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 Monday.
Speaker 2: We have an amazing show for everybody today, Christmas Show
Speaker 2: if you will.
Speaker 1: Indeed, we do broke out the Christmas decor here in
Speaker 1: the studio, which feels nice, even though the news, of
Speaker 1: course continues to be quite grim. We have, of course,
Speaker 1: that temporary ceasefire and place big question today is whether
Speaker 1: it is going to extend beyond the initial four days,
Speaker 1: so we've got details there. We also have pretty stunning
Speaker 1: I guess, confirmation of some previous reports coming out of
Speaker 1: Ukraine that indeed it was US and the Brits who
Speaker 1: made sure there was no peace deal at the beginning
Speaker 1: of this war, so.
Speaker 4: We'll break that down for you.
Speaker 1: Also, we had a slew of lawsuits last week filed
Speaker 1: in the state of New York. I'll give you the
Speaker 1: reason for that, but against many famous people, including Sean Combs,
Speaker 1: including Eric Adams, alleging sexual assault. Break that down for you,
Speaker 1: and also, like I said, why those claims are emerging
Speaker 1: right now.
Speaker 4: Sager's got a UFO special for you.
Speaker 1: Yes, Dave grush On, Joe Rogan break all of that
Speaker 1: down for you too. And Fox News with a really
Speaker 1: embarrassing walk back after they claimed that an explosion at
Speaker 1: the US Canada border was terrorism as confirmed they alleged
Speaker 1: by law enforcement sources. It was nothing of the sword.
Speaker 1: They had to walk it back, and you will never
Speaker 1: believe the cope that they are offering at this point.
Speaker 2: Oh, it's absolutely fantastic. Before we get to that though,
Speaker 2: as Christly, you guys did a great job, and I
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Speaker 2: And then I guess, in the hardest turn of all time,
Speaker 2: what's going on with the seasfire?
Speaker 1: Yes, indeed, all right, let's goad and put this up
Speaker 1: on the screen from the Financial Times. This is some
Speaker 1: of the latest reporting about the details of who has
Speaker 1: been exchanged thus far and what some of the holdups
Speaker 1: are in terms of extending this temporary pause.
Speaker 4: Now, just as a reminder.
Speaker 1: Here, the basic idea was a four day ceasefire. Hamas
Speaker 1: was agreeing to release fifty Israeli hostages. Israel in return,
Speaker 1: was going to release one hundred and fifty Palestinian prisoners
Speaker 1: that they had been holding so far. As of the
Speaker 1: writing of this article, thirty nine women and children plus
Speaker 1: eighteen foreigners had been released by Hamas. Israel had freed
Speaker 1: one hundred and seventeen Palestinian women and children. So the
Speaker 1: headline here from the Financial Times is Hamas must locate
Speaker 1: dozens more hostages in order to extend that truce. According
Speaker 1: to Katar, which has been central of course in these negotiations,
Speaker 1: that four day pause is set to expire after today,
Speaker 1: so that's why this is such a crucial piece right
Speaker 1: at this moment now. Indications from both Hamas and Israel
Speaker 1: are that they would like to extend the truth, the
Speaker 1: idea being that for every ten additional hostages that Hamas releases,
Speaker 1: that truce would be extended for another day. But Katari
Speaker 1: Prime Minister Sheik Muhamma had been Abdul Rahman Altani told
Speaker 1: the Financial Times that more than forty other women and
Speaker 1: children were being kept captive in Gaza who were not
Speaker 1: believed to be held by Hamas. He said the truth
Speaker 1: could be extended if Hamas were able to use the
Speaker 1: PA to locate those hostages. He also said that Israel
Speaker 1: had provided a guitar with a list of more than
Speaker 1: ninety women and children seized during that horrific October seventh attack,
Speaker 1: about two hundred and forty hostages total were taken and
Speaker 1: dragged back to Hamas controlled gaz of Other captives include
Speaker 1: Israeli soldiers and elderly civilians. So that is basically where
Speaker 1: we are right now. I do have some comments for
Speaker 1: you from the President of the United States, who says
Speaker 1: he is also hoping that the pause gets extended further.
Speaker 4: Let's take a listen.
Speaker 5: Beginning this morning, under a deal reached by extensive US diplomacy,
Speaker 5: including numerous calls I've made from the Oval Office to
Speaker 5: leaders across the region, fighting in Guys at a halt
Speaker 5: for four days. There's still also is structured to allow
Speaker 5: a pause to continue for more than fifty hostages to
Speaker 5: be released. That's our goal.
Speaker 4: This morning.
Speaker 5: I've been engaged with my team as we began the
Speaker 5: first difficult days of implementing this deal. It's only a start,
Speaker 5: but so far it's gone well.
Speaker 1: And I wanted to take this opportunity to keep the
Speaker 1: focus on the human beings here who have been through
Speaker 1: an absolutely horrific ordeal. We can show you some of
Speaker 1: the Israeli hostages here that were released here. They are
Speaker 1: you know, being led by Hamas militants. I want to
Speaker 1: make everyone aware this was a video released by Hamas,
Speaker 1: so this is Hamas propaganda. That's why everybody's waving and
Speaker 1: smiling and hey have a great time, because this is
Speaker 1: the face that Hamas wants to put on this exchange.
Speaker 1: But you can see women, you can see children. They
Speaker 1: put a priority on, the elderly, they put a priority
Speaker 1: on also these Taie nationals who are sort of like
Speaker 1: migrant workers within Israel, who also were released as part
Speaker 1: of this exchange. So that's the Israelis who were released.
Speaker 4: Go ahead to the next one.
Speaker 1: We have some footage of some of the Palestinian prisoners
Speaker 1: who were released. I went into a little bit of
Speaker 1: this over the weekend, just so you have some understanding
Speaker 1: of who these people are, and these were mostly women
Speaker 1: and children. You see these you know always here who
Speaker 1: are being led out to be released as well. Israel
Speaker 1: has this system sort of equivalent to what we did
Speaker 1: at Guantanamo obay of in definite attention detention. The overwhelming
Speaker 1: number of these Palestinian prisoners who are being released were
Speaker 1: arrested but have never been found guilty, and they're held
Speaker 1: in this sort of legal limbo. So that's a lot
Speaker 1: of the individuals who are being released on the Israeli side,
Speaker 1: Palestines who are being released.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean obviously, and you guys did a great
Speaker 2: job covering it while I was out, and I think
Speaker 2: that it's obviously a good step in the right direction
Speaker 2: anytime that there is not only a ceasefire, but there's
Speaker 2: actually hostage release going on. The big question, as you
Speaker 2: laid out, Crystal, is is this going to continue? So
Speaker 2: currently Hamas as you laid out, appears to be wanting
Speaker 2: an extension, Israel saying that maybe it can continue with
Speaker 2: ten to fifteen more prisoners per day. Obviously, the Thai
Speaker 2: prisoners and all that was almost a bit separate as
Speaker 2: I understand it, from the way that the Israelis were
Speaker 2: negotiating this. The qataris saying that there is potential in
Speaker 2: the long run for the back and for people who
Speaker 2: want to see this continue in terms of hostage release.
Speaker 2: And I think that's what really all of us should want,
Speaker 2: not on the Israeli side, but have the prisoners returned.
Speaker 3: Is that there currently.
Speaker 2: Is some optimism about extending this because the previous ceasefire
Speaker 2: that was negotiated in twenty fourteen, there were four separate
Speaker 2: instances where that happened.
Speaker 3: They broke down three times.
Speaker 2: But as I've laid out here before, once you have
Speaker 2: some sort of diplomatic breakthrough like this, it is generally
Speaker 2: difficult to not at least see the beginning of the end.
Speaker 3: However, the Israelies are pushing back on that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so there's I guess a question because we reported
Speaker 1: at the time how Tony Lincoln when he went to
Speaker 1: Israel to argue for a pause similar to this. And
Speaker 1: also keep in mind, actually the contours of this deal
Speaker 1: were negotiated a month ago and then it was dramatically
Speaker 1: delayed by Israel's ground invasion. And really Netanyahu's government has
Speaker 1: been very reluctant to move forward with any sort of deal.
Speaker 1: The furthest right wing factions of his government voted actually
Speaker 1: against this deal because they just want to keep bombing.
Speaker 1: They just want to keep the fighting going and have
Speaker 1: showed I think it's fair to say, no concern about
Speaker 1: the safety of the hostages, and of course are you
Speaker 1: interested in indiscriminately bombing Gaza. So he has pressure from
Speaker 1: his right in terms of just keeping up the fight.
Speaker 1: Now domestically, and I think this is what led him
Speaker 1: to finally cut this deal. You have huge domestic political
Speaker 1: pressure to try to bring these hostages home safe and sound.
Speaker 1: And of course Hamas should release all of the hostages,
Speaker 1: that's what they should do morally, ethically, etc. But also
Speaker 1: we have to acknowledge that the longer that the indiscriminate
Speaker 1: bombing campaign goes on, the more these hostages lives are
Speaker 1: at risk because of course they are being held in Gaza,
Speaker 1: so they are subject to the risks of these bombing attacks,
Speaker 1: just as every Palestinian that is there. So that's some
Speaker 1: of the competing pressures on net and Yahoo. So when
Speaker 1: Tony Blinkeln originally went to Israel to make this case
Speaker 1: of hey, we should cut some kind of deal to
Speaker 1: have some sort of a temporary pause, humanitarian pause, temporary ceasefire,
Speaker 1: whatever you want to call it, his argument wasn't oh,
Speaker 1: it's for the good of the people or the hostages
Speaker 1: or whatever.
Speaker 4: It was.
Speaker 1: We want to buy you time diplomatically internationally so that
Speaker 1: you can continue your campaign and your offensive longer. So
Speaker 1: put this up on the screen. This is from Defense
Speaker 1: Minister Joav Goalant, who said to troops that this will
Speaker 1: be a quote short respite, after which the fighting will
Speaker 1: continue with intensity and pressure will be made to bring
Speaker 1: back more hostages. At least two more months of fighting
Speaker 1: is expected. So on the one hand, there's an argument,
Speaker 1: as Soager was saying of you know, if you have
Speaker 1: a pause, you can start to see the end of
Speaker 1: a conflict. The fact that there are negotiations helps to
Speaker 1: build some sort of a trust if both sides are
Speaker 1: fulfilling their side of the agreement, which we'll put that
Speaker 1: aside for a moment, So there's hope, you know that
Speaker 1: just by nature of having those negotiations, potentially they can
Speaker 1: be you can be closer to the end of the conflict.
