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Speaker 3: dot Com. Turning now to housing, So this really caught
Speaker 3: my eye. Wanted to break all these numbers down with
Speaker 3: all of you guys. Just put it up here on
Speaker 3: the screen. The Wall Street Journal did an excellent job
Speaker 3: here where they collated a bunch of data which shows
Speaker 3: home ownership costs from twenty nineteen to twenty twenty five.
Speaker 1: So let's go through it.
Speaker 3: So, in terms of the amount of principle costs that
Speaker 3: people are now paying from twenty nineteen to twenty twenty five,
Speaker 3: people are now paying about twenty two percent more or
Speaker 3: in their principal payments than they were back in twenty nineteen.
Speaker 3: And remember this is just twenty twenty five data. It
Speaker 3: doesn't even include twenty twenty six, which has already gone
Speaker 3: higher twenty two percent more when it comes to principle.
Speaker 1: Now, let's look at interest.
Speaker 3: Whenever it comes to interests, people are paying thirty five
Speaker 3: percent more interest, largely because of the increase in overall
Speaker 3: interest rates. Now, all of that makes sense, and it's
Speaker 3: still not that crazy. Property taxes have gone up by
Speaker 3: thirty one percent, makes sense whenever you factor in the
Speaker 3: principal payment and some increase overall in city services. But
Speaker 3: this is where things start to become actually insane.
Speaker 1: Insurance.
Speaker 3: Home insurance costs up seventy two percent from twenty nineteen
Speaker 3: to twenty twenty five. Home maintenance is up by eighty
Speaker 3: five percent, and then the worst number of them all
Speaker 3: emergency repairs, up one hundred and seventy five percent. So
Speaker 3: they say that a home buyer in twenty nineteen could
Speaker 3: expect to spend about twenty thousand dollars a year on
Speaker 3: basic home ownership expenses. By twenty twenty five, annual bill
Speaker 3: is now twenty eight thousand, five hundred, which has massively
Speaker 3: outstripped overall inflation, which is pegged at twenty six percent
Speaker 3: during that same time period just from the consumer Price
Speaker 3: Index by twenty twenty five. Homeowners who wish that they
Speaker 3: could sell and move elsewhere are also staying put turned
Speaker 3: off by the cost of purchasing today. This is one
Speaker 3: of the foremost problems in the so called affordability trap.
Speaker 3: What we also see here is that sales of previously
Speaker 3: owned homes have held around four million a years since
Speaker 3: twenty twenty three, which is the lowest level in decades,
Speaker 3: down from the pre pandemic norm of between five million
Speaker 3: and a million five a year. So if you do
Speaker 3: the math, that's almost one mill that's almost five or
Speaker 3: six million houses that have been kept off of the
Speaker 3: market largely because of these exact traps. From the overall
Speaker 3: monthly insurance payments, taxes, interest and principle, you're now sitting
Speaker 3: roughly around two thousand dollars a month, which if you
Speaker 3: do the math, twenty four thousand. But then you look
Speaker 3: at the overall household income, especially if you look at
Speaker 3: overall household after ten income, you're sitting around fifty percent.
Speaker 3: This makes it impossible, especially with the average home rate.
Speaker 3: The one that really struck me is actually the hoafee.
Speaker 1: I don't know what the hell is going on.
Speaker 3: I don't live it in Hoa, but the average, the
Speaker 3: median HOAFE in twenty twenty one was five hundred bucks.
Speaker 3: The median hoaf in twenty twenty five is seven hundred
Speaker 3: and fifty seven dollars.
Speaker 1: So that's like a gigantic.
Speaker 3: Increase actually just from twenty twenty four to twenty twenty five.
Speaker 3: But my main takeaway from this is about financialization. So
Speaker 3: a friend of mine was taking a look at this
Speaker 3: data and what he pointed out shout out to Fred
Speaker 3: Bauer was if you look at the things that outpace
Speaker 3: overall inflation, it's interest, it's insurance, and that's homemintenance, emergency repairs.
Speaker 3: What do those things have in common? Financialization, the insurance industry,
Speaker 3: the interest obviously is the banks. But at home maintenance
Speaker 3: emergency repairs, that's not just labor costs. It's because in
Speaker 3: the last six years, private equity specifically has been rolling
Speaker 3: up local repair business is plumbing ac many of these,
Speaker 3: especially emergency repairs, and they've realized that because people are
Speaker 3: in dire straits, and they'll have to pay anything if
Speaker 3: they standardize, roll them up, give them, you know, back
Speaker 3: end software and all of that. They can squeeze enormous
Speaker 3: profits out of these homeowners. And that's why the emergency
Speaker 3: repair number is up so high. But finance is the
Speaker 3: bedrock of all of these overall cost increases that you
Speaker 3: could see.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so let me zoom out and make a bigger
Speaker 2: picture point and shout out to Gary's economics who put
Speaker 2: it in these terms in a recent video about Elon
Speaker 2: Musk becoming the world's first trillionaire. When you have trillionaires,
Speaker 2: and he's the first one on paper, but probably not
Speaker 2: the only one.
Speaker 4: It's just now that.
Speaker 2: Spacexipo'd, which actually SpaceX not doing that well today, but
Speaker 2: that's their story for another day.
Speaker 4: Might cover that tomorrow.
Speaker 2: In any case, with the spacexipo, we now officially know
Speaker 2: that he is a trillionaire. You have all of these billionaires.
Speaker 2: You look at the way that these mostly men's wealth
Speaker 2: skyrocketed over the p past several years.
Speaker 4: It is astronomical.
Speaker 2: Just think about the fact that we had in Bernie
Speaker 2: Sanders twenty sixteen campaign, what was his constant refrain the
Speaker 2: millionaires and the billionaires. You're talking about millionaires at this point,
Speaker 2: it's quaint. It's quaint to think about millionaires. Now we're
Speaker 2: talking about the billionaires and the trillionaires. And that's just
Speaker 2: over the course of a decade that that shift has happened. Well,
Speaker 2: when you are someone who has that amount of wealth
Speaker 2: and literally incomprehensible amount of money, A billion dollars is
Speaker 2: an incomprehensible amount of money, A trillion dollars is beyond
Speaker 2: the comprehension of any human being. What do you do,
Speaker 2: and this goes to your point, Soccer. You buy up assets.
