Speaker 1: Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here,
Speaker 1: and we here at breaking points, are already thinking of
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Speaker 1: All right, Happy Wednesday morning, Welcome to Counterpoints. We're now
Speaker 1: what about three days into Complementum. The world has changed
Speaker 1: since the last time that Emily and I were here.
Speaker 3: That's right, so much has happened in a week.
Speaker 4: Well, yeah, and we'll cover new video of the president
Speaker 4: looking tan rested. Yeah, dull ready, he is alive. Every
Speaker 4: conspiracy theory was at least momentarily dispelled yesterday, So we'll start.
Speaker 3: Without every conspiracy theory.
Speaker 4: Lots of them still alive, raging, yeah, fact, but.
Speaker 3: The one that he's dead it didn't hold up.
Speaker 4: Well, I'm sure people are still finding reasons too.
Speaker 3: Look great.
Speaker 4: Doubt the video, but yeah, he does not look great.
Speaker 4: We'll get to that in just a moment. We're going
Speaker 4: to start with a new video from Kamala Harris in
Speaker 4: Milwaukee yesterday, where she gave apparently a banger of a
Speaker 4: campaign speech to three thousand people, largest campaign crowd that
Speaker 4: Democrats have drawn so far. Still sort of pales in
Speaker 4: comparison to Trump rallies, but it isn't a big crowd, nonetheless,
Speaker 4: and she was feeling it. We have new polling numbers
Speaker 4: two that are fascinating. We're going to talk about the
Speaker 4: Republican reaction to Kamala Harris, which will be an interesting conversation.
Speaker 4: We're going to talk about the possibility of Donald Trump
Speaker 4: and Kamala Harris debating one another. Baby at Yahoo is
Speaker 4: in town here in Washington, d C. The protests have begun.
Speaker 4: We have some video and some thoughts, and Ryan has
Speaker 4: some original reporting on everything there. So we've got a
Speaker 4: big show and a guest who left the State Department.
Speaker 3: Well, we had two guests today.
Speaker 1: We're going to have Mota Salem, who's going to be
Speaker 1: joining us from the Capitol where there are protests outside
Speaker 1: awaiting Netyahu's visit to Congress.
Speaker 3: And then we're going to.
Speaker 1: Have a nel Shaline, who was one of the State
Speaker 1: Department officials who resign in protest over the Biden Harris
Speaker 1: administration's policy toward Israel. She'll give us her assessment of
Speaker 1: where Netanyahu is at this moment, where the war is
Speaker 1: going from here. Some good news by the way, over
Speaker 1: at drop Site, the news organization that we started with
Speaker 1: Jeremy Scahill, we climbed over two hundred thousand subscribers.
Speaker 3: Now that's fantastic, which is very exciting.
Speaker 1: Yes, so we still have the counterpoints discount going for
Speaker 1: that drop site news dot com slash counterpoints.
Speaker 3: We'll get you twenty percent off a year.
Speaker 1: So thank you everybody for signing up for supporting it.
Speaker 3: It's really gratifying.
Speaker 1: We'll have some drop site reporting that we dropped last night,
Speaker 1: actually about kind of u N casualties in Gaza. I
Speaker 1: obtained a leaked report that we'll talk about later.
Speaker 4: So I appreciate that you can say you dropped.
Speaker 3: New dropped it from dropped it. Yeah, well done, there
Speaker 3: you go.
Speaker 4: All right, let's start with video from yesterday of current
Speaker 4: President Joe Biden. It feels sort of ridiculous to say that,
Speaker 4: but you can take a look at him. He was
Speaker 4: traveling from Delaware to Washington. D C appeared in person,
Speaker 4: looking really rough. You can see he actually has a
Speaker 4: mask in his hand. He's had COVID for a week now.
Speaker 4: His doctor says his symptoms have mostly faded away into
Speaker 4: the background, but ryan pretty interesting to finally see the
Speaker 4: president because nobody has seen him since we've heard his voice.
Speaker 4: He called into his campaign headquarters, well his former campaign headquarters,
Speaker 4: no Kamala Harris's campaign headquarters, but since he actually resigned
Speaker 4: from the ticket, that man hadn't been seen in days.
Speaker 4: He did it on Twitter or ex and put out
Speaker 4: a statement that was it. Here we see him, mask
Speaker 4: in hand, not really engaging or talking with anybody. He
Speaker 4: is set to address the country tonight, but that was
Speaker 4: really something.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And the explanation essentially that leaked out of his
Speaker 1: team for why we didn't hear from him is that he.
Speaker 3: Was looking terrible. And the speech that he.
Speaker 1: Gives tonight announcing that he's stepping down, will be drained
Speaker 1: of all kind of climactic energy and suspense. We know
Speaker 1: exactly what he's going to say, but it will still
Speaker 1: be a speech that.
Speaker 3: Will be played a lot in history going forward.
Speaker 1: When documentaries or news organizations talk about what happened in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four. They will play a little clip of
Speaker 1: what Biden is going to say tonight, saying that he's
Speaker 1: stepping down and handing it over to Kamala. And my
Speaker 1: take was that he did not want to be a
Speaker 1: COVID ridden, decrepit creature for that video that he knows
Speaker 1: is going to live on in posterity. Just watching him
Speaker 1: walk or ample struggle from the car to the miniature
Speaker 1: version of Air Force one, the smaller plane, you can
Speaker 1: imagine what he would have been like several days ago,
Speaker 1: while also probably not getting much sleep, while also being
Speaker 1: at the lowest point, one of the lowest points of
Speaker 1: his political life. You can imagine that he wouldn't have
Speaker 1: given the kind of performance he wanted to. So that
Speaker 1: to me was always the most logical explanation for why
Speaker 1: we didn't hear from him.
Speaker 4: Well, also, by the way, clinging to office and that's.
Speaker 1: Some dignity, trying to try to desperately to some dignity.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we'll see if he maintains that tonight. But it's important,
Speaker 4: and it's actually crucial to everything that they're campaigning on
Speaker 4: in the next several months. They're going to be hammered.
Speaker 4: They already have been hammered for this alleged cover up
Speaker 4: of I shouldn't say alleged. I mean it was an
Speaker 4: obvious cover up of Joe Biden's frailty. He is clinging
Speaker 4: to power. He will not resign from office as far
Speaker 4: as we know as of right now, they're saying that's
Speaker 4: not in the cards. So why would he want to
Speaker 4: give the American people any reason just again strategically to
Speaker 4: doubt that he can hold on to office. You know,
Speaker 4: I have plenty of das as to whether he can
Speaker 4: hold on to office, and I'm sure that they will
Speaker 4: be on full display or they will be, let's say,
Speaker 4: validated by his performance tonight, because he's never given a
Speaker 4: performance that I've been like, this man is at in
Speaker 4: his prime.
Speaker 1: And I think one reason they won't get hit too
Speaker 1: much for the cover up because to the extent it
Speaker 1: was a cover up, it was like a string bikini
Speaker 1: cover up, like everybody could see what was going on.
Speaker 1: So it's like, Okay, you tried, you'd really try.
Speaker 4: It was so close to spending.
Speaker 3: Well, let's play comes on, Kamala Harris, so you can
Speaker 3: collect yourself.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's for the best at this point. Kamala Harrison
Speaker 4: Milwaukee yesterday.
Speaker 5: So Wisconsin, I am told as of this morning that
Speaker 5: we have earned the support of enough delegates to secure
Speaker 5: the Democratic nomination.
Speaker 4: And I am.
Speaker 5: So very honored, and I pledge to you I will
Speaker 5: spend the coming weeks continuing to unite our party so
Speaker 5: that we are ready to win in November. He intends
Speaker 5: to give tax breaks to billionaires and big corporations and
Speaker 5: make working families foot the bill.
Speaker 4: They intend to end.
Speaker 5: The Affordable Care Act and take us back then to
Speaker 5: a time when insurance companies have the power to deny
Speaker 5: people with pre existing conditions. Remember what that was like,
Speaker 5: children with asthma, women who survived breast cancer, grandparents with diabetes.
Speaker 4: America has tried these.
Speaker 5: Failed economic policies before.
Speaker 4: But we are not going back.
Speaker 5: We are not going back, not going back.
Speaker 3: So this is the line they've landed on.
Speaker 1: We are not going back feels pretty strong like in
Speaker 1: terms of political rhetoric, like make America great again, make
Speaker 1: America greg great again.
Speaker 3: We are not going back. So there.
Speaker 1: They always struggled in challenging make America great again because
Speaker 1: whatever they said sounded negative.
Speaker 3: Oh, America was never great or.
Speaker 4: America was America's already great.
Speaker 1: America's already great, which is sounds boring, and a lot of.
Speaker 4: People are just aren't feeling that at the moment.
Speaker 1: Right, Yes, not a lot of people clashes how with
Speaker 1: how people are feeling, so they never had a good
Speaker 1: response to that.
Speaker 3: But now we are not going back again.
Speaker 1: Still creates lots of room for optimism, like we're going forward,
Speaker 1: and it's a very strong allusion to abortion policy like that,
Speaker 1: because you know, overturning Roe is going back to before Row.
Speaker 1: And of course it also plays into that we're not
Speaker 1: going back to Donald Trump. Now some people say, well,
Speaker 1: going back to Donald Trump I had more money pocket,
Speaker 1: et cetera. But going back still has a negative connotation
Speaker 1: just rhetorically compared to going forward.
Speaker 3: Everyone wants to go forward. Yeah, people really don't want
Speaker 3: to go back.
Speaker 4: So good point.
Speaker 3: I thought that was kind of something clever that they
Speaker 3: landed on. If she can.
Speaker 1: Continue to just only give speeches to cheering crowds for
Speaker 1: the next two months.
Speaker 3: Well she's going to be in good shape.
Speaker 1: Yeah, she's going to have debates, she's going to have interviews,
Speaker 1: so well.
Speaker 4: Can she maintain the complimentum or whatever you call it,
Speaker 4: but when she actually has to respond to interviews, it's
Speaker 4: worth remembering that she had a really impressive campaign launch
Speaker 4: in twenty nineteen with that crowd in Oakland.
Speaker 1: Thirty thousand, massive crowds, surging popularity.
Speaker 3: People loved her ads yep.
Speaker 4: Speech was good, the look was good, the vibes were good.
Speaker 1: And when she became president, right, she was.
Speaker 3: She won the nomination.
Speaker 4: She was great in Iowa.
Speaker 3: So the White House, Yeah, that's how I remember it.
Speaker 4: So there's something about Kamala Harris that it just executing
Speaker 4: on the expectations is difficult for her. She does have
Speaker 4: one of the highest staff turnover rates. The Trump campaign
Speaker 4: has been hitting her front on that a little bit,
Speaker 4: but there's obviously something going on there. When you have
Speaker 4: a high turnover rate, that's a means that you're difficult
Speaker 4: to work with.
Speaker 1: People also want somebody like Kamala Harris to do well,
Speaker 1: particularly Democrats, but I think a lot of independence too.
