Speaker 1: Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here
Speaker 1: and we here at breaking points, are already thinking of
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Speaker 2: let's get to the show. Good morning, everybody, Happy Tuesday.
Speaker 2: We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do
Speaker 2: we have, Krystal.
Speaker 1: Indeed, we do lots to get to this morning. So
Speaker 1: the southern ground invasion in Gaza has begun, so we'll
Speaker 1: give you updates on that, and Kamala Harris's team is
Speaker 1: traveling to the region, so a lot to stay there. Also,
Speaker 1: apparently someone got rich short selling Israeli stocks in the
Speaker 1: days before October seventh.
Speaker 4: A bit of a mystery of who and how and why, but.
Speaker 1: Pretty conclusive report showing that there was unusual trading activity
Speaker 1: leading up to the horrors that were perpetrated on October seventh.
Speaker 1: In addition, we have some dire news about health in America,
Speaker 1: both in terms of life expectancy and also suicides reaching
Speaker 1: an all time high. So we'll give you the details
Speaker 1: we know about what is happening there, a blockbuster report
Speaker 1: on Ukraine and what has been going on there, as
Speaker 1: well as Lindsey Graham, mister Warhawk himself actually saying he
Speaker 1: is done with providing Ukraine with aid. So is this
Speaker 1: the end of US support for Ukraine? We will see.
Speaker 1: We've got a State Department spokesman caught live spreading misinformation,
Speaker 1: you might say, and congresson Rocana is going to join
Speaker 1: Sager in the studio to explain why he is now
Speaker 1: supporting a ceasefire in Gaza.
Speaker 2: Yes, that's right, we missed you Crystal here in the studio,
Speaker 2: but we will have you back very very soon.
Speaker 3: As you said, we're going to start with Israel.
Speaker 2: But before we get to any of that, I know
Speaker 2: that our good friend Ryan Grimm's got a book out.
Speaker 3: Why don't you tell the people about it?
Speaker 1: Yeah, So Ryan out with a new book that has
Speaker 1: a lot of exclusive inside reporting, actually much of it
Speaker 1: very relevant to what is happening in domestic politics right
Speaker 1: now visa via Israel. It's called The Squad AOC and
Speaker 1: the Hope of a political revolution.
Speaker 4: I read the whole thing.
Speaker 1: It's really you know, it's very incisive and lease on
Speaker 1: some of the details of what's happened with the squad,
Speaker 1: some of the disappointments, some of how things unfolded there.
Speaker 1: So highly recommend you guys pick it up. It is
Speaker 1: available online and in stores now. And in addition, Sager,
Speaker 1: we are continuing our discount on premium memberships.
Speaker 3: Yes, that's right.
Speaker 2: We know so many of you took advantage of you yesterday.
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Speaker 2: all of our election coverage for the future.
Speaker 3: Is because that's December. I can't believe it.
Speaker 2: In a year, I hear from now at least the
Speaker 2: election itself will be over other shenanigans.
Speaker 3: I don't know. Can't promise that, can't promise about the
Speaker 3: other shenanigans.
Speaker 2: As we said, it's going to be a wild ride
Speaker 2: breakingpoints dot com if you can take advantage and so
Speaker 2: then let us begin with what is going on in
Speaker 2: Israel as you said, the southern invasion of Communis and
Speaker 2: the likely envelopment of that city and of that portion
Speaker 2: of Gaza now probably beginning from what we know from
Speaker 2: satellite imagery, let's ahead and put this up there on
Speaker 2: the screen. Went ahead and broke last night from commercial
Speaker 2: satellite companies. From what you can see right there is
Speaker 2: that in the south of Gaza there are now fortifications,
Speaker 2: armored vehicles that are mounted in several different strategic areas.
Speaker 2: You've got tracks that show heavy vehicles equipment that are
Speaker 2: coming in. You also saw crystal yesterday widespread reports that
Speaker 2: there was telecommunications signal loss all throughout southern Gaza, which
Speaker 2: has been a precursor previously to the ground invasions. This
Speaker 2: also comes as the idea for releases its official casualties
Speaker 2: this morning, officially eighty Israeli soldiers who've been killed in
Speaker 2: action in the north so far. So this is likely
Speaker 2: the beginning of that ground invasion after much more a
Speaker 2: much more shortened period of bombing. Now that does not
Speaker 2: mean that the bombing itself is over, just that you
Speaker 2: will now see the transition to having ground forces go
Speaker 2: into there much quicker than happened before. So I'm curious
Speaker 2: for your reaction that they're beginning this so quickly.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean a few things here. So first of all,
Speaker 1: as we have reported on this show, and I'm sure
Speaker 1: you guys have seen, an endless number of US officials
Speaker 1: have come out publicly and said that what happens in
Speaker 1: the southern part of Gaza has to be different than
Speaker 1: what happened in the north. All of these leaks to
Speaker 1: the US press saying we told the Israelis and no
Speaker 1: uncertain terms, comments from Tony Blinkn that leaked out about hey,
Speaker 1: you've got weeks not months, and that it has to
Speaker 1: be different. This has to be more targeted in the south,
Speaker 1: with less civilian death. And so far there is zero
Speaker 1: sign that anything has changed in their approach. The only
Speaker 1: thing that they can point to and that American officials
Speaker 1: are pointing to as like, oh, this is going to
Speaker 1: be different with the southern ground invasion is they put
Speaker 1: out this map that we showed you yesterday that has
Speaker 1: the whole Gaza strip dividing divided into hundreds of little units,
Speaker 1: and they're posting on social media where people should flee.
Speaker 1: And remember, now you've got almost all two point two
Speaker 1: million residents of the Gaza Strip crunched down into the
Speaker 1: southern part of the strip, which is where they were
Speaker 1: told to be safe. Now, of course, the bombing campaign
Speaker 1: has massively ramped up, some of the most aggressive bombing
Speaker 1: we've seen yet in this campaign, happening in the south
Speaker 1: among an even more densely packed civilian population and sires
Speaker 1: you just mentioned, I said, they're posting online where you
Speaker 1: should be moving to to remain safe. They don't have
Speaker 1: consistent internet, they don't have consistent telecommunications, and this has
Speaker 1: done nothing to alleviate the concern about you know, the
Speaker 1: humanitarian situation and the loss of civilian life. Already, in
Speaker 1: the first days of this Southern Gaza bombing campaign, the
Speaker 1: death toll among civilians has been over seven hundred. That
Speaker 1: is consistent with some of the most brutal days of
Speaker 1: this campaign so far. So again, I was just reading
Speaker 1: this in the New York Times, you know, no very
Speaker 1: Western biased outlet, that there is zero sign that they
Speaker 1: have actually really changed the way that they're going about things.
Speaker 1: They're continuing to use these you know, massive bombs that
Speaker 1: the US completely rule down in similar dense urban warfare.
Speaker 4: So that's where things stand as as far as I
Speaker 4: can tell.
Speaker 2: Yes, that's right. So that's what we have in terms
Speaker 2: of the Southern invasion. Obviously, we'll continue to keep everybody
Speaker 2: updated counterpoints. We'll do that as well. We also, though,
Speaker 2: have some very unfortunate news for the Palestadians, Israelis and
Speaker 2: the American people. It seems that President Biden has turned
Speaker 2: to Vice President Kamala Harris to now be in charge
Speaker 2: of initiatives for the day after on who will govern
Speaker 2: the who will govern the Gaza strip after Hamas is
Speaker 2: destroyed or at the very least after the military operation
Speaker 2: has concluded. Kamala telegraphed some of her role in these
Speaker 2: negotiations and her vision for what the future of Gaza
Speaker 2: will look like.
Speaker 3: Here's what she had to say.
Speaker 5: Well, as I said that we have to revitalize the
Speaker 5: Palestinian authority, which means giving the support that is necessary
Speaker 5: for good governance, understanding that on the issues that must
Speaker 5: be resolved as we think of a plan for the
Speaker 5: day after. It is about good governance, which will bring
Speaker 5: transparency and accountability to the people of Gaza and the
Speaker 5: West Bank. It's also about what we need to do
Speaker 5: to recognize there must be some plan for security for
Speaker 5: the region, and I suspect it as a plan develops,
Speaker 5: it will take into account interim and then longer term
Speaker 5: and finally what we must do in terms of rebuilding
Speaker 5: Gaza and a commitment to that.
Speaker 2: Okay, so that's as ann and I and I guess
Speaker 2: as a but it does seem that her and her
Speaker 2: team are very much in the driver's seat behind this project.
Speaker 2: Let's go and put this up there on the screen.
Speaker 2: Times of Israel now reporting that the Vice President's National
Speaker 2: security advisor and other officials will be arriving in Israel
Speaker 2: later today quote for meetings with their counterparts to discuss
Speaker 2: planning for post war Gaza, led by the Vice President's
Speaker 2: National Security Advisor, who was actually with Kamala Harris by
Speaker 2: her side while she made that statement in Dubai after
Speaker 2: meeting with other leaders. This will also be led by
Speaker 2: an official that we named yesterday, the Strategic Affairs Minister
Speaker 2: Ron Dermer, former US Ambassador to the United States or sorry,
Speaker 2: former is reelly Ambassador to the United States. It also, though,
Speaker 2: does highlight that the Biden administration tasking this very I guess,
Speaker 2: thankless task to not exactly their most.
Speaker 3: Competent member of government.
Speaker 2: I'm curious, this is what you make of this overall
Speaker 2: crystal to put Kamala Harris now in charge and also
Speaker 2: spearheading this entire Palestinian of authority plan for Gaza, which
Speaker 2: seems dead on arrival both in the West Bank and
Speaker 2: in Gaza, and yet it appears to be the official
Speaker 2: position now of the US government.
Speaker 1: Putting Kamala Harrison her team on this particular project is
Speaker 1: preposterous on literally every level. It does make me feel
Speaker 1: actually like the people from Kamala's team who leak out
Speaker 1: how much the White House actually hates her and sets
Speaker 1: her up to fail may actually be correct, because listen,
Speaker 1: think of the position that she's actually put in here. Right,
Speaker 1: she doesn't have the ability to threaten to condition aid,
Speaker 1: she doesn't have the ability to threaten to pull diplomatic cover.
Speaker 1: All she and her team can do is the same
Speaker 1: finger wagging that every other US official has been doing
Speaker 1: with absolutely no effect. So you're put in the position
Speaker 1: of going out there and saying, gee, I hope they
Speaker 1: do better on civilian life. As we're watching bombs hit
Speaker 1: residential high rise after residential high rise in densely packed areas,
Speaker 1: children being pulled out of rubble, et cetera. So that's
Speaker 1: the position she's put in. And then, of course, on
Speaker 1: the other level in terms of it being preposterous, Kamala
Speaker 1: Harris has never proven herself to be up to the
Speaker 1: job on even the most basic of texts. So already,
Speaker 1: you know, people were pointing out that she got asked
Speaker 1: this question about we've been covering how the net Nagahu
Speaker 1: government says they want to quote fit out the population.
Speaker 1: They're talking about moving the borders, they're talking about pushing
Speaker 1: people out, and so she got asked a question about,
Speaker 1: you know, potentially changing the borders of Gaza, and she says, oh,
Speaker 1: we don't have a position on that, when her official
Speaker 1: statement that she put out said we're opposed to that.
Speaker 1: So she doesn't even know on the basic details of
Speaker 1: what the administration's stated position is at this point.
Speaker 4: So it's I don't know.
Speaker 1: It's a level of contempt for her, for the American people,
Speaker 1: certainly for Palestinians, and it is not a hopeful sign
Speaker 1: that the US is going to be any sort of effective,
Speaker 1: forceful or positive influence on the direction of this horrific
Speaker 1: war being waged right now.
Speaker 2: Well, and especially it look if you took it seriously,
Speaker 2: then the Secretary of State, the National Security Advisor, any
Speaker 2: other member of the president's cabinet actually had their ear
Speaker 2: would be in charge anytime if we looked at it too.
Speaker 2: History and in the past, presidents, whenever they took a
Speaker 2: foreign relationship especially seriously, would even elevate somebody who was
Speaker 2: on their most senior staff. I'm thinking of Fdr and
Speaker 2: Harold Hopkins and some of his other advisors who had
Speaker 2: frequently dispatched to Russia and others in a sign of
Speaker 2: like this person speaks for me directly. Anybody who reads
Speaker 2: a newspaper across the globe knows that this woman doesn't
Speaker 2: speak for the United States government and doesn't even speak
Speaker 2: for President Biden and her amateurist, amateur level. As you
Speaker 2: pointed out, we don't have a position on that.
Speaker 3: Yes we do.
Speaker 2: It's been the policy of the United States government since
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty seven. For her to have no idea about
Speaker 2: what the borders and our position on that would be
Speaker 2: is preposterous for her to be put in charge of this.
Speaker 2: It also does highlight just an ongoing, you know, real
Speaker 2: nightmare in the future sure over who is going to
Speaker 2: control Gaza.
Speaker 3: Let's put this up there on the screen.
Speaker 2: The Washington Post wrote up a decent summary at least
Speaker 2: of all of this. They say, who will run Gaza
Speaker 2: after the war? US searches for the best of bad options.
Speaker 2: But I actually thought that the lead paragraph put things
Speaker 2: especially well. The Israelis say they don't want the job.