Speaker 2: So is it any surprise then that all of these assets,
Speaker 2: including homes, become more and more and more expensive, that
Speaker 2: they find more and more ways to financialize every aspect
Speaker 2: of this. Why because it is money in search of assets,
Speaker 2: and we have money consolidated.
Speaker 4: In the hands of a very few number of people.
Speaker 2: You know, when you have a little more money in
Speaker 2: your pocket, you're not going up and going out and
Speaker 2: buying all these things.
Speaker 4: You're you know, you're able to indulg you maybe you
Speaker 4: go on vacation, You're able to buy steak.
Speaker 2: Right, the average person, it's much more hand and mouth,
Speaker 2: so you're not out there looking to buy up the
Speaker 2: entire world. The more wealth inequality that we have, the
Speaker 2: more that you have trillionaires and one hundred billionaires that
Speaker 2: are dominating the entire economy of the entire globe, the
Speaker 2: more they are going to bid up the price of assets.
Speaker 2: It is inevitable when you think about the way those
Speaker 2: dynamics work. So that is a part of the underlying
Speaker 2: story of why these costs keep going up and up
Speaker 2: and up, and there is no relief in sight. If
Speaker 2: you want, really you have to tax these people. That's
Speaker 2: what you have to do. You have to do a
Speaker 2: wealth text. You have to take some of the world.
Speaker 2: You cannot allow there to be these trillionaires and multi
Speaker 2: multi multi billionaires controlling everything and buying everything up. If
Speaker 2: you are a person who would like to aspire, excuse
Speaker 2: me one day to be able to I don't know,
Speaker 2: own a home or own really anything, if you are
Speaker 2: that person, then you should be in favor of raining
Speaker 2: in the wealth and power of these oligarchs. So I
Speaker 2: think that is a very critical piece of this that
Speaker 2: also oftentimes goes overlooked intentionally, you know, And that's not
Speaker 2: to say that like the sort of abundance agenda of
Speaker 2: deregulation and yimbiism.
Speaker 4: That's not to say that stuff doesn't.
Speaker 2: Matter, but the overarching structure here of these increasing numbers
Speaker 2: of trillionaires and billionaires buying up everything is going to
Speaker 2: make it so that we never get out of this
Speaker 2: doom loop loop until we check their wealth and power.
Speaker 3: There's a demand side and a supply side. That's the
Speaker 3: thing we have to look at both. Let's put D
Speaker 3: three up here on the screen just because I want
Speaker 3: to go through even some more of the math, and
Speaker 3: when you do, it's crazy. Like this is where they
Speaker 3: say that Morgan Stanley is predicting that home buyers will
Speaker 3: face a harsh reset, and mostly they say what it
Speaker 3: points is to this conclusion is that the base case
Speaker 3: projects mortgage payments will have to decline about twenty four
Speaker 3: percent of household income to twenty one percent in the
Speaker 3: coming decade as rates have to moderate over the long term,
Speaker 3: but that will still leave affordability well above the fifteen
Speaker 3: percent average that prevailed in the years after the two
Speaker 3: thousand and seven to two thousand and nine financial crisis.
Speaker 3: The squeeze will reshape ownership in rental dynamics and will
Speaker 3: make it so that aspiring owners will continue to imprize
Speaker 3: more and more of the overall US population. When terms
Speaker 3: of the reset, what they say is that it will
Speaker 3: reset the way specifically that wealth is built in the
Speaker 3: long term, specifically probably for people who are our age
Speaker 3: and more in the millennial demographic, because home ownership was
Speaker 3: the bedrock of wealth building over the postwar period. But
Speaker 3: now when the first time home buyer is some thirty
Speaker 3: six to forty years old, and then the average home
Speaker 3: buyer is like in their fifties, then you have different
Speaker 3: situations where having that lack of apt which will appreciate
Speaker 3: over time, just scrambles the entire way that you think
Speaker 3: about your future, not to mention whenever it comes to
Speaker 3: your community. So I think that that data is really
Speaker 3: really important actually just about home buying and the way
Speaker 3: that assets will move in the future. But I also
Speaker 3: think that whenever it comes to the housing front, it
Speaker 3: shows how the current way that I mean, I really
Speaker 3: struggle with this. I believe in some localism, I really do,
Speaker 3: especially when it comes to data centers. You know, nimbi's
Speaker 3: definitely have a point in their ability, but facility, yeah
Speaker 3: or yeah in your case whatever you want beautification, you know, zoning,
Speaker 3: I really do get it, like I get it whenever
Speaker 3: it comes to what makes a community nice?
Speaker 1: However, are we not at a genuine crisis level? Like
Speaker 1: That's how I start to think.
Speaker 3: And that's when when people start complaining about, oh, like
Speaker 3: this is going to overwhelm you know, ex services.
Speaker 1: I hear you.
Speaker 3: But then we need to make it so that you
Speaker 3: have the housing and you have the services, like there
Speaker 3: needs to be I just read that we spent eighty
Speaker 3: billion dollars on the Iran war, which is create eighty
Speaker 3: billion is what the Pentagon is asking for to recoop
Speaker 3: costs of what the Iran war. That is eighty percent
Speaker 3: of what we spent in twenty years just on the
Speaker 3: Afghan National Security Forces twenty years in Afghanistan on the
Speaker 3: a ANDSF. Is what we just spent in three weeks
Speaker 3: in the war in Iran. That's insanity. So just to
Speaker 3: show you all in terms of like the cost that
Speaker 3: we're dealing with here, maybe some of it could go
Speaker 3: to like an overall homestead fund or builder incentives. You
Speaker 3: need funds up front, then you need tax incentives for
Speaker 3: the builders. You need to make it so that the
Speaker 3: market that is best served for the builder, they have
Speaker 3: an incentive to build the first time starter home.
Speaker 1: You need to make it so.
