Speaker 1: Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here,
Speaker 1: and we here at breaking points, are already thinking of
Speaker 1: ways we can up our game for this critical election.
Speaker 2: We rely on our premium subs to expand coverage, upgrade
Speaker 2: the studio ad staff, give you, guys, the best independent coverage.
Speaker 3: That is possible.
Speaker 2: If you like what we're all about, it just means
Speaker 2: the absolute world to have your support. But enough with that,
Speaker 2: let's get to the show.
Speaker 3: All right, good morning, Well on the counterpoints, how you
Speaker 3: guys doing. How you doing, Emily, I'm doing great.
Speaker 4: We unfortunately can't get a response from the audience right
Speaker 4: now as to how they're doing. But I've also been
Speaker 4: doing whys and they're doing well, unless, of course, they
Speaker 4: are in North Carolina.
Speaker 3: And they also don't hold back on their opinions, and
Speaker 3: they have multiple different ways to deliver them. That's true,
Speaker 3: just not directly through the camera.
Speaker 4: Yes, a multitude of avenues to let us know how
Speaker 4: you're doing. But in all seriousness, we're going to start
Speaker 4: with the Hurricane Milton, following up on Hurricane Helen. Obviously,
Speaker 4: Tampa is right in the bullseye of that storm, which
Speaker 4: could have all kinds of implications for people's lives, for
Speaker 4: supply chains, for the economy. So we're going to start
Speaker 4: with that story, Ryan, and we're going to go and
Speaker 4: move on to a much more fun topic, which is
Speaker 4: Kamala Harris's surprise media tour.
Speaker 3: I don't well, both of us are sort of Our
Speaker 3: staff was browbeaten into getting her in front of the press,
Speaker 3: and the staff was correct and we were wrong. You know,
Speaker 3: the media tour was a mistake. We'll play some of that.
Speaker 4: Not a mistake from our perspective, though, because you really
Speaker 4: do get just a great glimpse into, yeah, the mind
Speaker 4: of Kamala Harris. Donald Trump was on Ben Shapiro's somebody.
Speaker 3: Else who should not do media appearances.
Speaker 4: It's a bench Shapier's podcast yesterday talking about Israel policy. Ryan,
Speaker 4: you guys over at drop site got a fantastic scoop.
Speaker 4: Tell us a little bit about what people going to
Speaker 4: tease it a little.
Speaker 3: If we were the first interview ever with the survivors
Speaker 3: of the brutal If you remember the August twenty twenty
Speaker 3: one dronest which the US Army instantly said they had
Speaker 3: just attacked an isis k operative and within moments learned
Speaker 3: that actually they had attacked an Afghan who was working
Speaker 3: with the United States and was being greeted at his
Speaker 3: car by many of his children and his family. And
Speaker 3: so the survivors of that drone strike are actually now
Speaker 3: have been relocated to the United States, are now living
Speaker 3: in Kansas City, and they gave their first interview to
Speaker 3: DROP site and so we'll be playing that later today.
Speaker 4: Fantastic, And we're actually going to discuss as well, this
Speaker 4: effort by seventeen porn actors to put some money into
Speaker 4: ads and swing States about Project twenty twenty five. There's
Speaker 4: a ForWord written by Kevin Roberts talking about how he
Speaker 4: would like to see port and regulated, so we'll get
Speaker 4: to that as well.
Speaker 3: We're going to try to do the entire segment without
Speaker 3: any double entenders, right.
Speaker 5: I don't think it's not worth even trying. It'll be
Speaker 5: a good one, yeah, not worth it. And we do
Speaker 5: have a Friday show this week.
Speaker 3: We do. We're going to have Jeremy Skahill, my co
Speaker 3: founder of DROPS. I knew he was going to be
Speaker 3: here to talk about the kind of the ark of
Speaker 3: his career that brought him to this place, talk about
Speaker 3: obviously is his coverage of the Warren Godz and the
Speaker 3: rest of the and in the rest of the region
Speaker 3: as well. You know, he's done some fascinating interviews lately
Speaker 3: with a deputy commander at Palestinian Islamic Jahad, top mass officials,
Speaker 3: like talking about how does that work? Yeah, yeah, behind
Speaker 3: the scenes, behind the scenes.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it would be super interesting. I'm really excited about that.
Speaker 4: All right, let's start with Let's start in Florida, where
Speaker 4: Hurricane Milton is expected to hit tonight. It is expected
Speaker 4: to be the first major hurricane to hit the Tampa
Speaker 4: Bay area since nineteen twenty one. Some experts have said
Speaker 4: nobody in the area has ever survived a storm as
Speaker 4: strong as this. Expecting ten to fifteen foot surges eighteen
Speaker 4: inches of rain to fall on Florida overnight. Astraphic predictions
Speaker 4: for what could happen to Tampa. Let's start with this.
Speaker 4: SOT officials are telling residents that they need to evacuate.
Speaker 4: Here's a one official telling them what could happen if
Speaker 4: they don't evacuate.
Speaker 6: It's the same message we're hearing for people from leaders
Speaker 6: across the state. If you stay, they cannot get you.
Speaker 6: They were able to do some water rescues and helene.
Speaker 6: That will not happen with Milton. Once the winds, which
Speaker 6: are forecasted to start here at tropical storm forest gust,
Speaker 6: once they start tomorrow at around eight am, he expects
Speaker 6: that by noon they're not going to be able. They're
Speaker 6: going to have to evacuate the island themselves. So starting
Speaker 6: at noon tomorrow, if you're here, there will not be
Speaker 6: help coming for you. You are on your own, and
Speaker 6: he's made that very clear. It's that same message we're
Speaker 6: hearing from officials. Write your name, write your number, write
Speaker 6: someone else's number, your date of birth on you, because
Speaker 6: when they come looking for you, they want to know
Speaker 6: who to contac because you decided to stay.
Speaker 4: All right, let's actually roll also this flood simulation to
Speaker 4: the If you're watching this, you can just get a
Speaker 4: visual of what Tampa could look like very soon.
Speaker 7: I can use this simulation to show you what it
Speaker 7: will actually look like in Tampa. At three feet above
Speaker 7: normally dry ground water is already life threatening. It's too
Speaker 7: late to evacuate. Whatter this high can knock you off
Speaker 7: your feet, make cars float and driving impossible. The first
Speaker 7: floor of homes and businesses are flooded. Unfortunately, the water
Speaker 7: is expected to rise even higher at six feet above
Speaker 7: the height of most people.
Speaker 5: Vehicles get carried away.
Speaker 7: Structure starts to fail.
Speaker 3: Just look at this.
Speaker 5: Anything could be in this water, sharp.
Speaker 7: Glass, debris, chemicals as well. The scary part is some
Speaker 7: areas could see surge values at ten to fifteen feet
Speaker 7: and this takes us up to nine.
Speaker 5: And look what it does at this level.
Speaker 7: The first floors of structures are completely flooded and there
Speaker 7: are a few places that it is safe when the
Speaker 7: water rises this high. We want everyone to know their evacuations,
Speaker 7: listen to local officials and evacuate when ordered to do so.
Speaker 4: That visual ryan is stunning, and we can play this
Speaker 4: actual satellite footage as well.
Speaker 3: This is a three Is this from the NASA, dudes.
Speaker 4: The one we're rolling out, Yeah, yeah, yeah, take a
Speaker 4: look at this. And again, if you're listening to this,
Speaker 4: what you just what you're seeing now is just the
Speaker 4: sheer size of Hurricane Milton, which is just.
Speaker 3: One hundred and forty miles from the center, which you
Speaker 3: can which if you're watching this, you can see it
Speaker 3: just expands as far as I can see from a
Speaker 3: spaceship right.
Speaker 5: Yes, it's just incredible that visual.
Speaker 4: I think also Ryan of the meteorologists that we just rolled,
Speaker 4: where you see the water levels going up higher than
Speaker 4: her head and then I mean, this is within the
Speaker 4: next twenty four hours, unfortunately, just shocking. Let's play also
Speaker 4: here a four this is going to be just the
Speaker 4: evacuation alerts you can get a feel for what's.
Speaker 8: Happening on the ground, have been ordered for your area.
Speaker 4: It's so obviously the government has no easy task ahead
Speaker 4: of them asking people to get out, because well, I'm
Speaker 4: sure many people are eager and have.
Speaker 5: The means to get out. It's really not that easy
Speaker 5: for everyone, and I think that's an important point. Also,
Speaker 5: people get told all of the time.
Speaker 4: It does depending on you know, if you live in Florida,
Speaker 4: it's easy to understand how people get sort of numb to.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and natural disasters are a way of reminding us
Speaker 3: that money is kind of an imaginary thing and it's
Speaker 3: actually not that useful sometimes. So yes, it helps to
Speaker 3: have means if you left several days ago, if you're
Speaker 3: trying to leave in the last twenty four hours, you
Speaker 3: can't transform money into gasoline. If there's no gasoline at
Speaker 3: the gas station, and you can't transform money into a
Speaker 3: path out if the roads are all blocked, if you
Speaker 3: get a flat tire and let's say your elderly and
Speaker 3: don't know how to change it, or like anything minor
Speaker 3: goes wrong, there's the breakdown of our side and our
Speaker 3: systems means that that's it, Like there's nobody to call.
Speaker 3: You're on your own. And so it's really heartbreaking to
Speaker 3: see these pictures, which in your mind become kind of
Speaker 3: before pictures, even though they are still present day pictures.
Speaker 3: We know that we're actually looking at as a picture
Speaker 3: that we'll soon have a line on the top of
Speaker 3: it says before it's a slow motion train cras.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so let's take a listen to one man who
Speaker 4: is refusing to evacuate.
Speaker 5: This is a five all right, jay, they're saying, twenty
Speaker 5: foot storm surge.
Speaker 3: It could be honored ony. It doesn't matter to both float.
Speaker 9: That's the whole thing.
Speaker 10: You can water on the outside of the boat and
Speaker 10: the boat will go up with the war down.
Speaker 11: That's what we want to do.
Speaker 5: Can we please get you into a hotel? No, everybody's
Speaker 5: been asking man, we got to get you off this day.
Speaker 10: The only way I'm going to go to a motel
Speaker 10: room if a woman invites made you, GUYU say.
Speaker 3: The only way I'm going.
Speaker 5: So it is the true run to the point that
Speaker 5: you were just making.
Speaker 4: I think it's you know, I've never lived in a
Speaker 4: hurricane like vulnerable area, but I do Always when I'm
Speaker 4: watching people say get out, get out, it's like, I
Speaker 4: don't know if you are persuading the people who are
Speaker 4: trying not to, who are considering staying, by just saying
Speaker 4: get out, You're dumb if you don't get out.
Speaker 5: It's actually pretty hard. It's not that easy for everybody
Speaker 5: to get out.
Speaker 3: I thought that the mayor's line was pretty good, where
Speaker 3: yesterday she said you know, if you stay, you're going
Speaker 3: to die. Yeah, because at least that kind of shocks
Speaker 3: the conscience and shocks the listeners. Oh, that's not the
Speaker 3: usual kind of rhetoric we hear from from politicians. Now,
Speaker 3: maybe that lieutenant got dan guy there, Maybe he'll be okay.
Speaker 3: I don't think so. But you know, one hundred and
Speaker 3: forty mile in our winds and that little boat, I
Speaker 3: don't see it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it doesn't seem like math that works out here.
Speaker 4: Let's put a six on the screen. This is I thought,
Speaker 4: a really helpful take from our friend Matthew Stoler who
Speaker 4: wrote on his substack, big what happens if a hurricane
Speaker 4: smashes Tampa. It was just a really important, I think
Speaker 4: glimpse at how vulnerable you were just making this point, right,
Speaker 4: and how vulnerable the.
Speaker 5: Economy is the supply chain is.
