics and equipment on the battlefield. You know, that's really what came through, and the key finding segment that we did earlier this week is that their military leadership is incredibly incompetent and arrogant and does not.
Listen to US military advice.
So there's so much going on here Chrystal that I don't I do not currently see a path for this.
Ukraine aid package.
Now.
I would never put it past them to not shoehorn this thing, you know, for the for the rest of all eternity, to try and keep getting some money flowing to Ukraine, but this sixty one billion, I really don't see a political path forward to this, especially this year. And everybody I've spoken to on Capitol Hill will privately say the exact same thing.
Yeah, And I mean, just think of what a difference year makes last year. At this time, Solenski is being declared Time Person of the Year. And you could not have said any of this publicly, not in Ukraine, not here Western outlets, New York Times certainly not gould be writing it up and talking about.
It, et cetera.
And it shows you there is a level of instability among the Ukrainian like in the domestic political situation that has been completely bubbling underneath the surface and has now completely exploded to the surface given the state of affairs, with the failures of the or disappointments, i should say, at least of the military campaign. And that was one of the things that this mayor was saying about Zelensky is he's lying about how well the conflict is going,
about how the war is actually going. And you know, you can't do that when you're asking your men to sacrifice their lives on the front line.
And them drafting people who have serious medical.
And banning them from leaving the country, and you're lying about how things are going on the front lines, and then you see you know, okay, the funding is starting to run out from your biggest backer, etc. It's a dire situation. It is a chaotic, unstable situation, and basically nothing would surprise me at this point in terms of Ukrainian domestic politics.
I mean, I'll say it here, this is speculation.
I think that there is a very serious possibility that there is a coup against Lensky, because you've got the serious you know, the chief military advisor who he is, he's not even speaking to he's issuing orders to his troops around basically the equivalent of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. That's an insane thing, like an what a completely unstable military architecture. Now you've got his political opponents who are openly speaking out against him, calling
him authoritarian. Remember he's canceled elections. But he's like, well, it wouldn't accomplish anything or any of this. So and if he is not able to politically deliver on aid from the United States, which is the sole thing that is keeping them going, he has no real purpose there at the top. So I think he's seriously overplayed his hand. I think his arrogance and the way that he conducted himself in the West and also really at home, has set them up for serious reality check whenever this aid
package doesn't pass. And it's very it's it would not be surprising to me at all if he's is removed and you have a very very different style of leadership come in just being like okay, it's time to cut a deal or something even something even more horrible, because don't forget, Russia is still waging war in Ukraine.
It has not ended. They're continuing to rain.
If anything, they're getting even better at it, holding their defensive positions and raining down these attack these very cheap attack drones all over Kievan, attacking their infrastructure as the winter goes on. So it's going to be I think it's gonna be a cold, cold winter all across Ukraine as all of this sets in.
All right, let's move on to the next part.
Here.
Had to weigh in on this, and we've touched a little bit in the initial a block on Nikki Haley and her comments around anti Zionism and anti Semitism. So there was a resolution put before the House of Representatives
which equated anti Zionism anti Semitism. Now, Crystal you aptly put it previously, but Zionism is a political ideology that has to do with land and is very separate from discrimination against a religious group, especially when members of that religious group, including people like Albert Einstein previously, had spoken out against Zionism, and that some of the most fierce
people who object to Zionism are themselves Jewish. Well, it overwhelmingly passed the House, and many of the Progressives ended up voting present actually on the resolution, but one of the members who has been most singled out for his opposition to that resolution was Congressman Thomas Massey for tweeting out this meme. Let's go and put this up there on the screen. He tweeted out for those who are
just listening, it's the Drake meme. The person who is he's holding up his hands as if opposed and says, Congress these days to American patriotism. Then he's pointing his finger and he's smiling, Congress these days towards Zionism.
Funny meme.
Definitely making fun again of these symbolic, ridiculous resolutions that are just what just like flagellating people themselves about how pro Israel they are, how many Congress.
They are going to pass to and they don't even doings.
So what's the purpose, all right, let's put that in.
The purpose is just a smear people as anti Semitic that don't lockstep agree with Israel on literally everything.
That's the purpose.
Guess what.
That's what they decided to do, not just Republicans, but actually prominent Democrats, including the White House, the Biden administration.
Let's put this up there on the screen.
The Biden administrations put out a statement saying all Americans, including House GOP leadership, should condemn this virulent anti semitism from a sitting member of Congress.
This was retweeted by the White House.