Speaker 1: They would love it to see somebody with Kamala Harris's
Speaker 1: background become president. It helped Barack Obama immensely like it.
Speaker 1: Having the first black president made so many people like
Speaker 1: feel good about America. You know, because it fit into
Speaker 1: the line that everybody loves that the arc of history
Speaker 1: is long, but it bends towards justice. It makes people
Speaker 1: feel like history is moving forward. And then all of
Speaker 1: those things you're saying about us, it's not really true.
Speaker 1: Look look what we did, and so like, there are
Speaker 1: a lot of hopes and invested in her doing well,
Speaker 1: and I think that that helped propel her in twenty
Speaker 1: nineteen when she launched.
Speaker 3: I don't know if she has.
Speaker 1: Developed into the kind of vessel that can carry those
Speaker 1: hopes across the finish line.
Speaker 3: She wasn't then.
Speaker 1: Yeah, she hasn't shown that she has those skills that
Speaker 1: during this term, but she only it's just two months.
Speaker 3: Can you do this for two months?
Speaker 1: I was going to say, yeah, she was the three
Speaker 1: three months, sorry, three months while the male ballots go
Speaker 1: out in September.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, and she her persona Obviously she's been more in
Speaker 4: the spotlight since she was vice president than senator, but
Speaker 4: she wasn't seen as quite a laughing stock when she
Speaker 4: was senator. The memes never materialized then, And actually I
Speaker 4: think you could go back and look, there weren't a
Speaker 4: lot of those types of clips. Granted again, she's talking
Speaker 4: way more, she's appearing way more in public when you're
Speaker 4: vice president. But if anything, her persona became less well
Speaker 4: respected after she assumed the vice presidency. It wasn't a
Speaker 4: part of her campaign that she was kind of.
Speaker 1: A She did not thrive in an environment where she
Speaker 1: was kind of on her on you flat footed.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: One of the first ones that really started going around
Speaker 1: was go look up her her riff on time.
Speaker 4: Yes, that's a good one. That is a good one.
Speaker 3: She kept going back to it. Yeah, So anyway, we'll see.
Speaker 4: So she's she's feeling herself. She's feeling you can see
Speaker 4: it in the rally, and I think you can see
Speaker 4: it in some of the reports that are going to
Speaker 4: come out, which is what you were just about to
Speaker 4: turn to here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Selena Meyer and Veep was at her best when
Speaker 1: she was confident.
Speaker 4: We should talk about the New York Times. We don't
Speaker 4: have to get into it, but the New York Times
Speaker 4: wrote an entire story yesterday on the Veep comeback, which,
Speaker 4: by the way, I'm definitely a part of my I've
Speaker 4: been binging Veep over the last few days just because
Speaker 4: everyone's talking about it makes me want to watch it.
Speaker 4: I think it was one of the best comedies in
Speaker 4: American history. But all that is to say The New
Speaker 4: York Times were an entire piece about the revival of
Speaker 4: VEEP and didn't concede that it was because Kamala Harris
Speaker 4: is so eerily reminiscent of Celina Meyer. In fact, they
Speaker 4: just were talking about the Trump administration.
Speaker 3: Reporter completely failed that assignment.
Speaker 1: Incredible, But so Vice President Kamalharas is threatening to get
Speaker 1: rid of we put this up on the screen, Jake Sullivan,
Speaker 1: Anthony Blincoln, and Lloyd Austin, a clean sweep of the
Speaker 1: kind of national security foreign policy apparatus which the critics
Speaker 1: of the Biden administration would absolutely delight in. So Jake
Speaker 1: Sullivan was walking through the Capitol yesterday with the sulliest
Speaker 1: look on his face that I think he could not mask.
Speaker 3: So that's something.
Speaker 4: Always kind of looks like that though to be fair, so.
Speaker 3: Rough but still rough week for those guys.
Speaker 1: And they don't like net Ya who He's coming to
Speaker 1: town with bags and bags of laundry, which is a
Speaker 1: hilarious story every time the nt Yah Who's always bring
Speaker 1: loads and loads of dirty laundry.
Speaker 4: Because we figuratively and literally.
Speaker 3: Wash it for free.
Speaker 1: Apparently the taxpayers do for any foreign leader who comes,
Speaker 1: which is fair. You know, you come, you Sully, your
Speaker 1: clothes will wash them, send you home with clean clothes.
Speaker 1: The who's bring suitcases full of during clothes, which I
Speaker 1: kind of respect, you know what.
Speaker 4: I don't know that I respect that.
Speaker 3: I think I would do that.
Speaker 4: Is it even worth it to bring all of the clothes.
Speaker 3: You're not paying for the gas on the plane?
Speaker 4: I guess.
Speaker 1: I guess Israeli taxpayers are paying for that, or probably
Speaker 1: American taxpayers are somehow I know.
Speaker 4: And Kamala Harris we're going to talk about this later
Speaker 4: in the show, obviously has at least we're told privately,
Speaker 4: we do not know how she would govern, and this
Speaker 4: is an indication, but we don't know if it's just
Speaker 4: a leak for the purpose of framing this all in
Speaker 4: the press, has some major disagreements with the Biden administration
Speaker 4: on Israel policy. Let's also put this next element up
Speaker 4: on the screen. This is a four pro crypto entrepreneur
Speaker 4: Mike Mark Cuban or Mike I guess says that the
Speaker 4: Kamala Harris team has reached out with multiple questions about cryptocurrency.
Speaker 4: I'm getting multiple questions from her camp about crypto, Cuban
Speaker 4: said Tuesday, So I take that as a good sign.
Speaker 4: The feedback I'm getting, but certainly not confirmed by the VP,
Speaker 4: is that she will be far more open to business AI, crypto,
Speaker 4: and government as a service. Keeban stated, you and Crystal
Speaker 4: covered Jim Kramer yesterday. Ryan, but these two reports both
Speaker 4: that she's ready to just gut the State Department's highest echelons,
Speaker 4: and she's already signaling that she's more interested in crypto.
Speaker 4: Biden's been fairly harsh on crypto. She's feeling herself. I
Speaker 4: think this is projecting an air of confidence and like
Speaker 4: she is ready to take over. She's been ready, probably
Speaker 4: for a couple of years, because we've all been kind
Speaker 4: of on tenterhooks over Biden's health, you know, those of
Speaker 4: us who were always concerned about it. We always kind
Speaker 4: of knew that there was something that could happen in
Speaker 4: any moment. He's an elderly man. Seems like she's just
Speaker 4: been waiting in the wings, and now that she's getting
Speaker 4: a really warm reception from the media, not just in
Speaker 4: the deep New York Times article. But someone took a
Speaker 4: screenshot of all the pro Kamala articles in the New
Speaker 4: York Times homepage yesterday. It's going really well for her,
Speaker 4: to the point where she is now openly telegraphing. Fundraising wise,
Speaker 4: it's helpful to telegraph to crypto people, but there are
Speaker 4: a lot of people in finance world. Wall Street seen before,
Speaker 4: had a report about Wall Street Democrats all of a
Speaker 4: sudden getting really juiced about Kamala giving lots of money. Again,
Speaker 4: she's telegraphing that she's going to be a different candidate,
Speaker 4: not just that she's gonna slide in and take the mantle, yeah,
Speaker 4: but that she's going to like actually try to make
Speaker 4: this a different ticket, not just you know, the Biden
Speaker 4: replacement ticket, a Kamala Harris ticket.
Speaker 3: Well, the polls are ticking up for Kamala Harris.
Speaker 1: We've got a slew of them that have all been
Speaker 1: produced kind of post Biden dropping out. We can put
Speaker 1: this first one up on the screen. So this still
Speaker 1: has and this is what people need to remember, still
Speaker 1: has Donald Trump up one point, This Marris Pole has
Speaker 1: had Biden up even post debate. Consistently, This NPR, PBS
Speaker 1: Maris Pole has consistently had Joe Biden over Donald Trump
Speaker 1: by one or two points. Now when it's when they
Speaker 1: add in Kennedy, we start to see that the drift
Speaker 1: of Kennedy's influence is anti Trump. That so they go
Speaker 1: from forty six to forty five with Kennedy not in
Speaker 1: the race. Then they go to forty two forty two
Speaker 1: with Kennedy in it.
Speaker 3: This is the Reuters there's numbers.
Speaker 4: From Reuters episodes which are similar. In a two way race,
Speaker 4: it's forty four forty two Donald Trump, marginal erics.
Speaker 3: To lead for Kamala Harris.
Speaker 4: And the margin of verias plus or minus three percent.
Speaker 4: So the three way race is where this is interesting.
Speaker 4: Given the margin vera on this Kamala Harris forty two,
Speaker 4: Donald Trump thirty eight, RFK Junior eight. The other Poole
Speaker 4: had them one at seven the NPR Merris poll. So
Speaker 4: what you see happening there is in the three way race.
Speaker 4: Both of these polls show a bigger drop for Donald Trump.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: One thing that I read into this is a whole
Speaker 4: lot of RFK junior voters we're just desperate for a
Speaker 4: sentient democrat, Like a big chunk of the support for
Speaker 4: RFK Junior was people who were so disgusted by what
Speaker 4: the Democratic Party did with Joe Biden, and I wonder, actually,
Speaker 4: as Republicans start making the case about the coup and
Speaker 4: the Kamala Harris honeymoon ends, media honeymoon ends. If that happens.
Speaker 4: I don't know if the media honeymoon will ever end,
Speaker 4: but at least the kind of vibe honeymoon, the pop cultural.
Speaker 1: Bottle title ends, and the resistance people will be so
Speaker 1: mad at the New York Times like how dare you
Speaker 1: democracies on the line, it'll happen, but yeah, go ahead.
Speaker 4: So but that's what I didn't say that. I mean,
Speaker 4: that's a huge opening for the third party candidates, which
Speaker 4: again might not be a big deal on paper, but
Speaker 4: then you look at those rest belt states like what
Speaker 4: chill Stein managed to put up in Pennsylvania really upset
Speaker 4: Hillary Clinton for good reason. She wasn't wrong to be
Speaker 4: upset about the fact that people rejected her because they
Speaker 4: felt like she was part of the machine. As Republicans
Speaker 4: make the argument about the machine ordaining Kamala Harris, which
Speaker 4: happened so quickly in a matter of a couple of days,
Speaker 4: we played the clip of Kamala Harrison just this morning,
Speaker 4: I got enough delegates to win Wisconsin. That's insane. It's
Speaker 4: been what two days. As that argument, I think sort
Speaker 4: of pierces through the noise about having a new candidate
Speaker 4: and everything. It could still be dangerous for Democratic.