Speaker 1: But that's different from what the Israelis are saying. They're saying,
Speaker 1: this is just a pause and then we're going to
Speaker 1: get back to an intense level of fighting. And we know,
Speaker 1: of course that they are broadcasting that they're moving now
Speaker 1: from bombing the north, which is basically completely destroyed and uninhabitable,
Speaker 1: to bombing the south. Conunis is where they say, oh,
Speaker 1: now the Hamas leadership is there, Hamas HQ is there.
Speaker 1: This is one of the areas that people have been
Speaker 1: told to fleed to flee to to find safety. So
Speaker 1: that's kind of where we are. And Saba. The other
Speaker 1: piece here, just as a note, is during the ceasefire,
Speaker 1: it's not like all things have been quiet. Put this
Speaker 1: up on the screen. Israel launched air strikes on the
Speaker 1: outskirts of Damascus during this ceasefire. Now technically, you know Syria, Lebanon, Hezbollah,
Speaker 1: they were not part of this ceasefire technically, but.
Speaker 4: In additional In addition.
Speaker 1: You had Israeli forces killing at least seven Palestinians in
Speaker 1: the West Bank in the past twenty four hours. You
Speaker 1: also had Israeli troops fatally shooting two Palestinians and wounding
Speaker 1: eleven others in Gaza itself as they were trying to
Speaker 1: return north after the IDF had told them to stay.
Speaker 4: Put in the south.
Speaker 1: You also have a peacekeeping force in Lebanon that was
Speaker 1: fired on by Israeli fire as well. And the last
Speaker 1: thing that I'll note as part of this, so the
Speaker 1: Israelis have released one hundred and seventeen Palestinians over the
Speaker 1: course of the ceasefire. At the same time they've detained
Speaker 1: one hundred and sixteen new Palestinian prisoners across the occupied
Speaker 1: West Bank.
Speaker 2: Right, So it's interesting too to also see those air
Speaker 2: strikes because the air strike, or at least a missile strike,
Speaker 2: we're not exactly one hundred percent sure what it is,
Speaker 2: was in the Damascus International Airport, which only that day
Speaker 2: resumed flights after a month long hiatus. They're saying, I mean,
Speaker 2: nobody's acknowledging whether this is Israel or not. It almost
Speaker 2: certainly is. Are the only ones really who've been conducting
Speaker 2: this type of activity, the reason being that it is
Speaker 2: a main artery for a lot of supplies and others
Speaker 2: to these Iranian backed militias. They may have also done
Speaker 2: it with the best of the US because many of
Speaker 2: these militias are attacking US troops, So we never know
Speaker 2: what some of the behind the scenes stuff that's going
Speaker 2: on here with the hostage in situation. In general, it
Speaker 2: seems to me the Netsu Yahoo got itself is completely
Speaker 2: torn because you had those two defense are those two
Speaker 2: ministers who voted against it. Now in a traditional system,
Speaker 2: and I saw a lot of people saying this at
Speaker 2: the time, they should resign, like if you're going to
Speaker 2: disagree on such a fundamental issue inside of the Israeli cabinet,
Speaker 2: then you should resign, and you should say I don't agree.
Speaker 3: With the coalition government.
Speaker 2: But one of the reasons why they can't resign or
Speaker 2: Netta now you can't let them go, is because he
Speaker 2: needs their right wing support to maintain his status as
Speaker 2: the prime minister of all of Israel. So I think
Speaker 2: what this actually highlighted most to me is how tenuous
Speaker 2: the support for Nettaya, who is within his own government,
Speaker 2: and really how that's actually hamstringing international peace. I guess,
Speaker 2: if you will, his own domestic political considerations are driving
Speaker 2: so much of the policy in this current government, and
Speaker 2: that is just so detrimental if you actually want to
Speaker 2: see the release of all hostages, if you want to
Speaker 2: see the resumption of some sort of peace, if you
Speaker 2: even want to see some different diplomatic approach or long
Speaker 2: term thinking. It is literally not possible for Netagna who
Speaker 2: to conduct himself in a long term manner, because he
Speaker 2: always says we'll talk about who's to blame on October seventh,
Speaker 2: once the bombing and the fighting is all done, And
Speaker 2: given some of the information that's been released so far,
Speaker 2: these guys screwed this up more than we did on
Speaker 2: nine to eleven, which I did not think possible in
Speaker 2: the background, in terms of the memos that were written
Speaker 2: to them, the forward deployed units. The fact that, I
Speaker 2: mean even most indefensible is that many of the troops
Speaker 2: that were supposed to be there were in the West Bank.
Speaker 2: I mean, so the security failure is so multifaceted that
Speaker 2: basically everyone involved should be should resign and possibly even
Speaker 2: be prosecuted for negligence. And that's just from what's publicly
Speaker 2: available today before any such investigation, And I think to
Speaker 2: me it just highlights H'm like, dude, he has got
Speaker 2: to go, Like there's just there's no way that he
Speaker 2: can maintain the head of the Israeli government right now
Speaker 2: with any really sort of credibility for a person who
Speaker 2: wants anything long term. And I actually do think though
Speaker 2: that people inside Israel, given his very very low approval
Speaker 2: rating and the almost certain fact that if there were
Speaker 2: an election he would not win, today, they should be
Speaker 2: most furious, I think really about this, and especially if
Speaker 2: you want the return of hostage because I mean, if
Speaker 2: you think about it too, Crystal, if all the hostages
Speaker 2: are back, then there's gonna be a lot of questions
Speaker 2: inside is like, now, what what are we doing here?
Speaker 3: Exactly?
Speaker 2: Because the hostage bring our people back is of course
Speaker 2: the rallying cry.
Speaker 3: But if that's over, what are they going to do?
Speaker 6: Now?
Speaker 3: What's the forward position?
Speaker 1: Well, and even if you just have like the women
Speaker 1: and the children and the elderly and the civilians returned,
Speaker 1: you know, then it's a much different and less emotionally
Speaker 1: fraught issue. And I think your point is really important,
Speaker 1: and it's really important to understand the domestic political pressures.
Speaker 4: Boebe is very.
Speaker 1: Ideological, but his number one concern is maintaining his grip
Speaker 1: on power. And I think that's very clear. And we
Speaker 1: may say, like, listen, this guy's done.
Speaker 4: He's finished.
Speaker 1: The Israeli public is disgusted with him. If elections were
Speaker 1: held today, not only him, but Lukud would be his
Speaker 1: entire party would be tossed to the curb. That's true.
Speaker 1: But this is also a person who has been a
Speaker 1: survivor for a lot of decades in Israeli politics, and
Speaker 1: so he had a very difficult time cobbling together this
Speaker 1: coalition government in the first place, and was only able
Speaker 1: to do it basically by like the skin of his teeth.
Speaker 1: And it's a little bit analogous to you know, to
Speaker 1: put it in like American domestic political context. And obviously
Speaker 1: this is not a perfect analogy. But when you have
Speaker 1: the Republicans with a very thin margin in the House
Speaker 1: where they barely got that majority by the skin of
Speaker 1: their teeth, who has that handed power to the matt
Speaker 1: Gates of the world. So Beebe is very beholden. And
Speaker 1: these you know, far right like extremist factions, and I
Speaker 1: don't think anyone even they would not dispute the characterization
Speaker 1: of their views that way. He is really beholden to
Speaker 1: them because he has to have them in his on
Speaker 1: his team and as part of his government to maintain
Speaker 1: his grip on power. So that is part of why
Speaker 1: he is so constrained. And then you also have, you know,
Speaker 1: within the Israeli public, and this is borne out by
Speaker 1: the polling, they aren't concerned about Palestinian life. They're concerned
Speaker 1: with revenge. And so that's the plan that he has
Speaker 1: put in place. And you know, all this talk of oh,
Speaker 1: we're going to eliminate Hamas or even degrade Hamas, et cetera.
Speaker 1: According to their own analysis somewhere they say they've gotten
Speaker 1: between one thousand and two thousand Palestinian I mean Hamas
Speaker 1: fighters militants. Well, if you put that in context the
Speaker 1: numbers of civilians that killed that have been killed, that
Speaker 1: means you have like a ninety percent civilian death rate
Speaker 1: and have only taken out, you know, a relatively minimal
Speaker 1: portion of Hamas militants, even after all of these weeks
Speaker 1: of a massive bombing campaign. So that's basically where things
Speaker 1: stand on the Israeli front exactly.
Speaker 2: You know, the Israeli domestic political situation is very fraud
Speaker 2: I think with this hostage situation, they are intense pressures
Speaker 2: right now inside of Israel.
Speaker 3: They're like, listen, we've.
Speaker 2: Got hostages coming back, Like you need to keep this
Speaker 2: going as long as possible.
Speaker 3: So if they walk that back, it is.
Speaker 2: Going to I think open up a fisher And I
Speaker 2: was thinking, you know, you're saying in of analogies, I
Speaker 2: think Chamberlain might be a good one as well. If
Speaker 2: we think to the early days of the Second World War,
Speaker 2: the reason why Chamberlain ultimately was booted out of power
Speaker 2: was not Munich, even though that's what a lot of
Speaker 2: people think.
Speaker 3: It was a catastrophic.
Speaker 2: Failure on the Norway debate and then eventually led to
Speaker 2: people inside the government saying we can no longer support you,
Speaker 2: and then even the coalition government saying we're not going
Speaker 2: to continue to serve under him. So, if we think
Speaker 2: about it that way, he's playing with fire right now,
Speaker 2: because if he screws this up, this actually could be
Speaker 2: what takes him out from power, even though you know
Speaker 2: he wants to keep it going as long as possible,
Speaker 2: lots of pressures on him from the right and from
Speaker 2: the left. I think the predominant view in Israeli's society
Speaker 2: from what I can tell, as you know, look, let's
Speaker 2: be honest, they don't particularly care about civilian casualties. They
Speaker 2: care the most about what's going on with their people.
Speaker 2: So if he does continue on with the military campaign,
Speaker 2: or let's say, God forbid, something does happen to some
Speaker 2: of these hostages and you know, some of them are
Speaker 2: killed or something like that, and you see a total breakdown,
Speaker 2: I think he would face a lot of domestic political pressure.
