0:00

Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty

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four is here, and we here at

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with that, let's get to the show.

0:25

Good morning, and welcome to Counterpoints. We have an amazing

0:27

show today, don't we.

0:28

You're talking so quickly.

0:30

Amazing.

0:32

It's an amazing bug.

0:33

Oh wow, indeed we do. I think that's

0:35

my cue card. It's like SNL, I need to look at the mugs

0:38

for my line. We do, though, in

0:40

fact, have a big show today, Bryan. Lots

0:42

of news obviously to cover out of the Middle East. We have

0:44

election results from last night. I'm very

0:46

curious to get your take on some of the election

0:49

results actually out of Wisconsin. Interesting

0:52

stuff there. John Stewart hosted Lena

0:54

Kahn on the Daily Show, and man,

0:57

was it a fascinating conversation. Actually gets

0:59

into some of the reasons

1:01

in fact that the DOJ filed an anti trust

1:03

suit against Apple just recently. We're

1:06

going to be talking about an absolutely wild segment

1:08

on the view that is probably the most evergreen

1:11

way to put it. We could say

1:13

that every single week and.

1:14

Come up with some clip.

1:15

They asked the question, are you better off than you were four years

1:17

ago? We'll get Emily to answer that. We'll find

1:19

out, Yeah, we'll.

1:20

Get Annotabaro's take as well for

1:22

just how the wealthy Manhattan dwellers are

1:24

doing versus four years ago. Ryan,

1:27

you ran a Twitter pool that we're going to talk about on

1:29

the renaming of Dallas Airport, which is a Republican

1:31

led effort.

1:32

House Republicans want us to have instead of

1:35

a Dulles and Reagan Airport here

1:37

in DC and Thurgood Marshall over in Baltimore,

1:39

they want us to have a Trump and

1:41

a Reagan Airport. We're going to find out

1:43

if that's actually better than Dulles.

1:45

Right, it's important to move beyond.

1:46

The Cold War, I guess so.

1:48

Yeah, And you're gonna lead us on a segment about

1:51

Harry Dunn, who some people may remember from the fall

1:53

out after January sixth. The hearing is the

1:55

investigations. He was a central figure and all of that.

1:57

Yeah, he's now running for Congress in Maryland

2:00

and bizarrely Apec

2:02

could end up being his biggest obstacle to

2:04

get into Congress.

2:05

We're going to talk about that. It's bizarre story.

2:07

And we have a good guest.

2:09

Yes, I'm Ed Cohn who has been

2:11

on the show before. He's been on my podcast, Deconstructed.

2:15

Leads relief efforts around the world

2:17

everywhere from Syria to Rwanda,

2:19

to Ukraine to Gaza. He's

2:22

in Cyprus now and he's

2:24

going to talk about what it's like, you know,

2:26

trying to get relief supplies

2:29

into Gaza given the

2:31

fact that the Israeli military appeers

2:33

willing to go to extraordinary

2:36

lengths to make

2:38

sure that this near famine tips

2:40

into a famine by attacking aid workers

2:42

as we saw on Monday.

2:44

And that's it.

2:44

That's where we can start today.

2:45

Yeah, we might as well start right there. In

2:47

fact, we can put this map on the screen. Ryan,

2:50

Can you walk us through what we're looking at with a

2:52

one?

2:52

Right?

2:52

So this is the convoy that

2:55

by now infamous convoy

2:57

that I'm sure if you're watching you have heard of this.

3:00

This was the World Central Kitchens

3:03

effort to move hundreds

3:05

of tons from Cyprus into

3:07

Gaza into the kitchens

3:10

that were gradually kind of

3:12

replacing the work that UNRA

3:15

had been doing and has been hobbled

3:17

from doing. Let's

3:20

not even get into that situation right

3:22

now, but it goes

3:24

to I think intent, the

3:27

whack a mole effort that the

3:29

world is making to kind of get

3:32

aid in continues to meet

3:34

the hammer of Israeli opposition to

3:36

simply feeding the Palestinian population.

3:39

So the three.

3:41

The three cars that you saw on

3:43

that map there represent the

3:45

places where each of them were struck. And we now

3:47

know from reporting by Aretz,

3:50

al Jazeera and others that

3:52

the first car was struck

3:55

and at that time the

3:57

wounded in that vehicle were

4:00

taken to the second vehicle, and

4:03

the w ck workers had enough time to

4:05

call their superiors because

4:07

they had been in coordination with the IDF and

4:10

so at first, and

4:12

these are the biggest, most

4:14

good hearted people on the planet, the fact

4:17

that they're dedicating their lives to

4:19

humanitarian relief efforts, so it's very hard for them,

4:21

I think, to believe at first that

4:24

they're being targeted by the IDF. So

4:26

they're calling, they're cooperating, they

4:28

are constantly cooperating with the idea

4:31

of telling them what route they're in, et cetera.

4:33

And so they call their superiors, tell

4:35

them call it off, call it off, We're

4:37

getting struck. They then strike

4:39

the second vehicle. The wounded

4:42

that are still able to be moved

4:44

to the third vehicle are

4:47

moved, and then the drone strikes

4:49

the third vehicle.

4:51

And so.

4:53

The images that everybody has seen

4:55

has shown the logo World Central Kitchen

4:58

on the top. So they're there's

5:00

just no credible way that anybody

5:03

could say that this was anything

5:05

other than deliberate. Now, how

5:07

Reetz reported that the idea of initial

5:10

explanation was that the

5:12

drone operators believed that they saw

5:14

an armed person on

5:17

the convoy when it went into the warehouse,

5:20

but they did not see that armed person when

5:22

they left the warehouse. Now we know

5:24

that three security people, I

5:27

think, one from Ireland, one from Britain, one from somewhere

5:29

else died in this attack.

5:32

So the idea just pause

5:34

on that for a second. So they think

5:37

that they see a convoy that

5:39

they know is a World Central Kitchen

5:41

convoy.

5:43

And they just left.

5:44

These just left.

5:45

The warehouse and on the way in they thought

5:47

they saw a person with a weapon. They

5:50

don't see that person with the weapon on the convoy, but

5:52

let's say they did.

5:54

Yeah.

5:54

First of all, why would a convoy not have a

5:56

person with a weapon going through a dangerous.

5:58

Area a war zone.

6:00

So second, what

6:02

that's saying is that their rules of engagement suggest

6:04

that if they suspect that there's a single

6:07

let's say even a terrorist, a

6:09

single Hamas fighter within

6:12

this convoy, that their rules of engagement

6:14

allow them to light up the entire convoy

6:17

and methodically chase

6:20

the victims from one vehicle to another until

6:22

they're all killed.

6:24

That's their own explanation.

6:25

Except their premise, right, if you accept

6:27

their right, yes, you know exactly.

6:30

And I don't think the israel government has commented

6:32

on this yet, but Israeli media has reported that yes,

6:35

there's a suspected militant embedded

6:37

with the convoy. We don't know exactly what their explanation

6:40

is, but if you take their premise at face

6:42

value, it's still outrageous.

6:44

Right, and it is incredible they would think that

6:46

an armed person with a convoy with

6:49

armored cars.

6:49

And everything is a militant.

6:52

Is a millet like maybe it's

6:54

the Irish guy they hired to do security.

6:57

And you've you've made this point

6:59

before that you know when you're part

7:01

of the big challenge if

7:03

you are the IDF, and let's say again,

7:06

in a hypothetical world, do you want to prosecute the

7:08

most ethical war to the extent

7:10

that's not an oxymoron, you want

7:12

to prosecute the most ethical war possible. The

7:16

fact that Hamas is essentially

7:18

the de facto government of the Gaza strip it

7:20

makes it incredibly difficult.

7:21

There's no question about that.

7:23

The infrastructure, anybody's doing security, it's

7:25

going to be like a Hamas linked police force.

7:27

Absolutely. That's like one of the things with.

7:29

The unroduct that would not excuse killing

7:31

a bunch of AID workers that.

7:32

Were with them, exactly, And that's one

7:34

of the big challenges in the unroad debate. Jose

7:36

Andres sub Amaru made a really good point

7:38

about this. Jose Andres was

7:41

furious at the Spanish government for

7:45

not being sort of supportive

7:47

enough of Israel after

7:50

October seventh. This is Jose Andres is

7:52

nonprofit World's central Kitchen, as many people

7:54

know, that's doing the aid work that

7:56

was destroyed, that was killed. So

7:59

I mean it's just again, it's horrible.

8:01

Right, and so that's why you have we can

8:03

put up this next element. Here's fran Albinizi

8:07

un special Rappidoire saying,

8:09

knowing how Israel operates, my assessment

8:12

is that Israeli forces intentionally killed

8:14

World Central kitchen workers so

8:16

that donors would pull out and civilians

8:18

and Gaza could continue to be starved. Quietly,

8:21

Israel knows Western countries and

8:23

most Arab countries won't move a finger

8:26

for the Palestinians. So

8:29

let's see how John Kirby responded

8:31

at the White House yesterday. By the way, the State

8:33

Department canceled its briefing a

8:37

rare occurrence, and then they were like, let's let

8:39

John Kirby just handle this one. So let's see how John

8:41

Kirby handled this one.

8:43

Is fighting a missile of people

8:45

who have been food and killing them, not a violation

8:47

of international humanitarian law.

8:49

Well, and Israelis have already admitted that

8:51

this was a mistake that they made. They're doing investigation,

8:54

they'll get to the bottom of this. Let's not get ahead of

8:56

that. Your question

8:58

presumes at this very early hour that

9:01

it was a deliberate strike, that they knew

9:03

exactly what they were hitting, that they were hitting aid

9:05

workers and did it on purpose, and there's no evidence

9:07

of that. I would also remind.

9:08

You, sir, that we continue

9:10

to look at incidents as they occur.

9:12

The State Department has a process in place, and

9:15

to date, as you and I are speaking, they have not found

9:17

any incidents where the Israelis

9:19

have violated international humanitarian

9:22

law. Unless you think we don't take it seriously,

9:24

I can assure you that we do.

9:25

We look at this in real time.

9:27

I have never violated the international humanitarian

9:30

law effort in the past five to six months.

9:32

I'm telling you the State Department has looked at incidents

9:34

in the past and has yet to determine that any

9:37

of those incidents violate international humanitarian

9:39

law.

9:39

It really raises the question of what the point of international

9:42

humanitarian law is. If that's true, you could

9:44

kill hundreds, more than two hundred aid workers,

9:46

more than one hundred journalists, hundreds

9:49

of nurses and doctors, leave

9:51

a population of two point three million displaced

9:53

and their homes in rubble, and

9:57

not violate international law. But I

9:59

wanted to play unless unless you have a

10:01

respond So this other one another

10:03

another Kirby clip. So notice

10:05

his body language there. Notice how animated he

10:08

was in defense of Israel.

10:10

There at the top of the press briefing.

10:12

He was kind of forced to read a

10:15

statement that was critical of

10:17

Israel, and I want you to notice the

10:19

difference in the body language when

10:21

he's kind of forced to be critical and when

10:23

he's voluntarily defending them. There's

10:26

only one moment that he gets animated

10:28

in this clip that we're about to play, and it's when he thinks

10:30

he's going to be about to pivot into a

10:32

defense of Israel. But then he realized he's not, realizes

10:35

he's not and goes back into

10:37

kind of a mumbling,

10:40

kind of forced, almost like

10:42

hostage like reading

10:45

of criticism of Israel. Here's Kirby

10:47

at the top of that briefing.

10:48

We understand it.

10:49

A preliminary investigation has been completed

10:51

today and presented to.

10:52

The Army Chief of Staff and Will.

10:54

We'll obviously look to see what they what they

10:56

discover in this preliminary one, but we expect

10:59

they brought her investation to be conducted and

11:01

to be done so in a swift and comprehensive manner.

11:04

We hope that those findings will be made public and

11:06

that there is appropriate accountability held.

11:10

But I'm sorry.

11:12

More than two hundred AID workers have been killed

11:14

in this conflict, making it one of the

11:16

worst for AID workers in recent history.

11:19

This incident is emblematic of a larger

11:21

problem and evidence of why distribution

11:24

of aid in Gaza has been so challenging.

11:26

But what beyond the strike, what is clear

11:29

is that the IDF must do much more, much

11:31

must do much more to improve

11:34

deconfliction processes so that civilians

11:36

and humanitarian aid workers are protected.

11:39

The US will continue to press Israel to do more

11:41

as well to ensure the safety of humanitarian

11:43

workers, and will continue to do all we can

11:45

to deliver this assistance to Palestinian

11:48

civilians in Gaza.

11:49

Thank you, Thanks

11:52

John.

11:53

Do you have any worries regarding Israel and

11:55

Gaza about the floating dock and

11:57

how can aid workers be protected?

12:00

Worried?

12:00

What do you mean by worries? Hmm?

12:04

What even say to that?

12:07

That was his scripted If you were listening

12:09

to this, that was the scriptive remarks

12:11

portion of his appearance at yesterday's White

12:13

House briefing. That wasn't during Q and A. He actually

12:16

moved to Q and A right after.

12:17

That you may have the first question, do you have any

12:19

worries? Worries or worries?

12:21

Goes back into his flip routine.

12:24

Let unless you think we're being unfair to Kirby, Uh,

12:27

Let's let's go to Barack Revid, who

12:29

is a reporter for Axios. UH

12:31

former formerly served in the

12:34

Israeli military. So we're not talking about somebody

12:36

who is, you know, some kind of

12:38

radical Hamas supporter here. So let's

12:40

let's get barakra VID's analysis

12:43

of this on CNN.