This himself is a White House spokesperson, and it was reiterated by the Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. Let's go and put that one up there on the screen, he says, Representative Massey, you are a sitting member of Congress. This is anti Semitic, disgusting, dangerous, exactly the type of thing I was talking about in my Senate address.
Take this down.
And Massey said, well, you know, it seems like you guys care a lot more about a foreign country's borders than our own.
I think is absolutely correct on that one.
But this is the absolute state of our discourse, Crystal.
Is that a meme making fun of meaningless resolutions where a country continually affirms, you know, the right of a foreign government to exist and then affirms like the inability to even speak out against the actions have said that government, or even any foreign any political ideology, is then not able to be mocked and instead is flipped around and said, you are a anti semi I mean, that's one of the worst things that you can say about somebody.
Correct.
In the twenty in the twenty first century, especially with the legacy of the twentieth century, and yet they have no compunction doing it.
I think it's really discussing what they're doing to It.
Is utterly disgusting and disgraceful for a variety of reasons. Number One, when you throw around the word anti semitism to talk about a meme which is not remotely anti semitic, to talk about people who have critiques of the Israeli government, which is not remotely anti semitic. When you just use this word for everything you don't like, the word becomes meaningless.
And then when things happen that are genuinely anti Semitic, which of course do happen all the time, and there has been an increase in the number of actual, real anti Semitic incidents during this time period, you have no words and no language left that means anything to anyone. And if you're an organization like the ADL where this is your thing, like you have completely bankrupted your credibility to apply this label to anyone or anything. So it's
disgusting on that level. It is utterly disgusting and preposterous on this level as well, which is that we are providing the bombs and the unconditional support for Israel in their war on Gaza, which has not only exacted a horrific toll on the civilian population there, but has made Israelis less safe and have made our own men and women in the region less safe. And yet you want to spend your time at the White House and the head of the Democrats in the Senate, very powerful individuals.
You want to spend your time railing against a fricking meme online. That's what you're spending your time and your outrage focused on what a clown show? Like, what a preposterous caricature of a decadent, failing society which cannot even focus on the actual real world events that are unfolding before our eyes. We're arguing about memes. We're inventing a soccer's going to discuss. We're inventing incidents on college campuses to debate. We're castigating a congresswoman who said rape was
horrific because she didn't say it hard enough. Like, what the hell are we doing right now? While our big great friend in the Middle East, bab net and Yahoo is actively floating plans to Congress to quote unquote thin out the gods of population and all but announcing outright that his end goal here is ethnic cleansing. And we're spending our time on a meme that Thomas Massey sent out. A few things could possibly disgust me more than what is unfolding an elite discourse right now.
Yeah, I mean, it's just it's totally nuts. And you know it's interesting.
I care about American sovereignty more than anything, especially whenever it comes to the meddling of foreign governments in our domestic politics.
And yesterday I noticed this.
I'm going to read it for everybody because you're what you were saying reminded me of it. The Defense Minister of the State of Israel tweeted this out. Let's be clear and unequivocal. Calling for intifada, a murderous insurgency perpetrating acts of women, is not free speech. Chanting from the river from the sea, openly calling for the destruction of the Jewish state quote is not free speech. Both are examples of dangerous, violent hate speech, and they must be
treated as such. Why is the defense minister of a foreign government, who, by the way, does not have free speech in their country trying to define free speech in our country. How about you worry about your goddamn job and we will do ours. But the reason that they feel so comfortable getting involved in this, getting involved in bed, I mean, the freaking Israeli ambassador has been going all over this country now for years promoting anti BDS legislation
at a state life. Imagine if the United States ambassador was going around Israel and getting involved in which kibbutz's govern themselves and what they're allowed to say, that I would speak out against that.
I would say, leave these people alone.
I don't believe the United States should be doing that, period at all, whenever it comes to meddling in foreign governments vice versa. I mean, this is a total disrespect, honestly to us. And this is how I see a lot of these resolutions. And you know, I don't even necessarily agree with a lot of these, like anti Israel talking points and all that, but I you know, this is America. We get to say whatever we want, period,
end of story. And you know, I wish, I truly wish they cared as much about this country, about our rights to do all these things, maybe our rights to say whatever we want as much as they did is affirming like anti zion or what is anti Zionism equals anti Semitism, so they they are fulfilling, by the way, all of the worst anti Semitic tropes around government aboutrue, control speech, d loyalty, duel loyalty, you know, by criminalizing or trying to make it such that you can't talk
about it in the public domain. And all that has made me do is angrier and more determined not only to defend it, but actually say some of these things about.