Speaker 2: But this is all just from the side we don't
Speaker 2: know as of right now now it stands, So, I mean,
Speaker 2: I think that's probably a good thing and we'll see
Speaker 2: because international pressure right now is so high. The Gataris,
Speaker 2: the US, Egyptians, that Jordanians, everybody pressing like, let's just
Speaker 2: at least let this continue, and then when that happens,
Speaker 2: you see some resumption of talks in the intrum.
Speaker 3: It's possible.
Speaker 1: One of the things that administration officials unbelievably leaked to
Speaker 1: the press was that they were worried that during the
Speaker 1: course of this temporary pause, journalists would be able to
Speaker 1: get into Gaza and people would be able to see
Speaker 1: the extent of the whrrors and the carnage and the
Speaker 1: devastation that has already been brought. And in fact, some
Speaker 1: of those images have emerged in the days of this
Speaker 1: temporary truth. Let's put this up on the screen. I mean,
Speaker 1: just unimaginable, the level of destruction that you see in
Speaker 1: city after city.
Speaker 4: These places that.
Speaker 1: We're showing you here are all in the northern part
Speaker 1: of the Gaza strip. Now that doesn't mean the south
Speaker 1: has been safe, but the preponderance of the bombing campaign
Speaker 1: has been in northern Gaza, where Gaza City, which obviously
Speaker 1: is where bulk of the population was, has been utterly
Speaker 1: destroyed completely uninhabitable. Here you see a main road that
Speaker 1: is just littered with bodies strewn about the road and
Speaker 1: horrific to see.
Speaker 4: Here, you see, you know.
Speaker 1: People gathered in the shadow of bombed down, destroyed buildings.
Speaker 1: And you know, in terms of northern Gaza, and this
Speaker 1: is coming out from you know, Gaza civilians Palestinians who
Speaker 1: are trying to return home.
Speaker 4: There's nothing left.
Speaker 1: I mean, there are no there are very few homes
Speaker 1: to return to in the northern part of the Gaza strip.
Speaker 1: New York Times put together a piece just showing the
Speaker 1: historic level in modern times of this destruction and carnage.
Speaker 1: Put this up on the screen, so their headline is
Speaker 1: Gaza civilians under Israeli barraje are being killed at a
Speaker 1: historic pace. Even a conserv assessment of the report of
Speaker 1: Gaza casualty figure shows the death rate during Israel's assault
Speaker 1: has few precedents in this century.
Speaker 4: You can see this chart.
Speaker 1: Leave this up on the screen from when they started
Speaker 1: reporting the number of women and children who have been
Speaker 1: killed in this conflict. You can see how it makes
Speaker 1: up the overwhelming preponderance of the number of debts. It's
Speaker 1: somewhere around seventy percent of the people killed bia Israeli
Speaker 1: attacks here.
Speaker 4: Have been women and children.
Speaker 1: So even if you say everyone else, which is very generous,
Speaker 1: is a hamas militant, you can see at the very
Speaker 1: least seventy percent of these deaths have come from women
Speaker 1: and from children. I encourage you to read this article
Speaker 1: to get a little bit of perspective on the scale
Speaker 1: and scope of this destruction in such a short period
Speaker 1: of time, in such a small area too, where people
Speaker 1: are packed in and they cannot by and large leave.
Speaker 1: More women and children have been killed in Gaza in
Speaker 1: less than two months than the roughly seventy seven hundred
Speaker 1: civilians document is killed by US forces and their international
Speaker 1: allies in the first year of the invasion of Iraq
Speaker 1: in two thousand and three, and the number of women
Speaker 1: and children killed is starting to approach the roughly twelve
Speaker 1: four hundred civilians documented to have been killed by the
Speaker 1: US and his allies in Afghanistan during nearly twenty years
Speaker 1: of war. So it gives you a sense of just
Speaker 1: I mean, this is something different that we're seeing here.
Speaker 1: There is no comparison in terms of modern history of
Speaker 1: the amount of attacks on civilian infrastructure, the amount of
Speaker 1: women and children and civilians that are killed.
Speaker 4: And one of the things that struck me here.
Speaker 1: Soccer that I thought you might pick up on, because
Speaker 1: something we've been talking about is there are a lot
Speaker 1: of comparisons made to our campaign in Mosul, and they
Speaker 1: talk about how when we were when we were in Mosol,
Speaker 1: we even thought five hundred pound bombs were too much
Speaker 1: because it's this densely packed urban area. Well, Israel has
Speaker 1: been routinely dropping two thousand pound bombs. Again, we said
Speaker 1: five hundred pound bombs, that's too much. There routinely dropping
Speaker 1: two thousand pound bombs on what is one of the
Speaker 1: most densely packed parts of the entire world.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, actually, this is something I talked a
Speaker 2: lot about if people are interested. I interviewed Jocko Will, like,
Speaker 2: this is something I was trying to get at with him.
Speaker 2: Which is the fundamental difference I think between the way
Speaker 2: that the US and its partners operated in Iraq and Afghanistan,
Speaker 2: especially twenty eleven onward and counterizes campaigns and urban even
Speaker 2: urban combat environments, versus the way that Israel has decided
Speaker 2: to conduct this war. One of the things that Jacko said,
Speaker 2: which actually really surprised me. He is like during the
Speaker 2: Battle over Madi, He's like, I think I called in
Speaker 2: maybe five air strikes during my entire year. All we
Speaker 2: did was we were like, we went in, we identified
Speaker 2: the target, we had our guys on the ground, and
Speaker 2: that obviously puts you your troops at tremendous amounts of risk.
Speaker 2: That said, one of the things that US commanders had
Speaker 2: to mandate for even from that period forward, was we
Speaker 2: are minimizing civilian casualties because our purpose is to get
Speaker 2: the civilian populace on our side and to try and
Speaker 2: separate the terrorists from the overall civilian population. And that's
Speaker 2: one of the other reasons. If you think too about
Speaker 2: the calculus of the bin Laden raid, the easiest thing
Speaker 2: to do for Osam bin Laden was dropped a bunker
Speaker 2: buster bomb on his compound. The reasons that we decided
Speaker 2: not to do that as well, it's in Pakistan. Definitely,
Speaker 2: you're not only going to kill every woman and child
Speaker 2: in the house, you're going to kill probably in flatten
Speaker 2: every single building around it. But it's not worth it
Speaker 2: because it would start an international incident and we would
Speaker 2: lose more high ground, and so we put our people
Speaker 2: in a tremendous amount of risk, and we sent them
Speaker 2: one hundred and sixty miles in this territory to go kill,
Speaker 2: grab the body, and at the end of the day
Speaker 2: only you ended up killing people who had a weapon
Speaker 2: in their hand and you were able to bring it back.
Speaker 2: I think that's one of the reasons why if you
Speaker 2: look back on it, it's not only looked back with
Speaker 2: such like affection, you know, in terms of finally getting
Speaker 2: the person who killed who was responsible for nine to eleven,
Speaker 2: is that it didn't come with all of the attendant
Speaker 2: collateral damage and the you know, the drones that have
Speaker 2: ended up accidentally hitting a wedding and all these other
Speaker 2: stains on the US campaign during terrorism, and this highlighted
Speaker 2: it actually to me the most, which is really the
Speaker 2: lastlast time America conducted itself was during Vietnam. That was
Speaker 2: the last time that we did anything like this. And
Speaker 2: I think we all remember, you know, and can even
Speaker 2: look at the idea that the entire idea behind the
Speaker 2: massive bombing campaign form NIX from Nixon to JFK or
Speaker 2: right sorry to Nixon to LBJ was they were like,
Speaker 2: we can bomb these people into submission and what they
Speaker 2: ultimately didn't understand is a we were doing with ideological
Speaker 2: actor and b that they were just going to conduct
Speaker 2: a guerrilla warfare and insurgency and outlast us the entire time.
Speaker 2: So that raises the question of like, Israel, what is
Speaker 2: your strategy? And this has been my fundamental I think
Speaker 2: criticism and departure from them is I have absolute sympathy,
Speaker 2: not even sympathy. I support the idea of killing every
Speaker 2: person Hamas terrorists who was responsible for this attack. I
Speaker 2: even support dismantling the organization. But from day one, especially
Speaker 2: with a lot of their actions, it just remains questionable
Speaker 2: about what they want in the future. And I would
Speaker 2: again point people back to that Jocko interview because one
Speaker 2: of the things that we really established a big area
Speaker 2: between us and subsequently talking with Darryl Cooper Martyr made podcasts,
Speaker 2: is that we were like, there has to be a
Speaker 2: baseline level of trust from the civilian population for this
Speaker 2: to move forward, because at.
Speaker 3: The end of this one day, this bombing will end.
Speaker 2: One day, it will end, and we have to think
Speaker 2: about what the end state of that is going to be.
Speaker 2: We can bomb for a month, we can bomb for two,
Speaker 2: we could bomb for twenty years, as we all found
Speaker 2: out in Afghanistan, But if we don't have a sustainable
Speaker 2: political project at the core of that, something will crumble
Speaker 2: and we'll give ultimately.
Speaker 3: So in the.
Speaker 2: Interim, just thousands and thousands of people are dying, and
Speaker 2: I mean, you can't help on a human level, but
Speaker 2: think about that pass tragic.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, I mean the number of new Homas militants or
Speaker 1: other varieties of radicals that are being created by the
Speaker 1: horrors that are being inflicted on them, like, it's incalculable.
Speaker 1: So even if if your only concern is long term
Speaker 1: security for the people of Israel, then this has been
Speaker 1: a dramatic error and dramatic mistake. And you know, there
Speaker 1: have been a lot of Natanyahu's been making all these
Speaker 1: comparisons to World War Two and oh what about the
Speaker 1: of Drews, like it was fine to kill civilians. Then well,
Speaker 1: there's a reason why after World War Two, why we
Speaker 1: had the Geneva Conventions and why we said we can't
Speaker 1: we can't have wars like this again. We have to
Speaker 1: put civilians and civilian infrastructure too off limits. And so
Speaker 1: you know, the basic job description for the soldier to
Speaker 1: make it you know, at its most basic element is
Speaker 1: like to get the quote unquote bad guys and to
Speaker 1: protect the civilians. That is the job description, and yes,
Speaker 1: that comes at some risk. So it has been I mean,
Speaker 1: it's been horrifying to watch what is unfolding there, and
Speaker 1: it's very hard to see what any sort of peaceful
Speaker 1: path forward from this moment is, even based on what's
Speaker 1: already been done. Even if they were to stop, even
Speaker 1: if they were to say now like permanent ceasefire, All right,
Speaker 1: we're done, that's it. We did enough in terms of hamas,
Speaker 1: it's impossible to see what the pathward is from here.