12:44

The movement of this convoy was coordinated

12:47

with the IDEF. This convoy

12:49

moved on a road that is a humanitarian

12:52

corridor that the IDEF knows

12:54

that that cars that are driving

12:57

on this road are carrying

12:59

you minitarian aid. The IDF

13:02

is a partner of the World Central

13:05

Kitchen in its work in Gaza. It

13:07

gives security to the boat

13:10

that is coming from Cyprus and delivering

13:12

the eight It's not some rogue

13:14

group that started delivering aid

13:16

in Gaza.

13:17

It was all coordinated.

13:18

And this is why the

13:20

claim that this was quote

13:23

unquote unintentional raises

13:25

a.

13:25

Lot of questions.

13:26

Yeah, to go back

13:28

to Kirby's point, his claim that

13:30

there's no evidence that Israel knew that this

13:32

was an AID convoy.

13:34

Is a lie.

13:36

Like I don't use the word lie often

13:38

with these spokespeople because usually they're usually

13:40

they're gas lighting, they're spinning their bsing,

13:43

you know, and they're

13:45

tethered somewhat to like a little

13:47

piece of the truth.

13:48

Their job is to be very clever and avoiding

13:50

a lie.

13:51

There is lots of evidence that they knew this was

13:53

a convoy, like A, the

13:55

fact that the convoy was communicating with the Idea

13:58

like B, the fact that it said World

14:00

Central Kitchen on the

14:02

rooftops, see

14:05

that Haretz has reported. They knew it was a convoy,

14:09

but they thought there was a militant associated with it.

14:11

So just a flat out disgusting

14:15

lie to cover up a war crime.

14:17

And so net Yahoo responded,

14:19

and we can play the video of that.

14:22

This is if you're watching, you see Yaho's

14:24

response and the translation

14:26

is here. Unfortunately, a tragic instance of our

14:29

forces unintentionally harming innocent people in

14:31

the Gaza strip.

14:31

It happens in war.

14:32

Will investigate it. We're in contact with the governments,

14:35

and we will do everything so that it doesn't happen

14:37

again.

14:38

Just so we can be as perfectly fair as we can

14:40

to Netanyahu in this clip,

14:43

in the first half, he's talking about how

14:45

he himself has left the hospital

14:48

and has recovered from his procedure

14:51

that he that he underwent. He thanks the

14:53

people in that cared

14:55

for him. And then the second half he transitions

14:58

to talking about this tragic

15:00

incident. He says, this is war, but will will

15:02

investigate it. And people have slammed

15:05

him for, you know, the kind

15:07

of joyfulness with which he's delivering

15:09

this message, and it's understandable

15:12

to talk about the joy of you know,

15:14

thanking those who treated you.

15:16

But he's he remains.

15:19

That that effort vescence

15:21

kind of remains as he continues to

15:23

talk about the tragedy and

15:26

that this is this is war and we're going to investigate

15:28

this. He doesn't quite. He doesn't.

15:31

There's no there's no there's no solemnity,

15:34

uh. There there's no there's no suggestion in the body

15:36

language that there's

15:38

any disappointment or sadness uh

15:41

from the Israeli leadership that

15:43

this has happened. Because the

15:46

if, if the intention was to

15:49

tighten the grip of starvation on the

15:51

population, it's working like

15:53

a charm.

15:54

I think it's also worth mentioning a Jerusalem Post

15:57

headline. This is from earlier this week,

15:59

friendly fire idea of helicopter pilot shot

16:01

at Israeli soldiers after pressing wrong

16:03

button. It's not just again, this

16:06

is like if.

16:06

You are a stop seentic weapons. I think

16:08

to these this army, this military

16:11

And.

16:11

John Kirby, he had a quote where you said the

16:14

IDF must do much more,

16:16

and that was in reference to protecting civilians

16:18

and aid workers, and it's ryan.

16:22

It is interesting to have the American

16:24

government in a defense of Israel saying

16:26

that actually the IDEF must do quote much

16:28

more, not some more, not

16:31

more, much more to defend

16:33

civilians and aid workers, while

16:36

at the same time maintaining

16:39

the posture that you just mentioned that

16:41

that's a really really difficult.

16:43

Position, right, And if you're Israel,

16:45

why would you if your goal is

16:47

to ethnically cleanse the Palestinian

16:50

population from Gaza and the

16:52

United States is willing to arm you no

16:54

matter what you do, Like why

16:56

would you not kill aid workers, kill

16:58

healthcare workers, like attack every hospital

17:01

in Gozen, make the place unlivable

17:05

and expect that the

17:07

American government will continue to support you all

17:09

the way.

17:09

So this is what's especially like for

17:12

net and Yahoo, that question

17:15

of what comes next, like day after, what do you

17:17

actually want to do with a Gaza strip.

17:19

That's why all of this continues

17:21

to be an untenable and position

17:24

period because they don't know

17:26

what they have no agreement consensus at

17:29

all on what comes next. There are people

17:31

that don't want to take any control of the Gaza

17:33

Strip in Israel, that don't want

17:35

that to happen. There are people who very

17:37

very very much do and don't want to give up an inch

17:39

of it, want every last inch of the Gaza

17:42

Strip back under Israeli control,

17:44

whatever it is. So that's how

17:46

the war ends up being prosecuted in

17:50

just an utterly bizarre and tragic way.

17:52

And what predictably came next

17:54

is we can roll this clip.

17:56

Relative to the AID shipments,

17:59

this.

17:59

Is about the killing of seven AID workers

18:02

in the Gaza Strip with World Central Kitchen,

18:04

the charity. We're now hearing from

18:06

Cyprus that the AID ships that have been traveling

18:09

from Cyprus into Gaza. Of

18:11

course, this was a big development for those in Gaza that

18:13

the AID was able to come in that way.

18:16

AIG ships are now being turned around still

18:18

carrying aid. Two hundred and forty tons

18:21

of undelivered AID is now heading back

18:23

to Cyprus because of this attack

18:25

on a car killing seven AID

18:28

workers, because the charity obviously unloading

18:30

the ship and distributing that aid in Gaza.

18:33

World Central Kitchen, one of those charities involved,

18:35

has now suspended its operations

18:38

because of this apparent Israeli.

18:40

S stripe, and so the UAE has also

18:43

suspended AID operations, saying that

18:45

it can't keep it can't guarantee that its personnel

18:47

won't be killed by Israel. ANERA

18:50

has paused its relief efforts, The World

18:52

Center of Kitchen pause its relief efforts. ENRA

18:55

has been banned by Congress

18:57

and President Biden from getting

18:59

any from the United States, and Israel has

19:01

banned from operating in

19:04

northern Gaza. The predictable and

19:06

intended consequence will be

19:09

a rapidly expanding number of deaths bymount

19:12

nutrition and starvation and disease.

19:15

And again this brings us back to the questions before

19:17

we move on of you know, if

19:19

this is if Israel wants to admit

19:22

that it's engaged in total war, that's

19:26

the if that's your tactic, If that's your strategy.

19:29

They are not owning up to it, and I.

19:31

Know, the most moral army in the world.

19:33

It's partially because there's disagreement

19:35

in their own ranks and there's

19:38

disagreement with the United States, which

19:40

is funding it. To the tune of like

19:42

we've heard so many people in the Israel government say,

19:44

we could not continue the war without the

19:46

unconditional support basically of the United States.

19:48

The United States is attempting to kind of condition

19:51

it with gentle guidance

19:53

from the White House. Hey, let's, you know,

19:56

pull back on killing AID workers,

19:58

and that's where you end up. So it's like,

20:01

not only is it awful and tragic, it's also

20:03

just glaringly dishonest and

20:05

disorganized. The level of like incompetence

20:08

when you have a helicopter firing

20:10

on their own soldiers, I mean, it's just and.

20:13

If the if the AID community believed that it was

20:15

a fluke kind of tragic accident, they

20:18

would not be withdrawing all of their personnel

20:21

from this situation.

20:22

Like their their blunt

20:24

reaction to this, Yeah.

20:26

That's true, shows that they

20:28

believe that this is deliberate.

20:30

As Barack Revied wrote in that Axios

20:32

article, the Amoradi's handled much of the coordination

20:35

with the Israeli government for the humanitarian mission,

20:37

which has delivered tons of supplies to the enclave

20:39

Viership from Cyprus over the past few weeks. So the

20:41

emioradis backing out. Is it's

20:44

not just you know, some random country that said

20:46

no, I mean, there's a huge component.

20:48

Yeah, And they're the ones that Israel's

20:51

always thinking is going to bail

20:53

them out in the end, like, oh, well, who's going to reconstruct

20:56

this after we've destroyed it? Oh, we'll get the

20:58

Amoradis in Saudis to do that.

21:00

You know, you've got Sullivan meeting with the

21:02

Saudis now, pushing

21:05

this delusional fantasy that they're going to come to

21:07

some mega deal that involves

21:10

Israeli normalization without

21:14

without any progress toward resolving

21:17

the question of the Palestinians, beyond simply

21:19

annihilating them all.

21:23

Rent, here's some interesting actually

21:26

reports with about the

21:28

press. Actually, so this is net

21:30

and Yahoo. We can go to this

21:33

is eight net and Yahoo

21:35

again. This is translated by Google said al Jazeera,

21:38

this is a tweet harmed Israeli. Israel

21:40

security actively participated in the October seventh

21:42

massacre and exided against IDF students

21:44

soldiers. It is time to remove the soho

21:47

far of Hamas from our country. The terrorist channel Al Jazira

21:50

no longer broadcast from Israel.

21:51

I intend to act immediately in.

21:52

Accordance with the new law to stop the channel's

21:55

activity. Ryan, you

21:57

know whatever I mean, It's true. Al

21:59

Jazeera is absolutely an

22:01

arm of the Katari government. There's

22:04

no question about it.

22:05

Funded by the Katari government. R.

22:06

Yeah.

22:06

Absolutely, And that doesn't mean I mean I actually read

22:09

Al Jazeera a lot throughout this conflict.

22:11

I found it fairly helpful.

22:13

It's somewhat interesting that

22:16

NETANYAHUU is just now cracking

22:19

down on Al Jazeer because

22:21

it kind of gets to what we were just talking to talking

22:23

about and how Israel

22:26

wants to sort of maintain the

22:28

moral high ground and puts a lot of effort into

22:30

even just naturally the propaganda of

22:33

maintaining the moral high ground. I

22:35

can't believe they allowed Aljazeera actually to operate

22:37

in Israel this long to be honest.

22:39

Well, Israel wants normal relations

22:41

with the wealthy golf countries. Yeah, and

22:44

so just banning one of the most popular

22:47

news channels in the world is a step

22:49

is a step against that. Israel

22:52

has already basically made it impossible

22:54

for Western media to operate inside

22:56

Gossa. Al Jazeera is

23:00

to the extent that it's it is a Western news

23:02

out in the sense that people in the

23:04

West are familiar with it. People in the West

23:06

go on it. It has it has an office

23:08

here in Washington, d C. You know, it's it's

23:11

it's kind of a known quantity in the way that some

23:13

other kind of Middle Eastern news news

23:15

networks aren't. And so Al Jazeer

23:18

was really the only well resourced

23:22

news outlet with that was watched

23:24

by Westerners in Gaza.

23:26

And now the CONEZA has passed

23:28

this law and you know who saying is going to enforce

23:31

it, that's gonna aband them. It's not entirely

23:33

clear how that affects

23:35

their ability to operate inside Gaza.

23:38

Uh.

23:39

Al Jazeera reporters do coordinate with the

23:41

I d F when they're going to go,

23:44

you know, to different areas. Sometimes that

23:47

coordination UH has

23:49

led to them being killed as

23:51

the intercept we've we've reported on

23:53

on some of that and that, and the id

23:55

F has then also you know, dragged

23:58

its feet in allowing kind of rescue

24:00

personnel to get to in the case of the Al

24:03

Jazeera cameraman

24:05

and reporter that died back

24:08

after December. Back in December,

24:12

does this mean that Israel

24:14

will now consider it all Al Jazeera correspondence

24:17

kind of like fair game in their in their

24:19

kill zones in Gaza.

24:21

I've reached out to Aljazeera.

24:22

I don't have an answer back on what they understand

24:26

the new laws effectively, But people

24:28

who have not been following this clothes you might not realize

24:30

that Israel, which continues

24:33

to call itself, you know, the only democracy

24:35

in the Middle East has

24:37

some of the h has

24:39

has censorship laws that are as aggressive

24:42

as anywhere in the world. Like you can be

24:45

arrested for reading different news

24:47

outlets, but you can go to jail for reading

24:50

different telegram channels, for

24:52

commenting or liking or even just being

24:55

subscribed to a particular channel anything.

24:58

And that's what what they describe

25:00

as kind of terrorist sympathizing or terrorist

25:03

supporting. But they consider anything basically

25:05

affiliated with Palestinians to be terrorist sympathizing.

25:08

It's absolutely also true that Cutter

25:10

has housed some hamas

25:13

leadership.

25:13

Well they do. That's where the negotiations are happening.

25:16

Yeah, right, but even before I mean that

25:18

you had Hummas leadership.

25:19

The Taliban's there, like Cutter is

25:21

like the Switzerland of the Middle East.