Speaker 4: It's a real thing, right, And Matt's asking, did we
Speaker 4: learn any of the lessons of COVID about the fragility
Speaker 4: of the supply chains? They are all kinds of important
Speaker 4: industries like Tampa is a very very important part, and
Speaker 4: it seems as though we just saw this with the courts.
Speaker 5: That was used in or that is used in the
Speaker 5: course of the season semi characters.
Speaker 4: Yeah, in North Carolina completely upended the semiconductor supply chain
Speaker 4: that we're pouring billions of dollars right now into domestically boosting,
Speaker 4: so Tampa as a critical port in the country. I mean,
Speaker 4: we could see tons of disruption from this because it
Speaker 4: appears we didn't learn a lot of lessons of COVID.
Speaker 3: Yeah. It' and also be a real shame if the
Speaker 3: sent com base there in Tampa gets wiped out and
Speaker 3: you can put up this next element. People may recall
Speaker 3: most of the drone strikes around the world, you know,
Speaker 3: get which, to Biden, to his credit, is actually almost
Speaker 3: completely eliminated. We now do them by proxy are carried
Speaker 3: out out of what McDill for McDill out and down
Speaker 3: in Tampa and during I talked to yesterday about Hurricane
Speaker 3: Michael back in twenty eighteen that wiped out an air
Speaker 3: Force base in a Panhandle and they have permanently moved
Speaker 3: a huge air fleet out of there. You can imagine
Speaker 3: that as it dawns on our military planners that hurricanes
Speaker 3: are a thing and continue to be a thing. That
Speaker 3: an air Force base in Tampa, while it might be
Speaker 3: convenient closest to the Middle East, so they do a
Speaker 3: lot of flights, you know, the takeoff from their head
Speaker 3: over there back and also to Central and South America,
Speaker 3: also has some problems with it, which you know, I
Speaker 3: say it's a shame because you know, the US military
Speaker 3: not only you know, built the post World War two
Speaker 3: era that produced the greenhouse gases that we're now living with,
Speaker 3: but the Pentagon itself is a non trivial contributor to
Speaker 3: that total. Like maybe the biggest contributor.
Speaker 4: So on that point, Actually, there's Tampa is the biggest
Speaker 4: exporter of fertilizer in America according to Stoler, and it's
Speaker 4: also the biggest importer, he writes, of gasoline and jet
Speaker 4: fuel that is used in Florida. So Matt says, that
Speaker 4: means we can expect significant supply shocks and probably environmental damage,
Speaker 4: which is another out on consequence.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the environmental damage from mixing all of the different
Speaker 3: toxins that are that are held in different bays and
Speaker 3: in Florida could be extraordinary. But yes, exactly, the Florida
Speaker 3: is like, is the bread basket of our fertilizer and
Speaker 3: there aren't a whole lot of places for it. Seeing
Speaker 3: that disrupt is going to be ugly.
Speaker 4: Yes, and it's this was another thing that happened with
Speaker 4: Helene is ivy Fluid, a manufacturer of iv fluid was
Speaker 4: hit that supply chain got disrupted. Well, another major manufacturer
Speaker 4: of ivy fluid is in Tampa, so can expect some
Speaker 4: serious problems there.
Speaker 5: And also a lot of the recovery efforts in Helene
Speaker 5: are ongoing, very very much ongoing, and so rebuilding Tampa,
Speaker 5: you can imagine you know this is this.
Speaker 4: Is there is a limited supply of all of these
Speaker 4: recent versus. So depending on how devastating the storm is
Speaker 4: when it hits tonight and into tomorrow, there could be
Speaker 4: some seriously stretched resources for both the people of Appalasia,
Speaker 4: Western North Carolina and Florida. Let's move on to Kamala
Speaker 4: Harris's media tour, which is interesting in some ways and
Speaker 4: entirely predictable in others.
Speaker 5: Obviously, she went on Call Her Daddy.
Speaker 4: She has just yesterday did the View, she did the
Speaker 4: Colbert Report, she did sixty minutes. It has been a
Speaker 4: hell of a week for Kamala Harris, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, in sixty minutes. They've just been rolling the interviews
Speaker 3: out and we'll talk in a moment. People noticed that
Speaker 3: the interview that they aired on sixty minutes on the
Speaker 3: television program for the folks is different than how it
Speaker 3: actually unfolded. There was truncated in a key moment.
Speaker 5: Yes, of course they always do that.
Speaker 4: We'll get to that in a second. She also went
Speaker 4: on Howard Stern, which we have a clip from. But
Speaker 4: let's just start with this exciting mash up of Kamala
Speaker 4: Harris on the View yesterday where right. It is going
Speaker 4: to be so funny if the women of the view
Speaker 4: are the people who get that sound bite that ultimately
Speaker 4: ticks down Kamala Harris, let's see roll the club.
Speaker 9: What do you think would be the biggest specific difference
Speaker 9: between your presidency and a Biden see a Biden presidency. Well,
Speaker 9: we're obviously two different people, and we have a lot
Speaker 9: of shared life experiences, for example, the way we feel
Speaker 9: about our family and our parents and so on. But
Speaker 9: we're also different people, and I will bring those sensibilities
Speaker 9: to how I lead by part. Listen, I plan on
Speaker 9: having a Republican in my cabinet.
Speaker 5: You got a list?
Speaker 12: Yeah right.
Speaker 5: You asked me, what's the difference between Joe Biden and me? Well,
Speaker 5: that will be one of the differences.
Speaker 9: I'm going to have a Republican in my cabinet because
Speaker 9: I don't I don't feel burdened by letting pride get
Speaker 9: in the way of a good idea.
Speaker 5: Yeah right, stuff.
Speaker 3: The problem with that answer, Okay, fine, she's doing she's
Speaker 3: going after Republicans is that Biden's brand is that he
Speaker 3: loves Republicans and loves to work with Republicans.
Speaker 5: So good point.
Speaker 3: People are like well, that's actually not a you're saying,
Speaker 3: it's a thing that's different. And I guess he did
Speaker 3: he technically not have a Republican in the cabinet. I
Speaker 3: guess not.
Speaker 4: No, But she actually had one of the most parties
Speaker 4: in voting records when she was in the Senate, so
Speaker 4: which was a selling point for her, as you'll remember
Speaker 4: in the twenty twenty primary that her voting record I
Speaker 4: think had been intentionally.
Speaker 3: It was also she was elected into the Trump presidency,
Speaker 3: and you just weren't if anything was associated with Trump
Speaker 3: as a Democrat, you were voting against it. So her
Speaker 3: entire Senate career was just Trump right right.
Speaker 4: Although the Kamala Harris of let's say twenty eighteen and
Speaker 4: the liszt Cheney of twenty eighteen would not have been
Speaker 4: especially friendly like they were last week It's rippin Wisconsin
Speaker 4: when Cheney endorsed her. This view segment was is so
Speaker 4: brutal that even CNN went in on Kamala Harris after it.
Speaker 5: This is Molly ball reacting. We can roll this clip.
Speaker 1: I'm surprised, frankly that she doesn't have more to say
Speaker 1: about this, given that she and her campaign know that
Speaker 1: this is one of the main questions the voters have
Speaker 1: about her, and one of the main things she's been
Speaker 1: trying to establish as part of her candidacy is the
Speaker 1: idea that she would represent a break from the past
Speaker 1: four years and to not be able to come up
Speaker 1: with something to say in that moment. She continues to
Speaker 1: not be particularly nimble on her feet in a lot
Speaker 1: of these interviews, and this is a very obvious question
Speaker 1: that gave her an opportunity.
Speaker 5: Frankly, yes, she is not very nimble on her feet.
Speaker 5: That's a good way to put it, I suppose.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So what could she say? The things that people
Speaker 3: don't like about the Biden administration, according to Pauling, is
Speaker 3: one is handling of Israel, Palestine, Kaza lebanon all of that,
Speaker 3: and also his border policy. She and he have broken
Speaker 3: with his original border policy, so they've already done that,
Speaker 3: so that kind of leaves Israel, and she has decided,
Speaker 3: for whatever reason, that she'd rather just go down with
Speaker 3: a ship inflation break with him on that.
Speaker 4: I mean, people like if you if you look at polling,
Speaker 4: people are not pleased with.
Speaker 5: The state of the economy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, she could say, I'll have lower egg prices and
Speaker 3: I'm gonna I'm gonna fight inflation more than I wouldn't
Speaker 3: bind it. But then it's like, well Biden said he
Speaker 3: fought inflation all the time, Like it's tough.
Speaker 5: It's you know, she can just stick with the answer.
Speaker 3: She said, I'm gonna fire Lena Khan.
Speaker 5: She couldn't do that.
Speaker 4: She'd be like I talked to Mark Cuban way more
Speaker 4: than Joe Biden. I'm much better friends with three Hawks.
Speaker 3: Sort of what she means by I'm going to have
Speaker 3: a Republican in the cabinet.
Speaker 4: Well, depending on when she puts Jade Fans in the cabinet,
Speaker 4: you might keep Lena Khan. So she also talked about
Speaker 4: her healthcare plan on the view Let's roll this uh
Speaker 4: B three.
Speaker 9: What I am proposing is that basically what we will
Speaker 9: do is allow Medicare to cover in home healthcare st
Speaker 9: and because we're talking about these kinds of things where
Speaker 9: it's just about helping an aging parent or person, you know,
Speaker 9: prepare a meal, you know, put their sweater on, and
Speaker 9: it's about dignity for that individual. It's about independence for
Speaker 9: that individual. Yes, I mean what people are declining skills
Speaker 9: to some extent, but their dignity has their pride has
Speaker 9: not declined. They want to they want to stay in
Speaker 9: their home. They don't want to go somewhere else. Plus
Speaker 9: for the family to send them to a residential care
Speaker 9: facility to hire somebody is so expensive.
Speaker 5: And I'll just say what.
Speaker 9: But here's the other thing about it is, you know,
Speaker 9: people say, well, how.
Speaker 5: Are you going to pay for it?
Speaker 9: Here, here's the thing, here's how we pay for Part
Speaker 9: of what I also intend to do is allow Medicare
Speaker 9: to continue to negotiate drug prices against these big pharmaceutical companies,
Speaker 9: which means we are going to save Medicare the money
Speaker 9: because we're not going to be paying these high prices.
Speaker 5: What do you make of that? Run?
Speaker 3: That's great stuff. That's that's the Democratic Party I'd love
Speaker 3: to see out out there more often. We are going
Speaker 3: to take money from these giant corporations that are ripping
Speaker 3: us off, and we're going to give it to people
Speaker 3: to make their lives better. Look wonderful. Let's do that.
Speaker 3: And you know that the Medicare paying for at home
Speaker 3: care is you know something I've been hoping Democrats would do.
Speaker 3: You know, as soon as I became you know, understood
Speaker 3: what it even meant. And because she's right, it does
Speaker 3: save money and saves a lot of pride and dignity
Speaker 3: to keep people out of these residential care facilities as
Speaker 3: long as possible. It's the last place anybody wants to be.
Speaker 3: And also the children, well grown, the grown children who
Speaker 3: were performing these this service for their their parents, they're
Speaker 3: doing it out of a sense of you know, filial
Speaker 3: obligation and love. But it's also taking it's also very hard.
Speaker 3: It's taking away from what they could be doing else
Speaker 3: they taking care of their kids, so they might have
Speaker 3: to hire somebody to be with their kids at the time.
Speaker 3: It's there is time you can't take shifts at work.
Speaker 3: It's time that you can't just you know, relax and
Speaker 3: recharge on your own. So, and it's not something that
Speaker 3: people do forever. Obviously, it's some it's it's something that
Speaker 3: many people do for some months or years. But while
Speaker 3: they're doing it's very it's very difficult, even though it
Speaker 3: is rewarding and it is the thing that you're doing
Speaker 3: out of love. And so for the state to step
Speaker 3: in and say we're going to try to soften this
Speaker 3: blow for you a little bit by taking some of
Speaker 3: the billions in profits that the pharmaceutical industry is taking
Speaker 3: from you. Good, great, good for her, just keep saying
Speaker 3: that the whole time.