Speaker 3: They keep the private capital people out of competing for
Speaker 3: said things. But I also think you honestly need a
Speaker 3: mechanism to make and genuinely force in some cases, especially
Speaker 3: in these high cost of living areas, to be able
Speaker 3: to build more housing. And I hear one hundred percent
Speaker 3: of the people who already live there. We're not saying
Speaker 3: you're going to get screwed. We should make sure that
Speaker 3: there's services and all of that too. But I just,
Speaker 3: you know, increasingly, all I hear from the home ownership
Speaker 3: classes like, oh, we can't have that, we can't have that,
Speaker 3: And I'm like, I'm sorry, Like, you know, when you
Speaker 3: have people pull in two three hundred thousand dollars a
Speaker 3: year and they can't even buy a home in a
Speaker 3: high cost of living area, like we're cooked, you know,
Speaker 3: as an overall society.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and you know that.
Speaker 2: So it's it's the housing costs, but it's all the
Speaker 2: other costs too. One of the things we focused on
Speaker 2: a lot is the electricity costs, which have skyrocketed, which
Speaker 2: is also documented in that Wall Street Journal piece. What
Speaker 2: we were talking about, and this again goes back to
Speaker 2: like the oligarchs and their demands, that is the primary
Speaker 2: reason why electricity costs are going up and up and up.
Speaker 4: And I took.
Speaker 2: Notice of this recent development with federal energy regulators. Here's
Speaker 2: the headline here, Federal regulators order grid operators to speed
Speaker 2: power to energy hungry AI data centers. Federal regulators on Thursday,
Speaker 2: this is last week, ordered regional grid operators to help
Speaker 2: large energy users connect more quickly to the nation's inefficient
Speaker 2: and aging electric transmission system, a step they said is
Speaker 2: needed to accommodate surging demand from power hungry artificial intelligence
Speaker 2: data centers. Now they're claiming, oh, don't worry, it's not
Speaker 2: going to add to your costs. Okay, do you believe that?
Speaker 2: Do you believe that? And you're the other thing, it's
Speaker 2: not just about the cost. We just literally do not
Speaker 2: generate enough electricity to deal with the amount that these
Speaker 2: you know, the operators that are the major AI tech
Speaker 2: companies what they are pushing towards. We do not have
Speaker 2: that level of electricity generation. So if we're having to
Speaker 2: if there are going to be blackouts if we're going
Speaker 2: to have to ration electricity generation means, who do you
Speaker 2: think is going to be prioritized in that situation. It
Speaker 2: reminds me very much of when we had the Flint
Speaker 2: water crisis and the FORD and GM were like, Hey,
Speaker 2: this new water is like corroning our parts.
Speaker 4: We can't do like you're destroying our business.
Speaker 2: The government was quick to, oh, well, don't worry, we'll
Speaker 2: switch you back to the other system.
Speaker 1: We got you.
Speaker 2: Meanwhile, people and their children were literally being lead poisoned
Speaker 2: every day and it took years before that was addressed.
Speaker 2: It's going to be the same dynamic here, right The
Speaker 2: people with the money and the power are.
Speaker 4: Going to get their needs met first.
Speaker 2: And so this to me is one emblem of the
Speaker 2: direction that the federal government and a lot of the
Speaker 2: state governments are going to go in as well, where
Speaker 2: they are being prioritized. Oh, you're a giant new data
Speaker 2: center and you need to be connected to the grid.
Speaker 2: Even though we you know this is going to spike
Speaker 2: energy rates and electricity rates for consumers across this entire region.
Speaker 2: Don't worry. We've got your back. We will fast track
Speaker 2: your ability to connect into the grid with no requirement
Speaker 2: that we're you know, building out additional electricity generation needs.
Speaker 2: So it is this dynamic which will continue to make
Speaker 2: costs higher and higher and higher across the board.
Speaker 3: And I will just point to the story that I
Speaker 3: relayed last time, our last show about Sterling, Virginia, where
Speaker 3: this exact situation happened. Those generators with the extreme wine
Speaker 3: which were overwhelming the noise in the neighborhood.
Speaker 1: They were told it would only be on temporarily.
Speaker 3: The generators have now been on for over a month,
Speaker 3: for over a year, so you could see and they
Speaker 3: have these residents have no recourse. Are sitting there with
Speaker 3: multi like with loud hearing, damage level noise, perpetuating the
Speaker 3: entire neighborhood.
Speaker 1: That for over a year with zero recourse.
Speaker 3: So whenever it comes to these promises from the electricities,
Speaker 3: from the electricity you utilities, oh it's not going to increase.
Speaker 3: The truth is, you can see, this is about priority
Speaker 3: and they need Look, they need these data setters to
Speaker 3: come online. At the end of the day, that's the
Speaker 3: only thing powering the American stockhol hole.
Speaker 4: It's at every entire economy.
Speaker 3: So if that doesn't work out it all goes bust.
Speaker 3: So it just makes it so that at the end
Speaker 3: of the day they're going to get the preferential treatment
Speaker 3: the rates. And yeah, if we're ever in a power
Speaker 3: generation crisis, we all know which way it's going to go,
Speaker 3: and you can only take it back one way, which
Speaker 3: is democracy. All right, So we have some great guests
Speaker 3: dating by the Blowback Pod to talk about their Special
Speaker 3: Relationship series on Israel and the United States.
Speaker 1: Let's get to it.
Speaker 2: There's been a lot in the news lately and a
Speaker 2: lot that is quite relevant about our quote unquote special
Speaker 2: relationship with the nation state of Israel. So luckily for us,
Speaker 2: we are joined by two experts. Today we've got Brennan
Speaker 2: James and Noah Colwyn, co hosts of the Blowback Pod,
Speaker 2: and they have just released right now for premium subscribers
Speaker 2: a special edition called No Daylight that looks at the
Speaker 2: historical trajectory of the US Israel relationship. It is fantastic.
Speaker 2: Everybody go and subscribe. Gentlemen, welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: Good to see you guys, Thank you, thanks for having us.
Speaker 2: Yeah, of course, so let's go ahead and start by
Speaker 2: taking a listen to some of the things that President
Speaker 2: Trump has said lately about his relationship with Benjamin Netanyahu and.
Speaker 5: Baby Nettnill, who worked well with me. But he will
Speaker 5: tell you we're the ones with the guns, the ones
Speaker 5: with a whole deal, We're the ones with the beat
Speaker 5: two bombers, et cetera. If it weren't for Donald Trump,
Speaker 5: Israel would have been eviscerated. It's a relationship with Nan Yaho's.