Speaker 2: Arab nations are resisting Palestinian authority. President Mahmuda Boss might volunteer,
Speaker 2: but the Palestinian people probably don't want him. As the
Speaker 2: Biden administration begins to plan for the day after in Gaza,
Speaker 2: confronting problematic questions such as who runs the territory once
Speaker 2: the shooting stops, how it gets rebuilt, and potentially how
Speaker 2: it eventually becomes part of an independent state, the stakeholders
Speaker 2: face a host of unattractive options. Unattractive, I guess, is
Speaker 2: certainly one way of putting it, and it does honestly
Speaker 2: enrage me. I mean, the Israelis to mount a full
Speaker 2: blown military campaign and then to say, oh, we want
Speaker 2: to wash our hands of this the moment that the
Speaker 2: bombing stops.
Speaker 3: Absolutely not. That is not how this works.
Speaker 2: You can look at every other nation that has had
Speaker 2: to pie and had a military campaign to supposedly rid
Speaker 2: a territory.
Speaker 3: You break it, you buy it.
Speaker 2: It's the most basic rule of invading another or another country,
Speaker 2: or at least another territory. And here, you know, we,
Speaker 2: somehow we have become the people who are going to
Speaker 2: decide its future, which only means.
Speaker 3: A couple of things. Diplomatic nightmares for.
Speaker 2: The US, more funding, more calls possibly for the US
Speaker 2: to leverage it's you know, debt and other foreign aid
Speaker 2: relationships in the Arab region effectively blow our political capital
Speaker 2: for the mess at Israel is now creating. And then
Speaker 2: in the future we know what they want. Scott Horton
Speaker 2: brought this up yesterday. Israeli officials are writing in the
Speaker 2: Wall Street Journal, Hey, you take them, you guys, take
Speaker 2: these Palestinians, or at the very least you deal with it.
Speaker 2: Or previously they had floated European Union and US peacekeepers
Speaker 2: patrolling the streets of Gaza. And you know, if Kamala
Speaker 2: Harris is going to come into this with such an
Speaker 2: amateur level of knowledge from a very basic question on
Speaker 2: day one, how can we have any trust Crystal is
Speaker 2: not stumble us directly into a similar incendiary type scenario
Speaker 2: where she would not even know the backstory enough to
Speaker 2: agree to something necessarily, which is an absolute non starter
Speaker 2: for all parties involved.
Speaker 3: So I'm honestly really worried about this.
Speaker 2: I might be more worried about this than anything else
Speaker 2: going on, because this is how the stage is set
Speaker 2: for decades long conflict.
Speaker 3: Just like we had to deal with in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Speaker 1: Well, here's the thing that I've been very worried about
Speaker 1: from the beginning. As you know, the Israeli government has
Speaker 1: made it very clear what their ideal end state is
Speaker 1: in Net Yahoo.
Speaker 4: Now you know it's coming out.
Speaker 1: He tasks is a top aid with coming up with
Speaker 1: a plan to quote unquote finn or you might say,
Speaker 1: cleanse the population in the Gaza Strip, and are floating
Speaker 1: plans to Congress that apparently have been received positively by
Speaker 1: both members of both parties, to push our allies who
Speaker 1: we give aid to in the region to accept some
Speaker 1: number of refugees and to you know, basically make good
Speaker 1: on y Netnyahuu and his government's desires to cleanse the
Speaker 1: Gaza Strip at least of some number of Palestinians. And
Speaker 1: you might say Okay, the US will never allow that,
Speaker 1: and you know, Egypt is really dramatically opposed to that,
Speaker 1: and other Arab nations are opposed to it as well.
Speaker 1: But then you look at the other options that are
Speaker 1: on the table. Israel is basically making it with their
Speaker 1: campaign of total war and absolute destruction that there are
Speaker 1: almost there are no good alternatives here, and so that's
Speaker 1: how you end up putting pressure on Egypt, That's how
Speaker 1: you end up putting pressure on us.
Speaker 4: They're using these.
Speaker 1: Words already about how this is the humanitarian solution. No,
Speaker 1: the humanitarian solution is to stop the bombing and negotiate
Speaker 1: a just peace, including a two state solution, so that
Speaker 1: the aspirations, legitimate aspirations of the Palestinian people can be recognized.
Speaker 1: So that's what I'm fearful of here. I mean, we've
Speaker 1: talked about how the US's planned, you know which Kamala
Speaker 1: Harris was there talking about, is to beef up the
Speaker 1: Palestinian authority and so somehow have them take control of
Speaker 1: the Gaza strip. And you've compared it, I think, pretty
Speaker 1: athlete to like Comind Karzai in Afghanistan or Ahamed Chalabi
Speaker 1: and Iraq. But it's even worse than that, because those
Speaker 1: people were like sort of unknown, they weren't pre hated
Speaker 1: Mahmudabas in the Palestinian authority. They are hated, hated because
Speaker 1: they are it collaborators with the Israeli security regime. I mean,
Speaker 1: they are part of the occupying force. That is the
Speaker 1: role they occupy. And they're also corrupt and they don't
Speaker 1: protect the Palestinians in the West Bank. So of course
Speaker 1: the Palestinians in the West Bank don't like them. The
Speaker 1: Palestinians in the Gaza Strip don't like them.
Speaker 4: They have zero.
Speaker 1: Legitimacy and they'll have even less legitimacy if they're foisted
Speaker 1: on Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, you know, brought in
Speaker 1: in the back of the idea of tanks. You can
Speaker 1: imagine how well that's going to go over part of that.
Speaker 1: What was interesting in that Washington Post piece was they
Speaker 1: actually talk to some Palestinians about how they feel about
Speaker 1: the PA, how they feel about Hamas, and you know,
Speaker 1: I thought that this was worthwhile. They talked to one individual,
Speaker 1: twenty eight year old man, who said, our current focus
Speaker 1: is solely on ending the war, while Hamas may be
Speaker 1: somewhat reckless, the Palestinian authorities riddled with corruption and unfit
Speaker 1: to govern us, he went on. Hamas is far from ideal,
Speaker 1: he said, but we are oppressed, and those willing to
Speaker 1: help us must respect our perspectives and facilitate elections, allowing
Speaker 1: the Palestinian people to choose their leadership, whether it be
Speaker 1: Hamas or others. A mother of two kids from Gaza
Speaker 1: City thirty two years old, said, both Hamas and the
Speaker 1: PA are marred by corruption. We endure without support from
Speaker 1: any party. Current political discussion seems senseless while people in
Speaker 1: Gaza continue to suffer, not just from bombings but also
Speaker 1: due to hunger and thirst. And of course Israel says
Speaker 1: their goal here is to eliminate Hamas. Well, it looks
Speaker 1: like right now they're headed in the polar opposite direction.
Speaker 1: Put this up on the screen from Bloomberg support for Hamas. Now,
Speaker 1: this is in the West not in Gaza, where it's
Speaker 1: understandably very difficult to conduct any sort of polling or
Speaker 1: do any sort of analysis. Journalists have very difficult time
Speaker 1: even accessing any of the people there. Support for Hamas
Speaker 1: right now is surging in the West Bank. So the
Speaker 1: polar opposite of your goal. Your goal is to eradicate Hamas.
Speaker 1: You have created more support for Hamas, you have created
Speaker 1: more members of Hamas, and so it's already been completely
Speaker 1: completely counterproductive. I did my monologue yesterday this blockbuster report
Speaker 1: from nine to seven to two magazine that I really
Speaker 1: recommend people people check out and read in its entirety
Speaker 1: because they talk about how the tactics of the Israeli
Speaker 1: military is not really to focus in a targeted way
Speaker 1: on Hamas militants or Hamas infrastructure. It's to create a
Speaker 1: quote shock among the civilian public that will put pressure
Speaker 1: on them to hopefully turn against Amas. What we've seen
Speaker 1: throughout history, that never works. When you bomb civilian population.
Speaker 4: You know what you.
Speaker 1: Do, You create more support for the government in charge.
Speaker 1: You create a rally around the flag effect. And that's
Speaker 1: exactly what we're seeing in Israel right now.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think it's important to understand too about what the
Speaker 2: future and all that looks look like. And the Hamad
Speaker 2: support in the West Bank is a very serious problem
Speaker 2: and indicative of exactly how this all may play out
Speaker 2: in the future. And it's something that I worry about
Speaker 2: very very deeply. You know, especially whenever we're looking at
Speaker 2: the supposed calls to the future, and worse that the
Speaker 2: US is even embracing the idea that we're the ones
Speaker 2: who are supposed to be solely responsible. You flagged this yesterday,
Speaker 2: Crystal about a particular moment on BBC where the Israeli
Speaker 2: ambassador to the UK appeared, I think it was on
Speaker 2: Sky News to be asked around where Palestinian civilians were
Speaker 2: supposed to flee inside of the Gaza strip and there
Speaker 2: was an almost immediate fact check for those who are listening.
Speaker 2: What you're about to listen to is her saying that
Speaker 2: Palstin should go to an area, and then the camera
Speaker 2: panning to that actual area, which basically refutes a lot
Speaker 2: of what she's saying.
Speaker 3: Let's take a listen. There is a river.
Speaker 6: There is a place in Gaza called the Muassi. The
Speaker 6: Muhassi is the place where they all can have shelters.
Speaker 6: Together with international organizations, we created shelters for the Palestinian people,
Speaker 6: so you cannot say Israel is not facilitating that together
Speaker 6: with humanitarianly.
Speaker 7: This is where she's talking about, a desolate wasteland of
Speaker 7: sand dunes next to the Mediterranean Sea. There is no
Speaker 7: aid in our malwaite. There are no aid agency tents,
Speaker 7: there are no food kitchens, there is no help here.
Speaker 2: The only food I saw there was a dead camel.
Speaker 2: So anyway, that's what she's saying. Let's go ahead, put
Speaker 2: this up there on the screen. This was actually after
Speaker 2: she reiterated this, after an Israeli organization also tweeted out
Speaker 2: this map quote. The IDEAF calls on Gaza City residents
Speaker 2: to evacuate south for their protection. All Mawassi is where
Speaker 2: international humanitarian aid will be provided as needed. So at
Speaker 2: very least now there is no international humanitarian aid in
Speaker 2: that region. And also, I mean, if you just look
Speaker 2: at that on a map, it seems, I mean, how
Speaker 2: the hell are you supposed to fit two point two
Speaker 2: million people inside of what a couple square miles of territory,
Speaker 2: Gaza already being one of the single most densely populated
Speaker 2: places on the planet. So anyway, this just highlights the
Speaker 2: ongoing nightmare that remains there, and more importantly, the nightmare
Speaker 2: of the future. You may think that this war is
Speaker 2: the worse, but the more that this continues, far far
Speaker 2: worse could come. Let's go ahead and turn now, sorry,
Speaker 2: go ahead.
Speaker 1: Just quickly on Almawasi, and this is going to be
Speaker 1: you know, even mainstream out looks like Sky News, like
Speaker 1: Jake Tapper on CNN are racing this question now of like,
Speaker 1: where are people even supposed to go that area that
Speaker 1: they designated, Oh, there's you, and there's humanitarian aid there,
Speaker 1: et cetera.
Speaker 4: First of all, obviously that was a lie.
Speaker 1: Second of all, that whole area is the size of
Speaker 1: Lax for two point two million people, the size of
Speaker 1: lax at airport. To tell you how absolutely preposterous this is.
Speaker 1: And I think Counterpoints will cover this tomorrow. But Jake
Speaker 1: Tapper talking to a spokesperson for the Israeli government. CNN
Speaker 1: had a producer who lost nine family members and he's saying,
Speaker 1: where were they supposed to go to be safe? So
Speaker 1: even mainstream outlets are starting to realize the absurdity of this.
Speaker 1: And at the same time, you had Matthew Miller, the
Speaker 1: State Department spokesman yesterday, you know, saying the same thing
Speaker 1: of oh, people can flee to these you know, un
Speaker 1: led areas where they can receive aid and they can
Speaker 1: receive shelter, and un spokespeople came out and said there
Speaker 1: is nowhere that is safe.
Speaker 4: There is nowhere that is safe.
Speaker 1: So as horrific as the bombing and the ground invasion
Speaker 1: of the North is, there's even more of a risk
Speaker 1: for catastrophes for civilians now because people are even more
Speaker 1: densely packed in this area that they were hold to
Speaker 1: flee to in order to be safe. The reality is,
Speaker 1: of course, there is nowhere to go that is actually safe.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, as you said, we'll continue to track it here.
Speaker 2: Let's move to a more important story in terms of
Speaker 2: domestic politics, which is how Americans are feeling about all
Speaker 2: of this that is happening in front of us. Let's
Speaker 2: go ahead and put this up there on the screen.
Speaker 2: So this is some pretty extraordinary polling that has just
Speaker 2: come out from Gallup, and I want to actually spend
Speaker 2: some time here Americans' views of military Israel's Israel's military
Speaker 2: action in Gaza by subgroup. So if you look at
Speaker 2: it by adults, it's fifty percent approved, forty five percent disapproved.
Speaker 2: I think, very different than how most people would look
Speaker 2: in the media. When you start to break it down though,
Speaker 2: by age, it's extraordinary eighteen to thirty four. In that
Speaker 2: age group, you have thirty percent approved, sixty seven percent
Speaker 2: disapproved thirty five to fifty four so gen x who
Speaker 2: have fifty approved forty four percent disapproved. And then amongst
Speaker 2: boomers it's more significantly sick xty three percent approved, thirty
Speaker 2: four percent disapproved. I do think though, if you look
Speaker 2: at the breakdown where things really split, it's party id
Speaker 2: So you've got seventy one percent of Republicans who approve
Speaker 2: of the Israeli military actions in Gaza, twenty three percent disapproved.