Speaker 2: That's actually my biggest fear is I'm like, you know,
Speaker 2: you could even end it today. I'm like, but at
Speaker 2: this point, like, what are you guys gonna do? Because
Speaker 2: as you laid out, like, at this point, we're in
Speaker 2: a middle ground strategy. I actually think they've basically box
Speaker 2: himself into a corner where total war.
Speaker 3: Is their only strategy.
Speaker 2: One of the reasons why we had the bombings of
Speaker 2: Dresden and the fire bombings of Tokyo is and people
Speaker 2: are interested, they should read Sean mckeekon's book called Stalin's
Speaker 2: War where he argues vociferously against unconditional surrender against the
Speaker 2: Germans and against the Japanese controversial view. But the point
Speaker 2: that he makes is that it basically boxed us in
Speaker 2: from a technical point of view, where we're like, no anything,
Speaker 2: but the complete unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany and of
Speaker 2: Tokyo is acceptable, which means you can destroy seventy percent
Speaker 2: of their infrastructure and they still will fight because they
Speaker 2: are not going to capitulate. Now, it's a very controversial opinion,
Speaker 2: but actually thin he lays it out quite well. And
Speaker 2: one of the problems of fears I think I have
Speaker 2: here is at this point, you know, you've destroyed Goad's
Speaker 2: of city.
Speaker 3: It's a city of one point one million.
Speaker 2: Now, what like you think you can just create some
Speaker 2: sort of like political it looks small occupying force. Well,
Speaker 2: of course, what they want to do is ship all
Speaker 2: the Palestindians here. That's a more recent thing that they
Speaker 2: even laid out in the Wall Street Journal. Shockingly enough,
Speaker 2: I'm talking about Israeli Kanescent and at members. But let's
Speaker 2: put that aside, and let's assume that their people are
Speaker 2: going to remain inside of this place. Well, what are
Speaker 2: we what is the actual political project that you're pursuing,
Speaker 2: And I think, you know, they've boxed themselves into a
Speaker 2: corner where total destruction really and then what you know,
Speaker 2: buying the future and hoping that the US saves them
Speaker 2: in the future.
Speaker 3: It's probably the most likely path.
Speaker 6: Now.
Speaker 3: It's it's possible that.
Speaker 2: We see some sort of resumption of the ceasefire negotiation
Speaker 2: all that that there isn't tons of international pressure, But
Speaker 2: I don't think so. If I had to bet, I
Speaker 2: would more likely bet on what the Defense Minister actory.
Speaker 2: It is, like, yeah, we're at the very least gonna
Speaker 2: see two months remaining of this type of campaign. But
Speaker 2: you know, I still come back to like, okay, but
Speaker 2: what happens the day after that? You know, are you
Speaker 2: just gonna have a massive military presence inside Gaza or
Speaker 2: around it? Another thing for people don't know, Israel called
Speaker 2: up three hundred thousand reservists. That is costing them two
Speaker 2: hundred and eighty million dollars per day. This could bankrupt
Speaker 2: the entire nation, not alone. It's a small country. If
Speaker 2: anybody's ever been there, all the military age males are
Speaker 2: now in the military.
Speaker 3: There's nobody working Israel.
Speaker 2: One of their you know, I think real claims is
Speaker 2: that they've built the first world nation and first world economy.
Speaker 2: First world economies don't run when all the military age people.
Speaker 1: Are can and not to mention, you know, Palestinians have
Speaker 1: been banned from working in Israel, who often did often
Speaker 1: the lower exactly lower do the you know, the things
Speaker 1: that the Israelis didn't want to do. Anyone here in
Speaker 1: the US will be familiar with the types of work
Speaker 1: that you know, migrant labors in our context does so,
Speaker 1: and that's also why those Thai citizens were in Israel
Speaker 1: as well. But yeah, I mean it's a huge, huge
Speaker 1: economic hit. But I don't know if you saw this article, Sager.
Speaker 1: We cover Emily and I covered it while you were
Speaker 1: out about the quote unquote three options for the future,
Speaker 1: and one of them was push everybody into Egypt, like
Speaker 1: you know, that ethnic lansing plan that we've been talking about,
Speaker 1: which is the option that you know many ministers in
Speaker 1: the COUD party and other security cabinet ministers have been
Speaker 1: floating and framing it as like oh, humanitarian, they'll they'll
Speaker 1: get to go wherever they want in the region.
Speaker 4: So there's that option one of them.
Speaker 1: Just to show you how what a horrific situation this
Speaker 1: already is and how preposterous. They're like, we're going to
Speaker 1: build an artificial island like they do in Dubai, and
Speaker 1: you know, and we'll just give them, We'll just kive
Speaker 1: them new land, like well, you know, they'll be totally
Speaker 1: on an island by themselves. And even in this report,
Speaker 1: which I think was I want to say it was
Speaker 1: Times of Israel, but don't quote me on that, they're like, well,
Speaker 1: you know, Gaza City is so bombed down you can't
Speaker 1: even rebuild. It be easier just to rebuild like a
Speaker 1: totally new island, which again, if you're talking about completely
Speaker 1: pushing two point two million people off of this little
Speaker 1: strip of land that you have, you know, had imprisoned
Speaker 1: them in and had pushed them in to already, well
Speaker 1: there's a word for that as well, and it's not
Speaker 1: a pretty one. So in any case, those are the
Speaker 1: sorts of preposterous scenarios that they're floating right now. I
Speaker 1: think tomorrow will cover some of the way the US
Speaker 1: is looking at this. The ideas of putting the Palestinian
Speaker 1: authority in charge, which has its own problems as well.
Speaker 1: But you know, we're already at a place where you know,
Speaker 1: the city, the largest city where over a million people lived,
Speaker 1: has been completely destroyed. You know, taking out Al Shifa
Speaker 1: was kind of like the last piece of taking out
Speaker 1: the a core of Gaza Palestinian civilian life. You've already
Speaker 1: got one point eight million Palestinians displaced, you already have
Speaker 1: at least one in every fifty six Gazins either killed
Speaker 1: or injured. That's where we already are this very short
Speaker 1: time in terms of you know, how long wars normally
Speaker 1: go on into this conflict, as we have this very
Speaker 1: small pause and look towards what the future might be.
Speaker 1: I thought this piece from Haretz, which by the way,
Speaker 1: horats under major assault from Israeli politicians as well, you know,
Speaker 1: threatening to pull their support, et cetera, et cetera, because
Speaker 1: they have done some actually good reporting during this war
Speaker 1: and in general do some good reporting. And we've framed
Speaker 1: them as sort of like the New York Times of
Speaker 1: Israel in terms of their political positioning. Put this up
Speaker 1: on the screen. They had a good report where they
Speaker 1: interviewed Palestinians about what this temporary ceasefire has meant for them,
Speaker 1: and the quote here in the headline our lives have
Speaker 1: been destroyed. Temporary ceasefire offers little relief for Gossen's morning
Speaker 1: lost family and homes. They interviewed This woman Israe, who's
Speaker 1: an English teacher. She's a newlywed, and she said, listen,
Speaker 1: life doesn't go back to normal during a ceasefire. Only
Speaker 1: now do we realize the extent of the destruction. She
Speaker 1: goes on to say, I wish there were no ceasefire
Speaker 1: because basically now she has to see and come face
Speaker 1: to face with how much of her life has been
Speaker 1: destroyed and will never come back. She says, it's a
Speaker 1: parent like the aftermath of an earthquake. Nothing remains as
Speaker 1: it was. What are we guilty of? Israel's problem is
Speaker 1: with the resistance to us. Why hurt civilians? Our lives
Speaker 1: have been destroyed, Our families have been broken. There are
Speaker 1: no houses left, only stones. Another student in Gaza said,
Speaker 1: for Gazans, a four day ceasefire means looking for relatives
Speaker 1: to see if they're dead or alive. It's not just
Speaker 1: about getting food and water. The second priority is bearing
Speaker 1: the dead and giving them their last respects. So that's
Speaker 1: the view from inside the Gaza strips.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I enourage people to read that.
Speaker 2: As we said, it was actually reported by Haretz and
Speaker 2: Israeli media organization. And actually it's funny the more this continues.
Speaker 2: I look to them, at them the Times of Israel,
Speaker 2: even people inside of Israel, much more than I do
Speaker 2: to so many of our media. And we will give
Speaker 2: you a perfect view of why with the Fox News
Speaker 2: segment that's coming up. At the same time, there has
Speaker 2: been yet another extraordinary confirmation about how the US and
Speaker 2: how about the NATO killed a Ukrainian peace East deal
Speaker 2: in the spring of twenty twenty two. Let's go ahead
Speaker 2: and play some of this. In this interview, he made
Speaker 2: an extraordinary claim. They asked what is the goal of
Speaker 2: the Russian delegation. He said that the Russian delegation thought
Speaker 2: to the very last minute that they could pressure them
Speaker 2: into an agreement signing such a deal quote taking neutrality. Neutrality,
Speaker 2: as your call is what the initial demand was. They
Speaker 2: said that the main thing for them, and that they
Speaker 2: were ready to end the war in the spring of
Speaker 2: twenty twenty two, was if they were to take a
Speaker 2: neutrality pledge like Finland.
Speaker 3: A long time ago.
Speaker 2: I've talked about that previously, and that they were to
Speaker 2: give an obligation not to join NATO. Quote factually, this
Speaker 2: was the key point. The rest was quote cosmetic and
Speaker 2: political additions, like about denotification. The Russian speaking patient, he says,
Speaker 2: blah blah blah. He says, why did Ukraine not agree
Speaker 2: to this position? The interviewer asks, and here you come
Speaker 2: the critical first to accept this that we would have
Speaker 2: to change our constitution. Now obviously that's something could do
Speaker 2: because their NATO aspiration was written in there. But second
Speaker 2: is that there was quote not enough trust to the
Speaker 2: Russians that they would fulfill everything that we could have
Speaker 2: done only these sorts of security guarantees. Quote, we couldn't
Speaker 2: cite something walk away and everybody would relax. But and
Speaker 2: the key move is when he talks about better preparation
Speaker 2: about how they would move in and that they would
Speaker 2: possibly take advantage of any sort of peace deal. Is
Speaker 2: he comes in over the top and he confirms that
Speaker 2: it was actually the US and the UK that they're
Speaker 2: the ones who said that you should not sign this deal.