Speaker 1: Yes, you know, she has all of the vulnerabilities that
Speaker 1: she has had, you know since the national public was
Speaker 1: introduced to her in twenty nineteen. We talked about it
Speaker 1: on Monday. She does not prepare well. She doesn't handle
Speaker 1: questions that are obvious that and that she knows are
Speaker 1: coming at her. The big knock on her in all
Speaker 1: of these reports that were done by The New York
Speaker 1: Times and Politico and others that delve into her the
Speaker 1: staff complaints about her, the key one was that she
Speaker 1: refuses to prepare for obvious questions. And so in January
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen, when she launched her campaign, the New York
Speaker 1: Times came out with a piece by Lara Basilon. It's
Speaker 1: kind of member of this the Basilon family, which is
Speaker 1: like democratic legal royalty, really calling into question her bona
Speaker 1: fides as a progressive prosecutor, saying that she'd worked she'd
Speaker 1: worked actively to keep innocent people in prison, and on
Speaker 1: and on, like really devastating peace January twenty nineteen. It
Speaker 1: was July of twenty nineteen when Telsey Gabbert hit her
Speaker 1: with that in the debate, basically regurgitated that Times op ed,
Speaker 1: which had been widely circulated in democratic circles.
Speaker 3: Kamala had Kamala Harris.
Speaker 1: Had read that op ed, Her team had had six months,
Speaker 1: seven months to prepare for attacks on that, and when
Speaker 1: she got hit in the debate where it she had
Speaker 1: absolutely nothing. Same with that famous Lester Hold interview where
Speaker 1: for days the media was asking when is Kamala Harris
Speaker 1: going to go to the border. He asked her, when
Speaker 1: are you going to go to the border, So she knew.
Speaker 3: The question was coming, of course, and her answer was
Speaker 3: We've been to the border. He's like, but you haven't.
Speaker 1: We doing an awful lot of work here and she's like, well,
Speaker 1: I've never been to Europe either.
Speaker 4: That's an amazing answer.
Speaker 3: I rewatched it recently and that was Felina Meyer, like perfect.
Speaker 1: That was a Selena Meermo where you'd be watching even
Speaker 1: like nobody would actually say that.
Speaker 4: Oh, even for a politician. It's insanely bad. Because she's
Speaker 4: the one who brings up though we've been to the border,
Speaker 4: and Holk goes you have it. She's the one that
Speaker 4: invokes the we unnecessarily is just I understand why her
Speaker 4: staff will complain about it, because it seems to be
Speaker 4: the case. Meanwhile, though the picture is not at all
Speaker 4: rosy for Republicans, let's put a seven up on the screen.
Speaker 4: This is jd Vance. Harry Enton on CNN yesterday made
Speaker 4: the point that jd Vance is the only candidate in
Speaker 4: modern political history vice presidential candidate that comes out of
Speaker 4: the convention not with a bump. Apparently. The average, according
Speaker 4: to Enton, is nineteen points.
Speaker 1: And what I love about this clip is that Harryton
Speaker 1: is genuinely like angry.
Speaker 3: About he seems mad.
Speaker 6: It's a negative net territory. Look at that negative six points.
Speaker 6: I will tell you, Aaron, I have gone all the
Speaker 6: way back since nineteen hundred and eighty. He is the
Speaker 6: first guy after immediately following a convention of VP pick
Speaker 6: who actually had a net negative favorable rating that is underwater.
Speaker 6: The average since two thousand is plus nineteen points.
Speaker 4: JD.
Speaker 6: Van's making history in the completely wrong way.
Speaker 7: I mean, it's amazing plus nineteen. And I know people
Speaker 7: talk vps don't usually matter, but they're usually.
Speaker 6: Usually not a usually the popular. In this case, he's
Speaker 6: dragging Trump.
Speaker 4: Down, all right.
Speaker 7: And then there's also Ohio, which I you know, have
Speaker 7: been around long enough to have been there on an
Speaker 7: election night. And the reason I was there because the
Speaker 7: person who wins Ohio wins the White House.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 7: Ohio's a red state. Now, so what does the jd
Speaker 7: Vance pick do for Trump? Obviously he is the senator
Speaker 7: from Ohio.
Speaker 6: There's this whole idea, Oh jd Vance is, you know,
Speaker 6: going to help out Ohio, perhaps perhaps help out in
Speaker 6: those russ Belt, those great lake battleground says, But if
Speaker 6: you look at Ohio, if you look, yeah, jd Vance
Speaker 6: won in twenty twenty two, but he only won by
Speaker 6: six points. That's worse than Donald Trump did in twenty twenty.
Speaker 6: It's far worse than Mike the Wine did in twenty
Speaker 6: twenty two. He is was the worst performing Republican candidate
Speaker 6: in twenty twenty two, up and down the ballot in
Speaker 6: the state of Ohio. He has nothing there, all right.
Speaker 7: So Trump does very well with white working class voters.
Speaker 7: That's one of his superpowers. So what does Vance add?
Speaker 6: Yeah, what does Van say? Look, he won white working
Speaker 6: class voters. He won white voters without a college decree.
Speaker 3: In the state of Ohio.
Speaker 6: But pretty much every Republican wins white working class voters.
Speaker 6: And if you look here again, the margin that Vance
Speaker 6: put up was the weakest performance of any major Republican.
Speaker 6: It's worse than Trump did in Ohio. It's worse than
Speaker 6: Mike the Wine did in Ohio.
Speaker 8: The jd.
Speaker 6: Vance pick makes no sense from a statistical polling perspective.
Speaker 4: Earon, he's mad, Yeah, he says at one point, it's
Speaker 4: strategic failure. He's a guy. I don't understand it. You know,
Speaker 4: the best way to un understand that jd. Vance pick
Speaker 4: is that Donald Trump needed somebody who wouldn't, let's make
Speaker 4: this a verb, pence him. Right, He wanted someone who
Speaker 4: wouldn't pence him in the eleventh hour when you know
Speaker 4: you need to do the elector vote on January sixth.
Speaker 3: He needed to stay in power despite losing the election.
Speaker 3: You better better have somebody who doesn't care.
Speaker 4: And JD.
Speaker 3: Vance did say that he would have not done what
Speaker 3: Mike Pence did, Yeah, which was his duty.
Speaker 4: I would say, I know a lot of people see JD.
Speaker 4: Vance as somebody who's sort of a flip flopper, because
Speaker 4: he quite literally flip flopped. But one of the things
Speaker 4: that struck Trump reportedly is that Vance is a true
Speaker 4: believer and Viance is a true believer. If people are
Speaker 4: you know, I get Democrats attacking Trump or attacking Vance
Speaker 4: for flip flopping on Trump, but that like, the truth
Speaker 4: of the picture is that he is a true believer.
Speaker 4: He is a true convert to the Maga world, and
Speaker 4: for a lot of interesting reasons, he converted to Catholicism.
Speaker 4: But one thing I understand about Jady Vance is he
Speaker 4: is a true believer. And you usually after the primaries
Speaker 4: tacked to the center, that's the old saying, and they're
Speaker 4: not with JD Vance. I don't know. I mean, I
Speaker 4: know they tried to do. I was at the RNC,
Speaker 4: I was listening to them. Unity, Unity, Unity. We talked
Speaker 4: underconstructed last week about how Sara Bamari and other people
Speaker 4: are trying to say that JD. Vance is the new
Speaker 4: center or could be. You know, a smart argument for
Speaker 4: him to adopt would be that he's the new center
Speaker 4: so far not working, clearly, if you're down six because
Speaker 4: he's a really I get why that's off putting, but
Speaker 4: it's also because Trump is very off putting to a
Speaker 4: lot of people still, and I know Trump is his
Speaker 4: favorability is unfavorable. Favorables aren't super high either, So if
Speaker 4: you're sort of claim to fame is becoming a big
Speaker 4: Trump convert, that's not going to be super appealing to people.
Speaker 1: And somebody tweeted that jd Vance is what you would
Speaker 1: get if some tech bros in California trying to grow
Speaker 1: a redneck in a lab And it's like, I kind
Speaker 1: of get what that argument is saying because his his
Speaker 1: mother struggled terribly and it's and it's wonderful that she
Speaker 1: has recovered and is now approaching I think what twelve
Speaker 1: years of sobriety. He was raised by his grandparents, who
Speaker 1: were pretty well off in a pretty middle class area
Speaker 1: of Ohio. His Appalachian roots are ancestral, and he's clear
Speaker 1: about that in the book.
Speaker 3: I'm not calling him out here.
Speaker 1: His family moved before he was born to this region
Speaker 1: of Ohio, and the book is kind of about that
Speaker 1: migration out of Appalachia into the kind of rust belt suburbia,
Speaker 1: but so that that was his actual upbringing in a
Speaker 1: pretty middle, upper middle class area with his wonderful grandparents. Yes,
Speaker 1: And I think it's hard for them to kind of
Speaker 1: construct the the redneck meant the redneck kind of image
Speaker 1: out of it, especially after years spent on Wall Street
Speaker 1: and his venture capitalists and in those in those circles.
Speaker 1: It's just not the beard isn't quite doing it.
Speaker 4: The beard doesn't make it work.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And in fact, one of the best hits on this
Speaker 1: entire maga kind of thing that's going on, I think
Speaker 1: was by Tim Walls, who I wish there was more,
Speaker 1: wish we had.
Speaker 3: More time in this world.
Speaker 1: Because Emily and I talked about, I pitched Emily on
Speaker 1: doing this story where we look at both Minnesota and Iowa.
Speaker 1: Because Minnesota was won by Democrats, a trifecta by like
Speaker 1: one percent, like just thousands of votes divided this purple
Speaker 1: state between Republicans and Democrats.
Speaker 3: Democrats took control.
Speaker 1: Iowa was a purple state most of both of our lives.
Speaker 1: Republicans want a trifecta in Iowa. Iowa is now as
Speaker 1: deep red a state as you can get, and they've
Speaker 1: pushed They've pushed as far as hard right and agenda
Speaker 1: as you can with that type of majority. Just across
Speaker 1: the border in Minnesota, Democrats did something very unusual for Democrats,
Speaker 1: which was to actually deploy power and enact in an agenda.
Speaker 1: And Tim Walls, with that very slim majority, has pushed
Speaker 1: through basically you look at the Democratic Party platform, they
Speaker 1: pushed everything through from from minimum wage to pro union
Speaker 1: stuff to all the cultural stuff.
Speaker 4: And it reminds me of the inverse of Wisconsin when
Speaker 4: it went read under Scott Walker, both legislatures Senators Scott Walker.
Speaker 4: They pushed the full cirlate of Republican priorities.
Speaker 1: Right, and Tim Walls is a sleeper of a VP
Speaker 1: pick yes, and so anyway, check out how he communicated
Speaker 1: his differences with Republicans here.
Speaker 3: These are weird people on the other side.
Speaker 9: They want to take books away, they want to be
Speaker 9: in your exam rooms. That's what it comes down to it.
Speaker 9: Don't you know, get sugar coating this. These are weird ideas.
Speaker 9: Listen to them speak. Listen know they talk about things.
Speaker 9: Listen to how your previous guests were right, like you said,
Speaker 9: They've told them that they shouldn't talk about race. They
Speaker 9: can't help it. It is built into their DNA because
Speaker 9: there is no plan. There's no health care plan, there's
Speaker 9: no health care plan, there's nothing to do on that.