Speaker 5: Well, that's what I was also going to ask you.
Speaker 3: I mean, I can imagine a decent number of people
Speaker 3: voting for just for that on the on the wing,
Speaker 3: in a prayer that could ever become law.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yes, completely agree with that. She went on Howard
Speaker 5: Stern as.
Speaker 3: Well, and JD. Vance said something similar to this or no,
Speaker 3: I mean, not exactly smart if he did. He's on
Speaker 3: the childcare side, like he's he's been supportive of helping
Speaker 3: to financially support family members who perform childcare for relatives, right, yeah,
Speaker 3: which this is similar.
Speaker 4: Similar, although it's such a I mean, any conversations that
Speaker 4: smack of greater state involvement in healthcare is like a
Speaker 4: hard red line for Republicans still, even though I mean,
Speaker 4: we've talked about this before, their lack of replacement plan
Speaker 4: for Obamacare, their lack of any plan.
Speaker 3: If we called trump Care trump care.
Speaker 4: You called trump care, then we're all good. He actually
Speaker 4: probably doesn't have hardened ideological opinions on what to do
Speaker 4: with the healthcare system. From what we can tell, so
Speaker 4: who knows, but she also, I mean, but my final
Speaker 4: point on that would be that I think we're increasingly
Speaker 4: waking up to the horrors of those facilities and we'll
Speaker 4: look back on it, like fifty years from now as
Speaker 4: a real cruel experiment that we went along with for
Speaker 4: way too long.
Speaker 3: Yeah. My mother worked in a nursing home the whole
Speaker 3: time I was growing up. Yeah, miserable plant I I
Speaker 3: would have walked there after school and sitting there and
Speaker 3: just hanging out there. Absolutely miserable places. Wonderful people at
Speaker 3: the nursing home. Yeah, until she was off, probably learned
Speaker 3: a lot. Yeah, yeah, play some dominoes. Well, she was.
Speaker 3: She did the she was the activity cordnerator, so she
Speaker 3: was one doing the bingo and the arts and crafts and.
Speaker 12: So do some of that.
Speaker 4: So Howard Stern interviewed Kamala Harris yesterday as well. So
Speaker 4: if you're going through kind of the checklist here, she's
Speaker 4: sort of mirroring the podcast playbook that Donald Trump rolled
Speaker 4: out starting a couple of months ago, which is interesting
Speaker 4: and you kind of do have to do it. That's
Speaker 4: one of the things Trump said to a Lex Friedman
Speaker 4: he seemed that he'd maybe learned that from his experience
Speaker 4: with Elon Muskin Spaces and maybe a little bit of
Speaker 4: Baron's touch in there as well.
Speaker 5: It's just it. It's true, like this is where the
Speaker 5: audiences are.
Speaker 4: She did a Colinghurston a basketball podcast last week that
Speaker 4: didn't get a ton of attention, but here she is
Speaker 4: on Howard Stern. Easiest decision in the world would be
Speaker 4: for her campaign to do Howard Stern because he has
Speaker 4: become an absolute shill that might as well get paid
Speaker 4: by the DNC.
Speaker 5: Here's how that went.
Speaker 13: I think that's some of the most important work that
Speaker 13: anyone can do, which is to require that we have
Speaker 13: a society that does not allow, in particular for violence
Speaker 13: and that kind of behavior to go without consequence, serious consequence.
Speaker 10: It's really weird too, because to me, you're the law
Speaker 10: and order candidate, and yet they try to paint you
Speaker 10: like here's some leftist I don't know who wants to
Speaker 10: have people running through the streets committing crimes. You were
Speaker 10: a prosecutor. I have put a lot of people in jail.
Speaker 13: I have personally prosecuted everything from you know, child said
Speaker 13: actual assault to homicide.
Speaker 5: I have put a lot of people in jail.
Speaker 4: So true, But also she like, I like how Howard
Speaker 4: Stern is they try to paint you as being soft
Speaker 4: on She was telling people that contribute to the twenty
Speaker 4: twenty bail fund for Minneapolis protesters, which you and I
Speaker 4: will disagree on.
Speaker 3: But she did do there you go believing that she
Speaker 3: believed that.
Speaker 5: Well, yeah, but like he's saying, they try to paint
Speaker 5: you this way, it's like she did that.
Speaker 3: She did do that.
Speaker 5: That was her I was like, she posted a tweeter.
Speaker 3: Did she do it if she didn't even mean it.
Speaker 4: That's a great question that goes a little deeper than
Speaker 4: we're prepared to address today. So yeah, I mean, Howard
Speaker 4: Stern is kind of open about being a shelt this way,
Speaker 4: He's not like ashamed of it. But he really really
Speaker 4: laid into her on that one, just really gave it
Speaker 4: the business. Yes, okay, So speaking of she also went
Speaker 4: on Colbert by the way and addressed kind of the
Speaker 4: same question as the view. He asked, basically, what in
Speaker 4: what ways will you be different than Joe Biden. She said, again,
Speaker 4: I'm not Joe Biden, and I love the American people,
Speaker 4: and to paraphrase, Mollyball was not very nimble on her feet.
Speaker 5: We watched that before we started taping. It was cringe.
Speaker 3: So she gave the same answer twice to the question
Speaker 3: of how would you be different from Joe Biden, which is, well,
Speaker 3: I'm not Joe Biden, which either she came up with
Speaker 3: that on her own or they actually did prep for
Speaker 3: this question. You would assume that this question, it's the
Speaker 3: number one question that voters are asking. It's you know,
Speaker 3: the consultants are saying, this is a change election. How
Speaker 3: do you show that you're the change candidate? And that
Speaker 3: seems to be what they've come up with so far.
Speaker 3: I mean, I get that it's difficult because you're the
Speaker 3: vice president, and so then the obvious follow up is
Speaker 3: why didn't you do it? And the obvious answer is
Speaker 3: while the vice president doesn't do anything and we all
Speaker 3: know that. But that's not a very you know, self
Speaker 3: satisfying answer, pointing to your own impotence.
Speaker 4: While we're on the subject, I don't begrudge either Kamala
Speaker 4: Harris or Donald Trump for doing fairly friendly podcast interviews.
Speaker 5: And I don't begrudge.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's gonna say, I don't begrudge Howard Stern, who
Speaker 4: is now an open partisan Democrat, for doing those interviews
Speaker 4: and doing it from his honest perspective. Same thing with
Speaker 4: Alex Cooper or Ben Shapiro talking to Trump, whoever it is.
Speaker 4: I mean, you're not going to suddenly cosplay as Walter Cronkite.
Speaker 4: It'd just be weird, wouldn't make sense. You're probably not
Speaker 4: equipped to do it if you're Alex Cooper anyway. But
Speaker 4: to see Howard Stern, Howard Stern just kind of marvel
Speaker 4: at the toughness of this, or the fake toughness of this,
Speaker 4: like manufactured robot girl Boss cop. It is just against
Speaker 4: everything that Howard Stern ever stood for, and that may
Speaker 4: have been and I'm not saying Howard Stern stood for
Speaker 4: anything good, but man, was that a great glimpse into
Speaker 4: the transition.
Speaker 7: No.
Speaker 4: I've never been a big Howard Stern fan, to be honest,
Speaker 4: but it does show just the dramatic change that he's
Speaker 4: taken in his life.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and he wrote a memoir about that like a
Speaker 3: year ago or.
Speaker 5: So, say five years ago?
Speaker 3: Was it that long ago?
Speaker 12: While ago?
Speaker 3: Yeah, basically I think he just feels extremely guilty, Yes,
Speaker 3: for all of the raunchy stuff he did for twenty.
Speaker 5: Years, the sexism in particular thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and so he's now atoning for that for the
Speaker 3: rest of his life.
Speaker 5: And you know, it's just not funny. It's just not funny.
Speaker 5: Let's move on to something that is, I guess funny.
Speaker 4: In some ways, people caught CBS because usually when you
Speaker 4: do a sit down interview with sixty minutes or whatever,
Speaker 4: you'll tape maybe an hour and they truncate it to
Speaker 4: thirty minutes something like that. So stuff always gets left
Speaker 4: in the cutting room floor. The drop of the editors
Speaker 4: is to make sure what is cut up is true
Speaker 4: to what was actually said. But in this case, when
Speaker 4: you look at the full foot from CBS, they released
Speaker 4: that often on their six minutes YouTube, which is great,
Speaker 4: what they actually aired on sixty minutes, it seems like
Speaker 4: was not exactly true to the answer here on Netanyahu.
Speaker 5: So let's take a listen.
Speaker 3: But it seems that Prime Minister Netanyah who is not listening.
Speaker 9: Well, Bill, the work that we have done has resulted
Speaker 9: in a number of movements in that region by Israel
Speaker 9: that were very much prompted by or a result of
Speaker 9: many things, including our advocacy for what needs to happen
Speaker 9: in the region.
Speaker 5: But it seems that Prime Minister Netanyah, who is not listening.
Speaker 9: We're not going to stop pursuing what is necessary for
Speaker 9: the United States to be clear about where we stand
Speaker 9: on the need for.
Speaker 5: This war to end.
Speaker 4: So what you heard first there is how Kamalhirst actually
Speaker 4: answered the question without editing, And what you heard afterwards
Speaker 4: was how CBS edited the question so Ryan, they made
Speaker 4: it and a lot smoother, a lot more vigorous, cleaned
Speaker 4: up some of her like just uncomfortable pauses and hesitancy.
Speaker 5: What did you make of the edit there?
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, it's like, oh, you ordered this without the
Speaker 3: word salad our fault and they just they just dump
Speaker 3: it in the trash and just get to the middle
Speaker 3: of the answer. Yeah. I can sympathize with the editors
Speaker 3: who are like, Okay, we need we need to clip here.
Speaker 3: And none of this made sense. Now if you go
Speaker 3: back and re listen to it. What she's trying to say,
Speaker 3: and that first answer is well, we actually have put
Speaker 3: pressure on him, and some of the things that have
Speaker 3: happened have been a result of that pressure. But it's
Speaker 3: it's a deeply unsatisfying answer because you're like, well, what
Speaker 3: pressure and what things like this didn't actually tell us anything.
Speaker 3: And then eventually she gets to the thing where she
Speaker 3: said there in print journalism, it's funny, well, we'll have
Speaker 3: a three hundred word answer from somebody and we will
Speaker 3: grab the two sentences that make their point that we need,
Speaker 3: and sometimes then we'll paraphrase in and out. But when
Speaker 3: you're doing a televised interview with a potential president of
Speaker 3: the United States, you got to be a little bit
Speaker 3: more kind of sacred with the words, because the voters
Speaker 3: want to know how this person's mind works more than
Speaker 3: they want just a crisp, clean answer to this question, which,
Speaker 3: if you notice, because they cut it the way they did,
Speaker 3: the answer doesn't really even flow from the question. It's like,
Speaker 3: what what have you done? Why isn't he listening? And
Speaker 3: she just in the edited answer, just says, well, we're
Speaker 3: going to continue pushing.
Speaker 4: It was a super tough interview, by the way, on
Speaker 4: it I think it was. You can hear that question
Speaker 4: on Netanyau is actually pretty tough in it itself.
Speaker 5: It looks like he's not listening. He's a great valid question,
Speaker 5: super tough on the border.
Speaker 4: It was a really I think it was the hardest
Speaker 4: interview that she's done so far, and her answers were
Speaker 4: going viral for all the wrong reasons on social media
Speaker 4: the last couple of days, for exactly the reasons that
Speaker 4: people were worried about Kamala Harris being the candidate in
Speaker 4: the first place.
Speaker 5: You know, Joe Biden stepped down.
Speaker 4: She was their apparent, and this is how she sounds
Speaker 4: in interviews, So it seems like that's exactly what happened
Speaker 4: over the last few days and sixty minutes was a really,
Speaker 4: really rough go for her and.