Speaker 5: It's good, but we have to keep them a little bit,
Speaker 5: uh sane.
Speaker 1: Are you going to be able to control Israel from
Speaker 1: attacking Lebanon?
Speaker 5: Yeah? I will be. I mean I wonder, Uh. They
Speaker 5: have a lot of respect for me, and they do
Speaker 5: as I say.
Speaker 6: Mister Bya, who happens to be a good man, gets
Speaker 6: a little excited sometimes, but he happens to be a
Speaker 6: very good man. We've had an amazing partnership. He's been
Speaker 6: an amazing Prime minister who we have a little dispute
Speaker 6: over Lebanon, and I say, you can do it a
Speaker 6: little softer touch. Maybe you don't have to knock down
Speaker 6: a building every time somebody walks into it. That's from
Speaker 6: his bullah. But it's been an amazing partnership. But he
Speaker 6: will say, we're the big partner and he's the very
Speaker 6: small partner.
Speaker 5: And that's true.
Speaker 2: Well, I'll start with you, what have you made of
Speaker 2: these comments from Trump? Also, more critically the comments from JD.
Speaker 4: Vance. Do you think this split with Israel is real?
Speaker 7: Uh, that's a great question. I think that this split
Speaker 7: is an inflection point. I don't necessarily know if I
Speaker 7: would say that it's real in the way that people
Speaker 7: necessarily like the at least popular sentiment would like it
Speaker 7: to be, just generally because of the contempt towards Israel
Speaker 7: and the Naicinaio government. But I do believe that what
Speaker 7: this shows and what it indicates and what it surfaces,
Speaker 7: And this is actually part of the point of our
Speaker 7: mini series is that we're interested in examining, like, well, okay,
Speaker 7: how do these moments of daylight emerge when it's clear
Speaker 7: that the US and Israel have divergent interests, and how
Speaker 7: is it then that they get sutured back shut? And
Speaker 7: I would argue that at this time, when I say
Speaker 7: we're at an inflection point, we're at a moment where
Speaker 7: we're figuring out, okay, is this going to be one
Speaker 7: of those moments as it has been for most of
Speaker 7: the past eighty years, where something gets stitch shut back together,
Speaker 7: or is this actually going to be part of a
Speaker 7: longer process initiated since October seventh, twenty twenty three, where
Speaker 7: the US and Israel's strategic partnership is perhaps you know,
Speaker 7: coming undone or at the very least significantly changing in
Speaker 7: character from how it's been before.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Brennan, let's talk here a little bit zooming out
Speaker 3: how it pertains to your guys' season, going back from
Speaker 3: the beginning. I have alluded to this in the past,
Speaker 3: about Truman's haberdashery partner and kind of the very strange
Speaker 3: circumstances in which the United States even became entwined with Israel.
Speaker 3: But why don't you take the audience through some of that.
Speaker 8: Well, it's a fascinating thing. I think many people will
Speaker 8: be caught off guard if they listen, particularly if they're younger,
Speaker 8: they're unfamiliar with some of this history. Harry Truman, of course,
Speaker 8: was the president, the US president that recognized the state
Speaker 8: of Israel when it was founded in forty eight, but
Speaker 8: for several years before that, from nineteen forty five onwards
Speaker 8: the beginning of his presidency, he was not so keen
Speaker 8: on there being a Jewish state in the Middle East.
Speaker 8: He opposed it. He told the Zionist lobby, he opposed it.
Speaker 8: He told his own advisors, he opposed it. He told
Speaker 8: the public. He opposed it. In one way or another.
Speaker 8: He thought it was a death no state, alternatively called
Speaker 8: it neth no state or theocracy, neither of which were
Speaker 8: ideals that he felt were worthy of lending American support to.
Speaker 8: The problem was is he had a sort of a
Speaker 8: showdown in his own cabinet between his foreign policy establishment,
Speaker 8: which at the very top was led by no less
Speaker 8: than George Marshwood, decorated general from World War Two. None
Speaker 8: of them supported, virtually none of them supported, and certainly
Speaker 8: no one high up supported the foundation of a Jewish state.
Speaker 8: And they were even cold warriors, right wingers who said,
Speaker 8: we think this will drive the Arab states that have
Speaker 8: a lot of oil into the hands, or rather into
Speaker 8: the arms of this Soviet Union. There's no reason to
Speaker 8: do this. Everyone, including Truman, was much more sympathetic to
Speaker 8: the idea of a binational or federated state. That's what
Speaker 8: they were working in concert with the British Empire to
Speaker 8: bring about. Because a lot of this also meant the
Speaker 8: British were exiting the Middle East. However, his domestic advisors
Speaker 8: were very keen on him supporting a state of Israel,
Speaker 8: not only because of their own personal Zionism, which they
Speaker 8: had reached, some of them actually quite recently in their careers,
Speaker 8: but because it was a very easy way for him
Speaker 8: to hold together the New Deal coalition that he inherited
Speaker 8: from FDR. It was a purely domestic, purely political calculation
Speaker 8: that the ethnic makeup of the New Deal coalition, which
Speaker 8: included Jews in very important states and very important cities,
Speaker 8: that he had to win, that this was something that
Speaker 8: we need not worry about the consequences of overseas as
Speaker 8: long as it secures us the election and the sort
Speaker 8: of democratic Democratic Party's coalition that was so important. So
Speaker 8: you have Truman being the first guy who recognized Israel,
Speaker 8: who didn't even think it was a good idea, and
Speaker 8: who really didn't pay attention to much of the issue
Speaker 8: of Palestine after except to express frustration with issues of
Speaker 8: refugees returning and indeed what you might call the right
Speaker 8: of return, that he was rather repulsed by Israel's conduct. However,
Speaker 8: it was at that point he had already given in
Speaker 8: to the political pressures and had recognized the state of
Speaker 8: Israel and couldn't really do much about it.
Speaker 2: And at that point in the you know, in terms
Speaker 2: of the political valance, Zionism was a cause war associated
Speaker 2: with the political left that has you know, shifted over
Speaker 2: the years.