The other thing that's preposters. I mean, the Congress is overwhelmingly Christian, yes, like it's just like what ninety percent Christian, and then you're defining what anti Semitism is like that's absurd as well. The whole thing is completely ridiculous. And the discussing, I don't know, there's a lot about it that discuss me, but it's just such a clear tactic to distract from what our policies are actually doing in the region and the horrific toll that the American people
have overwhelmingly rejected. I mean, I just saw another poll. Two thirds of American people want to cease fire. It's almost a majority of Republicans who want a permit ceasefire, and overwhelming majority of Democrats. And it's Democrats, of course, who are in charge of the White House. So they're
trying to distract from the things that actually matter. And it's just never been more blatantly clear to me that that's what's going on here, playing all these games and taking up news cycles debating theoretical things that might be said on a college campus with regard to the River to the sea, chan or whatever. You know, Ryan did a great job with Ted Cruz on this, like, hey, you know they say this in the Coude party platform.
What do you have to say about that. Well, it's not a.
Problem when it's the Israeli say it's not a problem when Netanyahu's literally holding up a map of Israel that completely disappears the West Bank and the Gaza strip and says this is the new reality from the river to the sea. By the way, well that's fine, there's no problem with that whatsoever. But you know, let's criminalize chance on college campuses, because that's really the important thing for us to focus on right now.
And by the way, even if it did mean it, I would still defend people's right to say it.
I said, yeah, you could say it. Why should that be criminalized?
Why do you need to be passing resolutions and all these other things against it. You should not be policing what people are saying anywhere in public life, especially whenever you're the government. But anyway, apparently that's a minority position here.
Today, Sager, what are you taking a look at?
Well, if there's one thing that drives me more insane than any other, it's hypocrisy. It hurts even more when it's from people that you considered friends and even allies in some way. And for the last two months, I think it is fair to say I'm pretty much done
with it all. The number of people who built now entire careers to crying attacks on free speech, safe spaces on college campuses and ideological witch hunts have switched on a dime now that it is a cause that they agree with and are leading only the latest iteration of
the famed current thing. This movement has kicked into overdrive after a group of university presidents from Harvard, MIT and the University of Pennsylvania refuse to say that specifically calling for the genocide against Jews was against the university's code of conduct.
Let's take a listen, Doctor Kornbluf at MIT, does calling for the genocide of Jews violate MIT's code of conduct or rules regarding bullying and harassment? Yes?
Or no?
You've targeted at individuals not making public statements?
Yes or no. Calling for the genocide of Jews does not constitute bullying and harassment.
I have not heard calling for the genocide for Jews on our campus.
But you've heard chance for intifada.
I've heard chance, which can be antisemitic depending on the context, when calling for the elimination of the Jewish people.
So those would not be according to the MIT's code of conduct or rule.
That would be investigated of as harassment if pervasive and severe.
Ms McGill at Penn, does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Pen's rules or code of conduct?
Yes? Or no.
If the speech turns into conduct, it can be harassment.
Yes, I am asking specifically calling for the genocide of Jews. Does that constitute bullying harassment?
If it is directed and severe or pervasive, it is harassment.
So the answer is yes.
It is a context dependent decision.
Congresswoman, It's a context dependent decision. That's your testimony today, calling for the genocide of Jews is depending upon the context, that is not bullying or harassment. This is the easiest question to answer, yes, Miss McGill. So is your testimony that you will not answer yes?
If it is yes or no.
If the speech becomes conduct, it can be harassment.
Yes, conduct meaning committing the act of genocide. The speech is not harassment. This is unacceptab Miss micguil. I'm gonna give you one more opportunity for the world to see your answer. Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate pens Code of conduct when it comes to bullying and harassment? Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Harvard's rules of bullying and harassment? Yes?
Or no?
It can be depending on the context.
What's the context?
Target it as an individual, targeted at an individual.
It's targeted at Jewish students, Jewish individuals. Do you understand your testimony is dehumanizing them? Do you understand that dehumanization is part of anti Semitism? I will ask you one more time. Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Harvard's rules of bullying and harassment?
Yes?
Or no anti Semitic rhetoric, and is it anti Semitic rhetoric? Anti Semitic rhetoric when it crosses into conduct that amounts to bullying, harassment, intimidation, that is actionable conduct, and we do take action.
The answer is yes, and this is why you should resign. These are unacceptable answers across the board.
Don't get me wrong. It sounds bad.
And also we also know that if you replace the word Jew with trans or black, they would give a different answer. But that gets me to the crux of the point. There is a freak out of unprecedented proportions over this clip from the likes of billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman, from celebrities, from pretty much every right wing pundit who is out there right now calling the president for calling out the presidents for not immediately saying yes.