Speaker 3: What's wild And I'm curious if you noticed this. I
Speaker 3: was listening to the Hugh Hewett and Dan Senor on
Speaker 3: a podcast the other day. They talked about this interview.
Speaker 3: They were livid at CBS for they they said, aunty
Speaker 3: is real questions and at Harris for not answering it
Speaker 3: by saying, well, the real problem and the real reason
Speaker 3: we all have a ceasefire is because of Hamas, because
Speaker 3: Amas won't do a ceasefire. So like from the right,
Speaker 3: she's getting blasted for that answer, saying it's too sympathetic
Speaker 3: to Hamas and letting Hamas off the hook and CBS
Speaker 3: because CBS is not asking all about Hamas, I guess
Speaker 3: like that, and then from the left, the left looks
Speaker 3: at that as her and it's like, that's this is
Speaker 3: absurd and ridiculous, and you're facilitating a genocide, and the
Speaker 3: people in the middle are like, I can't even make
Speaker 3: sense of any of this. Right, So it's like zero
Speaker 3: for three.
Speaker 4: I mean, ultimately, if your ideology on that question is power,
Speaker 4: then your answers won't make sense. You can't please anybody,
Speaker 4: because if your ideology is pro Israel, then you can
Speaker 4: sense that she's not entirely pro Israel, not.
Speaker 3: Locks depth, although in practice she is right, but ideologically
Speaker 3: not well, who knows. Again, you're assuming she has an ideology, right,
Speaker 3: that's what.
Speaker 5: Yeah, her ideology is questionable assumption.
Speaker 3: I'm going to need a citation for that.
Speaker 5: I think your ideology is not having a strong ideology.
Speaker 3: That's what she's means that, therefore, she's not actually an
Speaker 3: ideologically supportive Zionist.
Speaker 4: Yah yah right, Like she's exactly, she's not an ideological Zionist.
Speaker 5: She might be pro power and pro American.
Speaker 3: Power, and she's surrounded her ideologues.
Speaker 4: Right, and if your ideology is power, then you enable right.
Speaker 4: So anyway, that's what I made up. And actually speaking
Speaker 4: of that, that's a great opportunity to bring up V six.
Speaker 4: This is Mark Cuban saying that he doesn't believe Kamala
Speaker 4: Harris should keep Lena Kahan as FTC chair.
Speaker 5: Cuban said, if it were me, I wouldn't.
Speaker 4: This is what he told Seima for by trying to
Speaker 4: break up the biggest tech companies, you risk our ability
Speaker 4: to be the best in artificial intelligence. And Cuban has
Speaker 4: obviously been all over the place stumping for Kamala Harris.
Speaker 4: So add him to the list of very powerful billionaires
Speaker 4: telling Kamala Harris giving her money and saying we don't
Speaker 4: want Lena Khan.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I had a story a couple days ago
Speaker 3: at Dropsite on this same theme that I could put
Speaker 3: down the notes there where Cuban says the same thing
Speaker 3: where he except he goes even a little further. He
Speaker 3: says about Gary Gensler and Lena Khan. He says, quote,
Speaker 3: she's been very clear, Missus Harris. She's been very clear
Speaker 3: that she's against regulation via litigation. She said it She's
Speaker 3: had me say it for them. Then Andrew Ross Sorkin
Speaker 3: on c NBC aske him, is that a veiled way
Speaker 3: of saying that Gary Gensler is legislating through lawsuits, and
Speaker 3: he says, I don't think it's very veiled at all.
Speaker 3: I think it is what it did. I think it
Speaker 3: is what it is. Litigation. Regulation by litigation is another
Speaker 3: word for enforcement, Like you put laws in the books,
Speaker 3: and then if people don't, if corporations will follow the laws,
Speaker 3: you sue them and you find them or you or
Speaker 3: you go after them criminally if they if they really
Speaker 3: break the law. Like that's how it works. If you
Speaker 3: just put the laws on the books and you can't
Speaker 3: do any litigation, what good are the good are the
Speaker 3: laws in the books? And so Cuban, it's fastining to
Speaker 3: hear him say, she said it. She's had me say
Speaker 3: it for them, She's had me say it. So he
Speaker 3: is a surrogate, he's an official Kamala Harris surrogate. And
Speaker 3: so he's saying, like what I am saying about Lena
Speaker 3: Kon and Gary Gensler, I am saying at the direction
Speaker 3: of Kamala Harris specifically.
Speaker 5: Had me say it for them.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is sort of a remarkable which is what
Speaker 3: a starrogate is by definition. But he's being very clear,
Speaker 3: I am not on my I'm not out on a limb.
Speaker 4: Here, kind of unintentionally transparent. I think is one of
Speaker 4: the remarkable things about the post Trump era is that
Speaker 4: he's trying.
Speaker 3: To He's trying. He's trying to scream at Wall Street,
Speaker 3: she's with you.
Speaker 5: Yes, that's it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And he wishes he could do that clearly, He's
Speaker 4: probably doing it in texts and everything like that. But
Speaker 4: it is a remarkable moment of transparency that you don't
Speaker 4: often get from surrogates who are on their talking points,
Speaker 4: like nobody's business.
Speaker 3: It's when you have a billionaire surrogate, they probably feel
Speaker 3: a little freer. What are you going to do to them?
Speaker 5: It's it's the truck.
Speaker 4: It's similar to Trump, right, like he'll say, I know
Speaker 4: the system, I alone can fix it.
Speaker 5: I'm part of the system. They don't talk like politicians.
Speaker 4: So anyway, I don't know that Mark Cuban meant for
Speaker 4: that to be super transparent, but it was, and that
Speaker 4: is actually what happens. They do give surrogates actual talking
Speaker 4: points to go out there and use moral of the story.
Speaker 4: Though I think Grin is Kamala Harris predictably having a
Speaker 4: lot of trouble in the harsh spotlight of the one
Speaker 4: month mark, you know, the final stretch, hump stretch, one
Speaker 4: month until election day.
Speaker 5: Not as joyful as it was in August.
Speaker 3: But as she says, it's still her against Trump.
Speaker 5: That's right, that's right, and that's what matters at the
Speaker 5: end of the day, for sure.
Speaker 4: Speaking of Donald Trump, he was on Ben Shapiro's podcast yesterday.
Speaker 5: We can show he was at an event. This is
Speaker 5: c one.
Speaker 4: You can see he was at an event with Donald
Speaker 4: Trump earlier this week. That was on the anniversary of
Speaker 4: October seventh. So Trump went to this was did you
Speaker 4: catch this in New York?
Speaker 3: And here he says, do you want me to sign this?
Speaker 11: Right? Yes?
Speaker 4: Yes, And you can see him with Ben Shapiro there,
Speaker 4: and he was at basically he was at the grave
Speaker 4: of Rabbi Schneerson in New York.
Speaker 5: That's a you know more about this than I did.
Speaker 4: But that was the Lupavicher prominent, like a big deal
Speaker 4: with Donald Trump went there, which is why Ben Shapiro
Speaker 4: obviously came up for it on the anniversary of October seventh.
Speaker 4: You can see Trump is wearing Yamaka there. In the
Speaker 4: next day he went on Shapiro's show. So we have
Speaker 4: some thoughts from this, We have some clips from this,
Speaker 4: some highlights from this. Let's take a listen.
Speaker 14: It's really an honored to introduce you to the family
Speaker 14: of an American citizen currently being held hostage by Hamas
Speaker 14: in the Gaza strip. That citizen's name is e Doon Alexander.
Speaker 14: I want to thank you for that. The family was
Speaker 14: very grateful to you, obviously for taking the time to
Speaker 14: meet with them, and you know, it was really a
Speaker 14: meaningful experience. Wonder if you wanted to say something about
Speaker 14: the situation for that family and the other families like them.
Speaker 12: I thought, from a religious standpoint, it was so beautiful.
Speaker 12: I had not been that aware. As you know, I'm
Speaker 12: not Jewish, but I grew up in a Jewish neighborhood
Speaker 12: to plays mildly with my father being a Brooklyn builder,
Speaker 12: I knew lots of Jewish people, almost almost exclusively, if
Speaker 12: you want to know the truth. But I thought it
Speaker 12: was a beautiful you know, He's explained the whole thing
Speaker 12: and how it worked and it was very actually it
Speaker 12: was very beautiful ceremonial, and I got to meet the
Speaker 12: family and they were great. The young brother is very
Speaker 12: close to his brother who's hopefully somewhere right now. I mean,
Speaker 12: they really don't know. It must be almost harder when
Speaker 12: they just don't know. They're not sure whether or not
Speaker 12: he's alive or not alive. They think he is, but
Speaker 12: you know, being alive over there now is rough stuff.
Speaker 12: And before it was rough, but now it's probably even rougher.
Speaker 14: And some people, even on our side, seem to suggest
Speaker 14: that you're some sort of total isolationists want to slash
Speaker 14: the military. You and Senator Vance have said that your
Speaker 14: foreign policy is peace through strength. Can you describe what
Speaker 14: your second term foreign policy will look like.
Speaker 12: Yeah, Number one, he wouldn't have taken Key because you
Speaker 12: wouldn't have had a war, and you would have had
Speaker 12: the country just the way it is. Our policy is
Speaker 12: very simple, peace through strength. We had no wars, and
Speaker 12: I'm not an isolationist. I helped a lot of countries.
Speaker 12: I kept countries out of war. We had two countries,
Speaker 12: smaller countries. I can explain it later, and I can
Speaker 12: explain who they are when we're together. But they were fighting,
Speaker 12: and they've been fighting for a thousand years, and they'd
Speaker 12: go back and forth and they were going to fight
Speaker 12: again and kill tens of thousands of people. And I said, look,
Speaker 12: you do that was going to be no trade. There's
Speaker 12: going to be tariffs for on your head. There'll be
Speaker 12: no trade. And that's for both of them, et cetera,
Speaker 12: et cetera. Two days later they called me up that
Speaker 12: they've made peace. I do these things. Nobody ever even
Speaker 12: heard of it. Iran was broke when we had no terrorism,
Speaker 12: we had no attacks, we had no harmas problems, no
Speaker 12: hasput problems. We had nothing because Iran didn't have the
Speaker 12: money to give to them, because I put sanctions on
Speaker 12: and I dealt directly. And you know what I was
Speaker 12: asking for, ben one very simple thing. I don't want
Speaker 12: them to have a nuclear weapon. Very simple. Everything else,
Speaker 12: you know, I want them to have a great life.
Speaker 12: I want them to be rich. I want to but
Speaker 12: I just didn't want them to have a nuclear weapon.
Speaker 12: I would have been able to do that very easily.
Speaker 12: But when the Kamala and these people say about Kiev,
Speaker 12: and people call it Kiev, and they call it Kiev.
Speaker 12: I've always called it Kiev, and it depends on what
Speaker 12: part of the world you come from, is what I
Speaker 12: figured finally figured out.
Speaker 4: Okay, So Ben, if you were listening to that, was
Speaker 4: laughing the last Betton had a big, mused looked on
Speaker 4: his face for a couple of the other moments as well.
Speaker 4: Ravi Schneerson passed away in nineteen ninety four is obviously
Speaker 4: very big for the Kabad movement.
Speaker 5: So that's where Trump and Shapiro were in there. You're right, Ryan, he.
Speaker 4: Did seem like he asked to sign a prayer book,
Speaker 4: and it looks like the rabbi said no.
Speaker 5: But the next day he goes on the Shapiro Show.
Speaker 4: Shapiro, by the way, it should be noted, is not
Speaker 4: pretending to be like an objective guy here. He's fundraised
Speaker 4: for Donald Trump. He held the fundraiser for him back
Speaker 4: in the spring, I think. So he's pretty openly much
Speaker 4: like Howard Stern is openly pro Kamala Harrison, pro Democratic
Speaker 4: Party establishment. Shapiro's Trump in this case, what did you
Speaker 4: make of how Trump responded to those questions?