Speaker 4: Talk about how that political.
Speaker 2: Dynamic has shifted as the orientation towards Israel has shifted
Speaker 2: and become this you know, security arrangement that we know today.
Speaker 8: It's very fascinating again for people who think of you know,
Speaker 8: reasonably now look around and think of Palestine as something
Speaker 8: that is a cause for the center left, left of
Speaker 8: center and and all the way to the far left.
Speaker 8: Initially because I should think it was a it was
Speaker 8: a moment right after the Nazi Holocaust. There was also
Speaker 8: a rather typical American in curiosity with what was really
Speaker 8: going on in the ground in Palestine. A lot of
Speaker 8: progressives and liberals said, this is restorative justice of of
Speaker 8: some kind to the Jews of Europe. It's there's some tenuous,
Speaker 8: you know, biblical and ancient connection with this land. Why
Speaker 8: not allow this to happen? You must be an anti
Speaker 8: Semite you must be some kind of you know, uh,
Speaker 8: sort of crank to not recognize the right the Jews
Speaker 8: have to their own state. We still hear some of
Speaker 8: this language, but it was coming from places like the Nation,
Speaker 8: or the pre Murdoch New York Post, and even Soviet
Speaker 8: agents inside of America, which is a whole other story
Speaker 8: about why the Soviet Union might want it to have
Speaker 8: had some of its its inside guys, uh softening Truman's
Speaker 8: Cold War Coalition by appealing to some of its Jewish
Speaker 8: members of that coalition with the appeal of Zionism. But
Speaker 8: at any rate, it was viewed as a progressive cause,
Speaker 8: and as I mentioned earlier, it was Cold warriors. A
Speaker 8: guy named Lloyd Henderson had Truman's ear who was very
Speaker 8: conservative and right wing and felt that it was a
Speaker 8: really boneheaded move in the context of the Cold War
Speaker 8: and the standoff with the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union
Speaker 8: itself opposed the creation of a Jewish state for many
Speaker 8: years until around forty seven, when, to the surprise of everyone,
Speaker 8: it said, we still would prefer a binational or federated state,
Speaker 8: but if that cannot be reached, we will sign on
Speaker 8: to the execution of a Jewish state as far as
Speaker 8: that can be attained in a just manner, and that
Speaker 8: was a huge surprise to everyone. The idea, I think
Speaker 8: being that they really wanted to drive the British out
Speaker 8: of the Middle East, and they saw the retreat of
Speaker 8: the British Empire as something more strategically worthy of their
Speaker 8: attention than necessarily the founding of the Jewish state in Palestine.
Speaker 3: No, in terms of what you guys cover on the podcast,
Speaker 3: why don't you lay out for us the key moments
Speaker 3: in the so called special relationship? How did it evolve
Speaker 3: to what it is? From Truman's habard Ashery partner to.
Speaker 7: Today Truman's habitd Ashery partner, you know, his Jewish friend,
Speaker 7: somebody who would lean on considerably for personal advice and humor, was,
Speaker 7: you know, but a bit player right in this larger
Speaker 7: story between the US and Zionism and then the US
Speaker 7: and Israel that our show takes the big moments of
Speaker 7: these stories, or at least these moments when tension surfaces
Speaker 7: in very visible ways that are unique. We take them
Speaker 7: to be the founding of Israel more or less, and
Speaker 7: the Truman White House's navigation of that process. We also
Speaker 7: look at the Eisenhower years, and the Eisenhower years I
Speaker 7: think are very interesting and very understudied. In particular, we
Speaker 7: look at both the Suez Crisis, but also something that
Speaker 7: happened in nineteen fifty three a few years earlier, a
Speaker 7: massacre in the West Bank committed by Israeli forces led
Speaker 7: by none other than later Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon,
Speaker 7: A massacre that was such a pr blow to Israel
Speaker 7: that it led to you know, it was it tipped
Speaker 7: a relatively short series of dominoes that led to the
Speaker 7: creation of APAK, the most powerful and well known Israel
Speaker 7: lobby today. And then we also look at the Reagan years,
Speaker 7: and we have a bit of time. We talk a
Speaker 7: little bit about how the US is Rail relationship changed
Speaker 7: in the late sixties and seventies, but we really focus
Speaker 7: on the Reagan years because the Reagan years are also
Speaker 7: another underappreciated time of tension between the US and Israel.
Speaker 7: Ronald Reagan, elected as probably the most outwardly Zionist president
Speaker 7: in American history until that point, pretty immediately is thrust
Speaker 7: into a series of political fights with the pro Israel forces.
Speaker 7: This is the time when APAC in the pro Israel
Speaker 7: lobby is coming into its own when Israeli influenced networks
Speaker 7: in the United States are beginning to reach maturity and facy,
Speaker 7: A bunch of spy rings get broken up in this decade,
Speaker 7: a bunch of other organizations that are pro Israel, like
Speaker 7: the ADL, get caught up in various political scandals. And
Speaker 7: the Reagan White House was in fights, you know, a
Speaker 7: self described very pro Israel White House was in you know,
Speaker 7: they they did battle with the Israel Lobby or what
Speaker 7: was called the A Walks fight and arms deal with
Speaker 7: Saudi Arabia essentially. And then we also had the time
Speaker 7: that time that Israel went and bombed in a Raqi
Speaker 7: nuclear reactor and Reagan wrote in his diary that he
Speaker 7: thought armageddon was coming, and most infamously, and this is
Speaker 7: something that has very, you know, kind of jarring parallels
Speaker 7: with today, frankly, something that when Brennan and I conceived
Speaker 7: of this mini series, we hadn't you know, it was
Speaker 7: not quite yet a fact on the ground, which was
Speaker 7: the brutal Israeli assault that has been unfolding in Lebanon
Speaker 7: in the last couple of months. And how in Reagan's time,
Speaker 7: I mean, Israel committed atrocities and oversaw atrocities such as
Speaker 7: so Brin Shatila, And in fact, the US was directly
Speaker 7: implicated in some of these atrocities as well, and we
Speaker 7: suffered for it too, the United States. You know, the
Speaker 7: Marine Barracks bombing took place in this time, and you know,
Speaker 7: Reagan calls Bagan telling him it's a damn holocaust, like
Speaker 7: like cut it out, and it's you know, I think
Speaker 7: it's kind of interesting. And what we try to tell
Speaker 7: the story of there is how there was that great
Speaker 7: moment of tensions, something that had never really happened before,
Speaker 7: and then it kind of did go back to business
Speaker 7: as usual with a kind of big exception, or at
Speaker 7: least with like a sort of important coda, which is
Speaker 7: that under George hw Bush there was a sincere effort
Speaker 7: to try to get Israel to the negotiating table with
Speaker 7: the Palestinians, like say, what one will about the premises
Speaker 7: of those negotiations, how strong a hand or how fair
Speaker 7: a hand the Palestinians would be dealt in them. But
Speaker 7: hw Bush successfully held up loan guarantees. Is that Israel
Speaker 7: was seeking in the early nineties as a method as
Speaker 7: a method of coercing coercing them, I mean billions of
Speaker 7: dollars and it what is like, you know, Israel was
Speaker 7: facing legitimate financial crisis in the US used that as
Speaker 7: leverage to extract diplomatic concessions, which you know, I don't
Speaker 7: know about you guys, but I read the headlines today
Speaker 7: and that would seem like, you know, an idea coming
Speaker 7: from mars Oh.