Speaker 9: They want to take away our alliances and leave Russia
Speaker 9: to do whatever they want. Look, they are bad on
Speaker 9: foreign policy, they are bad on the environment. They certainly
Speaker 9: have no health care plan, and they keep talking about
Speaker 9: the middle class. That, as I said, a robber baron,
Speaker 9: real estate guy and a venture capitalist trying to tell
Speaker 9: us they understand who we are.
Speaker 3: They don't know who we are.
Speaker 4: Not bad, it's pretty po politically not bad. Republicans, by
Speaker 4: the way, are also we're going to talk about this
Speaker 4: in the next block, are also borrowing the weird line
Speaker 4: of attack, and arguably not even borrowing it. I feel
Speaker 4: like Republicans were making this argument for a long time,
Speaker 4: that you know, they'll talk about the suite of cultural issues.
Speaker 4: But at the RNC last week, multiple times speakers on
Speaker 4: the stage framed this as the election versus of weird
Speaker 4: versus normal, and so both sides are now calling each
Speaker 4: other weird.
Speaker 1: Maybe our whole country is just weird. So speaking of weird,
Speaker 1: let's move on to this great jd Vance clip that
Speaker 1: has been making making their round, So let's just jump
Speaker 1: right into that one.
Speaker 10: It is the weirdest thing to me. Democrats say that
Speaker 10: it is racist to believe. Well, they say it's racist
Speaker 10: to do anything. I had a diet mountain dew yesterday
Speaker 10: and one today. I'm sure they're going to call that racist.
Speaker 8: Too, But it's good.
Speaker 3: I love you guys.
Speaker 11: But we're effectively run in this country via the Democrats,
Speaker 11: via our corporate oligarchs, by a bunch of childless cat
Speaker 11: ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the
Speaker 11: choices that they've made, and so they want to make
Speaker 11: the rest of the country miserable too.
Speaker 3: And it's just a basic fact.
Speaker 11: You look at Kamala Harris, Pete Boodhaje AOC. The entire
Speaker 11: future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children.
Speaker 11: And how does it make any sense that we've turned
Speaker 11: our country over to people who don't really have a
Speaker 11: direct stake in it?
Speaker 4: Famous cat lady Pete Buddha Judge.
Speaker 3: All those since then ye have Buddha Judge and.
Speaker 4: Actually had a kid? Well it happened a month before
Speaker 4: that clip.
Speaker 3: Oh really, he hadn't even like updated his talking point
Speaker 3: on that one.
Speaker 4: It wasn't updated at that point.
Speaker 3: But the Mountain Dew, though you wanted to defend.
Speaker 4: It, I think I actually think diet Mountain Dew is
Speaker 4: one of the better diet sodas. I think it's diet
Speaker 4: Doctor Pepper and diet Mountain Mountain Dew. Diet coke is
Speaker 4: in a league of its own. But Diet Mountain Do,
Speaker 4: I'll defend. I think it tastes closest to the original
Speaker 4: product of many diezotas.
Speaker 1: As a concept is just so ridiculous, Like if you
Speaker 1: take Trump's famous line that he's never seen a thin
Speaker 1: person drink diet coke.
Speaker 4: Which, by the way, he was drinking diet coke, and
Speaker 4: that golf interview the dropped.
Speaker 1: Yesterday's well in it, mountain dew is like one of
Speaker 1: the least unhealthy things you can put in your body,
Speaker 1: and it's obvious you just look at it. Adding diet
Speaker 1: is not helping on a family text chain. I had
Speaker 1: to explain what was going on with this clip here,
Speaker 1: because like he's trying to insult liberals, but they're just
Speaker 1: they're actually like they're not getting it, so that the
Speaker 1: question is like and maybe a lot of viewers who
Speaker 1: are actual normal people are watching that clip and be like, wait, wait,
Speaker 1: I don't understand. Why does he think drinking diet mountain
Speaker 1: dew is racist. It's like, okay, he doesn't think it's racist,
Speaker 1: and actually, no liberals think it's racist either.
Speaker 4: Well, there might be one or two and they all
Speaker 4: have like big Twitter platforms.
Speaker 1: But what he's saying is that they will somehow they
Speaker 1: think everything is racist, and so they will somehow concoct
Speaker 1: a way that diet mountain dew fits into the schema
Speaker 1: of racism, and therefore he's racist for drinking a diet
Speaker 1: mountain dew. It's very online, it's very online, and it
Speaker 1: says something poor about me that I kind of understood
Speaker 1: what he was trying to do.
Speaker 4: Well, yeah, even though.
Speaker 3: He absolutely did not. Now, everybody flops a joke.
Speaker 1: I flops several every show, but wow, he flopped that
Speaker 1: one badly. Plus with the afterwards like hey, I love
Speaker 1: you guys. It's like this stuff matters. Style, style matters
Speaker 1: because people are siding like who they want in their face.
Speaker 1: So for the next four years, which you know, we're
Speaker 1: going to do a lot of criticism of Kamala Harris
Speaker 1: as she continues to introduce herself to the country over
Speaker 1: the next three months, and and we'll get into her
Speaker 1: in a weird ven diagram and stuff like that. Very
Speaker 1: fair to say that Jadie Vance is not wearing well.
Speaker 4: Either that speech was at his old high school or
Speaker 4: middle school.
Speaker 3: I want to show say either.
Speaker 4: Yet high school, and he was really familiar with the
Speaker 4: crowded on to the making jokes about specific teachers. So
Speaker 4: I think he may have lost and this is not
Speaker 4: a positive. He may have lost track of the fact
Speaker 4: that he was giving an address that everyone around the
Speaker 4: country was going to have access to that was going
Speaker 4: to be eclipped. And that's obviously one thing to keep
Speaker 4: in mind when you're suddenly thrust onto the national stage
Speaker 4: like this. It's not always going to translate as well
Speaker 4: when things are eclipped and tossed around the internet as
Speaker 4: it might in person. And the joke is based on
Speaker 4: something very very true, which is, you know, you can
Speaker 4: go down the line if you just type in blank
Speaker 4: is racist some you know article ten years ago, and
Speaker 4: Slate will come up or BuzzFeed will come up from
Speaker 4: like twenty fourteen saying yes, diet mountain dew is racist.
Speaker 4: That specific article probably doesn't exist, but maybe some.
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna I'm gonna look clear. The first thing
Speaker 1: Google asked me what was bad for you? Yes, it's
Speaker 1: bad for you.
Speaker 4: So it's not, you know, entirely off face. And this
Speaker 4: is something that wrinkles a lot of ordinary Americans that
Speaker 4: you know, you can't do anything without being Atlantic.
Speaker 1: Sabe Advance has a point about Mountain dew.
Speaker 4: Okay, that's written by me Atlantic.
Speaker 3: This is this, You've got to be kidding me.
Speaker 1: The sub headline in The Atlantic, the soft drink has
Speaker 1: long been associated with the joy and despair of white America.
Speaker 3: Oh, that's definitely.
Speaker 4: Something that's really something. Anyway, we probably shouldn't go too
Speaker 4: deep down the dim Mountain dew rabbit.
Speaker 3: All I gotta go, but I can't.
Speaker 4: Let's put the next element of the screen. Speaking of
Speaker 4: things Ryan loves, here's Laura Lumer. It's time for Republicans
Speaker 4: to start talking about Kamala Harris's sexual history and the
Speaker 4: reason why she likely doesn't have any children of her own.
Speaker 4: Oh gosh, im Melina bet she's had so many abortions
Speaker 4: that she damaged her uterus. A woman who has no
Speaker 4: biological children of her own should not be allowed to
Speaker 4: make decisions in the White House for your children, So
Speaker 4: abortion point aside. That is why people who are very
Speaker 4: much a figment or very much involved in online right
Speaker 4: wing politics and are fluent in that language, which Jadvance
Speaker 4: is one of. It's why the online right likes jd
Speaker 4: Vance so much. That sort of meme of people who
Speaker 4: are childless shouldn't make decisions about the future of the
Speaker 4: country is why Jade Vance felt comfortable saying that on
Speaker 4: Tucker Carlson a few years ago. It's something we've heard
Speaker 4: from Tucker Carlson. Jd Vance Personally, I detest that line
Speaker 4: of argument because it is so off putting to people
Speaker 4: in those situations that you should be trying to persuade.
Speaker 4: I'm not a parent. I imagine that there is something that
Speaker 4: changes about your politics when you realize that there's a
Speaker 4: future for your own offspring that's on the line. The
Speaker 4: stakes are obviously higher, but it is the Republicans, from
Speaker 4: my perspective, at least should be offering a positive message
Speaker 4: if they want people to vote Republican, if they want
Speaker 4: people to become a Christian and conservative and share their views.
Speaker 4: The insults are just coming across as bitter and counterproductive.
Speaker 4: So the Laura Lumer line, I think it's interesting to
Speaker 4: see it from her because it seems like it trickles
Speaker 4: down then to more mainstream Republicans.
Speaker 1: It's also not believable at all in the sense that
Speaker 1: a lot of Republicans, if she did have young children,
Speaker 1: would be saying, why aren't you at home taking care
Speaker 1: of your young children?
Speaker 3: Then she doesn't have children.
Speaker 1: It's like, you know, how could you actually care about
Speaker 1: the future you don't have children.
Speaker 3: So it's sort of like the fillish life think you.
Speaker 1: I think you're just going to come up with a
Speaker 1: reason that you don't want this woman to be president.
Speaker 1: Some people might be wondering, why on earth, you know,
Speaker 1: put up something like as as bonkers as that that
Speaker 1: Laura Lumer post. She has one point one million followers
Speaker 1: on Twitter, and she and she helps to kind of
Speaker 1: drive and craft a lot of conservative narratives.
Speaker 4: And I wouldn't sy I would say Magan.
Speaker 1: Narratives, Magan narrative narratives, and this I think there's a
Speaker 1: there's an interesting kind of Elon Musk point to be
Speaker 1: made here. Like Lumor has been a notable member of
Speaker 1: the fringe for a very long time. When Elon Musk
Speaker 1: took over Twitter, uh drove out all the progressives for
Speaker 1: the most part except me, I'm hanging out there, uh,
Speaker 1: and then elevated the fringe to center stage on this
Speaker 1: massive platform where journalists are still hanging out and watching,
Speaker 1: even if they're not all participating it. He took the
Speaker 1: break show and made it the main event. And I
Speaker 1: think it actually hurts the Republican Party. It does because
Speaker 1: all of us are then seeing like, oh, this is y'all.
Speaker 4: Really, it really hurt Democrats when Jack was in charge,
Speaker 4: because that's the basis for the It's the basis for
Speaker 4: the JD Van's argument. There you had mainstream writers journalists
Speaker 4: on the left who were making absurd arguments about why
Speaker 4: everything was raised people.
Speaker 1: Even more fringe than that with whoever could say the
Speaker 1: craziest thing and say it in like academic language would
Speaker 1: then get five million views on Twitter that day, and
Speaker 1: Democrats would be tearing their hair out being liked, this
Speaker 1: is not this does not represent the mainstream of our party.