Speaker 3: And as a producer, Mac points out background on eaton
Speaker 3: Alexander he's now twenty. He was born in Tel Aviv,
Speaker 3: grew up in New Jersey, graduated high school in New Jersey,
Speaker 3: then moved to Israel, joined the IDF and was stationed
Speaker 3: outside of Gaza and was captured on October seventh. You know,
Speaker 3: Trump doing his best, I guess to care about any
Speaker 3: of this stuff, and you know, we all know exactly
Speaker 3: what he's going to say every time it comes up
Speaker 3: that he has no he has no real solution for anything.
Speaker 3: He's just going to say, if I was president, none
Speaker 3: of this would have happened and just kind of leave
Speaker 3: it at that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's his favorite line.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and you know he doesn't expound on it, like
Speaker 4: Kamala Harris tries to expound on this line about what's
Speaker 4: different between her and Joe Biden. She really could just
Speaker 4: say I'm not Joe Biden and let everyone's doing the
Speaker 4: awkward silence and move on.
Speaker 5: That's what Trump does.
Speaker 4: He's like, if I was president, none of this would
Speaker 4: have ever happened, and you can kind of get away
Speaker 4: with it because it's impossible to deny that it is
Speaker 4: true she is not Joe Biden, and it is true
Speaker 4: that if he was president, we don't.
Speaker 5: Know what would have happened.
Speaker 3: We don't know, can't prove wrong.
Speaker 4: Oh, I actually think there's a decent argument for that
Speaker 4: in Ukraine, but we don't need to open up that
Speaker 4: particular can of work Ukraine.
Speaker 3: Ukraine's possible, for sure. It galls me when he does
Speaker 3: that on October seventh, though, because October seventh had so
Speaker 3: much ado with the Abraham Accords. They've been explicit that
Speaker 3: the Abraham Accords cutting Palestinians out of normalization in the
Speaker 3: Middle East incentivized them and drove them huge two to
Speaker 3: violently put themselves back into the conversation like that is
Speaker 3: what they have said. It also is exactly what people
Speaker 3: predicted would happen if you'd tried to do Middle East
Speaker 3: piece without the Palestinians. And so he kind of put
Speaker 3: all the kindling out there, threw a match and it
Speaker 3: walked away, and then when it starts burning, he's like,
Speaker 3: if I was still around here, wouldn't happen. It's like, no,
Speaker 3: I'm sorry, Ukraine. Maybe quite plausible, who knows, you guys
Speaker 3: seem tight, but this one, no, this is this is
Speaker 3: on you.
Speaker 5: Well in Ukraine.
Speaker 4: I mean Trump actually armed Ukraine and Republicans were very
Speaker 4: happy about that at the time. So anyway, it's all
Speaker 4: this is in the context of a huge reporting from
Speaker 4: Bob Woodward, which I honestly don't believe a word of.
Speaker 5: And we might disagree on that.
Speaker 4: But I don't believe a word of what he wrote
Speaker 4: on Joe Biden or Donald Trump.
Speaker 3: Frankly, you usually have direct sources and tapes, and.
Speaker 5: Yeah, some people do.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Bob Woodward is listing people talk. It's just the
Speaker 3: rule of Washington.
Speaker 4: So right, Yeah, the big reporting is that he claims
Speaker 4: a Trump aide says that maybe Trump and Putin spoke
Speaker 4: about seven times, maybe as many as seven time times
Speaker 4: since Donald Trump left the White House of former place,
Speaker 4: just kind of kinds of things.
Speaker 5: To talk about.
Speaker 3: But and Putin like actually speaks English to him, Like
Speaker 3: he drops the whole I don't speak English thing?
Speaker 15: Is that what?
Speaker 5: I didn't see that?
Speaker 3: But yeah, so the book is I don't know, I'm
Speaker 3: I'm just joking.
Speaker 4: Oh, I thought you were saying that was actually in
Speaker 4: the report, and I was like, that would be quite
Speaker 4: a good detail. It's possible, but I think the book
Speaker 4: comes out on October fifteenth. Well, the reason that sounded
Speaker 4: somewhat plausible to me is that some of the reporting
Speaker 4: is about how Putin was given like abbot COVID tests
Speaker 4: by Trump and told Trump not to be public about it,
Speaker 4: allegedly because it would reflect poorly on Trump, like Putin
Speaker 4: was concerned about Trump according to Bob Woodward's reporting, which
Speaker 4: is also somewhat strange to me. But anyway, that's why
Speaker 4: I think in the context of all of that, this
Speaker 4: is I think that's especially interesting, in the context of
Speaker 4: all the Ukraine conversation is especially interesting.
Speaker 5: In the context of all of that.
Speaker 4: It also said that MBS has a burner phone labeled
Speaker 4: Trump and a burner phone labeled Jake Sullivan. According to
Speaker 4: one of Bob woodwards sources, that.
Speaker 3: That's definitely possible. I reported years ago that there was
Speaker 3: a WhatsApp group that Jared Kushner and Yahoo, MBZ and NBS,
Speaker 3: and I think that all of their intelligence, their various
Speaker 3: intelligence services, were like, yeah, what are you doing get
Speaker 3: yourself a burner.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you're not gonna want to be doing that on
Speaker 4: your iPhone. But anyway, so that was Donald Trump on
Speaker 4: Ben Shapiro's show, but both of them clearly both Trump
Speaker 4: and Kamala Harris clearly making the rounds of kind of
Speaker 4: their partisan media or their ideological media friends. I don't
Speaker 4: know if that really changed any minds. I doubt that
Speaker 4: changed any minds pretty much. Everarnie's listening to Shapiro is
Speaker 4: already with Donald Trump and probably isn't making up their
Speaker 4: minds based on this in particular anyone.
Speaker 3: So yeah, I doubt it. Or actually, there might be
Speaker 3: a bunch who are like wondering whether to vote, because
Speaker 3: whenever you're talking to a large enough crowd at the points,
Speaker 3: you're talking to many, many people who are on the
Speaker 3: fence about voting.
Speaker 5: That's a good point.
Speaker 4: Ben definitely does have like never Trump people in his audience,
Speaker 4: but people who are just like sort of regular probably educated,
Speaker 4: middle upper middle class suburban voters who might be a
Speaker 4: lot of people take for granted that the Abraham Accords
Speaker 4: were a period of calm and stability, Like that's taken
Speaker 4: as fact that you know, the Abraham Accords actually were
Speaker 4: solving the problem in the Middle East, as helping to
Speaker 4: further it potentially, You're right, So, like the Republican line
Speaker 4: is that listen, contrast the era of the Abraham Accords
Speaker 4: with the era of October seventh, Like this is big.
Speaker 3: So Biden like picked up the Abraham Accords and forward.
Speaker 12: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Jake Sullivan was writing about it like week before October seventh.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so anyway, all the architects still in power. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and Jared Koshner with a two billion dollar private equity fund.
Speaker 4: And Howard Stern when he was courting Hillary Clinton to
Speaker 4: go on his show, was saying, specifically to the campaign.
Speaker 4: He writes about this in his memoirs, specifically saying to
Speaker 4: the campaign, we have truckers persuadable people who might be
Speaker 4: thinking about voting for Donald Trump. But if you talk
Speaker 4: to Yeah, if you talk to them and you make
Speaker 4: your case to them on my show, it might actually
Speaker 4: swing some votes. So you can see where Kamala Harris
Speaker 4: would come into that and say, eh, but I don't
Speaker 4: know how many of those undecided otters are actually still
Speaker 4: listening to Stern.
Speaker 3: Honestly, I think I think a lot of them are,
Speaker 3: because he still has a talent for speaking. Yeah, people
Speaker 3: need shows that are hours long if they have a
Speaker 3: lot of window time they got to get through in
Speaker 3: the day.
Speaker 5: Especially live stuff.
Speaker 4: Yeah, all right, Ryan, let's move on to this incredible
Speaker 4: scoop that you guys got over at drop site. A
Speaker 4: really really spectacular story, fascinating story. I don't say spectacular
Speaker 4: in a good way, so spectacular in a way that
Speaker 4: it is profound.
Speaker 5: So tell us what we're about to watch.
Speaker 3: On August twenty nine, twenty twenty one, an American hell
Speaker 3: fire missile fired by a drone killed seven children and
Speaker 3: three adults outside of Carli, outside of Cabble. My colleague
Speaker 3: armand Gassine filed this report for US about it.
Speaker 16: I heard a very true well sound, and I see
Speaker 16: that the sky is at black the smoke, and I
Speaker 16: think that maybe the accident up and at then the
Speaker 16: High Court, but unfortunately my wife.
Speaker 15: Call it me. The US military has confirmed in the
Speaker 15: last few minutes that it's carried out a drone strike.
Speaker 3: Drone strike against an isis K vehicle.
Speaker 17: The Pentagon confirmed they hit a vehicle which had suicide
Speaker 17: bombers in it.
Speaker 3: The procedures were correctly followed and it was a righteous strike.
Speaker 16: When I came in and I saw everyone's borned, everyone
Speaker 16: was killed, and the pace of the body was around
Speaker 16: that you are around the roof, everywhere, the pace of
Speaker 16: the body, and just I see that I'm not able
Speaker 16: to see my daughter, my niph for my niece, I
Speaker 16: didn't see them Againe.
Speaker 3: I offer my profound condolences to the family and friends
Speaker 3: of those who were killed.
Speaker 18: I'm not angry with you as since they are announced
Speaker 18: that they do mistake, tragic mistake, and they apologize for
Speaker 18: us and we forgave America because nothing can bring back
Speaker 18: our family now. But I expect for the US government
Speaker 18: that they got away for has it was so expensive
Speaker 18: and California, we have to decide to move for Califronia
Speaker 18: to Kansas City because here is cheaper.
Speaker 3: So I followed up with the State Department at the
Speaker 3: press briefing yesterday, asked Matt Miller if there have been
Speaker 3: any advancement on the negotiations with this family about potential
Speaker 3: compensation or whatever the word they use for compensation was
Speaker 3: like a gratuity payment or something bizarre. He said he
Speaker 3: had nothing to add yet, but he would get back
Speaker 3: to us when he did. So, you know, it's many
Speaker 3: years ago at this point that this happened. But I
Speaker 3: found it interesting that the survivors were able to say,
Speaker 3: you know, mistakes happened. I don't harbor any anger at
Speaker 3: the United States.
Speaker 4: I thought that was fascinating, and they said they forgive
Speaker 4: the United States. And if you were listening to this,
Speaker 4: the video ends with text a graphic that says the
Speaker 4: usas negotiations are ongoing, but that any payment would be
Speaker 4: out of good will, not out of any admission of
Speaker 4: guilt or legal liability. And what's interesting about that is
Speaker 4: earlier we watched the clip in the video of the
Speaker 4: US officials saying we apologize to the family, and you
Speaker 4: hear that jexapposed with Mark Milly saying, quote, it was
Speaker 4: a righteous strike.
Speaker 5: So on the one hand, to complete walk back.
Speaker 4: Of the initial position of the US government obviously, on
Speaker 4: the other hand, still no admission of legal liability forthcoming
Speaker 4: as far as the US government is concerned. And that's
Speaker 4: sort of an interesting square to.
Speaker 5: Try and circle.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's also a reminder that it is good
Speaker 3: that we left Afghanistan because if this type of killing
Speaker 3: ten incent people does not you know, can't is a
Speaker 3: tragic mistake, but isn't the kind of thing that causes
Speaker 3: like a policy change, like we're going to review our
Speaker 3: policies here and see how this happened. Say, well, you know,
Speaker 3: it was mistake. Mistakes happened, and we're just going to
Speaker 3: keep going forward, like you're going to continue to kill
Speaker 3: innocent people if the policies okay, because you're you know,
Speaker 3: you've got somebody in Tampa properly, ye, who's looking through
Speaker 3: a camera at a grainy video and they see somebody
Speaker 3: walking to the trunk of a car with some object
Speaker 3: and filling something and they're like, well, it could be
Speaker 3: a bomb. Well, sure, anybody carrying any like anybody who
Speaker 3: comes home from the grocery store or anybody who's going
Speaker 3: to a game and is loading things into the trunk
Speaker 3: like is in a grainy footage potentially a terrorist loading
Speaker 3: a bomb in there. And it's just it's a hard
Speaker 3: way to think of the world, to think of yourself.