25:23

When there's a crisis, that's everybody

25:25

goes to Doha. And like the US

25:28

begged actually Doha to allow

25:30

the Taliban, for instance, to have

25:33

its headquarters there so that we could negotiate

25:35

with Taliban, like you need somewhere for

25:38

that to happen, and so Kutter

25:40

has been the country that's been willing to do that. It also

25:42

has a base of ten thousand American

25:44

troops, so it's

25:46

not as if it's like a just a

25:48

nest of terrorists.

25:49

It's exactly what well.

25:50

Actually it is a American once.

25:53

Yes, so the

25:55

Israeli law interestingly, and again

25:58

they're making this argument that it al Jazeerra

26:00

poses a significant threat to state

26:02

security, and it's just

26:05

I don't want to bring TikTok into this, but

26:08

it does sort of echo some of the conversations

26:10

about obviously they're involved in a hot war

26:13

and we're sort of involved in a cold war with

26:15

China. But yes, cracking down on speech

26:18

when conflict boils

26:20

to the surface, is.

26:22

You understand from.

26:23

The perspective of security,

26:26

why yeah, oh sure, free speech is

26:28

harmful to security. You obviously

26:31

have to have red lines.

26:32

And to show that this is really not about who's

26:35

funding it, and it's about

26:37

what they're saying. We can look

26:39

at this Channel thirteen report that

26:41

aired yesterday, absolutely unhinged

26:44

and hysterical. So if you want

26:46

to read it, you can read the translation of

26:48

it here. This is a Hebrew language

26:51

report about a young

26:53

reporter named Eunice to Rawi,

26:56

who if you are following

26:58

this conflict.

26:59

You have problems his work.

27:02

He and others have done absolutely

27:04

essential work of just following

27:07

IDF soldiers, tiktoks and other

27:09

social media accounts and finding

27:12

the evidence of war crimes that they post themselves

27:15

and then reposting

27:17

that but taking it out of the

27:19

context of them bragging about it to their

27:21

friends. So they did

27:23

this long investigative report naming

27:26

this guy, essentially trying to put

27:28

a target on his back. And what's amazing

27:31

about the report, and you can find

27:33

it on Unic's Twitter account,

27:35

is that they don't identify a

27:37

single fact that he got

27:39

wrong. Ever, like, no, you would

27:42

think that, okay, because he's done dozens

27:44

and dozens of these at this point, most

27:46

of the ones that you've probably seen, these tiktoks

27:48

of them wearing

27:51

women's underwear or blowing

27:53

up a mosque, or

27:55

riding around in little bicycles

27:57

or grabbing a trophy, or as

28:00

the one we just showed, the French

28:02

National admitting to having just

28:04

tortured to detain eee like.

28:06

Those those are those are his?

28:07

You would you would think that there'd be one case of

28:10

mistaken identity or something that

28:12

an entire investigative news outfit

28:14

at Channel thirteen could find to kind

28:16

of undermine his work.

28:18

They found nothing.

28:19

Instead, what they found are

28:23

IDF soldiers who say that they

28:25

have been bullied as a result of

28:27

him posting the evidence of

28:30

their either war crimes or despicable

28:32

behavior, because what they quibble a lot with

28:34

the definition of what a war crime

28:36

is. Fine, call

28:39

the like parading around in the in the

28:41

panies of you know, a

28:43

displaced person. Call

28:45

it despicable, they call it. Call it whatever you want,

28:48

and we can play this the second part.

28:50

Here, here's the here's the French National

28:53

complaining, says, complaining

28:56

that like his

28:59

his his mission of torture is

29:02

now causing people like to say

29:04

mean things to him online online. I'm

29:06

being threatened with all sorts of lawsuits and an

29:08

international court, but I know it's

29:10

one big bs. They marked my

29:12

nephew who lives in France and his family because it's easy

29:15

to turn.

29:15

The hate towards him.

29:16

Now, I'd say, look, leave his

29:18

nephew alone, leave his family alone. But

29:20

this soldier himself to be complaining

29:22

that he's now potentially facing prosecution

29:25

in the international Criminal court or prosecution

29:27

back in France because Unice

29:29

exposed his admission

29:33

of torture. And also,

29:35

all units did is take a public post and share

29:38

it elsewhere, like the

29:40

French national with the IDF

29:42

is the one who decided to commit

29:45

torture and then post about it,

29:48

or if he didn't torture the guy, he then lied

29:50

about having just tortured somebody on his own

29:52

social media.

29:53

And so.

29:55

I think what this shows is that

29:58

yes, they don't like Al Jazeera, but it's not because

30:00

of how Al Jazera is financed.

30:02

Unus is not getting cutter funding.

30:05

He's just He's just a guy who's good at using social

30:07

media and has been dedicated

30:10

in an impressive way to this craft. I've I've worked

30:12

with him in the past. We've we've

30:14

worked on some stories together. We haven't ended

30:16

up publishing any yet. Over at the intercept

30:18

that I hope we do. He's

30:21

done, He's done incredible work, and as a journalist, I

30:24

think we all need to stand by him and condemn

30:26

these uh, these this

30:29

type of Channel thirteen threat unless

30:31

they've got something like they have, they have nothing if they

30:33

if they said, okay, this reporting

30:35

was flawed in these ways, then

30:38

fine. But to say it's unfair that

30:40

because of unice AS reporting, the International Criminal

30:42

Court is looking into this French national Yeah,

30:47

that's you know, your consequences actions

30:49

meaning your consequences or whatever.

30:51

Yeah, to your point about Al Jazeera,

30:53

I mean, I think they may genuinely care

30:56

about the source of funding, but it

30:58

seems as though the priority is

31:00

cracking down basically ran on dissent

31:03

like it's a it's a question

31:05

of and again, like like

31:07

I said before, yes, from a security

31:09

pure security perspective, speech

31:12

and reporting and journalism is sure.

31:14

It's a threat to security. Right, that's you

31:16

know, what we have though, are

31:18

in democracy is red lines that protect

31:21

your ability to speak, even

31:23

if so that it doesn't allow for fascist

31:26

total control of everything, and

31:28

so, yeah, huge concern. It'll

31:31

be interesting when John kirbyes to

31:33

answer questions about that going forward. I think

31:35

the White House, I think Matt Miller actually said

31:37

basically, they support freedom of

31:39

the press, and basically the implication was

31:41

that they don't support cracking down on al Jazierra

31:44

from Israel's point.

31:48

Back here in the.

31:48

United States, at least voters have a way to

31:50

express their anger.

31:51

That's a good what's going on here?

31:53

So Hillary Clinton appeared on a late night

31:55

program to talk about the way that here

31:58

in the US, the world cradle

32:00

of democracy, we have a way to work

32:02

through these very complex issues.

32:04

Let's let's roll Hillary here. It's Biden versus

32:07

Trump. We know that is it is.

32:10

What do you say to voters who are upset that those are the two

32:12

choices?

32:13

Get over yourself, those are the two choices,

32:16

right, and yeah,

32:18

you know, it's

32:21

kind of like one is

32:23

old and effective and compassionate,

32:26

has a heart and really cares

32:28

about people, and one is old and

32:31

has been charged with ninety one felonies.

32:35

Yeah, okay, I.

32:39

Don't I don't understand why this is even a hard choice.

32:42

Really, I don't understand it.

32:43

But we have to go through the election and hopefully

32:45

people will realize what's

32:48

at stake, because it's an

32:50

existential question what

32:52

kind of country we're going to have, what kind of democracy we're

32:54

going to have, And people who blow that off are

32:56

not paying attention because it's not like

32:59

Trump has an his empowerers,

33:01

his allies are not telling us what they want

33:04

to do. I mean, they're pretty clear about what

33:06

kind of country they want.

33:07

So if you are not planning

33:09

to vote because you don't like either choice, or

33:11

maybe you're planning to vote for RFK Junior, according to Hillary

33:13

Clinton, you're simply not paying attention. She doesn't

33:15

understand why this is even a hard choice. That's

33:17

a direct quote from her. I had the pleasure

33:19

of watching the entire interview Ryan just

33:22

for the sake of hashtag journalism.

33:24

And towards the end of it, she's promoting this new.

33:26

Broadway place that.

33:29

She produced about

33:31

the Suffragette movement, and Jimmy

33:33

Fallon is lavishing her with

33:36

these kind words, noting that you know, when she

33:38

goes to a Broadway place, she gets a standing

33:41

ovation. This is a direct

33:43

quote from Fallin. He says it was a pleasure, it

33:45

was an honor to sit next to you at

33:47

some Broadway production and it's like total

33:50

State TV, like North Korea, while

33:52

she's patronizing voters who don't

33:55

want to pick between Donald Trump

33:57

or Joe Biden as people who are just they're simply

33:59

not paying attention. They don't you get why

34:01

this isn't a hard choice. It's very very easy to choose

34:04

between Joe Biden and Donald Trump, don't

34:06

you see? They're so very

34:08

different, And.

34:09

A huge portion of the Democratic electorate

34:12

disagrees. And we had elections

34:14

last night that showed that we had

34:16

polling going into those elections that showed

34:19

that it was going to be ugly for Democrats.

34:21

So we can put up this piece from

34:24

my colleague Prem Talker over at

34:26

the Intercept.

34:27

I checked.

34:28

People should go check this one out, but the

34:30

headline here so you can find it. One in five Wisconsin

34:32

Democrats said Gaza war will impact

34:35

their primary vote in that he has

34:37

an amazing cross tab of a

34:39

poll. I've never seen anything like it.

34:42

It said voters under

34:45

twenty nine supported

34:48

an immediate and permanent

34:51

ceasefire by what one hundred percent?

34:54

I had to double check that one

34:57

because I've never seen it. Not that I doubt that that's

34:59

true, but I've ever seen it, Like you.

35:00

Said, I've never seen anything like that, not even a one, not

35:03

sure, like just one hundred, one

35:05

hundred percent.

35:06

And so so last night, if we

35:08

can jump to although.

35:09

By the way, that poll was commissioned by listening

35:11

to Wisconsin. As the intercept story notes, it's a campaign

35:13

to mobilized protest votes during the battleground

35:15

states primary in order to push the White House to change

35:18

course. The other thing the Intercept story

35:20

notes is that in twenty twenty, Biden one was

35:22

constant by some twenty thousand votes,

35:25

which is actually a smaller margin

35:27

than Trump won by in twenty sixteen.

35:29

Right, And so if we can actually control them, jump

35:31

to jump to B five. With

35:34

a decent amount of the vote reporting,

35:37

last night, it looked like that

35:40

the uninstructed vote was going to at

35:43

least hit thirty thousand, which,

35:45

as you said, is fifty percent more than

35:48

the entire margin by which Biden

35:50

beat Trump in twenty twenty. Now

35:53

that fuller results are in, it's

35:55

much closer to fifty thousand people

35:58

came out and voted uninstructed.

36:01

So these are people who are paying enough

36:03

attention to know that if they vote

36:05

uninstructed.

36:06

This is what it means. That's

36:08

enough people to throw the election to

36:11

Trump. People who are screaming

36:14

warning.

36:15

And what the organizers have said here

36:17

is that despite all the heat that they're taking from

36:19

Democratic Party officials for what they're doing, most

36:23

of these folks might

36:26

you know, we're very close to lost

36:30

by what they're seeing Biden

36:32

do in Gaza. What this

36:34

is doing is giving them an opportunity to have their voice

36:36

heard one last time. And

36:39

I don't know if there's anything Biden can do at this

36:41

point to act on it,

36:44

but at least they're giving him a chance. They're saying,

36:46

look, we're still participating

36:49

in this process that is leading to

36:51

genocide at the moment, but we're still participating

36:53

it because we have some hope that our voice

36:55

is going to lend some power

36:59

to the that is fighting to end

37:01

this genocide.

37:03

You know, whether it.

37:04

Can happen between now and the election, I don't know, but you

37:07

know that it wasn't

37:09

just Wisconsin either. This is in the

37:11

context of new polling

37:13

showing Trump with a fairly

37:16

comfortable lead in six of seven

37:19

swing states, So it's not as if Biden

37:22

is sitting on a comfortable margin where

37:24

he can say, you know what, fifty thousand

37:26

people in Wisconsin can go pound sand

37:29

right.

37:29

And that's where to your point, you know, whether or

37:31

not Hillary Clinton agrees on the sort

37:33

of definitional question of genocide

37:36

or Joe Biden agrees on that question, they

37:40

are actually hurting their chances

37:42

by again Hillary Clinton going out there and being

37:44

incredibly flippant about how

37:46

people don't understand, they're

37:49

not paying attention. It's not a

37:51

hard choice. Since twenty sixteen,

37:53

that has been exactly what has screwed

37:55

Democrats over and over again in some of these

37:58

close competitions. That's exactly

38:00

the wrong way to treat voters who do

38:02

feel and for some genuine, intellectually

38:05

defensible reasons, that the choice

38:07

is absolutely a difficult

38:10

one between Trump

38:12

and Biden, between Trump Biden, RFK Junior,

38:14

or between just not voting. So

38:17

to treat people like their concerns

38:19

aren't serious is how you alienate

38:22

them further and further. And it's something that Democrats

38:24

have been doing for almost a decade now.

38:26

On that Trump question in particular, that Hillary Clinton

38:29

once again brought up about how, yeah, he's just he's

38:31

so unhinged.