Speaker 2: Amongst independents, it's almost entirely equally split forty seven percent approved,
Speaker 2: forty eight percent disapproved. Amongst Democrats, absolutely extraordinary to see
Speaker 2: this number thirty six percent approve, sixty three percent disapprove,
Speaker 2: And of course a Democrat is currently in the White House. Now,
Speaker 2: you shouldn't conduct all foreign policy just to pay based
Speaker 2: upon what your party wants, necessarily, but Chrystal, this does
Speaker 2: highlight something that we've been trying to bring attention to here,
Speaker 2: which is not even just young voters per se, but
Speaker 2: many Democrats who may feel very differently about the Israel conflict,
Speaker 2: who don't see their views really represented in their in
Speaker 2: the government, that is, or at least in the party
Speaker 2: and the president that they are aligned with in a
Speaker 2: critical election year, and I thought that that was the
Speaker 2: biggest red sign I've seen yet for President Joe Biden,
Speaker 2: on top of all of his other problems. It explains
Speaker 2: why Trump right now is in the best position to
Speaker 2: win reelections for any Republican since George W.
Speaker 3: Bush in two thousand and four.
Speaker 1: And it's not just that they don't see their view
Speaker 1: reflected in the United States government, and by the way,
Speaker 1: of course, consistently from the beginning, the overwhelming majority of Americans,
Speaker 1: some two thirds of Americans have supported a ceasefire.
Speaker 4: Not only do they not see those views reflected.
Speaker 1: In large numbers outside of a few courageous members of Congress,
Speaker 1: but they've been treated with absolute contempt smeared as Hamas
Speaker 1: or terrorist sympathizers, smeared as anti Semites. There's a new
Speaker 1: resolution up in the House to equate anti Zionism with
Speaker 1: anti Semitism, which is absolutely preposterous.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 1: I did see Jerry Nadler and some others speaking out
Speaker 1: against that. That is good to see, but that is
Speaker 1: the level of contempt that young people and people of
Speaker 1: color who That's the other interesting divide here is the
Speaker 1: two real divides in terms of support for Israel or
Speaker 1: opposition of what Israel is doing here were generational, so
Speaker 1: young people, you know, far more disgusted with Israel's campaign
Speaker 1: and Gaza than older people. And then there's a huge
Speaker 1: racial divide as well. And you actually see this represented
Speaker 1: in the members of Congress who have been for a
Speaker 1: ceasefire effectively from the beginning. They're overwhelmingly on the younger side,
Speaker 1: and they're overwhelmingly people of color. There were effectively no
Speaker 1: white Democrats calling for a seaspire for quite some time.
Speaker 4: It took a while.
Speaker 1: So those two parts of the Democratic base obviously being
Speaker 1: very large and very critical, is why then you see
Speaker 1: this huge party identification divide in terms of support for
Speaker 1: israel I. Also, don't want to miss the top line here,
Speaker 1: you know, you might look at it, okay, there's still
Speaker 1: a little bit of narrow you know, fifty percent support
Speaker 1: what Israel's up to forty five percent a post that
Speaker 1: is remarkable from not only the early days of this war,
Speaker 1: but from how Americans have viewed Israeli actions in the
Speaker 1: past for years and years of years. I mean that
Speaker 1: should be sending shockwaves through DC and I think it is.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's why you see these groups like APAC
Speaker 1: and Democratic Majority for Israel coming out and say we're
Speaker 1: going to spend all this am We're going to spend
Speaker 1: hundreds of millions of dollars to try to quash any sort
Speaker 1: of descent on this issue, because they can see the
Speaker 1: way that they are losing the messaging and propaganda war
Speaker 1: with young people, and they are even losing some of
Speaker 1: their grip on a uniformity of opinion even in the
Speaker 1: mainstream press. So that's why you see such a freak
Speaker 1: out there. But yeah, for Biden, this is a complete disaster.
Speaker 1: You have far more Republicans supporting effectively his foreign policy
Speaker 1: than his own party. And you can only imagine, you know,
Speaker 1: if this was Trump with the same policies as Biden,
Speaker 1: would have like uniform democratic opposition to what was going
Speaker 1: on here. So, especially given the amount of propaganda people
Speaker 1: are consistently fed from the US press, to see a
Speaker 1: fifty to fifty overall divide and to see these kind
Speaker 1: of generational and racial and party splits as well as
Speaker 1: it's extraordinary, it really is a remarkable.
Speaker 4: Term.
Speaker 2: It's also important to know that is very different than
Speaker 2: even conflicts which have now become much more fifty to
Speaker 2: fifty or even in the case of Ukraine, have switched
Speaker 2: entirely in terms of how Americans feel about eight If
Speaker 2: you look at the initial numbers on Ukraine, it was
Speaker 2: almost ninety ten in terms of people who were supportive
Speaker 2: of initial military aid. It took over a year, probably
Speaker 2: eighteen months before reality started to set in, and we
Speaker 2: will talk quite a bit about that today. But nonetheless,
Speaker 2: from an electoral perspective, I think Biden certainly does face
Speaker 2: a problem.
Speaker 3: We flagged this report. Let's go and put this up
Speaker 3: there on the screen.
Speaker 2: Swing state Muslim leaders are now launching a campaign to
Speaker 2: quote abandon Biden in twenty twenty four. They're specifically trying
Speaker 2: to leverage the Muslim populations in Michigan, in Minnesota, Arizona, Wisconsin, Florida,
Speaker 2: and Georgia and Nevada and Pennsylvania, calling on the campaign
Speaker 2: quote abandon Biden, vowing to ensure Biden is a one
Speaker 2: term president. Leaders have run separate pressure campaigns in these
Speaker 2: respective states, now are banding together to try and get
Speaker 2: the hashtag trending and to try and to have organization.
Speaker 2: They say that the bubbling anger amongst Arab and Muslim
Speaker 2: Americans could threaten Biden's chances of reelection in many of
Speaker 2: these swing states in twenty twenty four in key voting blocks.
Speaker 2: And one of the reasons why I think it really
Speaker 2: matters to break this down is the vote total in
Speaker 2: Georgia is only a couple of thousand. In Arizona, we're
Speaker 2: talking about ten thousand votes. If you combine Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona,
Speaker 2: you only need thirty forty thousand votes to go in
Speaker 2: a different direction. And Trump is at back of the
Speaker 2: White House in twenty twenty. Looks a hell of a
Speaker 2: lot different. I don't think yet that'll A lot of
Speaker 2: political analysis has caught up with just the slimmest margins
Speaker 2: by which Biden even won the presidency in twenty twenty,
Speaker 2: and how precarious his chances are even the White House.
Speaker 3: Everybody seems to be.
Speaker 2: Swaggering, being like, oh, there's no way, or they're not
Speaker 2: taking it seriously. The DNC, a lot of the Democratic
Speaker 2: you know, the chattering class. Just yesterday we covered the
Speaker 2: story that they're anointing Biden the the nominee from the
Speaker 2: state of Florida. They're not even allowing democracy or any
Speaker 2: of that to creep in. So I think they're going
Speaker 2: to get smacked in the face come October of twenty
Speaker 2: twenty four, Crystal, when all of this just comes to
Speaker 2: a head and they're looking at their internals three weeks
Speaker 2: one month out to election day, and they're gonna be like,
Speaker 2: oh my god, this is a totally different election than
Speaker 2: we expected, almost like a Hillary oh shit moment from
Speaker 2: twenty sixteen that was happening at least in some parts
Speaker 2: of her campaign, but she didn't want to listen to.
Speaker 1: They still believe that this will just blow over that
Speaker 1: young people, that Arab Americans, that Muslim Americans, when they're
Speaker 1: face with the alternative of Trump and you know, his
Speaker 1: foading of a Muslim ban and wanting to ban from
Speaker 1: the country anyone who is Palestinian or supports the Palestinian cause,
Speaker 1: that they will suck it up and vote for Joe,
Speaker 1: that they'll move on, or they'll forget that any of
Speaker 1: this ever happened. And I just think that they're completely
Speaker 1: wrong in that. And you the greatest effort that you
Speaker 1: see in order to win people over is not to
Speaker 1: change the policy, is not to try to allay their concerns.
Speaker 1: It's to effectively brate and shame them for you know,
Speaker 1: quote unquote like voting to end democracy by not just
Speaker 1: getting on board with Joe Biden, who is complicit with
Speaker 1: these Israeli atrocities that we all see unfolding in front
Speaker 1: of our eyes every single day. So listen, you can
Speaker 1: make the lesser evil argument, that's fine. You know, I
Speaker 1: do think Donald Trump is worse, so may've been very
Speaker 1: clear about it, but it's always the responsibility of the
Speaker 1: voters rather than responsibility of Joe Biden, his administration and
Speaker 1: the party leadership. And frankly, I just don't think it's
Speaker 1: going to work this time. These Muslim leaders who are
Speaker 1: organizing this effort, they were asked about exactly this, and
Speaker 1: they said that they are not planning to vote for
Speaker 1: Donald Trump, though they recognize their effort to rally support
Speaker 1: against Biden could elevate the former president. But they said
Speaker 1: they're going to continue to have discussions about which candidate
Speaker 1: to throw their support behind as the primaries rapidly approached.
Speaker 4: Quote, We're not supporting Trump.
Speaker 1: We're not going to make the same mistake of thinking
Speaker 1: about President Biden the way we thought we don't have
Speaker 1: two options. We have many options, and we're going to
Speaker 1: exercise that. So I think that the Biden administration underestimates
Speaker 1: this political ground swell of.
Speaker 4: Outrage at their peril.
Speaker 1: And it is not on the young people, or the
Speaker 1: Arab American leaders, or the Muslim leaders who are disgusted
Speaker 1: with this policy.
Speaker 4: If Biden loses.
Speaker 1: Which he is on track to do, that is one
Speaker 1: hundred percent going to be on Joe Biden, his team
Speaker 1: and his policies with regard to Israel and also with
Speaker 1: regard to the account.
Speaker 2: Yes, exactly, well, it will be. I think it'll be very,
Speaker 2: very multi faceted. And you know, I'll speak up to.
Speaker 3: For the non voter.
Speaker 2: You don't know, you don't owe anyone your vote. If
Speaker 2: you it's up to you to decide what's the most
Speaker 2: important for you. And if you don't want to vote
Speaker 2: for somebody, you shouldn't be shamed into doing so. And
Speaker 2: I've you know, I've long decried lesser of two evils
Speaker 2: voting and all that, even though we've basically been forced
Speaker 2: into it now for my entire lifetime in American politics,
Speaker 2: and I think people who are especially younger, are very
Speaker 2: stick of it because they can't even remember, or they're
Speaker 2: only reading about times when people might have promised to
Speaker 2: actually do something and had a chance of doing it.
Speaker 2: So anyway, I think it's going to be a very
Speaker 2: significant story. We've got independent candidates galore, people like RFK Junior,
Speaker 2: Cornell West.
Speaker 3: And who the hell knows.
Speaker 2: I just saw yesterday Joe Lieberman floated that Nikki Haley
Speaker 2: could run on the no Labels ticket against Trump if
Speaker 2: she doesn't end up winning the GOP primary.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, listen, the more the barrier, as far
Speaker 2: as as far as you can ask me.
Speaker 3: Okay, yeah, let's move on.
Speaker 4: All right.
Speaker 1: So this was a fascinating report that really caught our attention.
Speaker 4: Put this up on the screen.
Speaker 1: This right up from Harets of an analysis of stop trading.
Speaker 4: Before October seventh.
Speaker 1: Now, their headline here is did Hamas make millions betting
Speaker 1: against Israeli shares before the October seventh massacre? Giant gambles
Speaker 1: against Israel and the markets in Tel Avivan Wall Street
Speaker 1: days before Hamas's attack made billions. Somebody seems to have
Speaker 1: known about the plan in advance. Now let me give
Speaker 1: you some of the details here. So first of all,
Speaker 1: they're sort of floating that. Obviously Hamas knew the attack
Speaker 1: was coming, so perhaps they were the ones that profited here.
Speaker 1: But we don't actually have any idea who it was
Speaker 1: that was placing these bets. We just know from this
Speaker 1: these researchers analysis that massive bets were placed against Israel,
Speaker 1: so short selling here in the days before October seventh,
Speaker 1: and it was on a scale that you know, can't
Speaker 1: be explained effectively by you know, chance or the random
Speaker 1: fluctuations of the market. So let me read you a
Speaker 1: little bit of this and you can see up on
Speaker 1: the screen how remarkable the amount of short selling on
Speaker 1: October seventh versus other times were here, which is pretty wild.
Speaker 1: And if you're confused, they have you know, this is
Speaker 1: in Israel and other countries, they do the dates in
Speaker 1: the reverse order, so two ten is actually ten two
Speaker 1: when we're thinking about it, anyway.
Speaker 3: It's the wrong order, let's be clear. Anyway.
Speaker 1: Anyway, moving forward, so they were short selling Israeli shares,
Speaker 1: betting they will fall in advance of October seventh, far
Speaker 1: exceeding the short selling during numerous other periods of crisis.
Speaker 1: This is according to a paper titled Trading on tear.
Speaker 1: They were betting on this ETF that tracks Israeli shares
Speaker 1: in New York, so they're basically betting against Israeli shares
Speaker 1: without buying any Just to explain the concept of short
Speaker 1: selling for people who aren't, you know, super into this
Speaker 1: kind of stuff. To explain how unusual the gamble against
Speaker 1: Israel was. They check the volume of short transactions in
Speaker 1: this ETF from thousand and nine to twenty twenty three,
Speaker 1: so quite a long period of time during which Israel
Speaker 1: experienced plenty of crises. There were three thousand, five hundred
Speaker 1: and seventy trading days during that period. The volume of
Speaker 1: shorts on October second was in the top ninety ninth percentile.
Speaker 1: The short ratio for eis was also extraordinary on October seventh.