Speaker 3: You're loading up your trunk for softball practice and you
Speaker 3: might just get a hell fire shot at you. Because
Speaker 3: nineteen year old in Tampa figures better safe than sorry.
Speaker 4: It's almost worse than that, because it's not it's not
Speaker 4: just a nineteen year old in Tampa. It's this like
Speaker 4: bureaucratic chain.
Speaker 3: Right and this one, yeah, this one, this one probably
Speaker 3: went up a ways, right, But you know, you have
Speaker 3: to do it quickly, right, although they can follow the
Speaker 3: car for a while. So I mean, hopefully the family
Speaker 3: gets what they considered to be justice. We'll see, oh
Speaker 3: my gosh.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 4: But amazing that they were able to say that they
Speaker 4: don't harbor any anger, that they forgive the United States,
Speaker 4: and like you said, hopefully they get some symbolance.
Speaker 12: Of justice here.
Speaker 3: And not surprising the California was too expensive and then
Speaker 3: never moved to Kansas City.
Speaker 5: Not surprising at all.
Speaker 4: And this is happening in the context of just yesterday,
Speaker 4: I think it was the FBI announced that they had
Speaker 4: thwarted a plot by an Afghan who was here in
Speaker 4: a special immigrant visa to this was in Oklahoma City
Speaker 4: to have some type of ISIS terrorist attack against America.
Speaker 4: And what's frustrating about is our inability to do any
Speaker 4: bureaucratic vetting correctly at all, Like you blow up the
Speaker 4: family of an AID worker who wanted to come to
Speaker 4: the US and be a part of the US, but
Speaker 4: this falls through the crack. So I mean, it's just
Speaker 4: weird incompetent or completely incompetent that the family that should
Speaker 4: have been here contributing is burned.
Speaker 5: And that happens here. Yes, indeed, all right, well, let's
Speaker 5: move on to this.
Speaker 4: Isn't quite just about Project twenty twenty five. It says
Speaker 4: Project twenty twenty five on the banner at the bottom
Speaker 4: of the screen, but it's sort of about the porn
Speaker 4: industry getting involved on behalf of Kamala Harris in the
Speaker 4: twenty twenty four election. This is a wild story and
Speaker 4: not an entirely unpredictable story, but we can put e
Speaker 4: one up on the screen and tear sheet from the
Speaker 4: New York Times about how the porn industry is jumping
Speaker 4: into the presidential campaign, targeting Project twenty twenty five.
Speaker 5: That is the New York Times headline.
Speaker 4: What's happening, essentially is that seventeen porn actors got together,
Speaker 4: cobbled together one hundred thousand dollars and are planning in
Speaker 4: swing states to run on Project twenty twenty five or
Speaker 4: to talk about Project twenty twenty five in political ads
Speaker 4: on those porn sites, so basically in swing states saying
Speaker 4: don't vote for Donald Trump. Obviously, it's an effort to
Speaker 4: aid Kamala Harris's campaign, and it is based on Project
Speaker 4: twenty twenty five, which ran I have pulled up the
Speaker 4: part of Project twenty five that actually deals with pornography
Speaker 4: and Ezra Klein, who's schedule in the show next week
Speaker 4: programming note, I have to go to Rome, have to
Speaker 4: I will be in Rome for work next week, but
Speaker 4: Ezra client is scheduled to come around the show. But
Speaker 4: Ezra asked me about this part of the Project twenty
Speaker 4: twenty five mandate book because I had spoken about pornography
Speaker 4: at porn Regulation at a conference Earler this summer. And
Speaker 4: this is what Kevin Roberts wrote in the Mandate for
Speaker 4: Leadership from Project twenty twenty five. Pornography Manta fested today
Speaker 4: in the omnipresent propagation of transgender ideology and sexualization of children,
Speaker 4: for instance, is not a political Gordian, not in extricably
Speaker 4: binding up desparate claims about free speech, property rights, sexual liberation,
Speaker 4: and child welfare, which is something you hear in libertarian
Speaker 4: circles a lot. It is no claim to First Amendment protection.
Speaker 4: It's purveyors are child predators and misogynistic exploiters of women.
Speaker 4: Their product is as addictive as any illicit drug and
Speaker 4: as psychologically destructive as any crime. Pornography should be outlawed.
Speaker 4: The people who produce and distribute it should be imprisoned.
Speaker 4: Educators and public librarians who purvey it should be classed
Speaker 4: as registered sex offenders, and telecommunications and tech firms that
Speaker 4: facilitate its spread should be shuttered. So much farther than
Speaker 4: I would go on porn regulation, and I feel like
Speaker 4: I'm pretty hawkish on peorn regulation, Ryan, but you can
Speaker 4: see where the porn industry would find that to be
Speaker 4: enormously threatening and politically beneficial because.
Speaker 3: It is so hardcore you should all be in jail.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it makes for a very easy political ad on
Speaker 4: behalf of the hairscape. And obviously, in order to do this,
Speaker 4: you have to tie Trump to Project twenty twenty five,
Speaker 4: which Trump is trying very hard to distance himself from Trump.
Speaker 3: I think they've already done that successfully.
Speaker 9: They have.
Speaker 4: I mean, my super quick take on it is that
Speaker 4: Trump had nothing to do, literally nothing to do with
Speaker 4: the writing and drafting Project twenty twenty five. He likely
Speaker 4: had no idea what it was, and it angered him
Speaker 4: when he heard out about it. But in his administration
Speaker 4: there would definitely be lots of influence from the.
Speaker 3: People who created Project twenty five. They're going to be
Speaker 3: front and center in front of the line for jobs.
Speaker 5: Two things are gonna be true.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Trump had nothing to do with it, and two
Speaker 4: he would definitely use it in his administration just out
Speaker 4: of necessity, right.
Speaker 3: And if Trump doesn't care about policy for the most part,
Speaker 3: then he's going to delegate that to the people who
Speaker 3: do care. And if he hires the people that wrote
Speaker 3: Project twenty twenty five, then these porn folks are right
Speaker 3: to be nervous.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, And it's politically and there is and there are.
Speaker 3: State level of assaults on the porn industry, right, like, yes, yeah,
Speaker 3: where there are wheres there Republican control.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you can't go to Pornhub in certain states anymore.
Speaker 4: Basically, Pornhub just they said it was too hard to
Speaker 4: operate in certain states because there'd been a lot of
Speaker 4: this I think comes down to the age verification laws,
Speaker 4: that that was such an owner's burden, which I think
Speaker 4: conservatives are right to say. That kind of tells you
Speaker 4: a little something about how these websites are being run.
Speaker 4: But it was such an owner's burden.
Speaker 5: That they just don't operate in certain states anymore because
Speaker 5: it's really hard to verify the age of people who
Speaker 5: are using those platforms in a way that complies with
Speaker 5: those laws that were passed, because there you know, and
Speaker 5: there are there are privacy concerns.
Speaker 3: I understand that the age verification laws require people to
Speaker 3: like upload their driver's license or something. Yeah, I think
Speaker 3: it varies, but that's I can imagine why that would be, Yeah,
Speaker 3: what he might not want to do.
Speaker 4: You can imagine why that would have an effect on
Speaker 4: people's voting decisions.
Speaker 5: So one hundred thousand dollars not a lot of money.
Speaker 3: Though, So if you know, they always come up with
Speaker 3: these different names for voters, soccer moms, whatever, porn dad.
Speaker 4: Because here so in the New York Times article, they
Speaker 4: say between eighteen to twenty nine year olds, forty four
Speaker 4: percent say that they've watched porn in the last month,
Speaker 4: and between thirty to forty nine year olds that number
Speaker 4: goes up to fifty seven percent in the last month.
Speaker 4: So you have your soccer mom.
Speaker 3: It's a huge electorate, yeah, the key demographic.
Speaker 4: But you can imagine where that would actually be pretty powerful.
Speaker 4: I'm surprised it's only one hundred thousand dollars because like,
Speaker 4: that's the privacy that stuff is psychologically, that would have
Speaker 4: a huge I would imagine that would have a huge
Speaker 4: and powerful effect on people's decisions when they're actually going
Speaker 4: to the ballot box and it's seven swing states, one
Speaker 4: hundred thousand dollars.
Speaker 5: You spread that out seven swing states, It's really just.
Speaker 3: Not that much money, right, it's the it's more the
Speaker 3: arn media and the New York Times and the breaking
Speaker 3: points and kund of points that is worth. It's going
Speaker 3: to explant I actually boost that.
Speaker 5: You're welcome.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So if you're getting a targeted ad, they know
Speaker 3: something about you, well, I.
Speaker 4: Think it is just on That's the other reason it
Speaker 4: might only be one hundred thousand dollars. They might actually
Speaker 4: have cooperation from the site, so like subsidize the ads
Speaker 4: and all of that.
Speaker 3: You would, Yeah, if they were smart, they would use
Speaker 3: their massive audience and advertise to them.
Speaker 4: And it's kind of funny, by the way, because Donald
Speaker 4: Trump is like the president the only president to my
Speaker 4: knowledge that has ever been on the cover of Playboy
Speaker 4: and post for the cover of Playboy.
Speaker 5: So it's Trump. This is a bit Trump.
Speaker 3: I'm sure he personally doesn't want any part of that.
Speaker 3: He doesn't care.
Speaker 4: Stormy Daniels, of course, likely likely had some type of
Speaker 4: relationship with Stormy Daniels.
Speaker 3: And this probably also blends together in people's minds with
Speaker 3: overturning Roe v. Wade, and because in the same states
Speaker 3: where they would be shutting down porn Hub, they're also pushing,
Speaker 3: you know, significan abortion restrictions in the wake of overturning
Speaker 3: Roe v. Wade, and so it probably all gets blended
Speaker 3: together in people's minds as Republicans just creeping into your
Speaker 3: bedroom in multiple different ways.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think that's true. I think that's true.
Speaker 4: The Kevin Roberts quote that I read earlier, even I
Speaker 4: was surprised by that, but you.
Speaker 3: Know what, you're like that this can't be right, Like,
Speaker 3: oh wow, I.
Speaker 5: Don't doubt that it was right, but it is.
Speaker 4: I will say that there is a there's a moral
Speaker 4: consistency to that that is superior to the kind of
Speaker 4: mealy mouth approached you see sometimes.
Speaker 5: So at least he's being morally consistent, he's going for it.
Speaker 12: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I think that's actually probably going to increase on the right,
Speaker 4: just given like the porn industry saying it's good that
Speaker 4: fifty seven percent of thirty to forty nine year olds
Speaker 4: are watching porn once a month.
Speaker 5: That doesn't appeal the most.
Speaker 3: How did they how did they lump trans people into that?
Speaker 3: What was the quote again?
Speaker 5: There is So I'll pull up the quote here, but
Speaker 5: I will say that is to.
Speaker 3: Read ten dollars words at the front end of that
Speaker 3: quote for me to be able to follow it.
Speaker 4: It is a common Now, correlation does not equal causation,
Speaker 4: is what I would say to that. But it is
Speaker 4: a common thing when you talk to kids who have
Speaker 4: like de transitioned or even they didn't do a full
Speaker 4: medical transition, but they end up regretting different types of
Speaker 4: therapy or whatever.
Speaker 3: It is a thing that a lot of porn addiction
Speaker 3: along the way. Yeah, comorbidity type situation. Right, Yeah, I
Speaker 3: mean basically, yes, that's what he's trying to say.
Speaker 5: That's what he's trying to say.