Speaker 1: Twitter is not real life was the phrase that everybody
Speaker 1: would kind of throw at them. And now he's done
Speaker 1: the reverse.
Speaker 4: Well, I think we just landed on a really interesting
Speaker 4: point because you, despite our best efforts, because you started
Speaker 4: this by saying, maybe America is just weird. Maybe America
Speaker 4: is just weird, And because Twitter and social media has
Speaker 4: gamified our politics, the fringe is obviously.
Speaker 1: Maybe we're just attracted to like engaging with weirdness. Yeah,
Speaker 1: even if even if fascinating, if that's not actually where
Speaker 1: we are, it's much more interesting.
Speaker 4: And the politicians mistake that for affirmation or for some
Speaker 4: sign that an argument they want to make is going
Speaker 4: to be more potent or mainstream than it actually is,
Speaker 4: which are politics then are further distorted from reality.
Speaker 1: On Capitol Hill, you had a ton of Republican members
Speaker 1: of Congress repeating these talking points, despite an effort by
Speaker 1: Mike Johnson and others to say, guys, stop talking about
Speaker 1: her race, stop calling her DEI candidate, stop talking about
Speaker 1: her gender. So here's here's some of the efforts to
Speaker 1: use kind of normal talking points against hers.
Speaker 3: Here's Mano over at CNN. I don't think it matters too.
Speaker 3: The Democrats run can't change the facts.
Speaker 8: Facts are.
Speaker 6: In three and a half years, we went from a
Speaker 6: secure border to no border and she's the borders are that's.
Speaker 4: Her biggest liability.
Speaker 8: I think, I mean, I think it was their biggest
Speaker 8: liability to begin with, and she was tasked with fixing
Speaker 8: it and that has not gone well.
Speaker 4: It should be tougher to beat.
Speaker 3: She will not be tougher to be No, not at all.
Speaker 3: We're excited abou Kamala le bean at the top of
Speaker 3: the ticket.
Speaker 4: So I was listening in PR on the way over
Speaker 4: here and they were questioning Bob Casey about Kamala Harris
Speaker 4: on immigration, and he had a really hard time answering
Speaker 4: the question that even NPR was asking to defend her
Speaker 4: record or whether that will be I think the question
Speaker 4: is whether it would be a problem for her in Pennsylvania.
Speaker 4: Energy and immigration in ross belt states are a huge,
Speaker 4: huge vulnerability for Kamala Harris. There are a lot of
Speaker 4: old clips for her when she was trying to run
Speaker 4: to the left of a lot.
Speaker 3: Of people dan fracking, yes, and plastic straws.
Speaker 4: If Republicans can make that argument, it will be devastating
Speaker 4: to her in rost belt states and could be devastating
Speaker 4: for them in the election. That said, you know those
Speaker 4: states also have big suburban populations that can be driven
Speaker 4: to vote on the weirdness and if they're you know,
Speaker 4: running to out weird each other or to let's say,
Speaker 4: out what is how do you even say what they're
Speaker 4: going to be doing in terms of like running away
Speaker 4: from the weirdness charge too, like they're trying to out
Speaker 4: normal each other. Let's say that unsuccessfully. Probably in fact,
Speaker 4: let's actually put this this is before we'll put befour
Speaker 4: up on the screen. This newsmas openly advocating for Kamala
Speaker 4: Harris seems unfair to the Trump campaign, wrote, Matt Bender
Speaker 4: supports massive corporate tax wanted to cap rent and utility payments,
Speaker 4: backed tax funded medicare for all investigated fossil fuel companies.
Speaker 4: Those are the news mes chirns will Kamala Harris spoke
Speaker 4: yesterday in Milwaukee. Now B five is a memo from
Speaker 4: the nr SC, the National Republican Senatorial Committee that has
Speaker 4: this section on Kamala Harris's kind of like an OPO
Speaker 4: document where they're just listing some of the most potent
Speaker 4: lines of attack what they believe to be the most
Speaker 4: potent lines of attack on Kamala Harris for Senate candidates.
Speaker 4: Republican Senate candidates, and under the one section, it's just
Speaker 4: weird that Kamala Harris has a habit of laughing at
Speaker 4: inappropriate moments. Going through some of the bullet points here,
Speaker 4: she's pleasured of ban plastic straws, favor in favor of
Speaker 4: banning certain behaviors like eating red meat, loves ben diagrams,
Speaker 4: loves electric school buses because she went to school on
Speaker 4: a school bus, recently discovered that electricity doesn't smell so ryan.
Speaker 4: Then you're going to be juxtaposing jd Vance, who has
Speaker 4: said whatever about cat ladies and diet mountain dew, and
Speaker 4: Trump's weirdness, which is in another league and is actually
Speaker 4: much more funny than the weirdness of Kamala Harris or
Speaker 4: jad Vans with the weirdness of Kamala Harrison, perhaps whoever
Speaker 4: she picks us her vice presidential candidate. And that's what
Speaker 4: you know, voters are going to have to choose between,
Speaker 4: in addition to the broader issues like immigration and energy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're different versions of cringe. Yeah, yes, this is
Speaker 1: the one we just put up. Yeah, it's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you have two flavors of cringe with these two.
Speaker 3: With these two.
Speaker 1: Meanwhile, Donald Trump This is pretty funny. We put up
Speaker 1: this next element B six. Trump just cannot let go
Speaker 1: of Joe Biden, crooked Joe Biden, and tum Biden has
Speaker 1: left the stage. So everything Trump has been truth socially
Speaker 1: has been about about Joe Biden and not about Kamala Harris.
Speaker 1: And Joe Biden is now leaving the stage with this
Speaker 1: crooked Joe Biden never landing.
Speaker 4: I love that one in the bottom left. If it's
Speaker 4: like such a non sequitur Biden never have had COVID.
Speaker 4: He has a threat to democracy.
Speaker 1: He's just throwing stuff against the wall. No, it doesn't
Speaker 1: mean that he's afraid to run against Kamala Harris, but
Speaker 1: it means he's having a hard time processing the events.
Speaker 3: It seems like, yeah, well, I mean it's been a
Speaker 3: big week for him.
Speaker 4: It's been a big month death experience, yeah.
Speaker 1: Plus then a convention, plus then losing his opponent and
Speaker 1: getting a new one, getting a new one, and his
Speaker 1: son talking into choosing jd Vance, his son whose judgment
Speaker 1: he doesn't really respect, and yet followed. You can you
Speaker 1: can just be certain that the fact that he listened
Speaker 1: to his son is gnawing at him as he kind
Speaker 1: of contemplates the JD Vance pick.
Speaker 4: Well, again, I think what he valued in the JD
Speaker 4: Advance pick more than anything. We've talked a lot about
Speaker 4: JD Vance in the show. I just don't see any evidence,
Speaker 4: like Harry Anton can put up that graphic that actually
Speaker 4: showed Vance's favorability is still higher than Trump's, his net
Speaker 4: favorability still higher than Trump's, which RCP at least has
Speaker 4: around like negative nine somewhere around there, and their average
Speaker 4: Jdvance could go down to like negative twenty, and I
Speaker 4: don't think it would have a meaningful outcome or a
Speaker 4: meaningful effect on the outcome of the election. Honestly, just
Speaker 4: don't think people vote on vice presidents. All that is
Speaker 4: to say, it does affect the vibe, no question about
Speaker 4: it. It affects the vibe. So vibes are weird. The vibes
Speaker 4: are weird. And whether Republicans use Joe Biden as a
Speaker 4: line of attack on Kamala Harris Donald Trump clearly is
Speaker 4: there is something to be said on the cover up angle.
Speaker 4: You said, you give good reason for why that might
Speaker 4: not work earlier in the show. But we'll see what
Speaker 4: Republicans end up sticking to.
Speaker 1: And we're going to get a debate. It looks like
Speaker 1: or at least at least one. Donald Trump is saying
Speaker 1: he'd be willing to debate Kamala Harris more than once.
Speaker 3: We can put c one up on the screen.
Speaker 1: On a call with reporters from President Trump says he
Speaker 1: will commit to debating Vice President Harris, but it's not
Speaker 1: thrilled with ABC. As debate host said he'd be willing
Speaker 1: to do more than one debate as well.
Speaker 3: Let's see who would ABC be? That would be Stephanopolis.
Speaker 4: It could be Stephanopoulos unless they're I think they've kept
Speaker 4: him out of debate moderating before because of that, but
Speaker 4: it may have been just a pure Republican debate. Monitors
Speaker 4: reading that they've replaced him with what Margaret Brennan.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so how do you think? How do you think
Speaker 1: Trump would do against Kamala Harris?
Speaker 4: She is a Ted Cruz type, Marco Brennan's on CBS,
Speaker 4: So I take that back, but I think she's a
Speaker 4: Ted Cruise.
Speaker 3: I disagree with this, but I want to hear you
Speaker 3: Ted Cruse type.
Speaker 4: In a very generic sense, not in a specific sense,
Speaker 4: but in a generic sense, which is that she is
Speaker 4: a talented well she was at one point of talented politician,
Speaker 4: and she was until she became vice president and there
Speaker 4: was a camera on her all the time, and she
Speaker 4: said it insane. But she's sort of talented on paper.
Speaker 4: You know, has has the right education, the right political career,
Speaker 4: and you know, can talk about the issues, et cetera.
Speaker 4: It doesn't matter when you're up against Donald Trump. She's
Speaker 4: just a generic politician, and Donald Trump eats generic politicians
Speaker 4: for lunch. Just you can be Hillary Clinton whatever. Joe
Speaker 4: Biden is a pretty general politician, but he's kind of
Speaker 4: got a folksier part of him. For what it's worth
Speaker 4: that he always at least pretended to have these populist,
Speaker 4: folksy instincts in a way that Hillary Clinton, Kamala Harris,
Speaker 4: Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Chris Christie, they just could never
Speaker 4: pull it off. And so Donald Trump will eat you
Speaker 4: for lunch if you're like that.
Speaker 1: So the reason I say I disagree is that I
Speaker 1: Ted Cruz is a meticulous.
Speaker 4: Uh prep guy, and Kamala Harris isn't.
Speaker 1: He's gonna he's gonna have all his lines memorized, He's
Speaker 1: gonna have all his arguments laid out.
Speaker 3: He's a debate bro. He loves to debate. He loves
Speaker 3: to pick out what somebody said, would challenge them.
Speaker 1: Uh, and he has a really thorough, kind of maybe
Speaker 1: surface level, but a but thorough surface level grasp on
Speaker 1: issue so that such that he can talk about them
Speaker 1: long enough to sound educated and eloquent throughout the length
Speaker 1: of a debate. If you had to go for you know,
Speaker 1: days with actual policy experts, then it's obviously he's going
Speaker 1: to fall apart.
Speaker 3: But no politician really has to do that in public.
Speaker 1: So whereas whereas Kamala Harris is much more of a
Speaker 1: kind of riffer and off the cuff person who has
Speaker 1: phrases that she goes back to sure as kind of crutches, Well.