38:32

Well, people think that about Joe Biden too.

38:34

For what it's worth, that Trump

38:36

might be temperamentally transparently

38:40

more of a mad man, but that Joe

38:42

Biden policy wise acts

38:44

just as much, if not more, like

38:46

a mad man. And that's a perfectly intellectually

38:49

defensible position. She could have a

38:51

long, interesting conversation with someone about

38:53

it, but instead, when she's in public, she's just saying.

38:55

Nope, you're not paying attention.

38:57

You're too dumb, You're too dumb and lazy to

39:00

figure this one out. It's just idiotic

39:03

as a strategy, and it's going to make things much

39:05

much worse for them.

39:07

And in New York, the

39:09

organizers were pushing people to do a blank ballot.

39:11

Probably a bunch of people watching this did

39:13

that. We don't have final

39:16

results on that.

39:16

New York takes several years to

39:19

count its votes.

39:20

So the traditional year's long vote count.

39:22

Yeah, we'll know by twenty twenty nine.

39:25

You know how that went yesterday.

39:27

But let's talk about two interesting,

39:30

actual non symbolic elections. One

39:33

we'll get get Let's let's get to the Zuckerberg one

39:35

in a second. But first, you did you see

39:37

the one in where Milwaukee

39:39

and the surrounding area was asked if they wanted

39:41

to spend hundreds of millions of more

39:43

dollars on education. Tell

39:46

us about this, right they won? Yeah,

39:48

I mean it's looking like it's gonna win. Right, It's like fifty

39:50

to fifty one percent right now.

39:51

I don't think we can. I don't think we can call

39:53

it yet.

39:55

But basically it asked, you

39:57

know, for the purpose of, you

39:59

know, maintaining high teacher quality,

40:02

arts, sciences.

40:05

Et cetera.

40:06

Are we do, you know, can the

40:09

Milwaukee and the surrounding area kind of bust

40:11

its budget and spend more on

40:15

education?

40:15

Fifty one to forty nine is the number as

40:17

of right now.

40:18

Team J four pretty solid at

40:21

this point.

40:21

Yeah, they'll pay two hundred and sixteen

40:24

dollars more in taxes for every one hundred

40:26

thousand dollars of their homes value.

40:29

That's Milwaukee Public Schools. Milwaukee Public Schools

40:31

as a Team J four story rightfully notes it's

40:33

facing a two hundred million dollar budget deficit

40:36

for the next school year. That school

40:38

district is an abject

40:40

disaster. I'm not from Milwaukee. I'm

40:42

from outside of Milwaukee, but just about

40:44

everybody can acknowledge the deep, deep

40:46

problems in Milwaukee Public schools. Milwaukee in

40:49

general is not in a great place right

40:51

now, and Milwaukee Public schools are suffering

40:53

enormously. Obviously, there's some real

40:55

fallout from the pandemic in terms of learning.

40:58

That increasingly is obvious.

41:02

Ryan and I could probably debate the question of what teachers

41:04

unions have done to Milwaukee Public schools.

41:06

I'm sure we disagree on that, but it's

41:08

another really, I mean serious,

41:11

The school district isn't a world of hurt,

41:13

so it's not party surprise, right.

41:15

Money alone doesn't solve the

41:17

problems, but taking money, taking

41:19

significant amounts of money away certainly doesn't

41:21

help.

41:22

You'd see where I mean, it's obviously

41:24

close, but you can certainly see where people

41:26

were favorable to it. And interestingly enough,

41:29

Wisconsin as a whole, not just Milwaukee,

41:31

but the state as a whole approved

41:33

Question one last night.

41:35

We just we just had that one up, so we can put question

41:37

one back up.

41:38

So, yeah, question is amendment

41:40

that stipulates quote, private donations

41:42

and grants may not be applied for, accepted,

41:44

expended, or used in connection with the conduct

41:47

of any primary election or referendum.

41:49

Question two, which also again you

41:51

can see Question one, you

41:53

can see. The Milwaukee area, which voted on the MPs

41:56

question voted against question

41:59

one, but ustion two is that

42:01

it requires that quote only election officials

42:03

designated by law may perform tasks

42:05

in the conduct of primaries, elections, and referendums.

42:08

That one also passed.

42:10

And Ryan, I am really curious for your thoughts on this,

42:12

because I was trying to like the

42:14

election issue, even though my own publication

42:17

covers it really closely. For me, it always just

42:19

made my eyes kind of glaze over, And

42:22

it seems like it's one of those things that is owned

42:24

in many cases by like

42:27

outright crazy people are talking about

42:29

it all the time. You're just like calm

42:32

down, like it's just everyone relaxed

42:34

here. But when you dig into

42:36

what happened with Mark Zuckerberg's what's

42:38

the it's like CTCL the acronym

42:41

the group that he at least

42:43

ostensibly was founded to help

42:45

people vote during the pandemic. When you

42:47

look at what they did with that billion, those

42:49

billions of dollars, I

42:51

imagine if the Koch Brothers, at

42:54

the height of their sort of limited

42:56

government giving during the Tea Party

42:58

era, had done what Mark's Zuckerberg

43:00

did, or another like as Sheldon

43:02

Adelson er, now a Miriam Adelson had did

43:04

what Mark Zuckerberg did, if

43:07

she did that in twenty twenty four or twenty twenty

43:09

eight. For example, just in Wisconsin,

43:11

Mark Zuckerberg's group gave out thirty

43:13

one grants, twenty eight went to cities, Twenty

43:16

of those cities voted for Biden, and

43:18

only eight ultimately voted for Donald Trump.

43:20

So basically, he's flooding the zone with

43:23

money and with aid

43:25

to counties that are almost certainly

43:28

going to go for Biden, not like necessarily

43:30

swing counties, but overwhelmingly counties

43:32

that are going to go to Biden. And as

43:34

Katie Porter said cal about

43:37

her own race in the California Senate primary,

43:40

looks a whole lot like rigging an election

43:42

where you can just have billionaires flooding

43:44

the zone with money to swing

43:46

different districts. I don't like it. So

43:49

I thought this was actually fantastic. I

43:51

thought it was worded. Both questions were worded very

43:53

tightly. Ryan, What did you make of it?

43:55

I mean, I agree on the principle that the public

43:57

should be funding at elections,

43:59

not not private folks.

44:02

I don't have a whole lot of sympathy

44:05

for the tears of Republicans in Wisconsin

44:07

because you know, they jerrymannered,

44:09

they took over the state, they jerrymanner

44:12

the heck out of it, and then they

44:14

tried to basically defund the

44:16

election apparatus and make it really difficult

44:19

for people in Wisconsin

44:21

cities to vote. And then they're

44:24

like, hey, wait a minute, goes back. We're trying

44:26

to make it really hard for people in cities to vote. Now you're

44:28

coming in and making it easy again for

44:30

them to vote.

44:30

That's completely unfair.

44:32

So yeah, I agree the

44:35

public should finance elections,

44:39

but also kind of Republicans brought it

44:41

on themselves with their like

44:43

really really partisan gutting of

44:46

the election, of the election system, election

44:48

apparatus, and kind of it like

44:51

made space for somebody like a Zuckerberg to come

44:53

in and try to fix it.

44:55

So let's just let's just have.

44:57

Functional elections, Like we're

44:59

more than two hundred years into this democratic

45:02

experiment here, because in the United

45:04

States of America.

45:05

Let's let's just like in Brazil,

45:07

they know the.

45:07

Results by like nine pm every night,

45:10

well on an election night, and and

45:12

they're like and they're they're audited

45:14

they're checked like it's it's legit, like this

45:16

can be done.

45:17

Of course it can be done, but we're so Yeah, to

45:20

your point, we're so owned by private interests

45:22

that have co opted the system, whether

45:24

it's from the left or the right. And you know, I actually

45:26

think this is a great measure in and

45:28

of itself, just because it prevents

45:31

people from the left or from the right from doing this

45:33

in the future. Zuckerberg replicated what happened

45:35

not just in Wisconsin, but actually in some of

45:37

those swing states that we were showing are really really

45:39

tight races right now. So to

45:42

some extent, you know, if you're declaring, you know,

45:44

unlimited money and politics,

45:46

and you have the way that like the CTCL

45:48

operated, and you're saying, we're not going

45:50

to put any limits on that, and you can just sort of.

45:52

Do it, it could.

45:53

Happen in different ways than just what the CTCL

45:56

did. There could be different that

45:58

can be exploited. I mean, they really pioneered a new

46:00

method of kind of electioneering in twenty

46:03

twenty. So I think to your point,

46:05

yeah, it's there have to be dramatic

46:08

questions about how the elections are run

46:10

in this country.

46:10

Second, the second one, I don't know anything about it.

46:13

You can't have poll workers who are volunteers. Now, like

46:15

that feels that can't

46:17

be right.

46:18

Well, so it was about curating ballots,

46:21

and that's a kind of a different can of worms.

46:24

If you're sort of funding ballot curation.

46:26

Correct, is that when you go door to door and pick up ballots?

46:28

Yeah, for people?

46:30

Right, So if you're doing it, and you're allowing some

46:32

states allow volunteers to do it. Actually,

46:35

my boss Molly having Way wrote a great book

46:37

about this called Rigged, which a lot of people

46:39

would would look at and be like on the left, they woul look at them

46:41

and be like this is crazy, like blah blah.

46:43

You read the book.

46:44

There's basically been no substantive pushback

46:46

to it at all. It's super interesting, and

46:49

you see, yeah, some of these processes like ballat curation

46:51

that you heard nothing about in the media were

46:53

being funded in heavy dumb districts by

46:55

things like Zuckerberg and by people who are not election

46:58

officials that are volunteers. And

47:00

just if you're uncomfortable about

47:03

the process of somebody who's vote actually

47:05

making it to the counting position, or

47:08

even if you're not that book the book made me

47:10

personally very uncomfortable with the laws and

47:12

the way that it's run in some states. But Ryan partially

47:14

that's also the problem is like our system of government

47:17

and federalism means that we have a patchwork

47:19

collection laws based on different states

47:21

decisions to run their elections.

47:23

So it's just a blast.

47:28

Lena Kahn appeared on John Stewart's

47:31

show, The Daily Show.

47:33

Finally, she appeared on John

47:35

Stewart's show now that he's not at Apple,

47:37

which is what we're going to get into.

47:38

And so John Stewart revealed on during

47:40

this interview with Lena Cohn that Apple

47:43

had effectively blocked him from having her on.

47:46

Let's play a little bit of this this back

47:48

and forth with John Stuart Lena Khan.

47:50

It's already being

47:52

consolidated. Apple has

47:54

bought thirty AI

47:57

models. Microsoft is pride bout, Google

47:59

has bought They all buy AI

48:02

startups and put them behind their

48:05

paywell, and they're already having an arms

48:07

race to see who will

48:09

be either the monopoly

48:12

or this will be in oha. Godly, I

48:14

got to tell you I wanted to have you on

48:16

a podcast, and Apple

48:19

asked us not to do it.

48:21

To have you.

48:21

They literally said please don't

48:24

talk to her having

48:26

nothing to do with what you do for a living. I think they

48:28

just I

48:33

didn't think they cared for you, is what happened. They

48:37

wouldn't, they didn't, They wouldn't let us

48:39

do even that dumb thing we just did

48:41

in the first Act on AI, Like,

48:44

what is that sensitivity? Why

48:46

are they so afraid to even have

48:48

these conversations out in the public sphere.

48:51

I think it just shows one of the dangers

48:54

of what happens when you concentrate so

48:56

much power and so much decision

48:58

making in a small number of companies.

49:00

I mean, going back all the way to the founding,

49:03

there was a recognition that in the same way

49:05

that you need the Constitution to create

49:07

checks and balances in our political

49:09

sphere, you also needed the anti trust

49:11

and anti monopoly laws to safeguard

49:14

against concentration and economic power,

49:16

because you don't want an autocrat

49:18

of trade in the same way that you don't want

49:20

a monarch.

49:21

Apple disagrees, Yes, exactly

49:24

so. First of all, Lenakhon for President. Second

49:27

of all, Luther Lowe, you can

49:29

put this up here, point it out that

49:32

part of the DOJ's suit

49:34

against Apple says, quote Apple's

49:37

conduct extends beyond just monopoly

49:39

profits and even affects the flow of speech.

49:41

For example, Apple is rapidly

49:44

expanding its role as a TV and movie

49:46

producer and had exercised that role

49:48

to control content. This was filedbas

49:51

This was filed before they knew the

49:54

lengths to which they were going to

49:57

control what John Stewart was able

49:59

to put on his podcast, which he's talked about a little

50:01

bit since since.

50:03

Then in reference to China, right,

50:05

China.

50:06

And yeah and just yeah,

50:08

it sounds like anything that was encroaching on

50:10

their interests.

50:11

And I think it was Matt Stoler

50:13

obviously who made the point about you

50:15

know, here's here's John

50:17

Stewart on Paramount on Paramount Network

50:21

then saying what he couldn't do on Apple.

50:23

So you know, some might say, oh, this is this is

50:25

perfect competition. You see how it works.

50:28

But imagine if John Stewart wasn't John Stuart

50:31

would Paramount allow John's a

50:34

lesser known John Stewart who wanted to interview

50:36

Alena Khan to interview Alena.

50:37

Con I thought Paramount is for sale. There's

50:40

that I'm going to buy that Apple.