Speaker 1: It is extremely unlikely that the volume of short selling
Speaker 1: occurred by random chance. They also looked at other periods
Speaker 1: of crisis, including the recession following the two thousand and
Speaker 1: eight financial crisis, the twenty fourteen Israel Gaza war, the
Speaker 1: COVID nineteen pandemic, and nothing compared to the level of
Speaker 1: short selling that happened on October seventh and during other
Speaker 1: days in advance of October seventh, and they also note
Speaker 1: that this was during the Secode Jewish holiday. There was
Speaker 1: no expectation of anything crazy going on, so somebody knew
Speaker 1: something in advance and placed some really big that's here
Speaker 1: that paid off to the tune of billions.
Speaker 4: Who it was, we have no idea.
Speaker 3: I have no idea, and we don't even know if
Speaker 3: it's a single individual.
Speaker 2: As you said, the Haretz report speculated it could be Hamas,
Speaker 2: It could be a variety of actors. It could be
Speaker 2: people who military intelligence officials, possibly who had been trying
Speaker 2: to warn the government nobody was listening, and then maybe
Speaker 2: they leaked out the word there. It could be Iranian
Speaker 2: back to actors, people like Iran and North Korea have
Speaker 2: done things like this in the past with regards to
Speaker 2: cryptocurrency and others. It could be you know, anything. It
Speaker 2: really it's basically the plot of Casino Royales, or at
Speaker 2: least part of it for those who have watched that
Speaker 2: Bond movie, which is why this is so intriguing. All
Speaker 2: of it traces back to this academic paper, which is
Speaker 2: pretty solid. I went and read through most of it.
Speaker 2: We can go ahead and put this up there on
Speaker 2: the screen. They're the ones who provided that chart to Haretz.
Speaker 2: But if you go and you read through it, they say,
Speaker 2: we identify increases in short selling before the attack, and
Speaker 2: a dozens of Israeli companies traded in Tel Aviv, one
Speaker 2: company alone four point four to three million new share
Speaker 2: over September fourteenth to October five, yielding profits of millions
Speaker 2: of dollars on additional short selling for one out of
Speaker 2: hundreds of securities that were traded on the Tel Aviv
Speaker 2: stock exchange. They also have some pretty interesting stuff here
Speaker 2: about the exact timing of the report and just how
Speaker 2: good the intel the trader was. Previously, it had been
Speaker 2: reported from the Times of Israel Hamas had initially planned
Speaker 2: the cross border onslaught for the eve of Passover, but
Speaker 2: canceled the attack after Israel had raised the alert level.
Speaker 2: Military intelligence had caught the early signs of an attack
Speaker 2: on Passover the year fell on April five and raised
Speaker 2: the alert. However, similar levels of trading were not seen
Speaker 2: within that So whoever knew this knew not only to
Speaker 2: not trade short you know, behead of Passover, they knew
Speaker 2: that the plans were ironclad, were set in stone, that
Speaker 2: it was almost one hundred percent that was going to happen,
Speaker 2: and the evidence I mean is basically incontrovertible if you
Speaker 2: look at this statistically. One thing they also point out
Speaker 2: or some of the shortfalls in US security law whenever
Speaker 2: you're actually trying to even get down to the bottom.
Speaker 2: I know that there's been a lot of speculation in
Speaker 2: the past about nine to eleven and possible insider knowledge
Speaker 2: and all of that, but they talk about the so
Speaker 2: called trading on terror phenomenon and how it has materialized
Speaker 2: in the past. But at the very least, if some
Speaker 2: of this or even any of this touch US securities markets,
Speaker 2: they need to do a pretty big investigation here, hopefully
Speaker 2: our own securities regulators, just to name them. If it's Hamas,
Speaker 2: if it's Iran, if it's you know, into some broken
Speaker 2: cider official or any of that. This is outrageous because
Speaker 2: it not only shows, you know, profiting from death. I
Speaker 2: believe there's also a billion subplot to something like this,
Speaker 2: which is just the purest type of evil, but.
Speaker 3: It shows that somebody was so sure that this.
Speaker 2: Was going to happen they were able to place bets
Speaker 2: that reaped them extraordinary profits. But with also some pretty
Speaker 2: extraordinary risk if it was a normal type of bet crystal.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's exactly right.
Speaker 1: That's really important to emphasize that they must have had
Speaker 1: a very high level of confidence to place this type
Speaker 1: of that because when you're you know, when you're shorting
Speaker 1: an ETF like this, I mean, your exposure is absolutely massive.
Speaker 1: Your potential for profit is huge, but your potential for
Speaker 1: catastrophic losses is also really huge. So there was certainly
Speaker 1: a level of confidence going into these trades, manifested by
Speaker 1: their size and by the level of the exposure. Now
Speaker 1: you make a great point, Sager, which is there isn't
Speaker 1: really any law in the US, at least against profiting
Speaker 1: off war profiting off of terror attacks, which is disgusting
Speaker 1: and we could talk about that another day, but there
Speaker 1: are laws that prohibit the finance of terrorism. So if
Speaker 1: it was in fact Hamas or Hamas related, or even
Speaker 1: Iranian related, the way that we will know is there
Speaker 1: is some sort of an investigation. If there's no investigation,
Speaker 1: then you can feel pretty confident then it was probably
Speaker 1: one of our friends rather than one of our foes.
Speaker 1: Or if we never hear about the investigation, you can
Speaker 1: probably be pretty confident it was one of our friends
Speaker 1: versus one of our foes.
Speaker 4: I genuinely have no idea.
Speaker 1: I'm not speculating here whatsoever in either direction, but it
Speaker 1: is worth noting. Part of the context here is, of course,
Speaker 1: we've now learned that the Israeli government had this plan
Speaker 1: in great detail of what Hamas was planning for October seventh,
Speaker 1: more than a year before these atrocities were perpetrated. So
Speaker 1: there were people in the government who had this plan.
Speaker 1: Now they waved it off and say, oh, we don't
Speaker 1: think that they have this is just aspirational. We don't
Speaker 1: think they have these capabilities, et cetera. And you also
Speaker 1: had this group of intelligence analyst spotters who were looking
Speaker 1: into the Gaza Strip.
Speaker 4: We're basically, you know, spying.
Speaker 1: And using the high tech cameras, so look at the
Speaker 1: Gaza Strip and watching Hamas training for exactly what is
Speaker 1: laid out in this document and sounding the alarm as
Speaker 1: clearly as they possibly could. Say No, no, this isn't aspirational.
Speaker 1: They're training for this. We are watching them in real
Speaker 1: time train for this. You need to take this seriously
Speaker 1: or this is going to be horrific. And of course
Speaker 1: it was the same you know, wave them off. No, no,
Speaker 1: they can't do that. They just they want to We've
Speaker 1: got it under control. Don't worry about it, effectively like
Speaker 1: you're being hysterical.
Speaker 4: Calm down. So this information was out there.
Speaker 1: There's also indications that you know, some other regional states.
Speaker 1: I believe it wasn't an Egypt that said that they
Speaker 1: also had some intel about the planet. Had warmed warned
Speaker 1: the net Yahoo government as well. So there were people
Speaker 1: and governments in the region that had gathered some intel
Speaker 1: about this. So that raises the possibility of any variety
Speaker 1: of actors who potentially could have looked at this and said,
Speaker 1: you know what, I don't think that they're faking here.
Speaker 1: I don't think this is aspirational. I think this is real,
Speaker 1: and I'm willing to put my money where the bet
Speaker 1: is in profit off of this horror, which is just
Speaker 1: you know, disgusting.
Speaker 2: Good point. It could have been in the Turks, could
Speaker 2: have been the Egyptians. You know, a hell of a
Speaker 2: lot of people knew about this attack. Could be Amas. Look,
Speaker 2: I want an investigation because this is outrageous, and especially
Speaker 2: if any US citizen or any other type of thing
Speaker 2: we're involved in US security regulators absolutely should do one
Speaker 2: into this and just let the public know because that
Speaker 2: nine to eleven one is one of the most enduring
Speaker 2: parts of the nine to eleven conspiracy that goes back
Speaker 2: around short selling, allegedly going on airline stocks and things
Speaker 2: like that. It's I think it quite literally inspired the
Speaker 2: plot for Casino Royale.
Speaker 3: I'm not sure.
Speaker 2: I haven't read the book, but it was enough so
Speaker 2: that it remained in the culture that it was a mainstay,
Speaker 2: you know, behind cable news before the age, or at
Speaker 2: least in the very early days of the Internet. And
Speaker 2: this certainly is already making the round, so it'd be
Speaker 2: better off we all had an explanation.
Speaker 3: Let's move on to the next one.
Speaker 2: This is a story I've been really wanting to and
Speaker 2: spend some time on, absolutely tragic debts of despair skyrocketing
Speaker 2: here in the United States. We're going to start off
Speaker 2: one where you can either be glass half full or
Speaker 2: glass half empty.
Speaker 3: Let's go and put this up there.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna choose empty just because of the sheer scale
Speaker 2: of what's happening. This is about new CDC life expectancy data,
Speaker 2: which shows a rebound from twenty twenty. Now, at a glance,
Speaker 2: you might think that that's good. A decline in US
Speaker 2: life expectancy from coronavirus eased in twenty twenty two, and
Speaker 2: that was the majority of the headlines that was released,
Speaker 2: including by the CDC. What they failed to mention is
Speaker 2: that the country remains quote well behind the overall peak
Speaker 2: of like life expectancy in twenty fourteen. But even more importantly, Crystal,
Speaker 2: I went through and I reviewed the data. Our life
Speaker 2: expectancy data is now on par with two thousand and one.
Speaker 3: So let that sink in.
Speaker 2: We have had a twenty year setback now and we
Speaker 2: continue honor decline of life expectancy. Twenty twenty and twenty
Speaker 2: twenty one obviously were extraordinary. They had the lowest, the
Speaker 2: biggest drop in life expectancy not seen since World War
Speaker 2: One here in the US. Some of that was attributable
Speaker 2: to COVID, But if you read and you actually get
Speaker 2: into the data, there are two glaring reasons why life
Speaker 2: expectancy has been on a general decline since twenty fourteen.
Speaker 2: It is chronic illness, drug overdose, and suicide. Chronic illness
Speaker 2: being one of the number one killers here in the
Speaker 2: United States drug overdose already surpassing car accidents, and the
Speaker 2: other is one of the number one cause of death
Speaker 2: for people who are young. And then the suicide rate
Speaker 2: also going sky high. And to that end, we actually
Speaker 2: have the suicide data which is really truly heartbreaking whenever
Speaker 2: you break it down. US suicides per one hundred thousand
Speaker 2: actually went up to the highest per capita rate since
Speaker 2: nineteen forty one. The actual number of suicides has hit
Speaker 2: a record high. So there are two important parts of that.
Speaker 2: The record high number is obviously just devastating. You know,
Speaker 2: you're losing more than all nearly fifty thousand people in
Speaker 2: the United States to suicide just in twenty twenty two.
Speaker 2: But I actually thought that per capita number was most
Speaker 2: important and a lot of people might be asking what
Speaker 2: the hell was happening in nineteen forty one.
Speaker 3: I went back and I.
Speaker 2: Pulled the suicide data crystal. Unfortunately, it was the tail
Speaker 2: end effects of the Great Depression. Suicide is actually peaked
Speaker 2: here in the United States in nineteen thirty seven. Per capita,
Speaker 2: Absolutely untold numbers of people per capita were killing themselves
Speaker 2: at that time simply because they couldn't feed their families
Speaker 2: from despair and more, and we are seeing a recreation
Speaker 2: of that the tail end now effect of nineteen forty
Speaker 2: one for the per capita rate on suicide, chronic illness,
Speaker 2: drug overdose, the deaths of despair has peaked now in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty two. That's eight years now into the decline.
Speaker 2: I mean, and this to me is the most important
Speaker 2: story in the US and something Andrew Yang, to his credit,
Speaker 2: always used to talk about during during his twenty twenty run.
Speaker 2: I always loved when we brought that ups. The most
Speaker 2: basic metric of how society is doing are people living
Speaker 2: or dying?
Speaker 1: In terms of the suicide numbers. What jumps out here is,
Speaker 1: you know, there's been a really alarming increase in young
Speaker 1: people committing suicide, and whatever interventions have been taken, I
Speaker 1: think also just you know, teenagers being back in school
Speaker 1: and having their social social networks back intact has probably
Speaker 1: been useful there as well. Those numbers have actually gone down,
Speaker 1: So that's encouraging. So that tells you that there are
Speaker 1: things we could.
Speaker 4: Do about it.
Speaker 1: On the other side, you know what is absolutely heart
Speaker 1: wrenching is older people and especially old men, are killing
Speaker 1: themselves at rates that we have just almost never seen before.
Speaker 1: And it's horrific and heartbreaking to think about what leads
Speaker 1: you to that place, you know, is it financial stress?
Speaker 1: Is it health stress? Is it feeling that you're a
Speaker 1: burden on people? Is it our broken elder care system
Speaker 1: where there are no good solutions for our elders, you know,
Speaker 1: in the latter years of their life. And you're right, Soccer,
Speaker 1: I mean, this is a horrifying indictment of our entire society,
Speaker 1: both on the suicide rate and also on life expectancy.
Speaker 1: You know, if you dig into some of those numbers
Speaker 1: on life expectancy, there were a few things that I
Speaker 1: wanted to point out. First of all, they have it
Speaker 1: broken down by racial category, and the decline among American
Speaker 1: Indians or Native Americans over this period, you just you
Speaker 1: can't even wrap your head around it. They suffered a
Speaker 1: loss of almost four years in life expectancy to sixty
Speaker 1: eight years. Black people suffered the second largest life expectancy
Speaker 1: setback of two years. Hispanics suffered an almost two year
Speaker 1: life expectancy drop.