Speaker 4: That's Marco and I guess it was Chris Christie because
Speaker 4: Trump wasn't at that debate, right, Trump would have Let's
Speaker 4: be real, Trump would have had a field day with
Speaker 4: that too.
Speaker 1: Now, the reason I think that it could it's it
Speaker 1: could be an interesting debate is that Harris is at
Speaker 1: her worst when somebody is pressing her directly on a
Speaker 1: vulnerability that she should be prepared to respond to, but
Speaker 1: she isn't and that Trump just doesn't do that because
Speaker 1: Trump is all about himself and the debate and exuding
Speaker 1: his own kind of set like that that's him. He
Speaker 1: doesn't tactically kind of try to pin somebody down. Instead,
Speaker 1: he uses his own buzzwords, you know. You know, he'll say, like,
Speaker 1: you know, laptop wrong, hunter wrong, and you have to
Speaker 1: kind of be kind of in the mix of his
Speaker 1: train of thought to understand what he's what he's saying,
Speaker 1: and which means that whoever he's saying it to doesn't
Speaker 1: have to like respond directly to any anything because Trump
Speaker 1: doesn't say anything directly. Trump just kind of throws a
Speaker 1: whole bunch of stuff against the wall.
Speaker 4: Which is why nobody can compete with him.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, he'll have a hard time
Speaker 1: exposing Harris's big vulnerability, like because he'll he'll just say, like,
Speaker 1: you know, he'll say border border, border chaos, energy and benefit,
Speaker 1: immigrants raping people, and by the end of his answer,
Speaker 1: like it will be very clear what tru was trying
Speaker 1: to say, but he won't be but it'll be so
Speaker 1: out there that it will let Harris off the hook
Speaker 1: so that she can just give a speech about immigration
Speaker 1: or something.
Speaker 4: Say what you will about Joe Biden, at least when
Speaker 4: he's conscious, he is a charismatic politician, and he always
Speaker 4: has been. That's actually something that's to his credit. He's
Speaker 4: able to. He can riff and sometimes he really shouldn't riff,
Speaker 4: but he does, like when he talked about seven eleven's
Speaker 4: in his state in an interview, which if you haven't seen,
Speaker 4: go ahead and look up Joe Biden several champions. Yes,
Speaker 4: very trumpy in moment circle like two thousand and seven,
Speaker 4: but he's charismatic. Hillary Clinton is not charismatic. Kamala Harris
Speaker 4: is not charismatic. Both of them try very hard to be, though,
Speaker 4: and that I see standing up to Trump very poorly,
Speaker 4: just because he is so absurdly charismatic that he just
Speaker 4: drowns it out.
Speaker 1: I think, I mean, maybe it depends on yours, then
Speaker 1: it's subjective, but I kind of feel like she does
Speaker 1: have some charisma, certainly personally Cringema.
Speaker 3: I tried to make that person. She does exude a charisma.
Speaker 4: And I've I've never talked to her.
Speaker 1: Despite and maybe that maybe it doesn't come through on
Speaker 1: the screen.
Speaker 3: I kind of think it does.
Speaker 1: I think it kind of is evaporated by like the
Speaker 1: looping sentences where you start to like get really worried
Speaker 1: for her. You're following the sentence, You're like, oh god,
Speaker 1: where is this going to go?
Speaker 3: And is she stuck in the loop.
Speaker 1: Talking about time or whatever else and just hoping that
Speaker 1: she can find her way out of this loop, out
Speaker 1: of this loop, and so then you forget that there's
Speaker 1: some charisma there.
Speaker 4: Well. It's interesting because I remember covering her son a
Speaker 4: campaign and thinking I actually was pretty impressed with her
Speaker 4: as a politician because the Los Angeles Times back then
Speaker 4: had gone with her to a fundraiser and she was,
Speaker 4: you know, in front of this room of California Democrats,
Speaker 4: pushing them. It became her three am policy or whatever.
Speaker 4: But at the time, she was like, listen, the identity
Speaker 4: politics stuff is not what people are thinking about when
Speaker 4: they're laying awake at three in the morning worrying about
Speaker 4: their families. And that was a this was what twenty
Speaker 4: eighteen something like that. It was a pretty brave thing
Speaker 4: to say in a room full of California progressives back then,
Speaker 4: and I remember thinking she actually might have something like
Speaker 4: there's you have to have charisma. I feel like to
Speaker 4: be making points like that. So it just seems that
Speaker 4: being vice president totally broke her brain. I thought she
Speaker 4: had charisma. In those Senate Judiciary hearings. She was going
Speaker 4: viral all the time. For those who you completely disagreed
Speaker 4: with her, most of the time, she was going viral.
Speaker 3: She handled her well.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but it's like being vice president just caused her.
Speaker 3: To melt or running for running for president too.
Speaker 4: That's true, right, she had a lot of I mean,
Speaker 4: Christma didn't necessarily come through during those debates, unless I say,
Speaker 4: by the way, is Trump in this call with reporters
Speaker 4: that was mentioned in the element we put up on
Speaker 4: the screen, he said that he absolutely that was his quote,
Speaker 4: absolutely thinks he should be debating Harris. He said multiple
Speaker 4: times you mentioned that earlier, and he said he thinks
Speaker 4: that people have quote an obligation to debate, which was
Speaker 4: on the table before he agreed to these debates. Whether
Speaker 4: or not either candidate felt obliged to stand on the
Speaker 4: stage and debate one another, I think because of what
Speaker 4: happened with Joe Biden, I pray that we were approaching
Speaker 4: this norm of no debates for primaries or whatever people
Speaker 4: were saying it doesn't really matter Trump skipped a debate.
Speaker 4: It was becoming more and more of a talking point.
Speaker 4: I pray that this is finally disabused us of the
Speaker 4: notion that it is okay to forego debates, because if
Speaker 4: Joe Biden had had to debate in the primary where
Speaker 4: he did have serious opponents, he would have crumbled and
Speaker 4: we could have done all of this earlier.
Speaker 1: And the irony is that if Trump had refused to
Speaker 1: debate him, and the first debate wasn't until September, by
Speaker 1: then it would have been too late for Joe Biden
Speaker 1: to drop off the ticket and he would have lost
Speaker 1: in a Mondale level of landslide. So Trump, by accepting
Speaker 1: the debate hut the whole put the whole thing at risk,
Speaker 1: for his whole his whole campaign at risk.
Speaker 4: Sure did. He also said he thinks it'll be quote
Speaker 4: no different debating Kamala Harris than it would Joe Biden
Speaker 4: in again, because.
Speaker 1: Trump doesn't care who he's debating. It's just himself, right.
Speaker 4: And it gets the point you were making earlier in
Speaker 4: the show that you can turn Biden migrant crime into
Speaker 4: Harris migrant crime crime, or Biden inflation into Harris flation.
Speaker 4: That's something Republicans are really banking on at this point
Speaker 4: because they have spent months preparing the case against Joe
Speaker 4: Biden and end of the almost before the convention, right
Speaker 4: at the end of the road, they had the rug
Speaker 4: pulled out from under them.
Speaker 1: We're joined now by independent journalist Motaz Sliam joining us
Speaker 1: from Capitol Hill.
Speaker 3: Motaz, thanks for joining.
Speaker 8: Us, of course, thanks for having me, And.
Speaker 1: So Benjamin Etna, who has arrived in Washington, d C.
Speaker 1: We can put this vio up of the screen as
Speaker 1: you can see smiles all around as he lands here
Speaker 1: and in the DC area. He'll be addressing a joint
Speaker 1: session of Congress at two o'clock this afternoon. At least
Speaker 1: twenty Democrats have so far said that they will be
Speaker 1: boycotting the address. Almost all of them will be meeting,
Speaker 1: you know, willing to meet at some point privately, either
Speaker 1: on Capitol Hill.
Speaker 4: First saw a picture of the entourage in.
Speaker 3: The White House. There's the entourage.
Speaker 4: There, including Noah Argamani, which the picture was pointing out
Speaker 4: former hostage now released, has become really the face of
Speaker 4: or one of the most prominent faces of the you know,
Speaker 4: the war. It's in support of the war that Israel's prosecuting.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, yes, Indeed, yesterday ahead of his speech, protesters
Speaker 1: kind of took over the Canon rotunda.
Speaker 3: If you can, we can roll some of this.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So motas you were there at Cannon yesterday, can you
Speaker 1: tell us what the what what the demands of the
Speaker 1: protesters were and what what the mood was there.
Speaker 12: The demands ultimately are for permanent ceasefire in Guzza as
Speaker 12: well as a arms embargo on Israel.
Speaker 8: As well as there was a very it was very
Speaker 8: emotional in the sense that.
Speaker 12: You could tell people really really don't want, for very
Speaker 12: justifiable reasons, Natan Yahoo to speak or to even have
Speaker 12: been invited. But ultimately, the I think the central demand
Speaker 12: is an arms embargo and to bring an end to
Speaker 12: the genocide.
Speaker 4: And you're on Capitol Hill right now, as the Capitol
Speaker 4: Hill police and other law enforcement have prepared with what
Speaker 4: looks like the leftover fence from the January sixth barricade
Speaker 4: that they put it on the Capitol afterwards. So tell
Speaker 4: us what the mood is like. They're what you're expecting
Speaker 4: to see today and if it's groups like Jewish Voices
Speaker 4: for Peace, which is who we saw yesterday and who
Speaker 4: we just saw in that video. Basically, what's happening outside
Speaker 4: the capital in the morning of Wednesday as we're talking
Speaker 4: to you here.
Speaker 12: Yeah, so right now it's around nine point thirty. It's
Speaker 12: still like there are people congregating. There's this sort of
Speaker 12: central area. We are on Pennsylvania and kind of a
Speaker 12: few blocks out of the Capitol, So there's a central area.
Speaker 8: Where people are kind of planning to meet. And the
Speaker 8: actual meeting.
Speaker 12: Time is eleven o'clock and you have like a medical tent,
Speaker 12: you have a lot of water supplies, signs and whatnot,
Speaker 12: and people for now are just meeting. I know that
Speaker 12: there was a protest in front of the water Gate
Speaker 12: happening earlier today as well, because that's where neatsan Yahoo
Speaker 12: and his whole like entourage is saying.
Speaker 1: Do you expect any lawmakers to come to the protest today?
Speaker 3: If so, who?
Speaker 8: None that I know of so far?
Speaker 1: And what are you what are you hearing from the
Speaker 1: from Democrats about how they're handling his his the decision
Speaker 1: by Democrats and Republicans to invite him here.
Speaker 12: Well hearing for the I mean, for the most part,
Speaker 12: it seems like and I think this is like a
Speaker 12: really awful thing. The fact that only about twenty or
Speaker 12: so Democrats have outright said.
Speaker 8: That they are going to boycott.
Speaker 12: His speech, and you know, you saw, like, for example,
Speaker 12: Representative Nadler gave a whole statement about how Natanyahu is
Speaker 12: this worst possible human who's responsible for the atrocities and.