50:42

Yeah, it's a good question, but

50:44

I think there's There's also something even more

50:46

interesting, which is what happened

50:48

with Parlor in the App Store after

50:50

January sixth, is that in terms

50:52

of Apple monitoring and controlling speech,

50:55

the app Store is unquestionably to

50:57

do oppoly. That was hilarious,

51:00

I mean, arguably a monopoly. If you have an iPhone,

51:02

you have to use the app store.

51:03

January sixth was basically organized

51:05

on Facebook, Facebook

51:07

groups, and

51:11

afterwards, right there were

51:14

a couple of Parlor images that

51:16

circulated to a Facebook app

51:18

WhatsApp, which is just text messaging

51:21

in a band, text messaging. And

51:23

so yeah, then they just the Apple just

51:26

kicked kicked Trump, you know, they all kicked

51:28

Trump off their platforms, and then they kicked Parlor

51:31

off, which was hilarious

51:33

because a like I said, it was mostly organized

51:35

on Facebook, not Parlor Parlor

51:38

also, but

51:40

it was tiny.

51:41

Like it would have happened with or without Parlor.

51:42

But the other ironic part of kicking Parlor

51:45

out was that the entire argument

51:48

about cancel culture had

51:50

been that, Okay, look,

51:52

you got kicked off Facebook. You don't like it, go start your

51:55

own platform. Facebook's a private platform,

51:57

they make their own rules.

51:59

So some naive

52:02

folks.

52:02

You know, took them at their word, and we're like, Okay,

52:04

we will go build our own platform. You

52:07

don't you don't want us on yours, We'll go build our

52:09

own. And they're like, oh yeah, not like that. We're

52:12

nuking your entire platform. Yeah yeah,

52:15

not defending the people on Parlor or anything

52:17

like that.

52:18

That's not the point. You don't have to Yeah, the point.

52:20

The point is they were told to go create their own

52:22

platform if

52:24

they didn't like the rules of the other private platforms

52:26

and then were new anyway, and that.

52:28

Had nothing to do This is the point in the DOJ

52:30

suit. This is the point that Stoler makes, and this is

52:33

the point that Lena Khan is making that had nothing to do with

52:35

Apple's business. Apple didn't get

52:37

rid of Parlor for business reasons.

52:39

They might have thought it was good PR, better

52:41

pr than allowing Parlor to sit there

52:43

and get questions from Ben freaking Collins

52:45

over at NBC about how they're just you

52:48

know, fueling disinformation

52:50

because they allow a tiny app to remain on the

52:52

App Store. So maybe you

52:54

can make the argument I think it was.

52:55

For business reasons, because I think the

52:57

business reason was deflect attention

53:00

to face, defect, regulatory attention

53:02

away from Facebook and their own

53:04

platforms over to Parlor

53:07

so that we solve the problem.

53:08

I mean, there there's an argument,

53:10

but they're doing that ultimately. That's even that is rooted

53:12

in political reasons, I guess.

53:14

But once you're a monopoly, politics and business

53:17

are the same thing, exactly.

53:18

Yeah, And that's exactly the point that John

53:20

Stewart and Lina Kahn are making.

53:21

And Lena Khan.

53:23

Really, I'm sure we have

53:25

some listeners and viewers who are in

53:27

businesses where Lena Khan is like treated

53:29

as public enemy number one. If

53:32

you talk to people who work in those sectors, it

53:34

is the specter of Lena Khan. Khan

53:37

looms so large. There's fury

53:40

at Lena Khan and people who work in

53:42

like M and A businesses.

53:43

There exactly people who do the mergers,

53:45

the people who do the mergers, and the executives who

53:47

benefit benefit from the mergers hate

53:49

her.

53:50

But everybody else, even at.

53:52

Those companies, is better off because what

53:55

are those mergers lead to enormous amounts

53:57

of layoffs and then and then consolidation

53:59

of the company, which means workers

54:01

get treated worse and customers get treated

54:04

worse, and suppliers get treated worse.

54:05

And Lena Kon lays.

54:07

All this out in a really aerad way in

54:09

that interview with with John Stewart, and

54:12

it also hurts. It turns out shareholders

54:15

like shareholders, are noticing that

54:18

when these mergers are blocked by

54:21

either by Lenacon or by the specter of Lena

54:23

Khan, that both companies'

54:26

share prices go up and

54:28

there and there are so many cases of this that

54:31

that people are able to point to now

54:34

that it is becoming clear that, oh,

54:36

it turns out it is a collusion of executives

54:41

who are defrauding workers, customers,

54:46

suppliers and shareholders

54:48

and just hoarding wealth for themselves.

54:50

There was an amazing sort

54:53

of green light for M and A during the Obama

54:55

administration the Trump administration, especially

54:57

in taking media, and man,

55:00

is it amazing how sensitive

55:04

people in those positions have been about It's

55:06

not amazing.

55:07

I mean, two of my job was to do mergers.

55:09

I would probably not like Lena Khan. On the other

55:11

hand, she's making a lot

55:13

of defense business for you.

55:15

And people might wonder, people might

55:17

wonder, you know, what, hey, why is it? Why

55:19

is Lena Khan's interview on John Stewart

55:21

like Newsworthy, Well, Lena Kahn's

55:23

tenure at the FTC has

55:26

had pretty sweeping consequences on the economy,

55:29

and that's why they're so sensitive about it, obviously,

55:31

but the pendulum swinging back and

55:34

sort of having a chilling effect on M

55:36

and A. There are people who

55:39

hate big tech on the right whose

55:41

offices on Capitol Hill are

55:43

super opposed to Lena Kahn. This is

55:46

one of the things we didn't have enough time to get

55:48

to with Ted Cruz back in the

55:50

holiday season, because he wrote a book

55:52

basically about about tech, why

55:54

big Tech. There were a lot of parts in the book about

55:56

why big tech is bad and overly

55:58

consolidated. Ted Cruise is a huge opponent of

56:00

Lena Khan because from a limited government

56:03

perspective, the FTC.

56:05

I mean, I think a lot of like hardcore conservatis would

56:07

just.

56:07

Get rid of the FTC.

56:08

But the FTC is, you know, very

56:11

very much a sort of encroaching

56:13

regulator. And you can quibble

56:16

around the edges with what Lena Khan has done,

56:18

but ultimately, if you're worried about consolidation

56:20

and big tech in baby formula and meat

56:24

packing and all of these different price

56:26

problems that consumers are having. I

56:28

find it very difficult to make the argument that

56:31

in the big picture, Lena Khan is

56:33

a net negative. I think that's basically insane.

56:35

I think the effect that she has had

56:38

is clearly in that positive, even if from a

56:40

conservative perspective you can quibble with some

56:42

of the regulatory approaches.

56:43

Yeah, and Cruz has flirted with supporting

56:45

her in different ways in the past,

56:47

and if he has recovered from his last interview

56:49

here, he's welcome to come back on

56:51

the program.

56:52

I think I don't think you had a problem with that interview.

56:55

It was their shilling books and

56:57

podcast.

56:57

Who who would ever show books

57:00

aggressively? Not you, Ryan, not me.

57:03

The ladies of the view have some

57:05

thoughts on whether or not they're better

57:08

off than they were four years ago, whether you were better

57:10

off four years ago. A

57:12

viewer of this program flagged

57:15

this for us and it was like, I think you guys will enjoy

57:18

this one. So let's roll a little bit

57:20

of this clip. Want to get Emily's reaction

57:22

to this.

57:23

I think the Democrats need to do more

57:27

in getting the message out that yes,

57:29

we actually are better off right now

57:31

because of all of the things that Biden has done.

57:34

But I will say this.

57:35

You know, while Trump.

57:36

May have you know, came

57:39

up with this operation warp Speed,

57:41

which I don't know why he came up

57:43

with that term. I do

57:45

believe that he is responsible for mishandling

57:48

the pandemic so much that

57:51

million, over a million Americans

57:53

died, including.

57:54

My in laws.

57:55

And it is in large part because he had

57:57

his son in law, who shouldn't have been in the White House

57:59

in the first place, handling the response

58:02

someone with absolutely no medical experience,

58:06

and the one person, doctor Fauci, who

58:09

you think very highly of and he thinks very highly

58:11

of you, was basically silenced by the White

58:13

House.

58:13

I know we all vividly do every picture

58:15

in a mask, from work to school

58:18

to not being able to see family. My parents don't

58:20

live nearby. I can't fly. I mean, you couldn't go on

58:22

trips, and not trips like for fun,

58:25

I just mean literally to get to people you love.

58:28

It was isolating, depressing. So

58:31

I laughed that someone didn't catch that part

58:33

when they said we're going to go out and ask people

58:35

how were you four years ago?

58:37

That is the time my brain is trying to completely

58:40

block out, like I'm.

58:41

Going to have better reproductive health rights.

58:43

Yes, listen, as black

58:46

people, we were not in

58:49

this insanity of trying to

58:51

figure out why our history

58:53

is no longer welcome in the

58:56

educational system.

58:57

For the record, four years ago, bro hadn't

58:59

been overturned yet, although the judges

59:01

put in place would be and abortions

59:03

actually have gone up.

59:05

We did make two good points, uh

59:07

that you know, four years ago a Roby Wade

59:09

was still a long land and

59:13

we didn't have this this

59:15

this bizarre backlash with the books

59:17

and the like in Florida,

59:20

Like you've got these permission slips, where is

59:23

it okay for your children to be read a book

59:25

by a black author?

59:26

Stuff like that.

59:26

And there's also like clear pornography

59:29

in some of those libraries that.

59:30

Was there four years ago.

59:31

That's true.

59:32

That true.

59:33

What did Donald Trump do about the porno seem

59:36

probably.

59:37

Not just

59:39

fine? So I thought she made some some

59:41

good points on on that one.

59:43

But I think I think the the

59:45

Democrats effort to

59:48

to do this four years ago thing ah

59:51

and point to the pandemic as a gotcha isn't

59:54

quite gonna work because of, like I think significantly

59:57

because of people's amnesia, like

59:59

will Full amnesia, like they want to forget

1:00:02

what that was like April twenty

1:00:04

twenty, Yes, horrible, like and they as

1:00:06

they talk about that program, people couldn't find paper,

1:00:08

towels, toilet paper, like basic they

1:00:11

were there, people like the people

1:00:13

were dying, people were

1:00:15

scared for their lives. Everybody

1:00:18

was getting hammered by like two in the afternoon.

1:00:21

Which is fun for like a few days, but then after

1:00:23

a while, it's like like if you look at if you look

1:00:25

at alcohol consumption, like it's

1:00:27

still up rights the data, right, I

1:00:30

didn't know that it was.

1:00:31

It was still up yeah, related the massive

1:00:33

spike.

1:00:34

Yeah, over the last five years, it's still up really high.

1:00:37

Makes sense. It's a bitual, habit forming

1:00:39

type of thing.

1:00:40

Well, and you're talking about a different amnesia than

1:00:42

I think the Biden campaign is talking about. So that's

1:00:44

this whole segment was in response to s both

1:00:46

the Trump and Biden campaigns sparring on this

1:00:49

reaganary question of ask yourself where

1:00:51

you better off four years ago? Because

1:00:54

and there's polling data, we can put D two up

1:00:56

on the screen here. This is a

1:00:58

Fox News poll from just economic

1:01:01

conditions you personally, sixty

1:01:03

four percent of people said negative.

1:01:05

Only thirty six percent said their economic

1:01:08

conditions personally were positive. And

1:01:10

that's even higher when you ask about the country as a whole. We can

1:01:13

move to the next element here. Yeah,

1:01:15

December, have you been helped by President Biden's

1:01:17

economic policies? Once again? In December, only

1:01:21

seventeen percent said they've been helped thirty

1:01:24

eight Oh, this is December twenty twenty one. Now,

1:01:26

last December, forty six percent of people

1:01:28

said they've been hurt by President Biden's economic

1:01:30

policies.

1:01:30

Only fourteen percent said they've been hurt.

1:01:32

Now a Fox News poll actually from

1:01:34

just a couple weeks ago, so March twenty

1:01:36

second to twenty second to twenty

1:01:39

fifth, over half of voters

1:01:41

they asked directly, are you worse

1:01:43

off than you were in twenty twenty? Are

1:01:46

you better or worse off financially? Was the exact

1:01:48

question people were asked. This is a registered

1:01:50

voters, and only

1:01:53

about one in five voters Foxting's reported today

1:01:55

answered yes. According to their latest survey,

1:01:57

just twenty two percent said that they're better off than four

1:01:59

years go. Well more than twice that many. Fifty

1:02:02

two percent say they are worse off.

1:02:04

So when you put that question to actual voters,

1:02:07

not the multimillionaire hosts

1:02:09

of the view. The results are totally different,

1:02:11

and the view was sort of conflating

1:02:14

the pandemic and all of the other kind

1:02:16

of cultural issues. The Biden administration,

1:02:18

I think, is sort of doing the same. I

1:02:21

think COVID amnesia, I agree with, is totally

1:02:23

real. On the other hand, while the

1:02:25

rate of inflation may be slowing, inflation

1:02:28

on some of those prices in and of itself

1:02:31

is still higher than it was four years ago. So

1:02:33

I know the Biden administration and I think

1:02:36

they're not wrong about

1:02:38

people having some amnesia

1:02:40

about the early days of the pandemic. Trump's mismanagement

1:02:42

of the pandemic most COVID does, I

1:02:44

believe, actually occurred during the Biden administration, although

1:02:47

they would argue that that was set up

1:02:49

by mismanagement during the Trump administration.