Speaker 4: And these numbers are just you know, unconutionable. Now.
Speaker 1: COVID, of course, played a huge role in this story.
Speaker 1: There was no other wealthy country that experienced so high
Speaker 1: a rate of death per capita from COVID as ours.
Speaker 1: But that is not disconnected from the other issues that
Speaker 1: they point out here, including the chronic health conditions, which
Speaker 1: are really underappreciated as one of the major reasons that
Speaker 1: we've seen this fall in life expectancy. To put it plainly,
Speaker 1: our healthcare system is total shit. You know, we have
Speaker 1: it's dramatically expensive. You still have so many people who
Speaker 1: are either uninsured or underinsured who can't go to the
Speaker 1: doctor when they're sick. Then you have, on top of that,
Speaker 1: you know, the subsidation of like the worst type of foods,
Speaker 1: you know, and like the type of poison that we're
Speaker 1: just pumping into our people day in and day out.
Speaker 1: We have these incredibly sedentary lifestyles, and you add this
Speaker 1: all in and you just see a calamity in terms
Speaker 1: of our basic health and in terms of our life expectancy.
Speaker 1: So even with you know, COVID, it's it's certainly not gone,
Speaker 1: but you know, more or less in the rear view mirror,
Speaker 1: you can see the effects of these long term trends
Speaker 1: in decline in our basic health persisting We're also the
Speaker 1: only wealthy nation that doesn't have some sort of universal
Speaker 1: healthcare system, and I think that is a huge part
Speaker 1: of the story as well, which by the way, doesn't
Speaker 1: get a mention in the Washington Post article.
Speaker 2: Healthcare is a huge part of the story. Chronic illness
Speaker 2: is number one by state. This also is just so
Speaker 2: obvious whenever it bears out the lowest life expectancy in
Speaker 2: the US to state of Mississippi, unexpectedly also as the
Speaker 2: highest obesity rate and also a very high poverty rate.
Speaker 3: Number two West Virginia. Same thing. You've got tons of.
Speaker 2: Obesity, you've got a huge drug problem, you have an
Speaker 2: immense amount of poverty. Number three was Louisiana, then Alabama, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma,
Speaker 2: New Mexico, South Carolina. All of the things that jump
Speaker 2: out from there is that with as if you have
Speaker 2: a lack of lack of access to healthcare, you have poverty,
Speaker 2: you have chronic illness, and you have extraordinarily high rates
Speaker 2: of obesity.
Speaker 3: And that's what you also brought up.
Speaker 2: One of the reasons the US suffered more than any
Speaker 2: of the developed country on the world because we're the
Speaker 2: fattest developed country on Earth, and you know, this is
Speaker 2: one of those where you have underlying health conditions, you're
Speaker 2: extraordinarily unhealthy, you have lack of access to healthcare, and
Speaker 2: it's much easier for a relatively minor illness like COVID
Speaker 2: to push somebody who is hanging on by a thread.
Speaker 2: Drug overdose is also a massive part of this, and
Speaker 2: I don't want to move past it as well, because
Speaker 2: drug overdose is fentanyl overdose specifically accounted for tens of
Speaker 2: thousands of debts in the United States just last year
Speaker 2: in twenty twenty two. The official numbers not yet clear,
Speaker 2: but it does come through in the life expectancy number.
Speaker 2: So while it's good that we've made strides and we've
Speaker 2: slightly reduced the suicide rate for young people, the elder
Speaker 2: one there, we shouldn't move past as well because it
Speaker 2: actually was especially highest and this is not surprising amongst
Speaker 2: older men over the age of seventy five, who were
Speaker 2: either suffering from loneliness or a health condition. And the
Speaker 2: thing is too, is this is a North American phenomenon.
Speaker 2: I don't know if anybody is tracking. There's a big
Speaker 2: debate right now in Canada over assisted suicide, but one.
Speaker 3: Whether it should be legal or not.
Speaker 2: I have complicated feelings about the matter, and it's probably
Speaker 2: a subject for another day. What is not deniable is
Speaker 2: that huge numbers of Canadians are taking advantage of this,
Speaker 2: and anytime people are taking advantage of a program to
Speaker 2: voluntarily end their life through the state, whether you think
Speaker 2: that should be allowed or not, that is extraordinarily grim.
Speaker 2: So I think some of this is downstream from like
Speaker 2: you know, metaphysical I guess, for lack of a better word, conditions.
Speaker 2: But a lot of it is a crisis internally and
Speaker 2: a structure of the US.
Speaker 3: But I don't know, I can't help but look at that.
Speaker 2: You got the highest suicide rate since World War Two
Speaker 2: and the Great Depression, and this, like you know, floated
Speaker 2: into the ether. I actually don't know a single major
Speaker 2: news outlet that talked about it in a cable format
Speaker 2: or in a discussion format like what we're doing here?
Speaker 1: I looked at it, Yeah, yeah, well, and you know,
Speaker 1: it ties into not good everything's about politics. But all
Speaker 1: this debate online of like, oh, why are people saying
Speaker 1: things aren't going well? We aren't they happy with the
Speaker 1: Joe Biden economy? And then you look at these metrics
Speaker 1: of just like the most basic measure of well being,
Speaker 1: and it's a catastrophe. So, you know, how can you
Speaker 1: look at those numbers and then you know, imagine that
Speaker 1: people are going to think that things are going well
Speaker 1: and we're on the right track in the society's on
Speaker 1: the up and up.
Speaker 3: It's really tragic.
Speaker 2: At the same time, an extraordinary development here in Washington.
Speaker 2: Even uber hawk Lindsey Graham says he's done funding Ukraine
Speaker 2: with the blank check unless it comes with a border
Speaker 2: security package.
Speaker 3: Stunning.
Speaker 2: I guess everybody involved here's what you had to say.
Speaker 8: I think their votes for Israel apart from the package.
Speaker 8: Republicans overwhelming support Israel, so do most Democrats. Republicans are
Speaker 8: divided on Ukraine. Republicans are one hundred percent behind strong
Speaker 8: border security. If you want aid to Ukraine, we need
Speaker 8: to control our southern border. I will not vote for
Speaker 8: any aid until we secure our own border, reform, asylum, reform.
Speaker 3: Parole, It's possible to do.
Speaker 8: Democrats don't want to do it, Pulgans want to do it.
Speaker 8: I'm not helping Ukraine into weigh up ourselves.
Speaker 2: So we are not helping Ukraine until we help ourselves.
Speaker 2: Where has this man been all my life? But I
Speaker 2: can crystal offer some inside reporting from people that I
Speaker 2: have spoken to on Capitol Hill who are involved in this.
Speaker 2: A lot of this is a feint from Lindsay Graham
Speaker 2: and from others. They have come to terms with the
Speaker 2: fact that Ukraine is dead on its own in terms
Speaker 2: of just aid going through sixty one billion dollars. So
Speaker 2: what they have done is kind of co opted this
Speaker 2: America First framework or whatever by trying to shoehorn a
Speaker 2: border security package that would be acceptable to the House Republicans,
Speaker 2: at least in rhetoric. So Lindsay Graham is trying to
Speaker 2: telegraph no, no, no, guys, I'm on your side.
Speaker 3: As these negotiations continue.
Speaker 2: Now, from what I understand, those negotiations are actually not
Speaker 2: going well at all. You had multiple of the sides
Speaker 2: who are nitpicking against each other, and these negotiations or
Speaker 2: at least talks whatever continue on Capitol Hill. But I think,
Speaker 2: I think the rhetoric itself, when even Lindsey is forced
Speaker 2: to saying something like that, you've got to know that
Speaker 2: what is a phrase like the goose is cooked or or.
Speaker 1: Something like that, well, not only that, but you increasingly
Speaker 1: have administration officials admitting things aren't going well, admitting that
Speaker 1: we need to push for some sort of resolution of
Speaker 1: this conflict. You even have you know, officials within Selensky's
Speaker 1: government admitting they're out of stalemate, admitting things.
Speaker 4: Are not going well.
Speaker 1: Now they're not saying, okay, well, let's come to some
Speaker 1: sort of a negotiated settlement of this. And by the way,
Speaker 1: it's a real question whether that's even on the table
Speaker 1: at this point, because, as we've discussed before, if you're Russia,
Speaker 1: you feel like you're winning, why do you feel like
Speaker 1: you want to bargain or negotiate at this point.
Speaker 4: The time when we should have done that was.
Speaker 1: Back when there were peace talks at the beginning of
Speaker 1: the war that we of course short circuited and said
Speaker 1: we don't want even if it is a real possibility.
Speaker 1: And listen, you never know until the thing is done
Speaker 1: and dusted. But we now have all of these admissions
Speaker 1: that many of the key details had been resolved, and
Speaker 1: we and the UK were the major roadblocks to getting
Speaker 1: that done. In Ukraine was of course in a much
Speaker 1: better and stronger negotiating position at that point, because they
Speaker 1: had outperformed in the early days of the war, and
Speaker 1: because Russia looked like they were in you know, total
Speaker 1: chaos disarray, they had dramatically underperformed.
Speaker 4: It was humiliating.
Speaker 1: There were a lot of questions about what was going
Speaker 1: to happen with their economy. There was some descent and
Speaker 1: domestic unrest within Russia itself.
Speaker 4: So you know, that ship has sailed.
Speaker 1: But now administration officials and even people like Lindsay Graham
Speaker 1: floating the end of this conflict is pretty extuordinary.
Speaker 4: The last thing I'll say, in terms.
Speaker 1: Of this package that is supposed to be border security,
Speaker 1: Israel and Ukraine, at this point, all three pieces of
Speaker 1: that are very controversial. I mean the border security piece,
Speaker 1: you know what Democrats are going to accept there and
Speaker 1: what everybody can agree on that's of course always controversial.
Speaker 1: Ukraine has become extremely controversial, certainly within the Republican Party,
Speaker 1: but also, as I said, even Democrats now acknowledging there's
Speaker 1: you know, we've got to have some kind of end
Speaker 1: in sight here. And then on the Israeli AID, we've
Speaker 1: covered how there are increasing discussions and not just from
Speaker 1: Ernie Sanderson AOC, but from you know, sort of normal democratic,
Speaker 1: mainstream traditional members of the Caucus who are saying, hey,
Speaker 1: maybe we need to condition aid to Israel as well.
Speaker 1: So every single piece of that package has become extraordinarily controversial.
Speaker 3: That is an excellent point.
Speaker 2: And I also want to take an opportunity to say this,
Speaker 2: This is why I hate bundling all these things together,
Speaker 2: and it is each one of these are absurd on
Speaker 2: his face. If you support Israel, why would you want
Speaker 2: to have Israel funding tied to Ukraine? If you support Ukraine,
Speaker 2: or let's say you support a border security package, I
Speaker 2: definitely support a hell of a lot of reforms for
Speaker 2: the US border. Why should the US border policy, security
Speaker 2: and funding be subject to literally funding a foreign war?
Speaker 2: Which one of these should be debated and presented on
Speaker 2: its face. Now, I'm not naive, and I know that's
Speaker 2: not the way that it works. But the reason that
Speaker 2: they do it is so the people like Lindsay who
Speaker 2: have hidden agendas and all these other Republicans on Capitol
Speaker 2: Hill who want to defy the will of their voters
Speaker 2: who don't support more funding for Ukraine can hide behind
Speaker 2: it and dangle some shimmery package about some fake border
Speaker 2: thing now. I have no idea if it we'll even materialize,
Speaker 2: or if it has any sort of chance of passing
Speaker 2: the House of Representatives. But do not think that the
Speaker 2: fight over Ukraine funding is dead at all. And that
Speaker 2: really brings us to what I wanted to spend some
Speaker 2: time on here, which is just a shocking and heartbreaking
Speaker 2: report about US policy towards Ukraine. Let's go and put
Speaker 2: this up there on the screen. These were two key
Speaker 2: findings from a month's long investigation into the failure of
Speaker 2: the Ukrainian counter offensive, and I put them up side
Speaker 2: by side because they're two separate stories. The first was
Speaker 2: about US military planning. I want to let some of
Speaker 2: this sink in. The United States held quote eight tabletop
Speaker 2: ex sizes at a certain point to try and game
Speaker 2: out what the Ukrainians should do. They advocated focused assaults
Speaker 2: by the Ukrainians amongst a southern axis. They encouraged them
Speaker 2: to basically take all of the weapons material in them
Speaker 2: and then run into fortified Russian positions at the hope
Speaker 2: of a breakthrough. They did this despite tons of intelligence
Speaker 2: that they were being told. The United States military was
Speaker 2: being told the chances of the Ukrainian breakthrough in these
Speaker 2: types of conditions not going to happen. So the US
Speaker 2: itself basically encouraged an entire generation of Ukrainian young men
Speaker 2: to run into their debts in this counter offensive and
Speaker 2: it didn't even work. So we are entire we are
Speaker 2: very much to blame in this. But there's another side
Speaker 2: of this coin too. The Ukrainian military leadership is arrogant
Speaker 2: and largely incompetent. Something that we talked about endlessly here
Speaker 2: on the show was the defense of Bachmut, about how
Speaker 2: they were blowing billions of dollars of AMMO and artillery
Speaker 2: and all these other things to eventually fight a battle
Speaker 2: that they would always go to lose. And it turns
Speaker 2: out that the US military was like, hey, you probably
Speaker 2: should conserve some of that fear counter offensive.