Speaker 4: I know, yeah, it's nuts, Brendan.
Speaker 2: Over the course of the podcast, you basically track these
Speaker 2: different instances where American presidents at least momentarily put up
Speaker 2: some resistance and say you got to stop. They cut
Speaker 2: off some arms at certain points in time, and I
Speaker 2: believe it was begging that you know, during the Reagan
Speaker 2: administration was like, no, they'll be back, don't worry, Like
Speaker 2: this will be a momentary bump and they'll be back.
Speaker 2: And that has been the correct analysis. So I wonder
Speaker 2: what you learned here about whether our relationship with Israel
Speaker 2: is driven primarily by the interest of empire, whether it's
Speaker 2: driven primarily by you know, APAC and the very effective
Speaker 2: lobbying and you know the impact of money and politics
Speaker 2: here in the US, or is that a combination of
Speaker 2: the two.
Speaker 4: You help us tease out.
Speaker 2: What you learned about what drives what is the engine
Speaker 2: that continues to drive this relationship.
Speaker 8: Well, the first thing I would say, and we've had
Speaker 8: to discuss this in the different interviews we've done promoting
Speaker 8: the show. I personally, I don't even necessarily want to
Speaker 8: speak for Noah, and we don't tend to editorialize too
Speaker 8: much in the course of the miniseries itself for any
Speaker 8: of our seasons. I'm skeptical about the thesis that Israel
Speaker 8: is a mere appendage of US foreign policy, a mere
Speaker 8: proxy for US interests in the region and in the world.
Speaker 8: There's too much spying, there's too much sabotage, there's too
Speaker 8: much dealing of state secrets, and there's too much just
Speaker 8: if this is to be a proxy or understood, is
Speaker 8: one flat out disobedience that you just don't see in
Speaker 8: that type of relationship. And as Noah was alluding to earlier,
Speaker 8: and as we cover in the first several episodes of
Speaker 8: the mini series, for several decades, Israel and America did
Speaker 8: not have the special relationship. Eisenhower held up arms, embargoed arms. Truman,
Speaker 8: as we discussed, was not terribly sympathetic in general, he
Speaker 8: recognized the state. That was obviously a huge move, but
Speaker 8: it wasn't this handing glove idea that people have had,
Speaker 8: rightfully so for the past few decades. So it wasn't
Speaker 8: serving our interest as some kind of attack dog or
Speaker 8: expeditionary force for many, many years. Once that became, I
Speaker 8: think the case that Israel was selling to America, we
Speaker 8: will be your Cold War chess piece in the Middle East,
Speaker 8: a lot of people started to believe that genuinely it
Speaker 8: was a truly necessary relationship. And then in the nineties
Speaker 8: there wasn't even greater emphasis. Once the Cold War was over,
Speaker 8: there was a greater emphasis on the Judeo Christian shared
Speaker 8: values and civilization. This was of course presaging the war
Speaker 8: on Terror, language in which Israel became once more this
Speaker 8: ally that we couldn't do without. I'm skeptical of all
Speaker 8: of that, and I think the left sometimes overestimates how
Speaker 8: in concert or symbiotic, supposedly in concert Israel and America are.
Speaker 8: I would say that, of course the lobby is impossible
Speaker 8: to ignore. Overstating it is something that will lead you
Speaker 8: down some strange places, but so well, understating it, and
Speaker 8: the nuclear blackmail I think is sometimes under discussed. I mean,
Speaker 8: whether it be Reagan or HW. Bush. We may do
Speaker 8: a sequel to our series someday we could talk about
Speaker 8: Clinton and Bush two and Obama and of course Trump.
Speaker 8: Right now, you can mouth off about Israel and get
Speaker 8: them to try to accept their place every now and again,
Speaker 8: but you can't get rid of those nukes. And I'm
Speaker 8: sure many many people in the State Department, whether it
Speaker 8: was the Biden administration or Trump, right now, they might
Speaker 8: like to read them their rights, but they might be
Speaker 8: told the next day by some fanatical Israeli minister, well
Speaker 8: you know that if we have to do it, we
Speaker 8: can set off a tactical nuke. That's not nothing. So
Speaker 8: you have the domestic political pressure at home where they
Speaker 8: own much of the Congress, to put it bluntly, and
Speaker 8: you have a nuclear option for them anytime they want
Speaker 8: to say, well, who are you to tell us what
Speaker 8: to do? That's pretty scary for an empire that is
Speaker 8: declining and that needs as many friends as it can
Speaker 8: get as it declines. So I think that at this
Speaker 8: point it's really a relationship born out of weakness of
Speaker 8: the of the United States. We'll see how this goes
Speaker 8: with Trump vance you know, did his little you know,
Speaker 8: kind of Zelenski's style belittling of Israel the other day.