1:02:51

I think most voters, though, aren't.

1:02:54

They don't have COVID in mind. They don't want to think about

1:02:56

COVID. To your point, they're voting on

1:02:58

their financial situation, right.

1:03:01

And to the extent they're looking around

1:03:04

the world too. Trump

1:03:07

was creating kind of an international incident

1:03:09

every other day and size and

1:03:12

yeah, and leaving people, you know, nervous

1:03:14

that he's going to like accidentally get into nuclear

1:03:17

war with North Korea, which currently which

1:03:20

apparently gain pretty close to happening, but

1:03:23

Biden is in you know, too hot actual

1:03:26

wars in Gahza and in

1:03:28

Ukraine. But yes, the economic

1:03:31

question is is is what people.

1:03:33

Are thinking of? And I think it just goes back

1:03:35

to housing and rent.

1:03:38

Housing and rent is unaffordable and

1:03:41

basically food prices went

1:03:43

up significantly in twenty twenty one and two

1:03:46

have that has moderated and now

1:03:48

wages are generally outpacing

1:03:51

the growth of inflation. Where

1:03:53

it's it's although it's getting close again now, but

1:03:56

it hasn't. It hasn't gone on long enough so that

1:03:58

you're better off, so that basically

1:04:01

you're further behind today than

1:04:03

you were four years ago. To me, the

1:04:06

tragedy of that from a

1:04:08

political perspective is that the

1:04:11

US did better than any

1:04:13

other country around the world and getting out of the

1:04:15

COVID recession and getting out of that all

1:04:18

with the American Rescue Plan and the

1:04:21

ira you know, we

1:04:23

went from a potential depression

1:04:26

to the economy surging.

1:04:29

The cost

1:04:32

was driven primarily by

1:04:35

you know, supply chain, you know, interruptions

1:04:38

from COVID and from the

1:04:41

from corporations recognizing that they had

1:04:43

an opportunity to raise prices. And

1:04:46

we were pointing that out at the time and called conspiracy

1:04:48

theorists, but it happened. But

1:04:52

the downstream effect on people is

1:04:54

the same, Like, prices are up and

1:04:57

Biden's president, and so they're

1:04:59

going to link those to My fear is that the

1:05:01

next time that we

1:05:03

face a recession or depression like situation,

1:05:06

that you're gonna have politicians like, wow, we didn't get any credit

1:05:08

for that, and there was some inflation associated

1:05:10

with our response.

1:05:11

So just let it burn and see what happens.

1:05:14

Yeah, I mean, that's certainly possible. And

1:05:16

the thing I want to add there a couple of different quotes

1:05:19

on a Navarro at one point during that segment

1:05:21

said, you know, now she's back to playing words

1:05:23

with friends, but during the Trump administration she

1:05:26

was getting death threats.

1:05:27

So she just again this was in the.

1:05:29

Context you can do both today, you can do.

1:05:31

Both, amazing, but she was

1:05:33

this is in the context of her talking

1:05:35

about voters like your average

1:05:37

voter and like that there's

1:05:39

any resonance between on

1:05:42

a Navarro's.

1:05:43

Experience during the Trump administration.

1:05:45

Where she just didn't have what like the psychological

1:05:49

comfort to play words with friends, but now she

1:05:51

feels comfortable playing words with friends. The idea that

1:05:53

she thinks that's resonant with other

1:05:56

people in the country, I think.

1:05:57

It's I think there's tens of millions of people

1:05:59

are well a, they were terrified during the pandemic

1:06:01

generally, but are terrified of Trump.

1:06:04

No, I think people are genuinely terrified of Trump. I

1:06:07

don't disagree with that. And you know, there's

1:06:10

obviously something to the

1:06:12

argument that the chaos in

1:06:14

the Trump administration that

1:06:17

was in some ways fieled by the media, but in many

1:06:19

ways feel directly by Donald Trump made

1:06:21

people uneasy. But Ann

1:06:23

Navarro saying that she's back to playing words with

1:06:25

friends because Biden as president kind

1:06:28

of for the reasons that we talked about in the Hillary

1:06:30

Clinton block. I mean, maybe there's some

1:06:32

wine moms around the country with whom that resonates,

1:06:35

but I think a lot of people are like

1:06:37

actually just as scared now under

1:06:39

Biden, maybe because of the hot wars,

1:06:41

maybe because they feel what's happening in Israel

1:06:44

amounts to ethnic

1:06:46

or what's happening in Gaza amounts to ethnic cleansing.

1:06:48

Maybe because they're terrified about the war in Ukraine,

1:06:51

dragging American troops ultimately into it, or

1:06:53

maybe because.

1:06:56

Respond to the Israel striking its

1:06:58

consulate Damascus.

1:06:59

Or maybe because these pocketbook issues, and

1:07:02

you know, also could possibly be because

1:07:04

of abortion access, abortion

1:07:07

lights, which.

1:07:08

Biden is going to drive so many peoples.

1:07:10

Yeah, agree, agree. And the other one

1:07:12

I wanted to highlight was Sarah Haynes saying

1:07:15

basically that a recovery. She said,

1:07:17

at one point, you're not going to feel

1:07:19

the recovery after the Great Depression. It took eleven

1:07:22

years. Not

1:07:24

super comforting to voters in the

1:07:26

moment, of course, although.

1:07:28

That was thanks to Obama like tightening the belt

1:07:30

and the Tea Party insisting, you know, taking

1:07:32

over in twenty ten.

1:07:33

Oh. She said, great Depression, not recession.

1:07:34

Oh, great depressions.

1:07:35

Okay, Yeah, And then will By Goilberg

1:07:38

said, if you were coming from another country, you were

1:07:40

not welcome during the Trump administration.

1:07:43

I don't think that's how most people are voting when it

1:07:45

comes to the border this time around.

1:07:48

Yeah, certain, Yeah, a new NPR poll, then we'll

1:07:50

move on, a new MPR poll.

1:07:51

Marist poll came out this morning and

1:07:54

found that yes, the top top far

1:07:56

and away issue for Republican voters

1:07:58

was immigration and surging

1:08:01

within the po although and that poll, by the way,

1:08:03

had Biden up two and

1:08:05

when you put this nationally and

1:08:08

then when you included RFK Junior and Cornell

1:08:11

West and others, he maintained his two point

1:08:13

lead.

1:08:14

So despite the fact that you've

1:08:16

got this.

1:08:16

Wall Street Journal polls showing him Trump up

1:08:19

in six of seven swing states, you also have this NPR

1:08:21

Marris poll showing Biden up by two.

1:08:23

Nobody likes either of these people.

1:08:25

The NPR poll found that people

1:08:27

disliked Trump more than they disliked Biden.

1:08:31

But also polls are consistently

1:08:33

showing that people

1:08:35

don't think Biden is up to it.

1:08:37

Yeah, well there's that too.

1:08:38

We didn't even get to that by thirty points or

1:08:40

so.

1:08:40

Another reason people perry Trump how pathetic is

1:08:42

that your your opponent

1:08:45

is Trump, and the question is he was

1:08:47

more fit to be president and you're losing

1:08:49

it by double digits.

1:08:50

And that's another reason to the words with Friends,

1:08:52

the silly words with friends point. I actually think that's another reason

1:08:54

that people are super uneasy when there's all of these

1:08:57

clips of the leader of the free world, an office

1:08:59

that you maybe they felt until Trump

1:09:01

came with at least some dignity. And we can go

1:09:03

back and argue, you know, who initially soiled the dignity

1:09:05

of.

1:09:06

The presidential office.

1:09:07

But you know, at least until Trump, people

1:09:09

felt like, you know, this was a sort of sacred space.

1:09:12

But now Joe Biden's in, they're like slurring his words

1:09:15

and mixing up everyone every other day.

1:09:17

That makes people really uneasy too, in the same way

1:09:20

that Trump tweeting about the size of his nuclear button made

1:09:22

people uneasy. So yeah, yeah, I mean, I

1:09:24

think they're they're so ardently in

1:09:26

Biden's corner, partisan lee in Biden's

1:09:28

corner that it's a bubble. Not

1:09:30

that it's surprising to anyone that the view

1:09:33

is a bubble, but and.

1:09:34

The answer that question would have to be James Madison, right,

1:09:37

you think James Madison. I mean, the

1:09:39

guy like basically eliminated the

1:09:41

government. Hell yeah, put together

1:09:43

a little tiny militia uh

1:09:46

so far that then got whooped by the British

1:09:48

and had the Oval office burned.

1:09:50

Yeah, that's true, that's true.

1:09:51

That's sullying. Sully the Oval Office.

1:09:53

Under Trump, the capital sort of was sacked.

1:09:56

I don't I don't understand how this small government

1:09:59

like limited Ryan ever,

1:10:01

limited government ideology like

1:10:04

survived the burning

1:10:06

of the White House.

1:10:07

You couldn't eat.

1:10:08

That's how you limit the government.

1:10:09

The British Ate literally

1:10:12

ate his dinner. His dinner

1:10:14

was hot on a plate in the White House. They

1:10:16

ate it.

1:10:19

Speaking of the sacred dignity of

1:10:21

our offices. Dallas

1:10:24

Airport, facing the legacy

1:10:26

of John Foster Dallas is now coming under target

1:10:28

for bro Trump Republicans who have introduced

1:10:31

legislation Ryan to rename

1:10:34

Dallas Airport named for John Foster Dallas

1:10:37

under to Donald Trump. And as you

1:10:39

point out, this would be meaning

1:10:41

that the two major Washington area airports

1:10:44

would be Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport

1:10:46

and then Donald Trump

1:10:49

Donald J. Trump Donald J. Trump Airport

1:10:51

DJT J. Yeah,

1:10:53

you're going from JFK to DJT. So

1:10:56

clearly Ryan's already in favor of this. You ran a

1:10:58

Twitter pool.

1:10:59

Yes, let's see, how are the how are the results

1:11:01

looking?

1:11:01

We can put this up so, uh, you

1:11:05

have to get rid of that thirty percent.

1:11:06

So we've got to do a little math here.

1:11:08

Basically, five to one or six

1:11:10

to one. My followers said,

1:11:13

uh, that Trump that

1:11:16

the Dullest Brothers have done more harm to the

1:11:18

world than Trump. Now, in

1:11:20

Trump's defense, the Dulls

1:11:23

Brothers had a little more time to do

1:11:25

to do all of this harm. Emily

1:11:28

was telling us before the show started. Your mom just

1:11:30

read the finished reading the Brothers

1:11:32

book.

1:11:33

Everybody read The Brothers.

1:11:34

If you haven't read, if you haven't read

1:11:36

The Brothers like great book.

1:11:38

It's it's it's incredible.

1:11:40

You can, you know, add on to that Jakarta

1:11:43

method, which I think pairs really

1:11:45

well with it, which which brings in Indonesia.

1:11:47

But yeah, I mean, should we do some of the should

1:11:50

we do some of the Dullest Brother's greatest

1:11:52

hits?

1:11:52

I mean it's hard to find don't have time.

1:11:54

Yeah, it's hard to find somewhere that they that

1:11:56

they didn't send the world spiraling in a more

1:11:58

chaotic direction. But everywhere from

1:12:01

overthrowing you know, so

1:12:03

overthrowing our benz in in Guatemala

1:12:06

and overthrowing the

1:12:10

Shawn in Iran. Uh,

1:12:13

which in a pretty direct link

1:12:16

led.

1:12:16

To nine to eleven.

1:12:17

I've I've got a piece of at the Huffington Post that

1:12:20

I have read that will explain how you

1:12:23

can you can draw a really direct line from

1:12:26

from that to there. Then uh

1:12:28

uh, then you've got La Mumba

1:12:32

in Congo.

1:12:33

We did a whole long interview on that.

1:12:36

Carno and uh Indonesia.

1:12:39

But but then also just setting the stage

1:12:42

for this interventionist kind

1:12:44

of coup regime attempt.

1:12:46

Now, one

1:12:48

thing I would add is that what what Trump

1:12:50

doesn't get enough credit

1:12:52

or discredit for, depending on how you feel, is his

1:12:55

his interventionist policy in Central and South

1:12:57

America during his his tenure. And

1:13:00

we should we should, I don't. I don't know if anybody's

1:13:02

you know, fully put this all together. But

1:13:05

you know, Trump talks

1:13:08

a big game of isolationism, but

1:13:10

was surrounding himself with

1:13:12

kind of the most interventionist John Bolton

1:13:15

types that that kind of

1:13:18

haunted the Reagan White you

1:13:20

know, Reagan era Republicans and still

1:13:22

haunted Republican Party today even

1:13:24

like the so you know, they tried

1:13:26

to overthrow uh

1:13:29

Medora and Venezuela. They they did overthrow

1:13:32

Morales for a while in Bolivia before he

1:13:34

came back into power. Uh they basically

1:13:37

overthrew Correa in

1:13:40

in Ecuador, but all, all of these are much more

1:13:42

complicated for the most part, uh

1:13:45

than the kind of military backed

1:13:47

coups that the Dulles.

1:13:48

Brothers would do. What what the US.