Speaker 3: They were said, oh, no, we know best.
Speaker 2: Then, even though we provided them with all these leopards
Speaker 2: and all these other Western you know, this Western military
Speaker 2: equipment that they had asked for, is that much of
Speaker 2: it was destroyed in a single battle, and that they
Speaker 2: were incompetently employing it. They did not listen to the
Speaker 2: US military advisors. They were treated to Soviet tactics. Much
Speaker 2: of the troops that they had seventy percent of them
Speaker 2: had never seen combat before. They were totally green. The
Speaker 2: Western military training that they tried to do over the
Speaker 2: course of a year and in some cases a summer
Speaker 2: for many of these troops, it's a total failure. I mean,
Speaker 2: how many times do we have to learn the lesson?
Speaker 2: From Vietnam to Iraq, to Afghanistan to the Syrian what
Speaker 2: was the good the good militias or whatever they were called,
Speaker 2: the good rebels, even Korea to a certain extent, We
Speaker 2: cannot competently train and equip a foreign military. It just
Speaker 2: doesn't work. And yet we pour billions and billions and
Speaker 2: billions and billions of dollars into this end and I
Speaker 2: just want to end on this so and I'm trying
Speaker 2: aptly to place the blame on the hands of the
Speaker 2: military who really encourage a lot of these guys to
Speaker 2: just run into their death. So, in some respects I
Speaker 2: sympathize with those people who were like, oh, we should
Speaker 2: have given Ukraine long range missiles, airpower and all of this.
Speaker 2: But what comes through on the Ukrainian side is a
Speaker 2: couple of things. Number One, these people are not trustworthy.
Speaker 2: They're incredibly arrogant. They absolutely would have used it to
Speaker 2: attack Russia, and we have intercepts, spying, leaked records and
Speaker 2: all of that that confirms it. So it was irresponsible
Speaker 2: on our part to do so. Number Two, they were
Speaker 2: incompetent from the get go, and we're never going to
Speaker 2: succeed in this counter offensive. And then really three is
Speaker 2: that at this point, when you combine the worst of
Speaker 2: all worlds of our policy, you have hundreds of thousands
Speaker 2: of Ukrainian young men who are either dead or maimed
Speaker 2: for the rest of their life and are out of
Speaker 2: the fight.
Speaker 3: We brought people the recruitment.
Speaker 2: News last time about how the average age of the Ukrainian
Speaker 2: fighting mail right now is forty three years old. You know, Crystal,
Speaker 2: there are six hundred thousand Ukrainian fighting aged males who
Speaker 2: have fled the country.
Speaker 3: They don't want to fight.
Speaker 2: Morale is at an all time low at this point,
Speaker 2: they're conscripting anybody that can even move, even with prior
Speaker 2: medical dischargement.
Speaker 3: I mean, as I've.
Speaker 2: Said previously, this is what it looks like in the
Speaker 2: last days of resistance. Now I don't know how much
Speaker 2: longer they can hold on defensive. Is obviously a better
Speaker 2: position to be in. But this is a horrible situation
Speaker 2: for Ukraine, and the US really did hang them. We
Speaker 2: bled them dry, We encourage them not to take a
Speaker 2: peace deal. We bled them for you know, to what
Speaker 2: is it to degrade the Russian military, even though by
Speaker 2: many respects we've sharpened them to be more combat effective
Speaker 2: than they've ever been before. We taught them all these
Speaker 2: new lessons about next generation combat and at this point,
Speaker 2: you know, Jake Sullivan, I'll just send on this. He
Speaker 2: said yesterday, anybody who doesn't vote for the sixty one
Speaker 2: billion dollars package to Ukraine is a vote for Putin.
Speaker 3: That's basically what he said. But I would put it
Speaker 3: the other way. If you vote for sixty one billion
Speaker 3: dollars for Ukraine.
Speaker 2: You are voting to bleed the last able bodied Ukrainian
Speaker 2: men debt dry. You're voting to bleed them dry for
Speaker 2: maybe a few square miles of territory in the hopes
Speaker 2: of reaching peace deal that was on the.
Speaker 3: Table in April twenty twenty two. How is that a
Speaker 3: defensible policy. It's not.
Speaker 4: It's absolutely not.
Speaker 1: It truly sickens me the way that we have used
Speaker 1: Ukraine and used Ukrainian military age fighting men in particular
Speaker 1: as pawns in our effectively imperial game, you know, hoping
Speaker 1: we can degrade Russia, hoping we can give Russia a
Speaker 1: bloody nose. It sickens me, It truly disgusts me, because
Speaker 1: you are right. We hung these people out to dry.
Speaker 1: And here's the other piece that I want people to
Speaker 1: really take in. Think of how you have been lied
Speaker 1: to during this conflict. Lied to about the possibility of
Speaker 1: a peace deal, lied to about you know, the nord
Speaker 1: Stream pipeline as one example, but in particular from this report,
Speaker 1: lied to about who really was in charge here. It
Speaker 1: has always been the US who's been governing the time,
Speaker 1: manner and direction of the fighting. We have always had
Speaker 1: a say in the direction of this war. And instead
Speaker 1: Biden and other officials always, oh, it's you know nothing
Speaker 1: about Ukraine without Ukraine, and it's all on them and
Speaker 1: we're just trying to help them.
Speaker 4: Bull shit.
Speaker 1: It has always been a complete lie. The other thing
Speaker 1: that I'll say about this is, Okay, well, why are
Speaker 1: these things coming out now? And you know, it's not
Speaker 1: that the reporting couldn't have been done earlier, et cetera.
Speaker 4: Et cetera.
Speaker 1: But you now have this very clear realization that this
Speaker 1: thing has gone completely sideways, and so you've effectively got
Speaker 1: US officials and you Krainian officials trying to you know,
Speaker 1: trying to blame shift. You know, the US officials are
Speaker 1: leaking about how it is the Ukrainian's fault and they're
Speaker 1: incompetent and we told them what to do and they
Speaker 1: didn't listen, etc. And the Ukrainians leaking that, no, they
Speaker 1: don't understand the reality of the war that we're fighting,
Speaker 1: and they hung us ound to dry and we didn't
Speaker 1: have the equipment we needed. That's what's going on here.
Speaker 1: I mean, you see this all the time. You know,
Speaker 1: I sort of hate sports analogies, but you see this too,
Speaker 1: when when the team starts losing, everybody starts sniping at
Speaker 1: each other. Everybody starts blaming each other. You see it
Speaker 1: in political campaigns. Just go and look at what's happening
Speaker 1: in the Ronda Santis campaign right now. This one blaming
Speaker 1: the other one and this one getting fired and this
Speaker 1: is the problem with the campaign.
Speaker 4: No, that's the problem with the campaign.
Speaker 1: That's the stage we're at right now in the Ukraine
Speaker 1: War is everyone just trying to leak to the press
Speaker 1: to set the narrative of what the hell actually went
Speaker 1: wrong here, And so that's increasingly why you see these
Speaker 1: reports that give you some insight into what was going
Speaker 1: on behind the scenes.
Speaker 4: That's why these are coming out right now.
Speaker 3: Yes, and the all as you.
Speaker 2: Let's spend some time on that about the lying and
Speaker 2: also about the reporting. This was evident from day one.
Speaker 2: I was saying in here on Bakmut you can roll
Speaker 2: the tape. We're saying it six months ago. And it's
Speaker 2: funny all of the professional military analysts were lying to
Speaker 2: our face.
Speaker 3: Now. I don't speak ill of former employers.
Speaker 2: And of people who helped me out in the past,
Speaker 2: but there are a lot of organizations who are out
Speaker 2: there who were absolutely spinning things with all of these
Speaker 2: maps and all of these releases and leaking to the
Speaker 2: New York Times, people of real prestige, with real military experience,
Speaker 2: who went all over TV, the pundit generals, all these
Speaker 2: former NATO commanders, YUKAM commanders, all this stuff bs. Everything
Speaker 2: they said was a lie, and all of it was
Speaker 2: a lie perpetrator to just continue the money flowing into Ukraine,
Speaker 2: and the thing is too about the money is if
Speaker 2: it would actually make a difference.
Speaker 3: I think that there is a little more of a
Speaker 3: debate on this.
Speaker 2: I would still be against it. But we have their
Speaker 2: own admission. They are stealing everything not nailed to the floor.
Speaker 3: Are they are?
Speaker 2: They're the most one of the most corrupt nations in
Speaker 2: the entire world. How many untold billions of dollars have
Speaker 2: been stolen from this aid We don't even have an
Speaker 2: inspector general. We'll never find out. At least we found
Speaker 2: out some of it. In Afghanistan, the troops on the
Speaker 2: front line, according to many Western reporters, even joke about
Speaker 2: how they are not getting sub they are getting suboptimal
Speaker 2: supplies because so much corruption has leaked down to them.
Speaker 2: They're the ones who are fighting. They're the ones who
Speaker 2: are dying. Six hundred thousand them don't even want to fight.
Speaker 2: What is the point of continuing all of this? And
Speaker 2: the really the worst part is is that previously Russia
Speaker 2: might have negotiated, but now since the West has basically
Speaker 2: moved on from Ukraine, why would you negotiate.
Speaker 3: I've said this before too.
Speaker 2: If I'm Russia, I got a hardened economy, I got
Speaker 2: industry spinning up. We Russia is pumping out more ammunition
Speaker 2: than all of NATO combined. As I've said before, we
Speaker 2: did them a favor. We sharpened their military, we got
Speaker 2: rid of they're useless initial generals. They've got their tactics
Speaker 2: down pretty well. They're in a well hardened defense battle position.
Speaker 2: They've got missiles that they're pumping out. They've got these
Speaker 2: new drones and other things that they're experimenting with. With
Speaker 2: the help of the North Koreans and of the Iranians,
Speaker 2: they're reigning terror down on Ukraine. Ukraine is in a
Speaker 2: far far worse position for its survival than it has
Speaker 2: been really since the beginning and early days of the war.
Speaker 2: Nobody is more to blame, I think, here than Washington.
Speaker 2: So congratulations to all of the people who supported this
Speaker 2: grift and this tragedy, I think from the very beginning,
Speaker 2: because most of it could have been avoided.
Speaker 3: And it really is just it's sickening. It really is sickening.
Speaker 2: Whenever it does, when it does eventually come to end,
Speaker 2: we'll see the final toll.
Speaker 1: That's exactly right, All of this time and money spent
Speaker 1: for what what has been accomplished here nothing, just lives lost, destruction.
Speaker 1: For Ukraine to be in a worse position than they
Speaker 1: were at the beginning of the we it's I mean,
Speaker 1: it is just a catastrophic failure. It's a humiliation, it
Speaker 1: is a moral rot. It is disgusting what has unfolded
Speaker 1: the last uh. This is kind of a side note,
Speaker 1: but it just it piqued my interest and I wanted
Speaker 1: to note it. From one of the Washington Post reports,
Speaker 1: they talked about the centrality of these very inexpensive drones,
Speaker 1: which was also something that Hamas used to great effect
Speaker 1: in their Horse on October seventh, But they said Russia
Speaker 1: is deploying fleets of these handbuilt attack drones. Ukraine is
Speaker 1: deploying them as well. They cost less than one thousand
Speaker 1: dollars each and can disable a multi million dollar tank.
Speaker 1: I think that is going to be you know, putting
Speaker 1: this particular conflict aside, But as we look forward to
Speaker 1: the future of conflict and war fighting and guerrilla war fighting,
Speaker 1: et cetera, some of these technological advances are you know,
Speaker 1: really terrifying for our troops abroad for what these conflicts
Speaker 1: are going to look like in terms of evening the
Speaker 1: blaying field here, and I think the drones and the
Speaker 1: use of them very inexpensive, effectively off the shelf at
Speaker 1: this point is kind of the bleeding edge of some
Speaker 1: of this leveling of the technological blaying field.
Speaker 2: There's a lot to be said about that, because for
Speaker 2: years there was something in military speak called the revolution
Speaker 2: in military affairs. The Gulf War showed everybody it's Shakana
Speaker 2: campaign of two thousand and three. Everyone's like warfare has
Speaker 2: changed forever. Technology has changed the game. Except in the
Speaker 2: biggest war since World War Two, it looks more like
Speaker 2: nineteen fourteen than any book I've ever read about supposed
Speaker 2: drone warfare and all of that in twenty twenty five. Instead,
Speaker 2: it seems a technology and asymmetric warfare has flattened the
Speaker 2: battlefield and reverted tactics back to historical levels than any
Speaker 2: sort of fifth generation fighter aircraft that was promising that
Speaker 2: no American soldier ever had to be put in harm's way.
Speaker 3: So there's a ton of military lessons on this.
Speaker 2: I'm sure there are a lot of geeks at West Point
Speaker 2: and all these others who are studying it, but a
Speaker 2: lot of them are grim lessons for the billions of
Speaker 2: dollars that we've poured into Lockheed Raytheon and all these
Speaker 2: other people in the hope of keeping us safe.
Speaker 3: Why don't we move on.
Speaker 1: Indeed, we'll save that, We'll save a deeper conversation on
Speaker 1: that for another day. So State Department spokesperson Matt Miller
Speaker 1: was at the podium yesterday and he started discussing why
Speaker 1: the ceasefire broke down and why he alleges that some
Speaker 1: of the women who are being held hostage by Hamas
Speaker 1: were not ultimately released. And he says this thing, which
Speaker 1: apparently was pure conjecture, that it seems maybe they weren't
Speaker 1: released because Hamas doesn't want them to come out and
Speaker 1: say what they were subjected to. And in the very
Speaker 1: same press briefing, he is forced to admit that he
Speaker 1: just made this up and actually has no evidence for these,
Speaker 1: you know, pretty inflammatory and extraordinary claims that he just
Speaker 1: casually put out there. Let's take a listen to his
Speaker 1: original comments and also the pushback that he received, the
Speaker 1: admission he had to make.