Speaker 3: Here is exactly he says.
Speaker 2: After we turn from istanbul Boris, Johnson said quote, we
Speaker 2: will not sign anything with them. Let's just make war.
Speaker 2: That is the official confirmation now that we have had
Speaker 2: from Fiona Hill, from the revelations that came in Foreign
Speaker 2: Affairs months after all of this happened.
Speaker 3: We know that the trip took place Crystal. But this
Speaker 3: is as big as it gets.
Speaker 2: I mean, here, this is a fit if I'm trying
Speaker 2: to think about, you know, something similar, maybe the Speaker
Speaker 2: of the House, but not even technically because they're separate
Speaker 2: branches of government, but a very high level of fit
Speaker 2: a political ally here of Zelenski, who says it outright,
Speaker 2: He's like, what they said is they wanted neutrality. They
Speaker 2: wanted us to enshrine in our constitution that we would
Speaker 2: not join NATO or it would take away that aspiration,
Speaker 2: and that the US, the UK and others were the
Speaker 2: ones who came in. What I love about what he
Speaker 2: says too, is that the less the rest were quote
Speaker 2: cosmetic about all this other stuff, which is obvious. And
Speaker 2: if we think back to twenty twenty two and the borders,
Speaker 2: that the borders that existed at the time, the incredible
Speaker 2: amount of fighting and death that has resulted since it's
Speaker 2: the best deal they ever would have gotten in those
Speaker 2: early days of the war. But we're the ones who
Speaker 2: decided not to. And what is the end result. The
Speaker 2: net result is America is now forgotten about Ukraine. Maybe
Speaker 2: not the American people long ago moved past Ukraine. The
Speaker 2: American legislator at this point is willing to, I guess,
Speaker 2: look the other way. They'll fight a little bit behind
Speaker 2: the scenes. Everybody says that they're with them. But you
Speaker 2: have a couple hundred thousand at least Russians and Ukrainians
Speaker 2: that are dead combined, probably much more when the official
Speaker 2: Kia numbers eventually do come out. The Ukrainian counterfense has
Speaker 2: been a disaster. One hundred and fifteen billion dollars of
Speaker 2: American weapons stock piles are laying in the eastern Dunboss region.
Speaker 3: Half of it is like.
Speaker 2: Unexplored in ordinance. The Russian economy is totally mobilized for war.
Speaker 2: There has been no coup against Putin. He seemed fine,
Speaker 2: better off than ever in some cases, you know, because
Speaker 2: he has now total control of the Russian oligarchy. Is
Speaker 2: what has been the net result of this. Let's take
Speaker 2: the Ukrainians out of it. Net net has this been
Speaker 2: a good result for America. This has been a humiliation
Speaker 2: for NATO and for the West. And so this is
Speaker 2: our brilliant diplomacy in action.
Speaker 1: Our actions with regard to this war have been monstrous.
Speaker 4: I mean, there is no other way to describe it here.
Speaker 1: And yeah, you could say, you know what, there's no
Speaker 1: guarantee that Russia would have followed the terms of the deal,
Speaker 1: and maybe they would have, you know, taken advantage of
Speaker 1: this momentary pause to regroup, and they just would have reinvaded.
Speaker 1: There's always a chance to do war down the road.
Speaker 1: And by the way, the other thing is like, you
Speaker 1: don't have to trust Putin.
Speaker 4: We should be negotiating.
Speaker 1: We do all the time with bad actors, and you
Speaker 1: know the Taliban or you know North Korea or you
Speaker 1: know Ntnyahu and his government. Like you have to be
Speaker 1: able to come to terms with your enemies, with your
Speaker 1: adversaries if you're ever going to have peace in any context.
Speaker 1: So I think it's important that we take ourselves back
Speaker 1: to that moment because of course, now we have the
Speaker 1: hindsight of history, we know how all of this plays out.
Speaker 1: But at that point in time, Ukraine had dramatically overperformed
Speaker 1: Russia had dramatically underperformed. You know, they were a mess.
Speaker 1: They were in shambles. Things weren't working, they were getting
Speaker 1: stuck in the mud. It was a total catastrophe and
Speaker 1: humiliation for Russia at this point nothing had gone according
Speaker 1: to plant. In addition, we had just hit them along
Speaker 1: with you know, our European partners and other parts of
Speaker 1: the world. We had hit them with these massive sanctions
Speaker 1: that it was no telling whether they would be able
Speaker 1: to cope with that. Now, I'm not going to say
Speaker 1: it didn't hurt their economy at all, but now with
Speaker 1: the fullness of time, we can see they were able
Speaker 1: to cope and a doubt. But again, at that point
Speaker 1: in time, they didn't know that, and we didn't know that. Okay,
Speaker 1: you also had more domestic political uncertainty at Russia, within
Speaker 1: Russia at that point, so you can see how the
Speaker 1: conditions were ripe for Putin to come to the table
Speaker 1: and basically look for a face saving exit because at
Speaker 1: that point every piece of it had been a complete
Speaker 1: catastrophe for him. Well, now, after hundreds of thousands, we
Speaker 1: don't nobody really knows the exact numbers, but of deaths
Speaker 1: and injuries, in combat during that time.
Speaker 4: Now Ukraine is.
Speaker 1: In a much worse, much worse position after their counteroffensive
Speaker 1: you know, effectively failed, certainly didn't accomplish anything close to
Speaker 1: its objectives. After they are struggling desperately with manpower issues
Speaker 1: now let alone you know, equipment and ammunition issues, and
Speaker 1: even their top generals agnowlged this is a stalemate.
Speaker 4: At best at best.
Speaker 1: It actually, reading this Sager, it actually gave me, in
Speaker 1: some ways more sympathy for the all in perspective that
Speaker 1: people are offering here, Because if we're the ones who
Speaker 1: are going to the Lenskain Co and saying, no, we
Speaker 1: want the war, don't make peace, we want the war.
Speaker 1: You're going to fight the war, then we damn well
Speaker 1: should have given them everything that they needed and wanted
Speaker 1: to be able to actually effectively fight that war. And
Speaker 1: so in a sense it gives me more sympathy for them,
Speaker 1: and more sympathy for people who are taking that perspective,
Speaker 1: because instead we did this bullshit middle ground of you know,
Speaker 1: slow walking things and I'll eventually we'll give them to you.
Speaker 1: And now we're in this horrific position. They're in this
Speaker 1: horrific position, you know, so many lives have been lost,
Speaker 1: so much destruction ultimately wrought, and for what to be
Speaker 1: in a worst place where whatever deal could theoretically be
Speaker 1: cut today, think one thing you know is you can
Speaker 1: guarantee it will be worse than this deal that was
Speaker 1: on the table that we and Boris Johnson said no,
Speaker 1: we want the war insaid.
Speaker 3: And let's see, let's put this up there.
Speaker 2: We we got a graph here about the number of
Speaker 2: people who were killed. This is just an estimate from Ukraine.
Speaker 2: They claim, Let's be very clear, only seventy thousand who've
Speaker 2: been killed, one hundred and twenty.
Speaker 1: T These are US official estimates. So again we probably
Speaker 1: are deflating the Ukrainian numbers and inflating.
Speaker 2: It is almost certainly orders of magnitude higher than that
Speaker 2: on the Russian side, we are claiming one hundred and
Speaker 2: twenty thousand dead and one hundred and eighty thousand who
Speaker 2: were injured. Again that who knows what that might be.
Speaker 2: It's probably a little bit more accurate. The Russians obviously
Speaker 2: claimed different. The Ukrainians claim three hundred thousand.
Speaker 3: Nobody will know.
Speaker 2: Really until years from now, when the propagandists have died
Speaker 2: at the very least though we know we can look
Speaker 2: at a map. Let's put the maps up there, because
Speaker 2: the map is what really tells us all of the story.
Speaker 2: And when we see from the graph, as you can
Speaker 2: see very clearly in March of twenty twenty two with
Speaker 2: that advance, and then November of twenty twenty two, which
Speaker 2: is right around where things would have looked sometime with
Speaker 2: this peace deal. After April, after the Ukrainians were able
Speaker 2: to push them out from most of their territory. You
Speaker 2: have about twenty percent of most of their territory in
Speaker 2: the north. I mean, they have about twenty percent or
Speaker 2: so that they're holding onto throughout Ukraine. And despite their
Speaker 2: so called like spring offensive miracle and all of that,
Speaker 2: where they have recraaemed some territory, basically it's all frozen
Speaker 2: in time ever since then, except hundreds of thousands of
Speaker 2: people have been killed and or injured. And I don't
Speaker 2: think it's fair to call it a stalemate. It might
Speaker 2: be technically from a tactical level on a long enough timeline,
Speaker 2: and you can go and look from day one we've
Speaker 2: been saying this. There is the strategic position of Ukraine.
Speaker 2: It can never overwhelm the Russian colossus. Russia has more manpower,
Speaker 2: they have an actual industry for weapons manufacturing. They have
Speaker 2: like a pet petroleum that they're able to sell to
Speaker 2: people who don't agree with the US and Western view
Speaker 2: of Ukraine. Long enough, they were always going to be fine.
Speaker 2: They were going to collapse, they were going to be fine.