1:13:50

Really learned is that this

1:13:53

this kinetic kind of overt

1:13:57

you know, killing a prime minister or a

1:13:59

president and putting in a new one just

1:14:01

clashed you know, too

1:14:04

squarely and fundamentally and hypocritically

1:14:06

with American values that they had to find a

1:14:08

less kinetic way to do it. And so

1:14:10

the Bolivia example is a good one, where they they

1:14:13

basically rigged the election and then put people

1:14:15

into the streets and then take power by kind

1:14:17

of kind of streetforce used,

1:14:20

you know, using kind of propaganda everats in Ecuador,

1:14:24

you know, a similar way, they kind of flipped the

1:14:27

guy that followed Korea and then they create

1:14:29

this alliance of narco traffickers and

1:14:31

right wingers in Brazil, similar

1:14:34

situation, Well.

1:14:35

It's basically happening right now in Haiti, I mean, the Biden

1:14:37

administration.

1:14:38

Like we've covered this for.

1:14:39

A couple of years, the way that they

1:14:41

manipulated the Haitian government

1:14:44

while publicly pushing it to be democratic,

1:14:47

et cetera, et cetera. But basically backed

1:14:50

the government on re because

1:14:52

they wanted them to accept migrant flights.

1:14:54

And port of Prince Yeah, exactly.

1:14:56

And then of course Trump and Cuba, which

1:14:59

Biden administration has completely continued

1:15:02

Trump's Trump's Cuba policy. So

1:15:05

I think it's interesting

1:15:07

that the Dulles brothers, if they came back

1:15:09

to life and

1:15:11

were brought to Langley and we're told

1:15:14

the God to see your briefing, as they would be entitled

1:15:16

to about you know what the Trump

1:15:18

administration did to make sure that it's favored

1:15:20

governments either got into power

1:15:22

or remained in power throughout Central and South

1:15:25

America.

1:15:25

I think they would be very impressed and.

1:15:27

Say, Okay, I'm glad to see that you guys are carrying

1:15:29

on the tradition and in a more sophisticated way, so

1:15:31

sophisticated.

1:15:32

Trump probably doesn't even know about half of it. I

1:15:34

think that's true and care about it. The point, but you

1:15:36

be fine with it.

1:15:37

The point that was with me is it's completely bipartisan.

1:15:40

This is is a tradition that was carried on

1:15:42

by certainly the Obama administration, the Clinton

1:15:44

administration. There's some you can have arguments

1:15:46

about the Carter administration, but John Foster Dulles.

1:15:49

The airport is named after the Secretary

1:15:51

of State throughout the in the Eisenhower

1:15:53

administration basically, and he

1:15:55

passed away in nineteen fifty nine. This dedication was

1:15:57

in nineteen sixty two, right after

1:16:00

I think Alan Dallas had been pushed out in

1:16:02

nineteen sixty one, after Kennedy

1:16:04

was furious with the Bay

1:16:06

of Pigs, which had been engineered

1:16:09

before he took office by the

1:16:11

Dallas brothers and by that sort

1:16:14

of early CIA establishment

1:16:16

that continues to the mentality,

1:16:18

the ideology continues to have major influence

1:16:21

over our foreign policy today. Tucker

1:16:23

Carlson made such an interesting point recently

1:16:25

that he's basically the more he's learned

1:16:28

about recent decades and Cold War history,

1:16:30

and to be fair to Cold

1:16:32

warriors, not ones

1:16:34

that were in the government, but you know, Cold War activists

1:16:37

and voters. Over the last half

1:16:40

a century, we are learning a

1:16:42

lot of new reporting about what was happening

1:16:44

just in the last ten twenty years. I mean Devil's

1:16:47

Chess Board by David

1:16:49

Talbot. A lot of that is like new reporting.

1:16:51

That book came out what in twenty nineteen, A Marria a

1:16:53

couple.

1:16:53

Of years ago. Yeah, there's a couple of years more than that.

1:16:55

Yeah, So, I mean, obviously people knew what was happening

1:16:57

with the Contrast because Congress ban funding of it

1:17:00

at the time. But still some

1:17:02

of this information about different coups, we're

1:17:04

just getting it now, like we're only now getting

1:17:06

declassified stuff. We're only now getting people to admit,

1:17:09

you know, basically what happened. So

1:17:11

as more new information comes up, perhaps these

1:17:14

remarks from John F. Kennedy at

1:17:16

the dedication where

1:17:18

he even mentions Alan Dalles I think he was

1:17:21

there, He says, I want to say how appropriate it is

1:17:23

that this should be named after Secretary Dallas. He was a

1:17:25

member of an extraordinary family's brother Alan Dallas,

1:17:27

who served in a great many administrations, stretching

1:17:29

back, I believe to President Hoover all the way to this

1:17:31

one. Kennedy had basically just pushed Alan Dallas

1:17:33

out of office. John Foster Dallas, who had the

1:17:35

age of nineteen, was rather strangely the

1:17:37

secretary to the Chinese delegation to the

1:17:39

Hague, and who served nearly every presidential

1:17:42

administration from that time forward to his death in nineteen

1:17:44

fifty nine. Also served, of course, the

1:17:46

clients of Sullivan and Cromwell where

1:17:49

he was in and out of So it's

1:17:51

just your point is a really apt

1:17:53

one that a lot of this is still continuing today,

1:17:55

the ideology, the mentality is still continuing

1:17:58

to this day, and I think

1:18:00

hearteningly a lot of people on the right who

1:18:03

used to dismiss this as a

1:18:05

hippie nonsense have come around

1:18:07

to it actually really being the excesses

1:18:09

of our shadow government.

1:18:11

Maybe the Eric Trump compromised Eric Trump

1:18:13

Airport.

1:18:13

The Eric Trump Airport. Well, so some

1:18:16

of the chief Deputy Whip, he's

1:18:18

a Republican from Pennsylvania, sort of the

1:18:20

southwestern corner of Pennsylvania's one who introduced

1:18:22

this. Co sponsors are Michael Wallas,

1:18:24

Andy Ogos guy

1:18:27

I don't know how to say his last name Russian Thalar okay,

1:18:30

but so also Paul Goser,

1:18:32

Troy nell Is, Chuck Fleischmann, red

1:18:34

state Republicans for the most part. So

1:18:36

I don't well, I don't think the Trump name is going

1:18:38

to catch on at Dallas.

1:18:40

May pick another one.

1:18:42

Everyone's ready to get rid of it.

1:18:43

I would hope that Democrats would be ready to get rid of the Dallas

1:18:46

name. So they just need to find somebody other than Trump

1:18:48

and Democrats probably go for.

1:18:49

It, are they though, because literally Biden

1:18:52

is doing like Dallas type conduct

1:18:54

in Haiti.

1:18:55

That's true, but yeah,

1:18:57

but it would it would.

1:18:59

It goes to kind of show

1:19:01

how sophisticated the new conduct is if

1:19:03

we can kind of publicly claim that

1:19:05

it's different, like we denounce our

1:19:08

past crimes against humanity

1:19:11

as a way of signaling that we don't we

1:19:14

don't commit those crimes anymore.

1:19:17

But we do.

1:19:18

Yeah, so at least publicly, right

1:19:20

exactly, All right, Ryan, you have some

1:19:22

interesting reporting on the race

1:19:25

in it's from a Maryland seat involving

1:19:27

Harry Dunn, a prominent figure

1:19:30

Capitol Police officer who's now running.

1:19:32

Yes, yes, indeed so apax

1:19:34

super pac has launched a major air

1:19:36

campaign to block a congressional candidate,

1:19:38

Harry Dunn, from winning a Democratic primary

1:19:41

in Maryland. And you've probably heard

1:19:43

of Harry Dunn. He's known for his work as a Capitol

1:19:45

Police officer. On January sixth, two

1:19:48

thousand and one, and he's become a hero within

1:19:50

Democratic Party circles for his testimony

1:19:52

before Congress and his regular media

1:19:54

appearances slamming Donald Trump

1:19:56

and warning of the threat to democracy. He

1:19:59

won a Congressional gold medal, and

1:20:01

even published a book called Standing

1:20:03

My Ground, A Capitol Police Officer's

1:20:06

Fight for Accountability and Good

1:20:08

Trouble. After January sixth, Here

1:20:10

he is on Jake Tapper's program announcing

1:20:13

his run for office.

1:20:14

At this moment, right now, I don't think

1:20:16

any of us have the luxury of sitting

1:20:18

back and waiting for somebody else to do something

1:20:21

else. You

1:20:23

do until there's nothing that can be

1:20:25

done. There's always something that can be done. And I

1:20:27

feel like my role as a Capitol Police

1:20:30

officer, I did all I could do to

1:20:33

meet this moment that we're in now, to fight, to try

1:20:35

to seek justice, accountability, defend democracy.

1:20:39

But now I'm stepping into a new role, and I think

1:20:41

that I'm up for the challenge to represent

1:20:43

the people of the third District of Maryland in.

1:20:45

A deep blue district.

1:20:46

For your typical Democratic voter, he's an

1:20:48

absolute dream of a candidate for

1:20:51

APAK. Apparently he's a nightmare

1:20:53

because they're on track to drop three

1:20:55

to four million dollars backing

1:20:58

his opponent, a standard issue Democratic

1:21:00

state senator named Sarah Elfreth.

1:21:03

She's one of more than a dozen local candidates running

1:21:05

for the seat vacated by Paul Sarbanes

1:21:08

and done until the past few days, was

1:21:10

considered the clear front runner. Dunn

1:21:12

has raised three point seven million dollars

1:21:15

so far, according to a campaign source. Of

1:21:17

that, two point seven million dollars

1:21:19

has been reported. Elfreth, meanwhile,

1:21:21

had raised roughly four hundred thousand dollars,

1:21:24

largely from high dollar donors, including

1:21:26

corporate packs. How much he raised in

1:21:28

the first quarter of twenty twenty four, though, has yet to

1:21:30

be announced. The irony for anybody

1:21:32

who knows Paul Sarbine's career is

1:21:34

that he dedicated his life to getting.

1:21:36

Big money out of politics.

1:21:38

Now, as he leaves Congress, a Democrat

1:21:41

hopes to take his seat with super pac money

1:21:44

largely coming from Republican supporters

1:21:46

of Israel. Elfreth appears

1:21:48

to have known, or at least hoped, the

1:21:51

super Pac support was coming. Her

1:21:53

campaign put on its website what's

1:21:55

known as a red box on March twenty

1:21:57

first. Now, redbox is a method

1:22:00

of coordinating without legally coordinating

1:22:02

with a superpack. Campaigns are

1:22:04

barred from directly coordinating with super packs,

1:22:06

but they get around the prohibition by

1:22:08

posting information publicly on a campaign

1:22:11

website. Typically inside a

1:22:13

red box that a super pack can

1:22:15

then use. If you need a primer on that,

1:22:17

go back and check out my twenty twenty one story

1:22:19

on the red box put out by Nina Turner's opponent

1:22:22

Chantel Brown, aimed at attracting pro

1:22:24

Israel money.

1:22:25

Hers worked too.

1:22:27

Eightpa's new ad on behalf of Elfred does

1:22:30

indeed rely heavily on information and

1:22:32

footage posted in her red

1:22:34

box. It focuses on her record supporting

1:22:37

abortion rights, quote the environment,

1:22:39

and quote our democracy, not

1:22:41

once mentioning Israel or any policy

1:22:43

related to the Middle East.

1:22:45

Here's their first ad surat.

1:22:46

Alfred gets things done.

1:22:48

In just five years, She's passed

1:22:51

eighty four bills like affordable

1:22:53

childcare, expanding prenatal care,

1:22:55

and enshrining abortion rights in the

1:22:57

Maryland Constitution.

1:22:59

Now Elpha is running to bring.

1:23:01

That same get things done approach to

1:23:03

Congress. With so much at stake, abortion

1:23:05

rights, the environment, our democracy,

1:23:08

we need a congresswoman who will deliver.

1:23:10

That's Democrats. Sarah alfrith UDP

1:23:13

is responsible for the content of this ad.

1:23:15

So Apax superpack is called United

1:23:17

Democracy Project, which refers to an

1:23:19

alliance between Israel which its backers

1:23:21

routinely refer to inaccurately as

1:23:24

the only democracy in the Middle East and

1:23:26

the United States. Harry Dunn,

1:23:28

of course, has organized his campaign to attract

1:23:30

support from Democrats nervous that

1:23:33

former President Donald Trump is a threat to

1:23:35

democracy.

1:23:36

Democrats have heavily criticized Apak.

1:23:38

For endorsing more than one hundred Republicans

1:23:40

who opposed certification of the twenty

1:23:43

twenty election, taking on a high profile

1:23:45

January sixth officer suggests Apak

1:23:48

has not been bothered by that criticism. UDP's

1:23:51

ad campaign costs nearly six hundred thousand

1:23:53

dollars last week. The primary is scheduled

1:23:55

for May fourteenth, with six weeks until

1:23:58

the election. The pace of spending suggests

1:24:00

Apak is willing to drop some four million

1:24:02

dollars to lift Elfreth and block

1:24:05

Done from getting to Congress.

1:24:06

But why, Here's the crazy

1:24:09

thing nobody knows.