Speaker 4: Okay, So the quote here, Ryan, because I know you
Speaker 4: wanted to hear it very very badly. Is pornography manifested
Speaker 4: today in the omnipresent propagation of transgender ideology and sexualization
Speaker 4: of children, for instance, is not a political gordion, not
Speaker 4: inextricably binding up desperate claims about free speech, property rights,
Speaker 4: sexual liberation, and child welfare.
Speaker 5: So that's the part of.
Speaker 3: Its junior in college writing, writing a paper and with
Speaker 3: no self awareness.
Speaker 4: But that is where it and the propagation of quote
Speaker 4: trensgender ideology and again like that there is I understand
Speaker 4: why it's invoked there, because that's a common point. If
Speaker 4: you see, if you're somebody who sees the stories of
Speaker 4: de transitioners as representative of something that's troubling, as I
Speaker 4: do you do that does just it comes up a lot,
Speaker 4: So I get where it comes from.
Speaker 5: That quote went harder than I would have expected.
Speaker 3: And just for people watching, if you are I want
Speaker 3: to be a writer, if you want to express your ideas,
Speaker 3: don't write like that. It's bad, bad writing.
Speaker 5: Maybe we can get Kevin Roberts on the show.
Speaker 3: You guys get out. If you ever find yourself writing Gordian,
Speaker 3: not stop and go back and rewrite the.
Speaker 5: Sentence Gordian that is, it's never what you really needed.
Speaker 3: To cliche as crutches, they're intellectual crutches.
Speaker 4: All right, Let's move on to our guest, who is
Speaker 4: actually has a pretty unique perspective.
Speaker 3: Tell Jewish Iranian American anti war activist here with the
Speaker 3: National Iranian American Council at the intersection of all the
Speaker 3: worst things going on. So stick around. We'll be talking
Speaker 3: about Benjamin Netanyahoo urging the Lebanese people to quote free
Speaker 3: themselves of a huge portion of the Lebanese population and
Speaker 3: what that means for regional stability going forwards. Stick around
Speaker 3: for that. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin netnah who released an
Speaker 3: unusual English language video directed at the Lebanese people, urging
Speaker 3: them to free themselves from a significant portion of the
Speaker 3: Lebanese population through the organization Hezbola. Let's roll a little
Speaker 3: bit of that.
Speaker 15: This is a message to the people of Lebanon. Do
Speaker 15: you remember when your country was called the pearl of
Speaker 15: the Middle East?
Speaker 12: I do so.
Speaker 15: What happened to Lebanon? A gang of tyrants and terrorists
Speaker 15: destroyed it. That's what happened. Lebanon was known for its tolerance,
Speaker 15: for its beauty. Today it's a place of chaos, a
Speaker 15: place of war. Israel withdrew from Lebanon twenty five years ago,
Speaker 15: but the country that actually conquered Lebanon is not Israel,
Speaker 15: It's irang You have an opportunity to save Lebanon before
Speaker 15: it falls into the abyss of a long war that
Speaker 15: would lead to destruction and suffering like we see in Gaza.
Speaker 3: It doesn't have to be that way, all right. So
Speaker 3: we're joined now by Eton Mubarak, who is an analyst
Speaker 3: at the National Iranian American Council. Eton, thank you so
Speaker 3: much for joining us. Welcome to the program.
Speaker 11: Thank you so much, Brian and Emily Grace too great
Speaker 11: to be here.
Speaker 19: Just a quick note, I'll be speaking today in my
Speaker 19: personal capacity as a Jewish Iranian American advocate, not on
Speaker 19: behalf of my organization, the National Iranian American Council, but
Speaker 19: i will discuss the organization's work and.
Speaker 3: Positions excellent, and we actually prefer that because then people
Speaker 3: can speak a little bit more freely than if they're
Speaker 3: speaking on behalf of a large institution. So Eton, then
Speaker 3: Yahoo goes on in that clip to say that the
Speaker 3: Lebanese people basically have a choice that they have to
Speaker 3: quote free themselves from Hesbola or he's going to turn
Speaker 3: Lebanon into Gaza. He's going to do to Lebanon what
Speaker 3: he did to Gaza. And so separating themselves those two
Speaker 3: things out. First of all, what would it look like
Speaker 3: for Lebanon to quote unquote free itself of Hesbola.
Speaker 19: Well Ran, I think it would look a lot like
Speaker 19: we're seeing in Gaza, and if recent events are any indication,
Speaker 19: it's like likely to look like a lot of what
Speaker 19: we've already seen.
Speaker 11: But the bottom line is, you know, the United States and.
Speaker 19: Activists are demanding that the United States should not be
Speaker 19: helping that Tiannahu pursue a campaign of regional war with
Speaker 19: Iran or regime change in Lebanon while he continues to
Speaker 19: fail to achieve his strategic goals in Gaza. You know,
Speaker 19: instead of preventing a war with Iran and throughout the region,
Speaker 19: US policy is actively fanning the flames of this conflict,
Speaker 19: and we need to change course. The fighting in the
Speaker 19: Middle East, broadly over the last year in Yemen, in Syria,
Speaker 19: in Jordan, where we lost three US service members, and
Speaker 19: most recently centering Lebanon, Iran, and of course Israel and Palestine,
Speaker 19: has flown directly in the face of Biden's stated goals
Speaker 19: of avoiding a regional war. And that's Yahoo continues to
Speaker 19: cross red lines in in Gaza, in in Rafa as
Speaker 19: he as he inflames tensions and seeks this this regional
Speaker 19: war and and and Hesla has came has also carried
Speaker 19: out heanous attacks on civilians, but they've also stated repeatedly
Speaker 19: that their attacks will end with a ceasefire in Gaza.
Speaker 19: And we should be wary of this campaign to to
Speaker 19: distract from the failures of achieving strategic.
Speaker 3: Goals there and a quick follow upon that and Emily
Speaker 3: get in if we can put up F two. Nayak
Speaker 3: has helped to organize a coalition against war with Iran.
Speaker 3: And I've noticed in the reporting over the last few
Speaker 3: days that the US is not only coordinating with Israel
Speaker 3: when it comes to Israel's response to Iran's response the
Speaker 3: back and forth air strikes that we're seeing, which would
Speaker 3: implicate the War Powers active because it introduces the United
Speaker 3: States into hostilities. But there are there's even reporting from
Speaker 3: the New York Times and elsewhere that the United States
Speaker 3: is considering its own direct air strikes on Iran, which
Speaker 3: would obviously be a flavored violation of the War Powers
Speaker 3: Act and the Constitution itself. What's your understanding of the
Speaker 3: of the current situation and whether or not the laws
Speaker 3: on the books have anything just you know, are are
Speaker 3: at all an obstacle in what the United States is
Speaker 3: considering here.
Speaker 19: Yes Ronan, Yeah, yesterday NBC claimed that US officials discussed
Speaker 19: joining Israel in offensive strikes against Iran, you know, passing
Speaker 19: them off as defensive after the fact. And we and
Speaker 19: your right to point out that we need to keep
Speaker 19: in mind Congress has not declared war on Iran, and
Speaker 19: and that outcome would be disastrous for the region, and
Speaker 19: it'd be exactly what Netanyahu wants. And some extremist Israeli
Speaker 19: and US Iran haawk camps are suggesting that this is
Speaker 19: some kind of generational opportunity to take out Iran, you know,
Speaker 19: the head of the snake, the eye of the octopus,
Speaker 19: and what have you. And these calls again are meant
Speaker 19: to distract from from the need for a ceasefire. But
Speaker 19: but in that letter that you that you mentioned that.
Speaker 11: That Nayak led you signed along with eighty you.
Speaker 19: Know, over eighty civil rights human rights organizations, we're demanding
Speaker 19: again that the us UH not pass any new laws,
Speaker 19: but just adhere to our basic laws on the books,
Speaker 19: that we condition weapons, condition offensive weapons in line with
Speaker 19: the Laky laws.
Speaker 11: And there's going to be a historic.
Speaker 19: Vote on a on a on a on a joint
Speaker 19: resolution of disapprovals of disapproval to condition weapons coming up.
Speaker 19: Senator Sanders is expected to force a vote in mid
Speaker 19: November after Congress returns from recess, and that will be
Speaker 19: the first straightforward Senate vote on Israel arms sales since January.
Speaker 19: A crucial opportunity to to to you know, enforce whether
Speaker 19: or not to see whether or not the US can
Speaker 19: enforce its own laws, relatives of the Lahy Law and
Speaker 19: National Security Memorandum twenty And at the.
Speaker 4: Crux of the efforts from those generational calls of people,
Speaker 4: especially hawkish on this is the idea that Aaron wants
Speaker 4: to wipe Israel off the map, as they often say. So,
Speaker 4: I'm curious for your perspective on how the that that
Speaker 4: central as somebody who's both Jewish and Iranian, how the
Speaker 4: characterization of Iran's ultimate goal towards Israel. What do you
Speaker 4: make of that as especially as it is used to
Speaker 4: justify potentially extreme responses.
Speaker 5: Uh, that that could be very, very escalatory.
Speaker 19: So, I mean, let me just make it clear, as
Speaker 19: a as a Jewish Iranian American, my family left Iran,
Speaker 19: they live, they came to the United States, and many
Speaker 19: of them live in Israel now. And I have friends
Speaker 19: and family in Israel who are horrified by this conflict,
Speaker 19: who are exhausted by the mental toll and the strain
Speaker 19: of this, you know, aside from the Palestinian humanitarian issue.
Speaker 19: But I think the bottom line for American Jews and
Speaker 19: the big the bigger picture around Iran and the regimes
Speaker 19: calls to annihilate Israel is that, you know, the US.
Speaker 19: I'm I'm an American citizen. I can only control what
Speaker 19: the United States government does, and activists around the country
Speaker 19: have been focused, laser focused on us doing better, and
Speaker 19: the US needs to do a better job of stopping
Speaker 19: this chaotic cycle where Israel has Bola. Iran proxy parties
Speaker 19: keep trying to out maneuver each other and one up
Speaker 19: each other, each unwilling to see as to be seen
Speaker 19: as the one who backs down. This kind of constant
Speaker 19: cycle of tactical wins in a war that is a
Speaker 19: strategic loss for everyone involved, for all civilians involved. And
Speaker 19: we've seen how military solutions play out to solving political problems,
Speaker 19: and you know, with I also want to make it
Speaker 19: clear I absolutely condemned the Islamic Republic regimes, human rights abuses,
Speaker 19: and I stand with the Iranian people's movement for self determination.
Speaker 19: The regime has been brutal in its treatment of women,
Speaker 19: journalists and dissonance of all kinds. And at Naiak we
Speaker 19: publish a human rights tracker every single week covering the
Speaker 19: human rights activists and abuse stories coming.
Speaker 11: Out of Iran.
Speaker 19: But when we analyze these policies and we advocate for policies,
Speaker 19: we have to acknowledge facts. And the fact is that
Speaker 19: our policies of maximum pressure, broad economic sanctions and general
Speaker 19: isolation and just eliminating of diplomatic off ramps have undermined
Speaker 19: US and regional security interests and human rights in the region.
Speaker 19: Human rights are a disaster all across the region, including
Speaker 19: in Iran and and and obviously in Palestine. So so
Speaker 19: our policies they need to be attached to advancing clear
Speaker 19: goals and you know that that needs I think that
Speaker 19: needs to be the framing with regards to Iran, you know,
Speaker 19: And and that doesn't mean that I, you know, in
Speaker 19: a vacuum conversation, I don't want to see the Iranian
Speaker 19: regime gone and see a you know, a better government
Speaker 19: that serves the Iranian people. But I don't think the
Speaker 19: United States and bb METS and Yahoo are the the
Speaker 19: the are the careful executioners of a regime changing in
Speaker 19: especially given the US legacy of supporting efforts to install
Speaker 19: and regium change in Iran in fifty three.