And it's not just they're furious over the hypocrisy. It's that they want an end state where calling for genocide would result in an immediate expulsion over the so called bullying and harassment policies of these universities. Again, this is after years of this entire ecosystem talking about how these systems are unfair, kangaroo court struggle. Session systems proliferated with talk of marginalization, snowflakes, safe spaces that violate the basic
tenets of the First Amendment. And that's where I got to speak out. I jumped on board the train when I thought we agreed that system itself was flawed.
Illegitimate, and Unamerican.
Now that you are upset, you don't fit the definition of marginalization, which within the diversity, equity and inclusion regime. As my friend Jason Willick has so aptly pointed out in the Aftermath quote, the presidents did not give good answers, but they were right to not answer categorically. There is no genocide exception to the First Amendment in America, unlike many countries. You can say Hitler was right. Either campuses
tolerate First Amendment speech or they don't. The obvious retort then, is that these are private universities. The First Amendment doesn't apply when we're talking about the code of conduct. And he gave what I thought was the best answer. When universities have embraced their conception of purpose as expelling people with bad beliefs, the result has been an aggressive and
polarizing suppression of disfavored political ideas. First Amendment neutrality is the least bad model realistically available to major US universities, and I could not agree with that more. It leads me to what I think is the best mental path forward to think of this. Many American Jews right now are outraged that they are not considered marginalized and instead demand to be so. This reminds me of huge debates within the Indian community and amongst Asians whenever there was
a fight over affirmative action. Asians had a choice. We could try and adopt the language of black liberation and convince these higher education DII monsters we too are marginalized, and that's why we also should get preferential treatment for admission in higher ed. Or we could reclaim our rights as American citizens to demand equal protection under the law and race color blindness and striking down an unfair system.
We joined forces with those who sought to destroy racial preferences and college admissions, and it was the right thing to do, not only because it secured our rights for fairness and higher ed throughout the United States, but it enshrined those rights for whatever group may be considered not sufficiently marginalized one hundred years from now. Jews themselves should
understand this. They were the first to be discriminated against at Ivy League universities and throughout the American elite in the early nineteen hundreds.
But I'm not naive.
Jewish leaders and most Republican members of Congress have instead decided to abandon the pretense of calling for free speech and instead adopting a censorious dei machine as their own, to be used for their own ends. Consider the recent testimony of many Jewish students on campuses who attest to not feeling safe and describing what they say are horrible conditions.
CIA protesters blocking the hallways, storming the offices of the MIT israel Inmanship offices, and harassing the staff and faculty there, and inviting dangerous outsiders to campus to join them in yelling hateful and violent chants. This is the same climate of antisemitism that has led to massacres of Jews throughout the centuries. This is not just harassment, this is our lives on the line.
What is it like to be a Jew at nyu?
Being a Jew at Nyu is walking to class and passing torn into faced posters of innocent hostages with the words occupier and murderer written across their faces. It has gone to Boath's Library to study and being interrupted by unauthorized protests where students and faculty call for a globalized into thoughder revolution.
Since October seventh.
The unmistakable anti Semitism that I've experienced on campus is reminiscent of the jew hatred I've heard about from my grandparents, Holocaust survivors who experienced firsthand the deafening silence of their neighbors in Poland and in Germany when the Nazis first rose to power.
On a personal level, I feel bad for these students, I'm sure it sucks, but replace their rhetoric with many who have preceded them, who were trans black, BIPOC whatever the djour term is these days, made up mumbo jumbo about how they don't feel safe on campus from statements made by people who they disagree with, you end up with the same regime. They equate feeling safe with hearing things that make them uncomfortable and hearing things that they find abhorrent to that.
I say, welcome to society.
Two months ago that was not a controversial point amongst a certain set, but apparently nowadays. So I'm going to end with wise words from my friend Jason, who I should say is also Jewish. The organizing ideology of elite American universities isn't free and cree and liberal neutrality.
It is identity politics.
Under identity politics, groups deemed marginalized are led entitled to affirmation. Jews have never made a good identity politics client group. So when Jews demand the universities acknowledge a cause near to their hearts as readily as they acknowledge other they are pulling a familiar lever on a broken machine. And he wisely ends quote. If universities are seen to foment and encourage identity politics, except when it targets Jews, that
would only further stoke anti Semitism. The problem needs to be addressed at its source, which is the illegitimate DEI regime itself.
And that's what's driven me totally.
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