Speaker 8: But yeah, I mean those are just words. You know,
Speaker 8: we tried to cover these in the miniseries, these moments
Speaker 8: where hw Bush withheld ten billion, where Eisenhower slapped an
Speaker 8: arms and bargo, where Reagan said, I'm suspending all support,
Speaker 8: You're committing a holocaust. However brief, these moments were It's
Speaker 8: more than we've seen from the Trump people at the moment.
Speaker 4: And Noah, do you agree more or less with that assessment?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think so.
Speaker 7: I think that the thing I would only even like
Speaker 7: somewhat add a two points would be on the nuclear
Speaker 7: blackmail piece. There was once another country that had nuclear
Speaker 7: weapons and you know, threatened to use them and all
Speaker 7: so partnered with Israel and developing them, and that was
Speaker 7: South Africa, and South Africa for a long time benefited
Speaker 7: from using the same kind of strategic imposter, strategic ambiguity,
Speaker 7: not acknowledging his weapons and so forth. And it wasn't
Speaker 7: really you know, in the end days of the South
Speaker 7: African apartheid regime in the final years there, in the
Speaker 7: context of their various border wars and in the fight
Speaker 7: in particular against the Cubans and Angola, there were discussions
Speaker 7: about using tactical nuclear weapons, and I think that, you know,
Speaker 7: there was a real fear that South Africa would do that,
Speaker 7: and you know, the like like it was taken as
Speaker 7: a credible threat. As my point, and I believe that
Speaker 7: in the case of Israel, world leaders today similarly view
Speaker 7: Israeli threats if they were ever to be made, even
Speaker 7: you know, in behind closed doors, they would view them
Speaker 7: as credible, considering that Israelis have done everything from like
Speaker 7: you know, like the Beeper bombings, and I mean, at
Speaker 7: this point too many ridiculous and strange and blatant horrors
Speaker 7: to name. And then the other point and so, which
Speaker 7: is to say that I think that the nuclear blackmail
Speaker 7: with them is a lot more powerful of a force
Speaker 7: than it necessarily.
Speaker 1: Is with other states.
Speaker 7: And then and then the other piece of it is
Speaker 7: that I think that the Israel lobby is is a
Speaker 7: really Fortunately there's a lot of really good scholarship coming
Speaker 7: out about it right now. Somebody whom we interview for
Speaker 7: our show, Doug Rossen, now has a terrific book out
Speaker 7: that'll sorry, that'll be out either later this year or
Speaker 7: next year about American Zionism that has a lot of
Speaker 7: good historical facts. I know that Eli Clifton, I forget
Speaker 7: his co author, but he's co author of a new
Speaker 7: book out about the Israel Lobby, and you know, to
Speaker 7: say nothing of the Walton Meersheimer.
Speaker 1: But for all of that, inc the Israel Lobby.
Speaker 7: Remains kind of like a hazy and under theorized and
Speaker 7: underreported kind of you know, set of institutions. And part
Speaker 7: of what that has enabled, right, is this like really
Speaker 7: sort of disastrous, direct and persistent conflation with being pro
Speaker 7: Israel and being Jewish, and the pro Israel lobby has
Speaker 7: more or less also taken the place of identifying with
Speaker 7: the position of the jew organized Jewish community in the
Speaker 7: United States, and the political power of that just shouldn't
Speaker 7: be taken lightly, not simply not on the level of like, oh,
Speaker 7: Jews have a lot of power, but simply on the
Speaker 7: level that like this, you know, like an influential, respected
Speaker 7: and well established minority group in the United States, like
Speaker 7: its civil rights are now bound up with this political position.
Speaker 7: And I don't think that the process by which that
Speaker 7: has been made to happen is a small part at all.
Speaker 7: I think it's a very important and big part of
Speaker 7: how it is that the US and Israel have maintained
Speaker 7: whatever the relationship it is that they do have.
Speaker 3: Yeah, last question from me, guys is about the USS liberty.
Speaker 3: I know that you guys touch on it a little bit.
Speaker 3: Why don't you tell us a little bit how it
Speaker 3: factors in some of the analysis they've laid out. Either
Speaker 3: of you can take the question, who ever wants to.
Speaker 7: I seed the hot potato to Noah? Go ahead, So
Speaker 7: the USS liberty. In nineteen sixty seven, during the I
Speaker 7: guess ongoing conflicts over the what we call the Sixth
Speaker 7: Day War, there was an Israeli plane attack on a
Speaker 7: US surveillance ship off the coast of Egypt and the US.
Speaker 7: This Liberty was the name of the ship. Dozens of
Speaker 7: sailors died. It was a rather surreal and startling attack,
Speaker 7: and for many years what the attack was, its nature,
Speaker 7: its causes, what may have prompted it were essentially was
Speaker 7: essentially hushed up. There were very little information was released
Speaker 7: about it, and it fostered a years long, eight decades
Speaker 7: long resentment between higher echelons of the Navy and the
Speaker 7: NSA because the NSA grew out of naval intelligence and
Speaker 7: the NSA and Israel.
Speaker 1: And also which is.
Speaker 7: Also because Israel does, like Israel spies on us and
Speaker 7: we spin and everybody else, and that spying goes cross
Speaker 7: ways a lot in addition to the intelligence sharing. So
Speaker 7: some rivalries there. But the usles Liberty kind of became
Speaker 7: this shorthand years since, right for all of the ways
Speaker 7: in which the US would just like go to bat
Speaker 7: for Israel against all reason. Why against all reason in
Speaker 7: this case, because there's persistent eyewitness testimony and subsequent testimony
Speaker 7: from senior naval officers who tried to pursue an investigation
Speaker 7: or at least a deeper establishment of the facts surrounding
Speaker 7: the bombing of the Liberty. They said that it was
Speaker 7: very clear that they were a US ship, that this
Speaker 7: wasn't a case of mistaken identities Israeli's later claimed, and
Speaker 7: furthermore that part of what they were observing were Israeli
Speaker 7: actions and potentially an atrocity in Egypt in the city
Speaker 7: of Alrish. And so I think that there is this,
Speaker 7: you know, the Liberty is just like a perfect example
Speaker 7: and of how again, like in part of why it's
Speaker 7: had sustaining power since it happened in sixty seven, even
Speaker 7: during like pretty consistently pro Israel times in the US,
Speaker 7: is because the liberty, you know, has come to represent
Speaker 7: like the just sort of baffling human cost imposed by
Speaker 7: the US is strategic alignment with Israel. And you know,
Speaker 7: there are scholars and journalists. Before we got talking on
Speaker 7: the show, you brought up James Scott, who is a
Speaker 7: very well respected and certainly no you know, you know
Speaker 7: anti Israel, you know lefty who has written about the
Speaker 7: liberty and has largely come down on the it was
Speaker 7: a deliberate strike attitude, as has James Bamford, who I
Speaker 7: would argue is you know, one of the best chroniclers
Speaker 7: of the NSA of all time, a wonderful journalist, and
Speaker 7: he has also argued the same thing.