Speaker 9: They continue to hold women hostages, the fact that they
Speaker 9: continued to hold children hostages, the fact that it seems
Speaker 9: one of the reasons they don't want to turn women
Speaker 9: over that they've been holding hostage. And the reason this
Speaker 9: pause fell apart is they don't way those women to
Speaker 9: be able to talk about what happened to them during
Speaker 9: their time in custody.
Speaker 10: The fact that it seems why is not dropping on
Speaker 10: your or well do you know? Do you do? You
Speaker 10: have very good reason to believe evidence to believe that
Speaker 10: AMAS is deliberately continuing to hold on to female hostages
Speaker 10: because they're concerned that they will speak about atrocities that
Speaker 10: were that they were subjected.
Speaker 9: So I will accept the edit not fact seems is
Speaker 9: a better way to say it. But let me let
Speaker 9: me answer than the answer the question. I won't say
Speaker 9: fact because I don't know it for a fa Okay,
Speaker 9: a number of people believe I just me. Let me
Speaker 9: just say a people in the US government. Let me
Speaker 9: let me just finish my answer. We have seen Hamas
Speaker 9: commit all kinds of atrocities.
Speaker 3: I know all.
Speaker 10: I am not suggesting that these things did not happen,
Speaker 10: and I am not suggesting that Matt is. I just
Speaker 10: want a reason for not releasing the remaining female hostages
Speaker 10: is one.
Speaker 9: I just I just want to be very sensitive in
Speaker 9: my language.
Speaker 10: Any evidence to suggest that that is what what it is,
Speaker 10: or is it.
Speaker 9: Just I want to be very sensitive in my language
Speaker 9: when talking about people that continue to be held hostage,
Speaker 9: that have UH families on the outside. I will so
Speaker 9: I will. What I will say is we know Hamas
Speaker 9: has committed atrocities. You know they hold they continue to
Speaker 9: hold women. They were going to release these women and
Speaker 9: then suddenly at the last point renegged on the deal.
Speaker 9: And we're never able to provide a credible reason why
Speaker 9: we hope that they will change their mind and release
Speaker 9: as women.
Speaker 10: But you don't know though, for certain, that that the
Speaker 10: or a reason for them renegging on the deal and
Speaker 10: not releasing them is because they're worried about them.
Speaker 9: Speaking about I'm not able to speak with the deitive
Speaker 9: assessment that that is the case.
Speaker 1: So this was pure conjecture, just floated And let's be
Speaker 1: clear what he's honestly floating here. He's basically implying that
Speaker 1: these women are raped, they were raped by Hamas, and
Speaker 1: that's why they're being held back because Hamas doesn't want
Speaker 1: them to come out and.
Speaker 4: Tell the world what happened.
Speaker 1: He floats this and has to admit that there's no
Speaker 1: evidence to back it up. Now that's not before though,
Speaker 1: there are you know, the original comments saying it seems
Speaker 1: this is what's happened, picked up by any number of
Speaker 1: members of the press, and you know, tweeted to the
Speaker 1: government and spread like wildfire and the Israeli government before
Speaker 1: he then has to walk it back. And this is
Speaker 1: disgraceful on any number of levels. I mean, first of all,
Speaker 1: there should be some expectation that US government officials when
Speaker 1: they say something from the podium like that, that it
Speaker 1: is based in some sort of evidence, fact and reality,
Speaker 1: not just speculating for the sake of speculating. So that's
Speaker 1: number one. Number two, and Matt Miller himself sort of
Speaker 1: alludes to this. Imagine you're one of the families of
Speaker 1: these women and you hear a US government official in
Speaker 1: flying that your mom, your sister, your aunt, your grandma
Speaker 1: has been raped and that's why she's being still held
Speaker 1: by Hamas.
Speaker 4: Imagine that.
Speaker 1: Just imagine that, and then he has to admit, no,
Speaker 1: I actually I just made that up effectively. It's disgusting,
Speaker 1: and you can never imagine them doing this in the
Speaker 1: other direction of just sort of casually well maybe the
Speaker 1: IDF rape, this woman.
Speaker 4: Do I have any proof?
Speaker 1: Not I have any proof, but I'm just gonna go
Speaker 1: ahead and say it from the podium a State Department spokesperson,
Speaker 1: that's the key.
Speaker 2: Look, I mean, they're not maybe we wouldn't put it
Speaker 2: past them, luckily.
Speaker 3: And this is the other thing. It's almost like everyone
Speaker 3: wants this to be true.
Speaker 2: Thank God, so far, no female hostage yet as far
Speaker 2: as I understand it has reported being rape.
Speaker 3: Thank god for that.
Speaker 2: Having Crystal, you and I sat here with the brother
Speaker 2: of one of those hostages who, thank god, was released
Speaker 2: and seems at least she has not reported anything as such.
Speaker 2: If she does, will absolutely update people here on this show. Now,
Speaker 2: there's a lot of you know, investigation into some of
Speaker 2: the things and the claims and all of that haven't
Speaker 2: made and when it bears out what bears out to
Speaker 2: be true is very important, but it's also important not
Speaker 2: to just wildly speculate from the podium for the exact
Speaker 2: reasons that you said. And if that was the case,
Speaker 2: then the US government should say, based on intelligence assessment,
Speaker 2: we believe that this is why. I mean, that's a
Speaker 2: shocking story in its own right. But then for them
Speaker 2: to on the very first question. Matt Lee, by the way,
Speaker 2: works to the Associated Press. He is one of the
Speaker 2: best reporters in all of Washington. He sees through the bs,
Speaker 2: he cuts through every administration right and left, and he
Speaker 2: knows things like the back of his hand. And I'm
Speaker 2: very glad that he had that follow up also too,
Speaker 2: that the families of those who are held could see that,
Speaker 2: because the inverse of if that was true, then you
Speaker 2: should really be resigned to, oh my god, these people
Speaker 2: never may be released. And if it's not true, then
Speaker 2: you can say and maintain some hope that a future
Speaker 2: sees fire's future negotiation or something like that could materialize. Anyway,
Speaker 2: I think it was absolutely outrageous and irresponsible the way
Speaker 2: that he handled that, because, as you said, you know,
Speaker 2: it was immediately I saw it spread by the Israeli
Speaker 2: government and others, and that's just the worst thing you
Speaker 2: can imagine if you're one of the families of the
Speaker 2: people who are being harpsed, and all we want is
Speaker 2: for those people to come home, and I hope that
Speaker 2: they're being treated, you know, a humane fashion.
Speaker 3: You know, can't guarantee or anything.
Speaker 2: Like that, but yeah, I thought it was crazy, absolutely
Speaker 2: crazy that he just spread.
Speaker 4: That, yeah, one hundred percent.
Speaker 1: And here's the other thing is when you you know,
Speaker 1: as that reporter did raise questions about, well, do you
Speaker 1: have any evidence of this? I mean, the risk is
Speaker 1: you end up looking like you're some sort of rape
Speaker 1: or hums apologists, when in reality, there is plenty of
Speaker 1: good reason to doubt what this government has said during
Speaker 1: this time period. You know, Joe Biden had to apologize
Speaker 1: because he, you know, had had downplayed the number of
Speaker 1: civilian debts and doubted the civilian death toll. He has
Speaker 1: repeated some claims about the specifics of the atrocities which
Speaker 1: were real on October seventh, but some of the specifics
Speaker 1: of the claims he played up turned out to be
Speaker 1: completely untrue. The net and Yahoo government certainly has been
Speaker 1: spreading multiple falsehoods. And this is not according to me
Speaker 1: crystal Ball. This is according to Aretz, leading Israeli newspaper
Speaker 1: that did an investigation into some of the most horrifying
Speaker 1: claims that were being made about the atrocities on October seventh,
Speaker 1: and the gruesome nature of which have been used to
Speaker 1: justify the gruesome assault that is occurring right now on Gaza.
Speaker 1: Put this up on the screen from Haratz. I'll go
Speaker 1: through a few of these. I recommend you read this
Speaker 1: entire report, which is in English so it's easily accessible.
Speaker 1: The headline here is the Hamas massacre led to the
Speaker 1: spread of horror stories, not all of which happened in reality.
Speaker 4: The truth is.
Speaker 1: Hard enough, which I would just echo listen, not denying
Speaker 1: that there were horrors committed by Hamas on October seventh.
Speaker 1: But some of these stories turned out to be completely baseless.
Speaker 1: One of the most I guess infamous at this point
Speaker 1: is the story about forty babies being murdered. In some
Speaker 1: cases they were described as beheaded. That report was quoted
Speaker 1: on social media, often referenced as quote dozens of the
Speaker 1: headed babies. Sometimes it was burnt babies, sometimes it was
Speaker 1: hanged babies. The Foreign Ministry published an account from a
Speaker 1: colonel from the Home Front Command who said that in
Speaker 1: one house he found the bodies of eight burnt babies.
Speaker 1: You also had the Prime Minister Office's Twitter account spreading
Speaker 1: this similar claims about the murder of a large number
Speaker 1: of infants, including graphic pictures that they said that net
Speaker 1: Nyaho showed to Tony Blinken. Well, it turns out that
Speaker 1: heels and I hate to use word only, but there
Speaker 1: was one baby who was killed during these horrors. Now
Speaker 1: that's obviously one baby too many that was killed here.
Speaker 1: But the reports of forty babies beheaded, burnt babies, baby
Speaker 1: in the oven, baby on the clothes lines, et cetera,
Speaker 1: et cetera. None of these turned out to be true.
Speaker 1: The truth of what happened on October seventh is horrific enough,
Speaker 1: but these, you know, intentional embellishments and gruesome stories again
Speaker 1: are used to sort of justify the response in the
Speaker 1: atrosties here. But that's far from all. There was also
Speaker 1: claims by net Yahu that there were quote dozens of
Speaker 1: children that Hamas tied them up, burned them, and executed them.
Speaker 1: This also on every level, both in terms of the
Speaker 1: numbers of children who were killed by Hamas on that
Speaker 1: day and also the nature and manner that they were killed.
Speaker 1: None of this was accurate whatsoever. There was a horrific
Speaker 1: story about a pregnant woman who was whose baby was
Speaker 1: cut out of her and then stabbed. This also turns
Speaker 1: out not to be true. And then the last one
Speaker 1: that I'll mention here, and there were a number of
Speaker 1: others in this Harat story that were debunked as well.
Speaker 1: But the Prime Minister's wife, Sarah Neett Yahoo, wrote a
Speaker 1: letter to our First Lady, Jill Biden. She wrote that
Speaker 1: a woman who was taken hostage was in her ninth
Speaker 1: month of pregnancy when she was abducted, and that she
Speaker 1: gave birth while she was being held hostage. The woman
Speaker 1: that they claimed was pregnant was not pregnant. She has
Speaker 1: now been released. She did not have a baby. She
Speaker 1: was not pregnant at any point. So again, this lie
Speaker 1: was spread from the first Lady of Israel to the
Speaker 1: first Lady of the United States. And you know, you
Speaker 1: feel horrible talking about these things because they make you
Speaker 1: feel like you're downplaying what happened on October seven. I'm
Speaker 1: not downplaying what happened on October seventh, but it's important
Speaker 1: that there'll be some fealty to truth, accuracy, and reality
Speaker 1: in the events that unfolded on that day. And now
Speaker 1: you have both the Net and Yahoo government and our
Speaker 1: own government caught in multiple lives. So yes, of course,
Speaker 1: people have every right at this point to not take
Speaker 1: what these government officials are saying at face value, to
Speaker 1: demand evidence for every single claim that is being made
Speaker 1: here from their podium, our podium, Matt Miller, Joe Biden,
Speaker 1: or anyone else in between.
Speaker 2: Yeah, as you said, small small lies beget big lies.
Speaker 2: It calls into question credibility, and many lies are often
Speaker 2: spread in order to inflame emotional tensions to a point
Speaker 2: where you can justify a different policy. This is the
Speaker 2: time hon or tradition. You can look no past our
Speaker 2: WMD lie whenever it came to Iraq, just for a
Speaker 2: more potent example. But these things are fastt of warfare
Speaker 2: from the history, you know, going all the way back
Speaker 2: to whenever you have recorded his about what people would
Speaker 2: say about what others have done, and propaganda and for
Speaker 2: used explicitly for certain purposes. And I just think the
Speaker 2: number one message that we've been trying to spread here
Speaker 2: is you better be careful don't fall victim to this yourself,
Speaker 2: because it's an emotional tool that is being used by
Speaker 2: great effect by a lot of people who are in power.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And another thing that we've seen throughout this conflict is
Speaker 1: an effort to downplay the amount of civilian death. I
Speaker 1: referenced before Joe Biden calling into question the numbers and
Speaker 1: then privately apologizing for having done that and pledging that
Speaker 1: whole quote unquote do better. There have been all of
Speaker 1: these viral fake stories about the quote unquote Hollywood conspiracy
Speaker 1: that all of these children being pulled from the rubble
Speaker 1: and all these horrific scenes that we're seeing these are
Speaker 1: actually many of them crisis actors. Well, we had one
Speaker 1: of these that actually got picked up by one of
Speaker 1: the largest English language Israeli media outlets, the Jerusalem Post,
Speaker 1: put this up on the screen. So there was this
Speaker 1: theory going around that this five month old baby who
Speaker 1: had been killed in Israeli airstrike that you know, a
Speaker 1: photojournalist took pictures of his grieving father and family holding
Speaker 1: this baby. There was this myth floating around and conspiracy
Speaker 1: theory that this was actually a doll again part of
Speaker 1: minimizing the civilian catastrophe that's unfolding here. And the Jerusalem
Speaker 1: Post actually published a story claiming that this was not
Speaker 1: a real human child who had been killed, that this
Speaker 1: was a doll. They then, after confronted with the evidence
Speaker 1: that no, this is a real baby who was killed here,
Speaker 1: had to delete that fake story and apologize for posting it.