Speaker 2: And let's put this up there. This is a view
Speaker 2: of what it's actually like inside of Ukraine. Now that
Speaker 2: we're finally getting some truth from the Western media, and
Speaker 2: they're talking about how manpower has become Ukraine's latest challenge
Speaker 2: as it digs in for a long war. And I mean,
Speaker 2: this anecdote is just terrifying. They talk about a mobilization
Speaker 2: center where there are four men lined up at the
Speaker 2: army recruitment center. Only one man is there voluntarily. He's
Speaker 2: a thirty four year old. The other three were there
Speaker 2: because they were drafted. And the other guys that were there,
Speaker 2: two of them had previously filled a medical exemption. Because
Speaker 2: they had, they prevented them from serving, and not just
Speaker 2: any medical Think about this quote. One sided brain damage
Speaker 2: from a freak accident. The other has metal plates in
Speaker 2: his spine. The fourth is a forty two year old
Speaker 2: sales manager with no military experience. He says, quote, I'm
Speaker 2: not going to hide it. I honestly don't know what
Speaker 2: I can contribute. This fits with the Time magazine profile
Speaker 2: of Zelenski, where they let it slip that the average
Speaker 2: age in the Ukrainian military is somewhere around forty years old.
Speaker 2: And how do averages work. You have a sixty year
Speaker 2: old and a twenty year old take the average. That
Speaker 2: means that there are enough people on the right side
Speaker 2: of the bell curve there for the distribution who are
Speaker 2: in their fifties and sixties. As I've said it before,
Speaker 2: that is like Army of Northern Virginia eighteen sixty five territory,
Speaker 2: where you have teenagers and old men who are holding
Speaker 2: the line in Petersburg. That's not where you want to
Speaker 2: be from a strategic point of view. And you think
Speaker 2: you're going to last like this for years? No, and
Speaker 2: even then only if the West continues to pump you
Speaker 2: full of ammunition that is depleting our stockpiles to a
Speaker 2: historic degree. Strategically, it was never going to make any sense.
Speaker 2: You're right, I agree if you hold that position, which
Speaker 2: I don't, which is, let's fight on the war and
Speaker 2: all that.
Speaker 3: Then, yeah, you give them everything.
Speaker 2: The problem is at Risks World War three, whenever there
Speaker 2: was a consideration of what we can give them and
Speaker 2: what we can't, this has been a historic disaster. The
Speaker 2: only counterpoint, the real politic response to mine, has been yeah,
Speaker 2: but we're degrading Russia's military for only five percent of
Speaker 2: our GDP.
Speaker 3: Let me tell you something.
Speaker 2: We did the Russians a favor, and this sounds cold
Speaker 2: blooded because we previewed NATO tactics. We're prepping their military
Speaker 2: for fifth generation warfare with all these drones and all
Speaker 2: this other stuff. We have wiped out all the useless
Speaker 2: commanders that often accumulate in peacetime. They're learning their lessons.
Speaker 2: They're fighting the Russian way of war. They're a battle
Speaker 2: harm battle hardened enemy right now. They're gonna be more
Speaker 2: combat effective today than they were in the early days
Speaker 2: of Ukraine. This is cold and it's heartless because people
Speaker 2: are like, oh, there's three hundred thousand dead. Yeah, but
Speaker 2: the Russians don't care. The Russian military doesn't care. Their
Speaker 2: families are the only ones who are. So from almost
Speaker 2: every strategic level, we have sharpened the knife that we
Speaker 2: apparently were so afraid of. And at the end result
Speaker 2: of this, Ukraine is in a way worse position. If
Speaker 2: I was Russia, why would I negotiate now?
Speaker 3: Today?
Speaker 2: You know, the US has forgotten about you. My entire
Speaker 2: economy is geared for war. I've run rolling more weapons
Speaker 2: and AMMO off the line than all of NATO combined.
Speaker 3: I'm just going to keep going.
Speaker 2: So we blew the only chance that we had, and
Speaker 2: there's going to be some sort of cobble style event.
Speaker 7: You know.
Speaker 2: David Sacks has now been saying this, and I agree
Speaker 2: with him. He's like, they're going to collapse. There's going
Speaker 2: to be some sort of political Look at Zelenski, his desperation,
Speaker 2: the way he is in these media interviews. You got
Speaker 2: all the people around him, and we're admitting that they're
Speaker 2: all corrupt as hell, that they're stealing everything that's not
Speaker 2: nailed to the ground. Yeah, I mean, this is what
Speaker 2: it looks like in the end days for a lot
Speaker 2: of nations. I'm not gonna say it's coming tomorrow, sometime
Speaker 2: in the next few years, maybe a decade, who knows
Speaker 2: how long this is all going to go. And when
Speaker 2: that time comes and eventually the history book is written.
Speaker 2: We're going to be really the ones who are at
Speaker 2: fault here.
Speaker 1: And now we have US officials who were saying what
Speaker 1: we've been saying all along, Oh maybe now it's time.
Speaker 1: Maybe's time to wrap it up now that you know,
Speaker 1: Ukraine is in a much worse position than they were
Speaker 1: at that point. And you know, just look at it
Speaker 1: like we use them, We use them as our own
Speaker 1: little like imperial plaything to try to degrade Russia's capabilities
Speaker 1: and potentially trigger some regime change within Russia and get putin,
Speaker 1: get Putin out of there, which of course we always
Speaker 1: thought was fanciful and unlikely to succeed.
Speaker 4: But that's what we did here.
Speaker 1: All this talk from the beginning of like, oh nothing
Speaker 1: about Ukraine without Ukraine they're really driving the train, has
Speaker 1: always been total and complete bullshit. They're fighting this war
Speaker 1: and they have lost an entire generation of men because
Speaker 1: we wanted them to fight this war. That's the reality.
Speaker 1: And you know, just to take it back to the
Speaker 1: beginning here and what that dude was saying in that
Speaker 1: interview revealing the contours of this deal, which you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, maybe he has an incentive to lie about it,
Speaker 1: But I can't really see what incentive you would have
Speaker 1: at this point in time to lie about what was
Speaker 1: going on there, especially when other reporting that backs up
Speaker 1: some of the claims here says okay, well, number one,
Speaker 1: you know our NATO aspirations are in our constitution. Obviously
Speaker 1: that's something that through a political process they could deal with.
Speaker 1: Number two was we needed security guarantees, which makes sense,
Speaker 1: right because one of Russia's demands is effectively you're going
Speaker 1: to have you're going to be militarily degree, you're not
Speaker 1: going to have as many, be as well armed as
Speaker 1: you are right now, so you would need those security guarantees.
Speaker 4: Well, guess who that also falls to.
Speaker 1: And then the third pieces, and then Boris Johnson came,
Speaker 1: you know, and said, now we're gonna make war. So
Speaker 1: all of those pieces ultimately fall on our shoulders. It
Speaker 1: has always been clear we're the ones driving the train.
Speaker 1: We're the reason this conflict has unfolded as it has,
Speaker 1: and we're the reason ultimately that Ukraine is in such
Speaker 1: a devastating position right now. And why I agree with Zager,
Speaker 1: what incentive does Russia have at this point? They can
Speaker 1: see this as clearly as we can they can see
Speaker 1: how poorly things are going. They can see how time
Speaker 1: is right now at this point at their side, on
Speaker 1: their side. So if I mean, if there is some
Speaker 1: theoretical deal to be had with them, it's going to
Speaker 1: be a really bad deal for Ukraine. It's going to
Speaker 1: be a much worse deal than what could have been
Speaker 1: had at the beginning. So I mean, just it's honestly,
Speaker 1: it's utterly tragic to think about what could have been
Speaker 1: if we had actually seriously pursued peace at that time.
Speaker 1: And again, there's no guarantees, right. The fact that you
Speaker 1: have contours of an agreement doesn't mean you have an agreement.
Speaker 1: The fact that Russia agrees to the agreement, you know,
Speaker 1: doesn't mean that they stick to it. They're all sorts
Speaker 1: of uncertained, no doubt about it. But there was at
Speaker 1: least a chance that it might have worked out, at
Speaker 1: least a chance that they could have avoided all this
Speaker 1: carnage and bloodshed, and today that chance is gone.
Speaker 2: I just want to say the last thing, which is this,
Speaker 2: and this is what I you know, it's all been
Speaker 2: born out, it's being born out in actions, which is
Speaker 2: and what we said from day one, I know This
Speaker 2: is hard. It's hard to hear Ukraine did not matter
Speaker 2: to us, and as we are all watching, what really mattered,
Speaker 2: you know, to the current politicians Israel? Of course, you
Speaker 2: know triumphs that ten times here in Washington. They forgot
Speaker 2: about you instantly, and so I find it disgusting, you know,
Speaker 2: I'm just thinking about the current things. It's a joke
Speaker 2: about whatever the current thing is. First it was afghan girls.
Speaker 2: We had to commit two hundred million dollars a day
Speaker 2: to Afghanistan first, so the girls can Afghanistan could go
Speaker 2: to school.
Speaker 3: You're a monster. If you disagree with that, then you're
Speaker 3: a monster.
Speaker 2: If you disagree with whatever's going on in Ukraine and
Speaker 2: the horrible invasion, you can on a human level, you
Speaker 2: can empathize, But at the base, it's always been this
Speaker 2: military force and military might was developed to protect trade,
Speaker 2: commerce and the American way of life.
Speaker 3: Period.
Speaker 2: In fact, our superpower status obfuscated with the real costs
Speaker 2: all of that are as trade offs become more real,
Speaker 2: and as we all watched, it's even more dehumanizing and
Speaker 2: immoral in my opinion, to give somebody so much hope,
Speaker 2: let them all die, and then abandon them at their
Speaker 2: last stand. I agree, that's way worse than being honest
Speaker 2: from day one and being like, listen, at the end
Speaker 2: of the day, this doesn't matter. Twenty percent of Ukraine
Speaker 2: doesn't affect my life, doesn't affect my economy, sucks for you,
Speaker 2: but you know, what are you going to.
Speaker 6: Do about it?
Speaker 2: And that would everybody would have better off if they
Speaker 2: had done that.
Speaker 1: One of the things I'm talking about in my monologue
Speaker 1: today is just the utter hypocrisy between how we talk
Speaker 1: about Ukraine, how we talk about Russia's actions in Ukraine
Speaker 1: versus how we talk about what Israel's doing in Gaza
Speaker 1: right now. And I have like side by side the commentary.
Speaker 1: But no, I mean to the extent that the US
Speaker 1: had any credibility on caring about, you know, the democracy
Speaker 1: and humanitarianism and the international rule of law and the
Speaker 1: rules based international To the extent we had any credibility
Speaker 1: which was already in question, that is completely gone. No
Speaker 1: one can look at the Ukraine conflict ands oh, we
Speaker 1: really cared about democracy and human rights.
Speaker 6: Bullshit.