Speaker 1: And I think that there is just you know, there's
Speaker 1: so much evidence.
Speaker 7: That points to it and exists in these historical counts
Speaker 7: that it's kind of hard to deny. But I think
Speaker 7: what's more important, at least you know, fifty or sixty
Speaker 7: years on, sorry Jesus, sixty years on, is that it
Speaker 7: has this resonance because of what it represents in terms
Speaker 7: of you know, Israeli actions and US tolerance for it.
Speaker 2: Totally bright In my last question for you, because I
Speaker 2: found this anecdote just so incredible, is you know you
Speaker 2: were mentioning how some of the rationales or some of
Speaker 2: the argument that was made on the Israeli side of
Speaker 2: why we should have this close relationship changed and over
Speaker 2: the years it became more sort of like ideological, oh,
Speaker 2: shared Western values, et cetera. But you know, I think
Speaker 2: some of our leaders genuinely like their true believers, Like
Speaker 2: I think Joe Biden is a true believer in that regard,
Speaker 2: And you talk also about how LBJ was a true believer,
Speaker 2: and he would make all these comments about like, oh,
Speaker 2: they're just like us in our founding fighting the savages,
Speaker 2: comments which later on were when it became less of
Speaker 2: a convenient narrative on both sides, were excised from his
Speaker 2: public comments. Talk a little bit about that, because I
Speaker 2: thought that was sort of an extraordinary admission both of
Speaker 2: the reality of our past and founding and also of
Speaker 2: you know, what some of the real ideological ties might
Speaker 2: be between the Zionist project and the American one.
Speaker 8: Yes, it certainly stands out, doesn't it, that comparison. It was,
Speaker 8: in fact Brandeis who made those speeches as a Zionist
Speaker 8: in the early part of the twentieth century that were
Speaker 8: later echoed by LBJ and in the very good book
Speaker 8: Genesis by John Judas, which covers the Truman era and
Speaker 8: the founding of Israel and for the most of the
Speaker 8: book Truman's opposition to it. He brings up this history
Speaker 8: of American Zionism. Yeah, Brandeis would make comparisons between the
Speaker 8: civilizing mission of the American settlers and the civilizing mission
Speaker 8: of the Zionist settlers. The Jewish settlers in the Middle
Speaker 8: East and the indigenous population of America that were of
Speaker 8: course exterminated and cheated, were to be compared to the
Speaker 8: barbarians of the Arab population in Palestine. However, by the time,
Speaker 8: even of the Second World War, which is a lot
Speaker 8: of stuff that wasn't there was still socially admissible that
Speaker 8: we wouldn't like now. Even then those lines were excised
Speaker 8: from his collected speeches that were released. Johnson, however, I
Speaker 8: think more in private, who was one of the first
Speaker 8: presidents to embrace Israel a lot more than it previously
Speaker 8: had been by a US president. He liked that the
Speaker 8: Israelis were fighters, and that they were they reminded him
Speaker 8: of the shotgun over the mantelpiece that was there for
Speaker 8: every American pioneer, and it was just happening in the
Speaker 8: Middle East instead of in North America. So a lot
Speaker 8: of people, correctly, I think, identify this as one of
Speaker 8: the easiest ways that Israel sold its kinship with America,
Speaker 8: and two Americans. These days, maybe not so much, because
Speaker 8: even if it was out of style by the nineteen forties,
Speaker 8: for some probably isn't so much in style now. In fact,
Speaker 8: I guess I would close my answer by saying, we've
Speaker 8: had an interesting switcheroo where now a lot of Israel
Speaker 8: pro Israel voices will say Israel in fact is decolonial,
Speaker 8: and Israel is the one who was the Jews were
Speaker 8: colonized in fact by these Arabs and driven out, and
Speaker 8: they're reclaiming air indigenous role in that land. So the
Speaker 8: arguments change very drastically and sometimes to a comic level
Speaker 8: of contradiction, but the ultimate case remains the same, which
Speaker 8: is that Jewish settlers should have the right to steal
Speaker 8: other people's land and do whatever they want to the
Speaker 8: people there. So whether it was LBJ back then or
Speaker 8: Brandeis back then or Chuck Schumer and the Atlantic magazine,
Speaker 8: now you have the same bottom line.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely serious, fantastic. No, it's tell people where they
Speaker 2: can go in order to subscribe and get access to it.
Speaker 7: Sure, So this series is behind to pay. Well, it's
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Speaker 4: Well, thank you.
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Speaker 7: merch and our digital presents a little bit later this year,
Speaker 7: so stay tuned and as always, we have more shit.
Speaker 4: To announce soon.
Speaker 2: Excellent, excited for the merch shakeup. Gentlemen, Thank you so much.
Speaker 2: It's fantastic see you guys, Thank you, thank you.
Speaker 4: All right, that does it for us. Today.
Speaker 2: We're going to be tracking the election results tonight very closely.
Speaker 2: Ryan is going to be in New York and he
Speaker 2: is going to join me tomorrow for a full breakdown
Speaker 2: of that, as well as whatever additional news breaks, which
Speaker 2: we know there will be many things consequential between today
Speaker 2: and tomorrow, so we will see you then for that.
Speaker 3: We'll see you all then, and I will be out
Speaker 3: for a little bit of a period of time on vacation.
Speaker 3: We're all going to but there's gonna be a lot
Speaker 3: of different combinations here on breaking points, so don't freak out.
Speaker 1: Everything's all good. We'll see you that