Speaker 11: So I'll leave it at that, and there's more to talk.
Speaker 19: Also, there's a template, sorry to example, but there's a
Speaker 19: template for how we can solve this in terms of goals,
Speaker 19: like the Iranian Nuclear Deal, even though it wasn't perfect,
Speaker 19: it was working to contain Iran's nuclear program, and Iran's
Speaker 19: current president, as Eshkion, supports it and put together a cabinet,
Speaker 19: whatever you think of you put together a cabinet of
Speaker 19: former JSQA negotiators again in support of a deal that
Speaker 19: was containing Iran's nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief
Speaker 19: to the Iranian people. And the Trump administration withdrew from
Speaker 19: it while Iran was complying. It destroyed goodwill and trust.
Speaker 19: But there is still a world. I believe that there
Speaker 19: is still a world where we can re engage with
Speaker 19: Iran even in this moment and de escalate the regional
Speaker 19: conflicts and deal with the nuclear issue.
Speaker 11: But it's not going to come if the US continues
Speaker 11: to be will.
Speaker 19: You know, unwillingly or be dragged along into a five
Speaker 19: front regional war at Netsanya?
Speaker 11: Who's best?
Speaker 3: One other thing I wanted to ask you about, By
Speaker 3: the way, I forgot to mention that I would bring
Speaker 3: this up. But I don't know. Did you notice that
Speaker 3: Netanyahu yesterday or the Israeli government yesterday put out basically
Speaker 3: an infographic with a bunch of targets of people that
Speaker 3: it intended to assassinate at some point going forward and on.
Speaker 3: That was Ali al Sistani, one of the most revered figure,
Speaker 3: maybe the most revered you know, cleric or religious figure
Speaker 3: on the U of the Shi of the Shia faith,
Speaker 3: somebody who met the Pope fairly recently, a political spiritual leader.
Speaker 3: Uh and a lot of people were shocked to see
Speaker 3: his face with the target on it, along with like
Speaker 3: Hesbula commanders and I'm and like, I think the Ia
Speaker 3: stin war or something was on there. I don't know
Speaker 3: if you saw that, but uh, is that is that
Speaker 3: rippling through the Shia community at all?
Speaker 11: Do? I can't speak to it. I haven't seen it.
Speaker 3: That's different, different, different, different area over there. So Anyway,
Speaker 3: I also wanted to ask you about the UH the
Speaker 3: Irish if you have any sense of where this situation
Speaker 3: with the Irish speaking in my own sec the Irish
Speaker 3: Lebanon UH, the I d F has kind of ordered
Speaker 3: these Irish peacekeepers you know, to basically get out of
Speaker 3: their way, and the Irish are saying, we can put
Speaker 3: up F three by the way. This this is a
Speaker 3: v O of the of some id F soldiers raising
Speaker 3: a flag in in southern Lebanon. Rather provocative act and
Speaker 3: certainly you know, not beating the charges of a planned
Speaker 3: occupation of southern Elebinon by doing that. This and so
Speaker 3: you know, the the Irish troops have said that they
Speaker 3: have not been directly threatened by the I d F.
Speaker 3: Hesbula has said that they will not fire at I
Speaker 3: d F troops who are anywhere near the Irish because
Speaker 3: they don't want to catch the Irish. What do you
Speaker 3: make of the kind of this this U N peacekeeping
Speaker 3: role of the of the Irish kind of refusing to
Speaker 3: back down? What and what what's your sense of how
Speaker 3: things are going broadly in Israel's ground invasion.
Speaker 19: Well, I know that the Irish Prime Minister on the
Speaker 19: on the on the global stage, has been one of
Speaker 19: the one of the most outspoken proponents of Palestinian human
Speaker 19: rights and critics of of work of the you know,
Speaker 19: alleged war crimes committed by the idea. Within this, I'm
Speaker 19: glad to see h you know, UH peacekeeping forces involved
Speaker 19: and trying to stand in solidarity.
Speaker 11: Amidst uh you know, with with with the Lebanese people.
Speaker 19: You know, we've seen with the ground invasion so far,
Speaker 19: what two thousand Lebanese folks killed, a million displaced.
Speaker 11: It's it's uh.
Speaker 19: And and while the I d F and Israelis you know,
Speaker 19: maintain a strategic advantage in terms of air strikes the
Speaker 19: ground invasion, there are there are questions, especially considering the
Speaker 19: recent operation that saw eight I d F soldiers killed.
Speaker 19: I mean, the fact is, I think more broadly, this
Speaker 19: is one of the darkest periods in the region, uh,
Speaker 19: in the region's history. But it doesn't it still doesn't
Speaker 19: have to be like this, uh. And we need to
Speaker 19: call out as Jews, as as Americans, you know, obviously,
Speaker 19: we need to call out the call and and and
Speaker 19: and call anti stemitism and escalation from from the one
Speaker 19: side calling to destroy Israel but we also need to
Speaker 19: call out and condemn this greater Israel expansion dream along
Speaker 19: with ethnic lens and occupation in Lebanon and in the
Speaker 19: West Bank ongoing.
Speaker 11: Uh.
Speaker 19: You know, no side, despite these calls to eliminate the
Speaker 19: Israelis from from you know, the one side, and and
Speaker 19: calls to expand Israel into these states on the other,
Speaker 19: no side is going anywhere. In my opinion, despite the
Speaker 19: regime change fantasies, no side is going away, and we
Speaker 19: we need to just embrace the sustainable path, you know,
Speaker 19: through diplomacy and negotiations. This I I don't see the
Speaker 19: ground invasion in Lebanon, uh, you know, eliminating Hesbal they
Speaker 19: may have degraded them, they may significantly. You know that
Speaker 19: certainly some decapitation UH strategy has has has worked uh
Speaker 19: in that sense, but there's a lot of and international
Speaker 19: relations scholars that have questioned the efficacy of, yeah, of
Speaker 19: decapitation tactics.
Speaker 4: Ahead, we wanted to get your reaction to a fairly
Speaker 4: viral confrontation that Liam Cosgrove of Grey Zone had with
Speaker 4: State Department spokesman Matthew Miller yesterday. Ryan was there for it,
Speaker 4: so he'll have probably some color to add to the conversation.
Speaker 4: But this is Liam questioning Matt Miller on escalation. Essentially,
Speaker 4: we couldn't roll this clib.
Speaker 17: We often hear in response to these concerns that, well,
Speaker 17: putin Kamani, you know their war criminals, they're terrorists, as
Speaker 17: if they're too inherently evil or a moral for us
Speaker 17: to negotiate with. But meanwhile, this administration has financed a
Speaker 17: genocide in Gaza for the last year, and every day
Speaker 17: you're up there denying accountability for it. So, I mean,
Speaker 17: what gives you the right to lecture other countries on
Speaker 17: there more? If you have a policy question for me,
Speaker 17: I'm happy to take it. If you want to give
Speaker 17: a speech, but I think spa places in Washington where
Speaker 17: you can give a speech. Yeah, but people are sick
Speaker 17: of the bullshitting here.
Speaker 3: I mean, it is a genocide.
Speaker 17: Mean, you are betting on another question, and you are
Speaker 17: risking nuclear war and you crazy places give a speech.
Speaker 3: So the question I guess was what gives you the right?
Speaker 8: What are you?
Speaker 15: Yeah?
Speaker 3: What does give the United States right? So we if
Speaker 3: you have a response, that go for it. We just
Speaker 3: wanted to kind of make sure that we had that
Speaker 3: as a chaser to the program.
Speaker 5: Yeah, what do you make of any.
Speaker 19: Look, I share the frustration, you know, in the in
Speaker 19: the question and Frankly, you know, I'm an I'm an organizer.
Speaker 11: We we work you know as a at Nayak.
Speaker 19: We were you know, we have fourteen volunteer chapters and
Speaker 19: thousands of members and allies around the country. And we've
Speaker 19: been organizing meetings every you know, at every chance we
Speaker 19: can for the last year, with members of Congress and
Speaker 19: their staff trying to call for no war with Iran,
Speaker 19: cease fire, no weapons for war crimes, unrough funding by
Speaker 19: the way, another huge issue, and UH and diplomacy first,
Speaker 19: and in these meetings people are get extremely emotional and
Speaker 19: Democrats have failed, frank to UH, in my opinion, properly
Speaker 19: engaged with with Middle Eastern Arab Muslim communities on this
Speaker 19: and with with progressives generally. They've you know, there was
Speaker 19: a moment of hope when Kona replaced Biden and when
Speaker 19: Possession got elected.
Speaker 11: But right now we were not.
Speaker 19: I I don't have so much faith in in the administra,
Speaker 19: in the administration right now, certainly before the election, UH
Speaker 19: to make any significant departures from from what has been,
Speaker 19: and and and and again. You know the clip aside,
Speaker 19: I would just love to reiterate some of the things
Speaker 19: that activists have been calling for again with with the
Speaker 19: war powers, with diplomacy with Iran, was rejecting this war,
Speaker 19: the great statements from some members of Congress, folks like
Speaker 19: Represented mcgoverned, Jayapaul, the Congression Progressive Caucus, Center Van Holland,
Speaker 19: et cetera. And the under a Restoration Act was was
Speaker 19: just introduced, which is a huge, huge potential issue in
Speaker 19: addressing the humanitarian crisis. So but but I feel for
Speaker 19: that reporter. It's I'm glad I'm not I don't have
Speaker 19: to be in those rooms because I might, I might
Speaker 19: lose its fit. Your meetings are are are much better.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that was. Yeah, It's like there was a question
Speaker 3: there where do you get off basically, where do you
Speaker 3: get the right to say the things you say?
Speaker 16: Right?
Speaker 6: Uh?
Speaker 3: Etom O Brock, thank you so much for joining us,
Speaker 3: really appreciate it.
Speaker 4: All right, Well that does it for us today? Like
Speaker 4: I said, quick programming note, we uh, well, soccer will
Speaker 4: be here in my.
Speaker 3: Stead extra show on Wednesday.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I have a fellowship in Roma.
Speaker 3: As a result, Triple bro Show, Triple Bro Show.
Speaker 5: Oh my gosh, that's going to be too much.
Speaker 3: That's still not a lot of tea, right, I mean
Speaker 3: that's that's three low tea dudes.
Speaker 5: Right, don't tell soccer that soccer for you?
Speaker 3: This I was bringing the taste.
Speaker 5: Someone cut this, yeah, actually, don't leave it. And it's
Speaker 5: more fun that way.
Speaker 4: But anyway, that's the schedule for next week. I'm looking
Speaker 4: forward to watching. I wish it could be there. Ezra
Speaker 4: is such an interesting guy, and you guys go way back.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean we've been came up in this field
Speaker 3: together twenty years ago or something at this point, Lord,
Speaker 3: so that'll be exciting. I remember when he was a
Speaker 3: young man compared to me, compared to you. Now we're
Speaker 3: both old.
Speaker 12: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Well, I look forward to watching that and watching a
Speaker 4: Bro show with you and Sager. Soarker doesn't often get
Speaker 4: to subn on counterpoints, so that'll be extra fun.
Speaker 5: He's on your tour. Oh no, I always move for crystals,
Speaker 5: so he should move.
Speaker 3: I actually prefer this side, so I'm going to try
Speaker 3: to move over to this side.
Speaker 4: All right, Stay tuned to figure out which side of
Speaker 4: the desk Ryan ends up on, and after that, We
Speaker 4: have what two three weeks till the election.
Speaker 3: So stick around for Counterpoints Friday. Come back on Friday
Speaker 3: for It. We're going to have Jeremy sk Hill, my
Speaker 3: co founder over it drops O new is in, my
Speaker 3: former colleague back at our last organization as well.
Speaker 4: Very exciting. All right, stay tuned. We'll be back with
Speaker 4: more on Friday or Thursday night. If you're a premium subscriber,
Speaker 4: Breakingpoints dot com to get the show early.
Speaker 10: Toe you later,