Speaker 1: Certainly no one can look at what's happening in Gaza
Speaker 1: right now and oh we really care about democracy and
Speaker 1: human rights? And humanitarian Oh bullshit, bullshit, all of these
Speaker 1: international rules based order people now to talk about what's
Speaker 1: happening on the ground, and Gozza, Suddenly they're.
Speaker 4: Not judging jury.
Speaker 1: Suddenly they don't really know the definition of what a
Speaker 1: war crime, and suddenly they can't really say when they're
Speaker 1: very quick to say previously, oh, Putin's doing a genocide,
Speaker 1: look at these war crimes, etc. It's just been used
Speaker 1: as a cudgel and a weapon against the countries we
Speaker 1: don't like. That's all that it's ever been. And it
Speaker 1: has never been more clear than.
Speaker 3: At this moment, well said Crystal.
Speaker 1: All right, let's move on to a slew of lawsuits
Speaker 1: filed against a lot of prominent people, but also a
Speaker 1: lot of non prominent people. But a lot of prominent
Speaker 1: people are what we'll focus on today in New York.
Speaker 1: These are all civil lawsuits for sexual harassment sexual assault.
Speaker 1: One of the most noteworthy here, let's put this up
Speaker 1: on the screen. Rapper and entrepreneur Sean Diddy Combs accused
Speaker 1: of sexual assaults in two new lawsuits. This comes after
Speaker 1: he had just settled a separate lawsuit with singer Cassie
Speaker 1: last week, after she had leveled some pretty stunning allegations
Speaker 1: about sexual assault that had occurred over many, many years.
Speaker 1: Those two fresh suits, filed to New York's Supreme Court
Speaker 1: on Thursday, alleged that he had drugged and sexually assaulted
Speaker 1: one woman in nineteen ninety one and attacked and sexually
Speaker 1: assaulted another in nineteen ninety or nineteen ninety one, by
Speaker 1: the way, his representatives had not commented in this piece
Speaker 1: as of the time that went to publications. So One
Speaker 1: of the suits was brought by Joy Dickerson Neil. She
Speaker 1: alleges Combs drugs, sexually assaulted, and abused her after a
Speaker 1: date in New York City in ninety one. She also
Speaker 1: says that he drugged her before videotaping himself sexually her
Speaker 1: assaulting her. The second suit, in which the claimant is unnamed,
Speaker 1: allegis that Combs and a friend forced her into having
Speaker 1: sex after a party. It also claims that Colmbs later
Speaker 1: visited the claimant's home and physically assaulted her, choking her
Speaker 1: until she passed out.
Speaker 4: In addition, as I mentioned.
Speaker 1: Before, Cassie had reached a settlement on November eighteenth, the
Speaker 1: day after she filed a lawsuit accusing him of physical
Speaker 1: and mental abuse that spanned roughly a decade. Terms of
Speaker 1: the settlement were not to disclosed. They first met in
Speaker 1: late two thousand and five, when she was nineteen years
Speaker 1: old and he was thirty seven. Comb's lawyer labeled venturas
Speaker 1: claims Cassie's claims outrageous lies and said she was seeking
Speaker 1: a payday and to tarnish his reputation. Now, listen, none
Speaker 1: of us knows the facts of what unfolded here. I
Speaker 1: will say, though, you know, with all three of these stories,
Speaker 1: you have the use of drugs to you know, sort
Speaker 1: of compel behavior and enable sexual assault. Those are common
Speaker 1: elements in all three of these accusations. And with Cassie
Speaker 1: she also had some contemporaneous or some backup to some
Speaker 1: of the claims. One of the claims that she made
Speaker 1: is that she had tried to leave Sean Combs and
Speaker 1: she was dating this other rapper, Kid Cutty, and Combs
Speaker 1: became enraged about this.
Speaker 4: This is again according to her.
Speaker 1: And threatened to blow up Kid Cutty's car and lo
Speaker 1: and behold, Kid Cutty's car blows up in his driveway.
Speaker 1: And by the way, they asked him in this report,
Speaker 1: hey is this true, and he said every word of
Speaker 1: what she said is accurately.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: How wild is that is that he came confirmed on
Speaker 2: the record. He's like, yeah, no, my carb what car bombs?
Speaker 2: This is totally nuts wild, but all of it fits.
Speaker 2: And Crystal, if you can, you know, really break this
Speaker 2: down because I also I tried to read about it
Speaker 2: and I'm trying to understand. Is that the Survivors Act,
Speaker 2: That's what's the Adult Survivors Act allows a filing with
Speaker 2: a look back period to me too, But it's not criminal,
Speaker 2: it's all civil. So then what are the like, what's
Speaker 2: the burden of proof for a jury to find like
Speaker 2: a determination against you?
Speaker 1: Where so it's a preponderance of evidence versus you know,
Speaker 1: in a guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. So it is
Speaker 1: a different level of you know, evidence that you have
Speaker 1: to offer and a different standard in a civil case.
Speaker 1: This is actually interesting this law that has enabled all
Speaker 1: of these suits to be filed, and this is why
Speaker 1: there was a rash of them that came out because
Speaker 1: the law.
Speaker 4: The law had a one year period.
Speaker 1: Where basically people who had wanted to claim sexual assault
Speaker 1: where they could file these lawsuits. Even though the statute
Speaker 1: of limitations had expired, so you had one year to
Speaker 1: do this, and so all of these suits came in
Speaker 1: underneath the deadline.
Speaker 4: One of the more famous suits.
Speaker 1: That you all, I'm sure are aware of that was
Speaker 1: filed with regards to this law was Egen Carroll suit
Speaker 1: against Donald Trump. That's what enabled her to be able
Speaker 1: to file this civil suit during this period, even though
Speaker 1: the statute of limitations had run.
Speaker 4: So I looked into some of them.
Speaker 1: And by the way, I think there is good reason
Speaker 1: to think that part of the reason this law was
Speaker 1: passed and signed into law by Governor Cathy Hochel was
Speaker 1: specifically because of the Egen Carroll allegations. But I will
Speaker 1: also say I looked into this a little bit. So
Speaker 1: before twenty nineteen, there was only a three year statute
Speaker 1: of limitations applied to civil suits for sexual misconduct in
Speaker 1: New York, which does seem really short, especially given what
Speaker 1: we know about the psychology of survivors at this point.
Speaker 1: Then in twenty nineteen, New York extended that statute of
Speaker 1: limitations for civil suits arising for sex crimes against adults
Speaker 1: to twenty years. But the extension wasn't retroactive, so you
Speaker 1: had this change where it used to be three year
Speaker 1: statute of limitations. Then they changed it to twenty but
Speaker 1: it wasn't retroactive. So this was kind of like a
Speaker 1: middle ground attempt for people to have some ability to
Speaker 1: seek justice for past sexual assault allegations, but not over
Speaker 1: an indefinite period. You just got this one year. If
Speaker 1: you want to file, you can file, and then it's
Speaker 1: over and you move forward with the twenty year statute
Speaker 1: of limitation. So that was the thought behind It's called
Speaker 1: the New York's Adult Survivors Act that was signed into
Speaker 1: law by Kathy Hokl.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's interesting. I was trying to think about it.
Speaker 3: I kind of.
Speaker 2: Agree that three years is definitely not far enough, but
Speaker 2: the evidentiary burden and so much of what we have
Speaker 2: with me too, And even if you think about i
Speaker 2: mean not even eging Caroll, but you zoom out about
Speaker 2: the idea of like jurys and a civil trial litigating
Speaker 2: sexual assault and all that.
Speaker 3: Obviously we have precedent and of course that should exist.
Speaker 2: It just for me, I'm so weary of any sort
Speaker 2: of punitive, like kangaroo court type action, just given what
Speaker 2: happened in the campus cases. This is obviously a little
Speaker 2: bit different because it moves through a civil process. At
Speaker 2: the same time, you can basically bankrupt someone through these
Speaker 2: laws and dragging them through that. Of course, you know
Speaker 2: it's going to rise to the courts to adjudicate whether
Speaker 2: it's legitimate or not, and it's going to eventually fall
Speaker 2: with the jury. I have trust in the jury system
Speaker 2: generally within this, but it does seem that there are
Speaker 2: a lot of perverse incentives with some of this in
Speaker 2: terms of the money, in terms of you know, all
Speaker 2: the me too accusations that we had seen previously that
Speaker 2: didn't bear out. So I have complicated feelings about this
Speaker 2: law curious I think.
Speaker 1: That's I think that's fair where I came to this
Speaker 1: because I also was like, h I'm not sure about
Speaker 1: this that period and this year only, Like what's the deal.
Speaker 1: Activists want more right? They wanted to they want there
Speaker 1: to be known as statute of limitations period. They want
Speaker 1: you to be able to, you know, continue to file
Speaker 1: these lawsuits. I felt like this was a reasonable middle
Speaker 1: ground because we also know that back in the day,
Speaker 1: I mean, all like Bill Cosby, how much did he
Speaker 1: get away with?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: They're at Harvey Weinstein. Like, for years and years and years,
Speaker 1: if you had a claim against a powerful man, there
Speaker 1: was no way that you were going to be heard.
Speaker 1: There was no way that you were going to be
Speaker 1: able to achieve justice. So I felt like this was
Speaker 1: kind of a good compromise of all right, we'll give
Speaker 1: you a year. Well, we'll get rid of the statute
Speaker 1: of limitations. It'll only be civil, right, So we're not
Speaker 1: talking about criminal charges, we're not talking about people going
Speaker 1: to jail, but we are talking about some possibility for accountability.