Speaker 1: But this sort of stuff is just running rampant. And
Speaker 1: again this is a supposedly you know, quote unquote credible
Speaker 1: outlet that just ran with a wild conspiracy theory based
Speaker 1: on absolute garbage.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think that the baby doll, the
Speaker 2: pally Wood that we talked here previously and more. Anyway,
Speaker 2: I just want people to take this away as you
Speaker 2: need to be very clear about what you're ingesting, what
Speaker 2: you're spreading, about what you can say is actually a
Speaker 2: matter of fact, you should question the government too, because
Speaker 2: they can fold almost immediately in terms of things, and
Speaker 2: much of it is being done in order to justify
Speaker 2: many things that are being done with you know, for
Speaker 2: US policy, for as really policy we've seen and we've
Speaker 2: showed previous examples here from the Palaes Indian side as well.
Speaker 2: So yeah, it's a terrible facet of war.
Speaker 3: Christal.
Speaker 2: We've got Congressman Rowe Kanna standing by, So any final
Speaker 2: thoughts that you want to say before you sign off.
Speaker 1: No, I'll be back on Thursday, and thank you guys
Speaker 1: as always for watching.
Speaker 2: All Right, we missed you and we'll see you soon.
Speaker 2: Joining us now is Congressman row Conna is a friend
Speaker 2: of the show. We always appreciate you joining us, sir,
Speaker 2: and whenever you're here in Washington, and our audience always
Speaker 2: wants to hear what we have to say.
Speaker 11: Let's increase my name recognition amongst Capital Yeah, please, you've
Speaker 11: got that's your demographic.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was.
Speaker 2: Telling you we have a shocking audience amongst the Capitol police.
Speaker 2: Every time I'm on Capitol Hell, we can see some
Speaker 2: of that. So I wanted to ask you about some
Speaker 2: of these things that are happening here in Washington. Something
Speaker 2: Crystal in particular really wanted to speak with you about
Speaker 2: was the idea of conditioning US military aid to Israel
Speaker 2: based upon either humanity or like having to abide with
Speaker 2: the international hamitarian rules, the Lay Amendment and all that.
Speaker 2: I know that something that you've been involved in. So
Speaker 2: give us your thoughts and some of the actions going
Speaker 2: on behind the scenes.
Speaker 11: Well, first of all, I've called for a permanent ceasefire.
Speaker 11: We just need an end to the cycle of violence
Speaker 11: and the release of all the hostages. But the aid
Speaker 11: should be following the Lay Law. I don't understand why
Speaker 11: this is controversial. We have a law in the United States,
Speaker 11: it's called the Lahy Law. It says that any aid
Speaker 11: to any country has to uphold human rights standards, international
Speaker 11: law standards. The problem is that the State Department hasn't
Speaker 11: been enforcing the lay Hey law in cases. And what
Speaker 11: I've said is that.
Speaker 3: That has to be enforced.
Speaker 11: If we are going to pass an aid package, we
Speaker 11: should explicitly say that it should be upholding the Lehi law.
Speaker 3: Well.
Speaker 2: So on the permanency spire point, I guess if we
Speaker 2: want to steal man the position, what the pro Israel
Speaker 2: side would say is your only cease fires are going
Speaker 2: to help Hamas and help them regroup. This will not
Speaker 2: allow us to rid Hamas of the population inside of Gaza.
Speaker 2: Is that even an attainable goal in your view? If
Speaker 2: we have a permanency spire, what would the next step
Speaker 2: be for people who are advocating for that policy.
Speaker 11: So I had said Israel has the right to self defense.
Speaker 11: When the brutal attack happened, I unambiguously condemned it. But
Speaker 11: Israel has diminished significantly at this point Hamas's military capability
Speaker 11: in northern Gaza. Now there are forty five thousand Hamas fighters.
Speaker 11: Israel has killed probably one to three thousand, depending on
Speaker 11: whose estimate you built. You believe Macron is saying that
Speaker 11: it would take ten years of a war to eradicate Israel,
Speaker 11: And when you talk to Israel's or our allies in
Speaker 11: the Gulf, they'll tell you the same thing. So a,
Speaker 11: it's an unachievable goal. I guess if you were going
Speaker 11: to try to achieve it, it would be massive civilian casualties.
Speaker 11: And we've all seen the women, the children who are
Speaker 11: being killed. I mean, it's heartrending. And you can't have
Speaker 11: two hundred three hundred thousand casualties or the entire expulsion
Speaker 11: of Palaestindias from Gaza.
Speaker 3: What do you think should come next?
Speaker 2: We had a whole segment on our show here Kamala
Speaker 2: Harris and the Palstinian authority needs to be revitalized. Do
Speaker 2: you think the Palistinian Authority is a legitimate actor that
Speaker 2: could be takeover governance? What is your view of what
Speaker 2: the next phase of this should look like. We have
Speaker 2: a ceasefire, now we have to do governance, possibly elections.
Speaker 2: Who is legitimate who is not? What should that look
Speaker 2: like in your view?
Speaker 11: Well, I don't think it should be the United States
Speaker 11: dictating who is at the table. I think we want
Speaker 11: to have every polistated voice under the condition that they
Speaker 11: recognize Israel's right to exist and they renounce violence, which
Speaker 11: has been the precondition for those negotiations. But then have
Speaker 11: the diverse factions of Palestine represented, so you have a
Speaker 11: Palestinian state with equal rights and Israel obviously at the
Speaker 11: table as well. The problem the United States made is
Speaker 11: for years we thought we could just ignore the Palestinian issue,
Speaker 11: and they tried the abraham agwords. They didn't have Palestinians
Speaker 11: have a voice for a state, and now people are
Speaker 11: realizing that's not going to work.
Speaker 3: So what is your view?
Speaker 2: Then you're an ally the president, I know he talks
Speaker 2: to you from time to time. What's your assessment of
Speaker 2: how the Biden administration has handled this so far?
Speaker 3: What do you think?
Speaker 11: I don't agree fully with the way that they've handled it.
Speaker 11: I mean, obviously I'm calling for a permanent cease fire.
Speaker 11: I thought initially the statement that Israel has a right
Speaker 11: to defend itself was completely fine. I thought the unambiguous
Speaker 11: condemnation of Hamas and the attacks, we're fine. But I
Speaker 11: don't think we should have beer hug Net Yahou, which
Speaker 11: gave a far right government in Israel way too much
Speaker 11: of a green light to have the bombing that they did.
Speaker 11: These should have been much more surgical strikes against Hamas
Speaker 11: perpetrators who committed the attacks, And that to me was
Speaker 11: where I had disagreements with the administration.
Speaker 2: What do you make of the general ubiquity of support
Speaker 2: for Israel amongst the Democratic Party. One of the things
Speaker 2: that we covered here today was that forty or sixty
Speaker 2: something percent of Democrats disapprove of Israeli military action inside
Speaker 2: of Gaza. I believe you said forty some people have
Speaker 2: called on for a permanency's fire, but nonetheless not even
Speaker 2: representative of voters and all that have you hoard organic
Speaker 2: pushback on this and are do you worry about electoral
Speaker 2: consequences as a result of this policy.
Speaker 11: I do worry about the losing young people, losing minorities,
Speaker 11: not just Muslim Americans or Arab Americans, but voters of color.
Speaker 11: I worry about it in the battleground state. And I
Speaker 11: think that you can stand with Israel condemn October seven,
Speaker 11: unambiguously condemn the horrors, the rape, the twelve hundred people
Speaker 11: who are killed, and still say that we also recognize
Speaker 11: the dignity the value of Palestinian lives. Here's what I'm
Speaker 11: hearing from people who and I don't think this is
Speaker 11: fully understood, that they don't see American policymakers expressing the
Speaker 11: same empathy, the same value for the Palestinian children, for
Speaker 11: the Palestinian women being killed, as they do for people
Speaker 11: who are Israeli or European. And we have to make
Speaker 11: sure that we, as a country in a multi racial democracy,
Speaker 11: say that every human life has value. And that to
Speaker 11: me is really what's driving some of the anger among
Speaker 11: young people, progressives, and minority communities in America.
Speaker 2: What do you make of some of the ongoing heightened
Speaker 2: attacks on US forces? And I know you've got a
Speaker 2: lot of foreign I know you spend a lot of
Speaker 2: time thinking about foreign policy as well. This is something
Speaker 2: that's worried me, particularly about attacks on not only US troops.
Speaker 2: Now we've had multiple weird incidents in the Red Sea,
Speaker 2: We've got hoothy drone attacks and all that is. Do
Speaker 2: you think that's derivative largely of what Israel is doing
Speaker 2: inside of Gaza, is of US support or is this
Speaker 2: just part of the inflamed tensions of unleashed a lot
Speaker 2: of tension that was already simmering behind the scenes. And
Speaker 2: what do you think of the Biden administration's handling of
Speaker 2: it so far?
Speaker 11: I think the latter I think you have a conflict
Speaker 11: that is escalating. This is why we need a permanency's
Speaker 11: fire to ratchet down the tension so we don't get
Speaker 11: drawn in to a Middle East conflict. I mean, some
Speaker 11: of it is a remnant of the Yemen War, which
Speaker 11: where the UTIs were fighting the Saudas, and that was
Speaker 11: a foreign policy mistake. The President has corrected course on Yemen,
Speaker 11: which I give him credit for. But overall, what I
Speaker 11: would say is that the administration needs to figure out
Speaker 11: a way for the bombing and the war to end.
Speaker 11: And once you have a permanent ceasefire with the release
Speaker 11: of all hostages, then I think you can start to
Speaker 11: ratchet down the tensions and lessen the likelihood not just
Speaker 11: of the United States getting into a war, but an
Speaker 11: attack on the United States.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's something I'm deeply worried about.
Speaker 2: I also wanted to ask you something I know Crystals
Speaker 2: particularly up about this.
Speaker 3: Let's put this please up there on the screen.
Speaker 2: It's about a new House resolution which could be voted
Speaker 2: on very early, which quote clearly firmly states that anti
Speaker 2: Zionism is anti Semitism. I know that there were previous
Speaker 2: statements and resolutions that had passed the House. What do
Speaker 2: you make of this resolution, which I know even people
Speaker 2: like Jerry Nadler have spoken out against.
Speaker 11: Probably voting no. Look, I voted for resolutions to say
Speaker 11: we do not want any anti Semitism on college campuses.
Speaker 11: And I recognize the genuine fear of anti Semitism in
Speaker 11: this country. I mean, they're Jewish Americans who tell me
Speaker 11: they're changing their names when they're getting on cerebrale cab drivers,
Speaker 11: and that's a real issue. But you can't say a
Speaker 11: resolution like this basically says if you're criticizing the net
Speaker 11: Yahu government, if you're criticizing the net Whose policies on annexation,
Speaker 11: if you're calling for a Palestinian state and saying that
Speaker 11: Palestinians have legitimate grievances against occupation, then you may be
Speaker 11: seen as anti Semitic. And I don't think that the
Speaker 11: criticisms of Israeli policy should in any way be equated
Speaker 11: to anti semitism. That diminishes actually what anti Semitism.
Speaker 2: Is when you speak with your colleagues generally, what is
Speaker 2: the feeling behind the scenes. You have forty some people
Speaker 2: now calling for a permancy spar Do you think that
Speaker 2: the overall sentiment is beginning to grow? Like, do you
Speaker 2: think that there may be a particular event may push things,
Speaker 2: Because it does seem that things, at least on the
Speaker 2: democratic side are trending in a very different direction. Even
Speaker 2: when you look at the Senate, people like Mark Warner
Speaker 2: and others who have said things very disconsonant with the
Speaker 2: current US policy towards the towards Israel and his military action.
Speaker 11: I would say the last two weeks there has started
Speaker 11: to be a shift both the scenes of the bombings
Speaker 11: and the children, the women, the devastation there. I mean,
Speaker 11: people have seen that from a human perspective, but also
Speaker 11: the fact that we did have a temporary cease fire,
Speaker 11: hostages did start to be released. That shows that through
Speaker 11: diplomacy we can get all the hostages out and a
Speaker 11: diplomatic solution and then to the violence. So there was
Speaker 11: hope there. Even the President was saying, I hope this
Speaker 11: is lasting, but now we've got to move beyond hope
Speaker 11: to making it lasting. Just one basic point. The Gaza
Speaker 11: war into the twenty twenty one ended when Biden called
Speaker 11: up net Yahu and he said, that's it. The runways ended,
Speaker 11: and that yao was the hours before say we're going
Speaker 11: to continue. We're going to continue. An hour later. They stopped.
Speaker 11: Reagan when he called up the Israeli Prime minister in
Speaker 11: nineteen eighty two, they stopped with it hours. Reagan was
Speaker 11: sent to someone I didn't know I had that much power.
Speaker 11: So the American policy, America policy space Sea bakers have
Speaker 11: a lot of power here.
Speaker 2: Well, Congressman, we always appreciate you joining us on side.
Speaker 2: Crystal wasn't able to join us, but we always appreciate
Speaker 2: your views. And thank you very much, sir, Thank you absolutely.
Speaker 2: We'll see you guys later