Speaker 1: Whatnots leader in Israel for in like three thousand years
Speaker 1: or something.
Speaker 12: Yeah, worst leader in Israel for three thousand years. But
Speaker 12: I'm still going to attend it.
Speaker 8: And it's it's really like I run out of words.
Speaker 12: Especially as as someone Palestinian, of how like how much
Speaker 12: cover they're giving him. They're trying to rehabilitate his image.
Speaker 12: They have police forces coming from they got NYPD coming in,
Speaker 12: they got all of this effort just to protect him
Speaker 12: when he is really just the you know, the man
Speaker 12: respects constable for a modern day genocide.
Speaker 8: It's really awful.
Speaker 4: Who is participating in this protest? So again yesterday I
Speaker 4: was Jewish Voices for Peace was a part of that
Speaker 4: big protest in the rotunda of the Cannon House office building.
Speaker 4: You know, I think that's an important component obviously of
Speaker 4: how people will interpret what's happening outside the capital. Are
Speaker 4: there Jewish protesters? What's the kind of coalition outside the
Speaker 4: capital today?
Speaker 8: I think it's really a mixture. There's a variety of
Speaker 8: different contingents.
Speaker 12: I know there's going to be a Jewish contingent here
Speaker 12: joining the protests.
Speaker 8: You have sort of.
Speaker 12: Palestinian led organizations. You also have a lot of labor
Speaker 12: organizations that have mobilized in order to join the protest
Speaker 12: today because.
Speaker 8: Influenced a lot by.
Speaker 12: Labor organizing in Palestine which has been potting out, a
Speaker 12: lot of calls, a lot of messaging.
Speaker 8: Two pressure organizations.
Speaker 12: At all levels too, not just boycott and that's in Yahoo,
Speaker 12: but really put the pressure on Israel to put the
Speaker 12: pressure on the US to actually implement an arms embargo
Speaker 12: on Israel, because that's kind of the main leverage we have.
Speaker 12: But to answer your question, it's a variety of many
Speaker 12: walks of life and different backgrounds.
Speaker 4: Let's just quickly put the element D four up on
Speaker 4: the screen since we just referenced it. Their seven major
Speaker 4: unions just sent a letter this is July twenty third,
Speaker 4: so yesterday to Biden calling on him to immediately haul
Speaker 4: all military aid to Israel ahead of it now who's
Speaker 4: visit to Washington? So that included the s CiU, the
Speaker 4: UAW and some other big unions.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and the s c IU extremely close with Kamala Harris,
Speaker 1: which could be interesting and raises the question motaz of
Speaker 1: how people are how people there and people talked to
Speaker 1: yesterday and in the in the movement more generally are
Speaker 1: feeling about the switch from Biden to to Kamala Harris.
Speaker 1: How how much has the door open for people to
Speaker 1: consider now supporting a Democratic ticket given you know, the
Speaker 1: the complexity of this question is that Harris is part
Speaker 1: of the Biden Harris administration. She's also represents potentially a
Speaker 1: new path forward. Where where are people coming down on this?
Speaker 8: Yeah, I mean it's I think, looking at it.
Speaker 12: And in an objective as as objective sense as I can.
Speaker 8: It does definitely.
Speaker 12: I mean, the chances are much higher for Kamala to
Speaker 12: receive votes from people who are very concerned about what's
Speaker 12: happening in Buzzo, what's happening in Palestine, especially from like
Speaker 12: the Arab American population here.
Speaker 8: That being said, I think.
Speaker 12: This is anecdotally speaking, I mean my understanding from a
Speaker 12: lot of Palestinians I've talked to and Muslims is we
Speaker 12: they want to see first what if she is actually
Speaker 12: going to change any of the policies that Biden has
Speaker 12: kind of toad so far, because Biden has pretty much
Speaker 12: given a green light to Natanyahu and his administration despite
Speaker 12: all the different god knows how many red lines for
Speaker 12: different things there have been that Yaho has passed, and then.
Speaker 8: Really there was no consequences.
Speaker 12: For any sort of the atrocities, the massacres, the war crimes.
Speaker 8: So, I mean, you do see this rhetoric from a
Speaker 8: lot of people.
Speaker 12: In like a lot of liberals saying that, oh, like
Speaker 12: we need to push her left. I personally am am
Speaker 12: doubtful of that because it's you know, she's she's received
Speaker 12: a lot of money from the pro Israel, pro Israel
Speaker 12: lobby groups in her career, and it's seems pretty clear
Speaker 12: she's trying to have like a harsher rhetoric. But it's
Speaker 12: been ten months of genocide and rhetoric is not enough anymore.
Speaker 8: I'll say that as a.
Speaker 12: Palestinian first and foremost, like we need to see an
Speaker 12: action plan and things put into place to use our
Speaker 12: leverage as the US to bring an end to the genocide.
Speaker 1: Instead, we're going to hear from Prime Minister Benjamin Netyahu
Speaker 1: addressing a joint session of.
Speaker 3: Congress later today. Quite quite a moment.
Speaker 1: Motas, thank you so much for joining us, and welcome
Speaker 1: back anytime.
Speaker 8: Thank you appreciate it.
Speaker 1: Up next, Nel Shaline, a State Department official who resign
Speaker 1: in protest over the US's unquestioning support for the Dyahu's
Speaker 1: war on Gaza.
Speaker 3: Stick around for the.
Speaker 4: What We're joined now by someone who actually resigned from
Speaker 4: a post at the State Department over the way the
Speaker 4: Biden administration had prosecuted the war on a war on Hamas.
Speaker 4: We're joined by doctor Anel Shalen, who is now a
Speaker 4: researcher at the Quincy Institute. And now thanks for coming
Speaker 4: on the show to talk about this.
Speaker 13: Thank you for having me.
Speaker 3: And so Anel.
Speaker 1: You may have seen this Politico article and we can
Speaker 1: put this up on the screen here. The headline was
Speaker 1: Biden resignees are more hopeful.
Speaker 3: What was the exact happen.
Speaker 4: More hopeful about Harris's Israel policy? That is a July
Speaker 4: twenty first Politico story. And as we are talking to
Speaker 4: you and now you are, we can put f one
Speaker 4: up on the screen. You're one of those resignees, but
Speaker 4: I think there's an open question about whether you're one
Speaker 4: of them who's quote hopeful.
Speaker 1: So many of people have resigned in the State Department
Speaker 1: over this policy that there's an entire now group of
Speaker 1: people that can have differing opinions, So curious where you
Speaker 1: fall down and the question of a change in a
Speaker 1: potential change in policy toward this war.
Speaker 13: I mean, there is an opportunity right now. I think
Speaker 13: the question is who is in touch with Kamala Harris's team,
Speaker 13: And again open question. Obviously it's not yet totally solidified
Speaker 13: that she'll be the nominee, but assuming that she is,
Speaker 13: I know that several of my fellow resignees, you know,
Speaker 13: we're in touch with each other. It's such a great
Speaker 13: source of support to get to work with them. We
Speaker 13: released a joint statement the week of July fourth where
Speaker 13: we were calling for a different policy. So absolutely there's
Speaker 13: an opportunity now for a new approach. I think I'm
Speaker 13: just a little bit less inclined towards optimism just knowing
Speaker 13: the strength of the Israel lobby in US politics. You know,
Speaker 13: I think that we are seeing a generational change. I
Speaker 13: don't think we'll continue to see this bipartisan support for
Speaker 13: this unconditional support for Israel. But I don't know that
Speaker 13: that political change is either here yet or that politicians
Speaker 13: are really plugged into it yet. I don't know that
Speaker 13: Harris and her team are plugged into it. I do
Speaker 13: think I hope they would be, because that could help
Speaker 13: bring young people who are completely disillusioned with this policy.
Speaker 13: It could bring really critical voters, Arab American voters, and
Speaker 13: critical parts of the country the progressives. But I won't
Speaker 13: be surprised if she maintains a lot of these same policies.
Speaker 1: Can I ask you a little bit about how the
Speaker 1: lobby actually works. So I've spoken with some State Department
Speaker 1: officials who have said that the way that it works
Speaker 1: from their perspective is.
Speaker 3: If they if they push a little bit too.
Speaker 1: Hard, let's say, in a meeting with Israeli counterparts, all
Speaker 1: of a sudden that will be told, Hey, so the
Speaker 1: boss got a call from Ron Dharmer, you know, said
Speaker 1: that you're a little bit off the leash. Why am
Speaker 1: I hearing from Ron Durmer about you chilling? And they
Speaker 1: just tighten the leash there a little bit.
Speaker 8: Is that.
Speaker 1: Have you experienced that or have you heard that type
Speaker 1: of kind of influence or in general, how does it
Speaker 1: actually function in practice as you're trying to do your job.
Speaker 13: So I was with the Bureau of Democracy Human Rights
Speaker 13: in Labor or DRL and then their Office of Nearest Affairs,
Speaker 13: and I wasn't working directly on Israel Palestine. You know,
Speaker 13: my portfolio was different countries. But everything I was doing
Speaker 13: and trying to advocate for human rights was absolutely undermined
Speaker 13: and made essentially impossible by Israel's war on Gaza. But
Speaker 13: what I observed wouldn't have necessarily probably risen to that
Speaker 13: level because I was, you know, working level. But what
Speaker 13: I would see would be if there might be a
Speaker 13: shared document and you're working on it with a bunch
Speaker 13: of different people, different offenses, and you're suggesting comments and
Speaker 13: someone might put in your comment, you know, if I
Speaker 13: had said something that was like more critical or pointing
Speaker 13: out something about Israel, someone might say in the comment
Speaker 13: you know that that's not that's not going to work,
Speaker 13: or they might just erase it. And so then it's
Speaker 13: a question, well do do you escalate it? Where are
Speaker 13: the Human Rights Office? So os sensibly and to be clear,
Speaker 13: you know, my superiors in DRL were trying to, you know,
Speaker 13: within the sort of marginal space that they could to
Speaker 13: push for human rights. But human rights are never the
Speaker 13: first priority of US foreign policy, and so we were
Speaker 13: always outranked.
Speaker 4: We were you know, we.
Speaker 13: Never really got to call the shots when it came
Speaker 13: to human rights in Israel or you know, any country
Speaker 13: other than countries that we just routinely call out, like
Speaker 13: Iran and Syria. So what I observed would probably be less.
Speaker 13: You know, our boss got a call about you because
Speaker 13: I was too junior. It was more this internal self
Speaker 13: censorship of other people just knowing that like, yeah, you
Speaker 13: can't say that, got it?
Speaker 4: So something interesting. You resigned in March, and in your
Speaker 4: CNN A bad you wrote about how some of your
Speaker 4: colleagues said, please speak for us. What are you hearing
Speaker 4: if you can speak to that from people who maybe
Speaker 4: are still inside official Washington capacities or working in official
Speaker 4: capacities now that you know, we talked about how people
Speaker 4: like you had already resigned, are looking at a potential
Speaker 4: Harris administration. What are you hearing if you are from
Speaker 4: people who are still inside the government about what that
Speaker 4: might look.