1:24:11

In mid February, the news outlet Jewish

1:24:14

Insider, which covers congressional primaries

1:24:16

closely with an eye toward policy toward Israel,

1:24:18

flagg Done as a quote wild card

1:24:20

in the race. Dunn provided a comment

1:24:22

to Jewish Insider, saying he supports the legislation

1:24:26

to fund Israel's war effort. Quote, Israel

1:24:28

has a right to defend itself, and I support the goals

1:24:30

of returning all the hostages home and eliminating

1:24:33

Hamas. I am glad President Biden

1:24:35

has advocated for an approach that reduces

1:24:37

unnecessary civilian casualties, and

1:24:40

I support that approach. Dunn said, the

1:24:43

crowded congressional primary will decide

1:24:45

who replaces outgoing representative

1:24:47

Sarbines, and the district is solidly

1:24:50

democratic. There is no serious

1:24:52

Republican challenger, so,

1:24:55

Emily, if you ask people in this race,

1:24:58

like what.

1:24:58

Did Harry Dunn do?

1:25:03

Joining us now to discuss the fallout of the

1:25:05

World Central Kitchen massacre is

1:25:07

international humanitarian relief Organizermed

1:25:10

Khan Ahmed, thanks so much for joining us.

1:25:14

Hi Ryan, Hi Emily. Nice to be

1:25:16

with you, Unfortunately under

1:25:18

these circumstances.

1:25:19

And I just wanted to set it up by reading

1:25:22

a piece that you published March

1:25:25

twenty third. In the intercept to give people

1:25:27

context for the work you've done. You wrote, I have

1:25:29

organized airlifts of women, legislators,

1:25:31

judges and journalists out of Afghanistan. As kabl

1:25:34

Fell delivered ongoing aid to Ukrainian

1:25:36

frontline villages during Russia's invasion,

1:25:39

worked on efforts to build runways, roads

1:25:41

and highways to deliver aid to Rwanda refugees

1:25:43

after the genocide, and delivered aid shipments

1:25:46

to enclaves besieged and under attack

1:25:48

by the Syrian army. None of it prepared

1:25:51

me for the challenges of trying to bring a few

1:25:53

trucks of food and medicine per week

1:25:55

into the Gaza strip. But this

1:25:58

was late March before for this massacre.

1:26:01

Can you talk about you know, what has

1:26:04

happened to these relief efforts in

1:26:06

the wake of it.

1:26:08

Well, it's immediately after,

1:26:10

of course, so

1:26:13

we'll have to wait and see what happens.

1:26:15

But at the moment, many

1:26:18

international organizations have paused their

1:26:20

activities, mainly because

1:26:22

of the local staff does not feel safe.

1:26:25

I mean they haven't been safe for

1:26:27

any moment, as we've discussed before, for

1:26:31

the last six months, but now

1:26:34

they're being killed in such numbers that

1:26:37

they do not feel comfortable doing distributions

1:26:41

and going to meet the people where they are to

1:26:43

distribute them. So we're in a

1:26:45

bit of a stand still. I'm actually in Greece

1:26:48

and I have a plane

1:26:50

full of virgent medicines that

1:26:54

are sort of urgently required

1:26:56

in Gaza, and I'm

1:26:58

waiting for clearance to bring

1:27:00

them there. And it's a very slow

1:27:03

process. It was a slow process

1:27:05

before and now

1:27:07

it's basically grind to a standstill. And essentially

1:27:10

it's indicative of a situation

1:27:13

where no one in power, none of the decision

1:27:15

makers really actually care about

1:27:17

the humanitarian situation. There's been plenty of lip

1:27:19

service, but the reality on the ground is

1:27:24

it is very slow, and

1:27:26

there are a number of factors, but

1:27:29

it's slow, but essentially nobody

1:27:32

in power actually cares at about

1:27:34

the issue.

1:27:35

Can you you mentioned it's like still the

1:27:37

immediate aftermath of what happened

1:27:40

with the World Central Kitchen workers. But can

1:27:42

you walk us through a little bit of what so far additional

1:27:44

layers of red tape look like to get

1:27:47

aid into Gaza. What are some of the big

1:27:49

barriers that you're encountering already

1:27:52

or that you expect to encounter just to again

1:27:54

get aid medicine into

1:27:57

Gaza to the people of Gaza.

1:28:00

Well, essentially, the major

1:28:02

blocking point is the checkpoint

1:28:05

system and the checking of actual

1:28:07

physical trucks that come in to Gaza

1:28:11

through Egypt, and that's been since day

1:28:13

one, since I was first

1:28:16

in Rafa on October ninth,

1:28:18

and trucks were

1:28:20

already backed up then, and

1:28:22

it's gotten worse and worse. They're miles and miles

1:28:24

and miles of trucks backed up at every checkpoint.

1:28:27

So whether it's Rafa on the border or

1:28:29

a Larish about forty five

1:28:31

minutes from Rafa, or Ismayula

1:28:34

another couple hours away, and

1:28:37

the trucks are backed up essentially because they don't go

1:28:39

through in the numbers they need to go through. And

1:28:43

that is I mean, I've had any number

1:28:45

of things happen. I've

1:28:47

had incubators taken off trucks

1:28:49

because I was told they needed to be on ambulances.

1:28:52

I've had blood pressure monitors taken off trucks

1:28:54

because they needed to come in ambulances.

1:28:57

I've been told that the crates were in pact

1:28:59

correct, there were too many creates in the

1:29:01

truck, so any number of excuses

1:29:03

to not getting stuff in. And essentially, you know, the United

1:29:06

States government is fully aware of this. They've been fully aware

1:29:08

of this since day one. Senators

1:29:11

Merkley and von Holland came

1:29:13

to Rafa. They saw exactly, they spoke to truck

1:29:15

drivers. They've been very vocal since

1:29:18

about the situation. So it's a there's

1:29:20

no there's nothing new here.

1:29:23

It's it's been like this since the beginning. Essentially,

1:29:27

the powers that be don't want to aid

1:29:30

and significant numbers or the numbers

1:29:33

needed to enter.

1:29:35

And let's say that they find something on

1:29:37

the truck like the blood pressure medicine or

1:29:39

too many crates or you

1:29:41

know whatever else and they say, oh, this is this

1:29:44

is flagged. Do they let the rest of the truck

1:29:46

through or do they send what happens to

1:29:48

that entire.

1:29:49

Shipment, depending on where you are.

1:29:52

If you were at one of the Israeli chick points, they'll send

1:29:54

the truck back. The whole truck comes back, and

1:29:57

it couldn't come back to a certain check point where

1:29:59

if you have another truck available, you can take

1:30:01

some of it off, replacement with

1:30:03

this with the stuff that they'll allow in,

1:30:06

and then send it back. But essentially you get back

1:30:08

in the back of the line. So there's

1:30:11

no telling how long it would they take. You

1:30:13

know, for example, there are trucks that have been sitting in Rocker

1:30:15

for three months, literally three months,

1:30:17

and and you can go through the

1:30:20

list and this is you know, stuff that I wish,

1:30:22

you know, I could make public more widely.

1:30:24

I mean, the you go through everything

1:30:26

is literally before it enters, everything

1:30:29

is you know, you send, you submit invoices,

1:30:32

you submit the packing list, you submit

1:30:34

the weight, the quantity, the

1:30:36

origin of where it came from,

1:30:39

and you just wait and you wait and you wait and

1:30:41

you wait, and so it's, uh,

1:30:44

it's truly soul shattering what you

1:30:46

have to go through to get to get stuff

1:30:49

in that you know is desperately needed

1:30:52

and literally is helping

1:30:54

keep you people alive, and

1:30:57

you know it's it's it's part of this strategy

1:31:01

that I think, you know, the Israeli strategy since

1:31:03

October seventh or October eighth has been very

1:31:06

clear that their goal is to ethnically

1:31:09

cleanse Gaza. And that doesn't mean they want to kill everybody.

1:31:11

It means they want to get everybody out. I

1:31:13

think internally probably there's

1:31:16

discussion on whether that means they want to clear out

1:31:18

the north part of Gaza or all of Gaza. And

1:31:20

that means they want you know, people out, and

1:31:23

there we have hundreds of data points that

1:31:26

prove that and to make that a reasonable deduction.

1:31:28

So I don't think that's kind of and they've been open

1:31:30

and honest about it. I mean, many members of the Prime

1:31:32

Minister's Cabinet and Kinnescant

1:31:36

members have said the same. And so

1:31:38

if you look at any of the things that have happened, it

1:31:40

looks like a pretty you know, sort of strategy,

1:31:44

a pretty obvious strategy of meeting

1:31:48

the end goal of ethnically

1:31:51

pleansing Gaza, including the

1:31:55

attack on the World Central Kitchen staff.

1:31:58

So this is exactly what I was to ask you about next.

1:32:01

Basically, having gone through all

1:32:03

of these protocols, which as you just described,

1:32:05

I mean, are incredibly detailed.

1:32:08

From the perspective of Israel,

1:32:10

the IDF, and from your

1:32:12

perspective, having been involved so closely

1:32:15

in all of this, it seems pretty

1:32:17

clear that they should have confidence

1:32:20

in their own processes to clear

1:32:23

all of the aid that's attempting to come

1:32:25

in that basically they're

1:32:27

doing everything possible, if not more than

1:32:29

necessary, to ensure

1:32:31

there's nothing involved in

1:32:33

the aid deliveries that's going to be

1:32:36

used against them or that's going

1:32:38

to you know, have any

1:32:40

sort of capabilities capacity for Hamas

1:32:44

to kill IDF soldiers or

1:32:46

Israelis. And it seems like you've

1:32:48

seen that up close that their own processes

1:32:50

are very sound. They should have all

1:32:52

confidence that what's coming into the country or attempting

1:32:55

to come into the country, for the most part, is

1:32:57

safe.

1:32:59

Yeah. They they have a very good system.

1:33:01

They've had a system for years and years

1:33:04

of clearing stuff, and they know what they're doing, and

1:33:06

they could clear many, many more times

1:33:10

tons of food and medicine

1:33:12

a day than they're doing. They have the capacity to do

1:33:14

it, and certainly the United States government has

1:33:16

the expertise and capacity to do it, and certainly the UN

1:33:18

agencies do as well. They could assist, but it's

1:33:20

just not happening because it's never been

1:33:23

made a priority. They

1:33:25

talk about it, They talked about it over and over and over

1:33:27

again, about caring about civilians and humanitarian

1:33:30

assistance. But they don't. They literally, they

1:33:32

just don't.

1:33:34

I want to read one more passage from your

1:33:36

recent piece in the intercept. Write

1:33:39

it's easy to point the finger at Israel, the country

1:33:41

that is implementing the blockade of God's two

1:33:43

point three million residents, half of whom

1:33:45

are children, yet trying to work the issue

1:33:47

from every angle on a daily base to get urgent

1:33:49

medical and food. Eight in I've come to the conclusion

1:33:52

that President Joe Biden, for whom I hosted

1:33:54

fundraisers and worked to elect in twenty

1:33:56

twenty, has signed on to Israel's

1:33:59

end goal of the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians

1:34:02

in Gaza. So what I'm curious

1:34:04

about is when you came

1:34:06

to that conclusion. You and I have been in conversation

1:34:09

since since the beginning of this war,

1:34:11

and I'm curious when you moved

1:34:14

from this is heartless

1:34:16

incompetence to this

1:34:18

is an actively malicious

1:34:21

effort on the part of both the Biden administration

1:34:24

and the Israeli government to ethnically

1:34:26

cleanse Gaza. Was it accumulation

1:34:30

of the days of it, or was there a specific

1:34:32

moment where you were like, no, this is this

1:34:35

is deliberate.

1:34:37

I don't know that I had an aha moment. It

1:34:39

was some time in October. I was

1:34:41

in and out of Sinai two or three

1:34:43

times in October at

1:34:46

the border, and it was very

1:34:48

clear that AID was being slow rolled. It

1:34:51

was very clear that they

1:34:56

were targeting certain

1:34:58

sectors, and you know, sort of some time

1:35:00

in October I came to the conclusion,

1:35:02

which I think is a reasonable deduction, that there

1:35:05

were no mistakes and there are no mistakes. And

1:35:08

you know these really, the IDEF tells us all the

1:35:10

time. You know how precise

1:35:12

they are. So the hundreds of doctors

1:35:14

that have been murdered, the hundreds

1:35:17

of teachers that have been murdered, the

1:35:20

hundreds of AID workers that have

1:35:22

been murdered, I don't think their

1:35:24

mistakes. The hundreds of children, the

1:35:26

thousands of children, but actually I know

1:35:28

of literally tens of babies

1:35:31

that were simply guilty of being in their grips.

1:35:34

And so these are things that are well

1:35:36

known to the US government for many, many years

1:35:38

as a military term called command and control

1:35:42

sort of any US government official that's

1:35:44

been stationed in the region know the IDF

1:35:46

has a problem with command and control. If

1:35:49

you wanted to, you could go out and dig up any number

1:35:51

of US government officials who've been

1:35:53

fired on by the IDF over the last you know, thirty

1:35:56

years or so.

1:35:58

So what happened yesterday, for example, it

1:36:02

will come out at some point that it was an issue of

1:36:04

command and control and local commanders decided

1:36:07

to pull the trigger once twice and a

1:36:09

third time on three different vehicles.

1:36:14

But this is not anything new. And

1:36:16

again, when to come back to your point

1:36:18

about the White House, this is nothing

1:36:20

that the United States government doesn't know about

1:36:23

IDF activities over the course of

1:36:25

thirty years literally and

1:36:27

probably more than that. The thirty years I referred

1:36:29

to as those are the years that I've been,

1:36:31

you know, sort of affiliated with the US government

1:36:34

or working alongside these issues.

1:36:37