Speaker 13: Like people in government think Trump is going to win,
Speaker 13: and they're really scared of that, especially worried about Project
Speaker 13: twenty twenty five and losing their jobs. I think that
Speaker 13: they're also pretty cynical about Harris, at least the folks
Speaker 13: that I'm in touch with, they don't anticipate a shift here.
Speaker 13: You know, these are people who've spent their careers in
Speaker 13: government and they've seen right and go, and this policy
Speaker 13: doesn't change.
Speaker 4: This is the third vale of American.
Speaker 13: Politics, and so there are people now inside government who
Speaker 13: are continuing to do what they can. I know a
Speaker 13: big contingent are going to be at the protest today
Speaker 13: against bb probably you know, obscuring their appearance to avoid.
Speaker 4: Yeah, their state lanyard zone. Yeah. But you know, I
Speaker 4: do think that.
Speaker 13: Many people inside government are really worried about about Trump
Speaker 13: coming back, but they do see it as kind of
Speaker 13: an inevitability.
Speaker 1: So, speaking of human rights, if we could put up
Speaker 1: D three on the screen here, I don't know if
Speaker 1: you saw this. This is a piece I published last
Speaker 1: night at drop site News leaked you own report Israeli
Speaker 1: Worse called three hundred and sixty six UN staff and
Speaker 1: family members ASNA who prepares to address Congress. And this
Speaker 1: is the first it's a confidential report from the UN
Speaker 1: that was the was leaked to us. It's the first
Speaker 1: one that has laid out the number of dependents of
Speaker 1: UN staff, so not just UN staff. And you know,
Speaker 1: people have been killed from UNISEEF, the UN Development Program, UNRA,
Speaker 1: the World Food Program of the World Health Organization, and
Speaker 1: also from this un like It department. So, as somebody
Speaker 1: with a human rights record since World War Two, have
Speaker 1: you ever seen so many UN workers and their families
Speaker 1: targeted and killed in a conflict before? And what does
Speaker 1: it say about what's going on the ground?
Speaker 3: There?
Speaker 13: Never never, And you know is the kanesset I think
Speaker 13: just designated UNRAH a terrorist organization. This is a UN
Speaker 13: agency and they are targeting you know. Not only did
Speaker 13: they level these accusations against the twelve UNRA employees such
Speaker 13: that the US withdrew funding, as did much of the
Speaker 13: rest of the way world. Other countries have now reinstated
Speaker 13: some of that funding, which is good. But without US funding,
Speaker 13: UNRA does not have the money it needs to function.
Speaker 13: And so the way that Israel has targeted the UN
Speaker 13: and designated UN agency's terrorist organizations is completely dismantling the
Speaker 13: supposed legitimacy of the UN system in ways that will
Speaker 13: have repercussions around the world. I mean, if we don't
Speaker 13: have a set of institutions, and certainly there were already
Speaker 13: issues with UN. It's not perfect, but it is what
Speaker 13: we have, similar to international law. International law, it's not perfect.
Speaker 13: But the ways that Israel in the US have so
Speaker 13: directly undermined it and even used it kind of to
Speaker 13: justify what they're doing, this is going to have massive
Speaker 13: repercussions for conflicts going forward.
Speaker 4: I mean, it is, it is.
Speaker 13: It's going to horrifyingly I run it because so many
Speaker 13: of these institutions were set up in the aftermath of
Speaker 13: World War two to try to prevent another holocaust, and
Speaker 13: you know, I think we can't even know yet what
Speaker 13: the damage from that will be.
Speaker 4: So that's something I think is really underappreciated in this
Speaker 4: larger conversation. And you write in your cna AP ed
Speaker 4: about how American credibility on human rights has I think
Speaker 4: the quote has almost vanished from your outbed over the
Speaker 4: course of the last six plus months as this war
Speaker 4: has transpired. Can you talk to us a little bit
Speaker 4: about that and what it might look like down the
Speaker 4: road in future conflicts or for example, there's a war
Speaker 4: in Ukraine right now, how is this affecting other spaces?
Speaker 13: And I want to be clear, advocating for human rights
Speaker 13: on the behalf of the United States in the Middle
Speaker 13: East was already not easy, do you ways imagine did
Speaker 13: not have a lot of credibility there, but it was
Speaker 13: still able to engage with civil society organizations. There's you know,
Speaker 13: work that was done in these deeply authoritarian spaces in
Speaker 13: ways that really had an impact for people on the ground.
Speaker 4: And so it was so.
Speaker 13: Depressing to then meet with some of these individuals, not
Speaker 13: from Israel or Palestine, elsewhere in the region. We'd sit
Speaker 13: at a table with them, start, you know, open the
Speaker 13: conversation about what it is that they're dealing with the
Speaker 13: way that they're being attacked by their government, and they're
Speaker 13: like Gaza, Gaza, Like we want to talk about Gaza.
Speaker 4: How is this happening?
Speaker 13: How can you you know, this person that I have
Speaker 13: a relationship with, that I know advocates for human rights,
Speaker 13: how are you letting this happen? And we'd kind of
Speaker 13: she bishally have to say, like, I mean this is
Speaker 13: coming from the very top, like you can't. This is
Speaker 13: what the president wants and you're some you know, working
Speaker 13: level person at the State Department or even an under secretary,
Speaker 13: w sister secretary. You can't change that. So in terms
Speaker 13: of thinking about Ukraine, it.
Speaker 4: Is this sort of it's it is such.
Speaker 13: Cruel irony that we have what Russia is doing to
Speaker 13: Ukraine in such direct juxtaposition of the US reaction to
Speaker 13: that and rightful condemnation.
Speaker 4: And then.
Speaker 13: The complete opposite when Israel does even worse things to
Speaker 13: the civilian population of Gaza, and we have the US saying,
Speaker 13: you know, the v's international institutions, our right and just
Speaker 13: in the condemnations of Russia, and then they're trying to
Speaker 13: go after like the families of the ICC or the
Speaker 13: ICJ prosecutor when they are called, you know, have accused
Speaker 13: net Yahoo and was it gallant of war crimes? That
Speaker 13: just the hypocrisy is so blatant that I think the
Speaker 13: only thing that the US could try to do to
Speaker 13: re establish credibility on human rights would be to work
Speaker 13: to establish a state of Palestine, to actually make that happen,
Speaker 13: not pretend that that's what it's you know, that's been
Speaker 13: the official policy for years, but the US has done
Speaker 13: nothing but provide this unconditional support for Israel, which keeps
Speaker 13: moving US further away from that and towards more violence.
Speaker 1: In the meantime, if we can put up this F
Speaker 1: three one of the more I mean, I don't want
Speaker 1: to rank the shockingness that's been coming out of Gaza,
Speaker 1: but the headline here from the BBC is a World
Speaker 1: Health organization quote extremely worried about possible Gaza polio outbreak.
Speaker 1: There were reports in Israeli press about Israeli soldiers being
Speaker 1: vaccinated for polio before heading into assault Assault Gaza, reports
Speaker 1: of the virus that causes polio being detected in sewage.
Speaker 1: You know, this is a throwback to something that the
Speaker 1: world had, you know, felt.
Speaker 3: Like it had defeated.
Speaker 1: What does it say to you that the who is
Speaker 1: now extremely worried about this potential polio outbreak?
Speaker 13: I mean, like you said, polio, you think of FDR,
Speaker 13: you know, you think of a bygone era before we
Speaker 13: had vaccines that could prevent these these completely preventable diseases.
Speaker 13: And you know, if they're having a polio outbreak, who
Speaker 13: knows what else could happen. I mean, there's it's completely
Speaker 13: there's no water, it's completely untreated sewage. There could be
Speaker 13: all kinds of you know, the population of Gaza. Who
Speaker 13: knows what else, what other diseases might be circulating there
Speaker 13: that we're just not even aware of. But you know
Speaker 13: the fact that the who had gotten so close to
Speaker 13: eliminating polio and now we're worried about an outbreak. It's
Speaker 13: I think it's just like you said, it's just one
Speaker 13: more example of how shocking this conflict is.
Speaker 4: Is there anything about the conflict that you think people
Speaker 4: maybe aren't as aware of as somebody who actually worked
Speaker 4: in the State Department, worked in human rights issues that
Speaker 4: we haven't covered yet. Is there something people just don't
Speaker 4: understand should understand better.
Speaker 13: I think a lot of people aren't sufficiently worried about
Speaker 13: the war expanding and the US getting dragged in. I'm
Speaker 13: fairly sure that Bibe is going to ask certain he's
Speaker 13: going to ask for more money and more weapons. But
Speaker 13: I think he wants Congress to sign off on him
Speaker 13: going after Husbullah in Lebanon, and I think his objective
Speaker 13: is to enter into a war that gets Israeli civilians
Speaker 13: killed that will try to shift this global condemnation of
Speaker 13: him and his actions against Palestinians and Gaza and try
Speaker 13: to claw back some of that sympathy that Israel had
Speaker 13: after October seventh to then justify expanding the violence. And
Speaker 13: what I'm worried about is that this will drag in
Speaker 13: the United States because the US continues to pledge this
Speaker 13: unconditional support, that US troops will get dragged in and
Speaker 13: that this in some ways could be seen as election interference.
Speaker 13: That Bbie will do this right before the US election.
Speaker 13: Americans are so tired of unnecessary wars in the Middle East.
Speaker 13: This could hand I mean Trump's already Trump could win
Speaker 13: by himself without this happening, but that could really tank
Speaker 13: the chances of whoever ends up on the Democratic ticket.
Speaker 1: Yeah and so and now thank you so much for
Speaker 1: joining us, very much, appreciate it, Thanks for having me
Speaker 1: and so. Yeah, at two o'clock ya who will address
Speaker 1: the Joint Session of Congress At eight o'clock later tonight,
Speaker 1: Joe Biden will give his address where I guess he'll
Speaker 1: and he guesses what he's going to announce.
Speaker 4: I mean, he already tweeted it. He did tweet it
Speaker 4: he's been posting.
Speaker 1: It's you're going to confirm that he is not going
Speaker 1: to be the Democratic nominationing He'll confirm, little whole scoop here.
Speaker 3: You heard that here first.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's a great thing. You post something on X
Speaker 4: wait a few days, jump on video, more content. You
Speaker 4: can just keep minding it for clicks. So well to
Speaker 4: the president, sitting president of the United States.
Speaker 1: Indeed, all right, well you guys enjoy that at saga.
Speaker 1: We'll actually be back with Crystal tomorrow.
Speaker 4: So he should have just taken tomorrow off. What did
Speaker 4: he should have just taken the whole week he couldn't. Yeah,
Speaker 4: that's so good, so true. So you'll get another I
Speaker 4: guess dose of Sager before the week is over. Great wedding,
Speaker 4: by the way, super fun. We had a lot of fun,
Speaker 4: breaking points, career, had a lot of fun.
Speaker 1: Ryan was dancing a lot, very happy for the couple.
Speaker 4: Yes, all right, well we will be back next week
Speaker 4: with more counterpoints. See then,