Speaker 1: And there were roughly twenty five hundred lawsuits, so you know,
Speaker 1: we're talking about the most high profile examples, but there
Speaker 1: were twenty five hundred lawsuits that were filed here. A
Speaker 1: lot of them were also not against the people who
Speaker 1: did the sexual assault. A lot of them are also
Speaker 1: against institutions that knew that this was going on and
Speaker 1: kept this person in power and enabled the behavior, which
Speaker 1: I also support that level of accountability. So I agree
Speaker 1: with you, it's complicated, and especially when you throw Trump
Speaker 1: into the mix, and you know, raise the question of
Speaker 1: like was this just an attempt to get Trump with
Speaker 1: the eg and Carol's But I feel like it was
Speaker 1: kind of a good middle ground to allow for the
Speaker 1: possibility of accountability. There were some additional examples here that
Speaker 1: you're going to be hearing about in the news that
Speaker 1: we wanted to raise with you, because, as I said,
Speaker 1: a lot of powerful people were accused. Mayor Eric Adams
Speaker 1: put this up on the screen. He's been accused of
Speaker 1: sexual assault that was also filed under the jurisdiction of
Speaker 1: this law. The plaintiff in this case, we know very
Speaker 1: little about this one, no details, no idea whether there
Speaker 1: is anything to these claims at this point. But the
Speaker 1: plaintiff is a woman whose name is being withheld right
Speaker 1: now due to the nature of the allegation. She filed
Speaker 1: a summons on Wednesday night. It also names the Transit
Speaker 1: Bureau of the New York Police Department and the Guardian
Speaker 1: Association of the NYPD as defendants because it came during
Speaker 1: that time when Eric Adams was at the Police Department.
Speaker 1: So that's why they are also named as defendants. In
Speaker 1: this case gets to what I was saying Sager about
Speaker 1: how it's not just the people, it's also some of
Speaker 1: the institutions that allegedly enable the behavior. Let's put the
Speaker 1: next one up on the screen. Disgraced former governor and
Speaker 1: noted Italian Andrew Cuomo sued for sexual assault by former
Speaker 1: executive assistant Brittany Camiso. Obviously, Cuomo has faced allegations previously,
Speaker 1: so this is not the first time he has faced
Speaker 1: these sorts of allegations, and I think these may have
Speaker 1: even been public previously. She alleges while she worked in
Speaker 1: the Executive Chamber as an executive assistant from twenty nineteen
Speaker 1: through August twenty twenty one, her ex boss subjected her
Speaker 1: to humiliating and demeaning tasks, huggs, kisses, sexual touching of
Speaker 1: the buttocks, and forcible touching.
Speaker 4: Of the breast.
Speaker 1: After she reported Cuoma's alleged conduct, then Lieutenant Governor Kathy
Speaker 1: Hocheld demoted her, reassigning her to demeaning task of just
Speaker 1: answering the phone in Lieutenant Governor's office until she was
Speaker 1: moved to other offices. So Cuomo, again, as I said,
Speaker 1: has faced some allegations in the past. He did that
Speaker 1: whole wasn't like a PowerPoint presentation about how it's all
Speaker 1: just because he's all misunderstood. He also at this point,
Speaker 1: so you got Mayor Eric Adams facing allegations that he
Speaker 1: also was apparently interested in running for mayor of New
Speaker 1: York City.
Speaker 4: So anyway, I don't think there it's.
Speaker 3: Going to work out for mister Cuomo. Yeah it is.
Speaker 2: It was more interesting that they all just hit around
Speaker 2: the same time, because that was what the look back
Speaker 2: period had within the law. Overall, it's obviously hitting quite
Speaker 2: a few other celebrities, by the way, not example, let's
Speaker 2: put this up there on the screen, you also had
Speaker 2: Axel Rose, Jamie Fox, and a few others that we
Speaker 2: had allegations against.
Speaker 4: The Cuba gutting Junior who had faced allegations in the past.
Speaker 2: That's right, that had come out previously, but obviously was
Speaker 2: filed under the law as well. So this law certainly
Speaker 2: making some waves. Again, I have some complicated feelings I
Speaker 2: think about the implementation. I definitely agree with the institutional one.
Speaker 2: Actually think that one might be more important than any
Speaker 2: sort of you know, individual accusation and more just because
Speaker 2: that was I think, you know, the primary the primary
Speaker 2: disbelief on me too was not necessary like a creep
Speaker 2: like Harvey Weinstein was creepy.
Speaker 3: Is that the.
Speaker 2: Weinstein Company in all of Hollywood and an entire institution
Speaker 2: and system was protecting him.
Speaker 3: That's the same thing with Epstein.
Speaker 2: It's not a story that there's a rich guy's pedophile,
Speaker 2: is that it was created as a system which arguably
Speaker 2: to connected to foreign intelligence networks and was propped up
Speaker 2: and used for blackmail purposes that enabled real world.
Speaker 3: Things to then happen.
Speaker 2: Not erasing the victims, just saying why these matter from
Speaker 2: a big spotlight institutional level.
Speaker 3: So anyway, we'll see how this one works out.
Speaker 2: I'm curious actually on the Eric Adams piece, given how
Speaker 2: shady he is on the behind the scenes, whether he's
Speaker 2: not going to try and interfere in the process, because
Speaker 2: that actually could end up coming to bite him even
Speaker 2: more in the future.
Speaker 4: Yeah, because you were. I mean, he's going through it
Speaker 4: right now. Yeah, he's his phone.
Speaker 1: He denies any wrongdoing, but and hasn't been charged or
Speaker 1: anything like that. So let's just be clear about where
Speaker 1: things stand. But never good signed when the FBI is
Speaker 1: seizing your phones and rating the offices of your top fundraiser,
Speaker 1: the alligator are that you know they're looking into these
Speaker 1: potential corrupt ties to Turkey, and so you know he's
Speaker 1: going through it with that obviously, he's under dramatic fire,
Speaker 1: including from Cardi b which you.
Speaker 4: Missed the.
Speaker 1: Okay, over huge cuts being made to the budget and
Speaker 1: they're struggling to deal with an influx of migrants. He's
Speaker 1: sort of gone to war with the federal government over that.
Speaker 1: So it has not been smooth sailing, uh from mister Adams.
Speaker 1: And again I have no idea the veracity of these claims.
Speaker 1: Will wait and see if any evidence, any sort of
Speaker 1: evidence is produced, but not a not an easy time
Speaker 1: for him. One last thing I wanted to note here,
Speaker 1: just in terms of talking about what sort of suits
Speaker 1: have been brought under the jurisdiction of this law, because
Speaker 1: it's obviously not all famous people and powerful people, et cetera.
Speaker 1: Lawsuits also were fouled on behalf of survivors who say
Speaker 1: they were sexually assaulted by former Columbia University gynecologist doctor
Speaker 1: Robert Hadden. I don't know if you all remember the
Speaker 1: news reports about this was horrific. He was convicted of
Speaker 1: federal sex sex so he's charges. In January, Columbia University
Speaker 1: will notify nearly sixty five hundred former patients of Hadden's
Speaker 1: conviction and sentence and provide information about its survivor's settlement fund,
Speaker 1: it said in the statement November thirteenth. So some of
Speaker 1: the alleged victims and survivors of doctor Hadden also were
Speaker 1: able to file suit under this law. So in any case,
Speaker 1: twenty five hundred suits filed, you know, some of them
Speaker 1: will be bogus, some of them will be legitimate, and
Speaker 1: obviously the ones regarding powerful people are going to get
Speaker 1: a lot of attention.
Speaker 4: We'll continue to.
Speaker 3: Follow they certainly will.
Speaker 2: Okay, let's move on to UFO spent a lot of
Speaker 2: big developments while it was gone. I guess wrote, I
Speaker 2: don't know why he had to have him on during
Speaker 2: Thanksgiving break, but it is what it is. So Dave Grush,
Speaker 2: the UFO whistleblower who we've covered your previously, appeared for
Speaker 2: almost more than two hours on the Joe Rogan podcast.
Speaker 2: He faced a whole bunch of questions, He made some
Speaker 2: pretty eye popping claims and also just describe some of
Speaker 2: the things that he alleges that were happening behind the
Speaker 2: scenes of which he is blowing the whistle on the
Speaker 2: TLDR of it really is that there is, you know,
Speaker 2: a massive scale cover up in the side of the
Speaker 2: US government around UFOs, crash retrieval, reverse engineering programs, and
Speaker 2: a lot more about than what is known to the public.
Speaker 3: Here's some of what he had to say.
Speaker 8: This answers a fundamental question, you know, for humanity.
Speaker 6: Are we alone? Or you know what happens when we die?
Speaker 9: Well?
Speaker 8: I don't know about that, but are we alone? Well
Speaker 8: the answer is we're not alone. And I know that
Speaker 8: with one hundred percent certainty, which as an Intel officer
Speaker 8: you never say one hundred percent. But all things pointed
Speaker 8: towards based on the people I talk to, like Harry Reid,
Speaker 8: and I use him as an example, but I talk
Speaker 8: to the highest of the high people you could possibly
Speaker 8: talk to catch my drift. So unless all them are
Speaker 8: lying and they're covering up something else, which I don't
Speaker 8: even know what it would be at this point. Because
Speaker 8: the phenomenon is real. It's been going on for thousands
Speaker 8: of years. People have been seeing strange things, and not
Speaker 8: everybody these mass hallucinatings. We're concerned because we think you
Speaker 8: might have an ongoing mental health issue.
Speaker 6: I'm like, what are you talking about.
Speaker 8: I reported that I had PTSD from Afghanistan and my
Speaker 8: military service several years ago, and I sought help for that,
Speaker 8: Like I'm not ashamed of that. You know, I'm high
Speaker 8: functioning autistic, and I didn't know that until my early thirties,
Speaker 8: and how I processed trauma I didn't really understand until
Speaker 8: many years later. And you know, I sought help for that,
Speaker 8: and they were trying to say that, like I had
Speaker 8: some secret mental health problem that I haven't been reporting
Speaker 8: to So I had to go through this whole process.
Speaker 8: Three agencies at the same time investigated me for that,
Speaker 8: which I don't even know if that's like legal. They
Speaker 8: tried to say that I like mishandled.
Speaker 6: Classify all this other stuff. It was insane.
Speaker 8: Apparently I was under criminal investigation for a couple months
Speaker 8: and I didn't even know that, and nor did they
Speaker 8: interview me. But they made a finding with no evidence
Speaker 8: they tried to use against me that I had to
Speaker 8: spend money to basically litigate and maintain my employment my clearance,
Speaker 8: which I did for the record.
Speaker 3: So a couple of interesting things there.
Speaker 2: Really what he talks about is the retribution that he's
Speaker 2: faced since from inside the government, in which he's filed
Speaker 2: a report, but more importantly about what he alleges that
Speaker 2: he saw behind the scenes. There was a lot of
Speaker 2: talk about well, you say you can say this, how
Speaker 2: come you can't say that? And and that's really where
Speaker 2: I think some of Rogan's best questioning came in. He said, look,
Speaker 2: what's really going on here? So before we even break
Speaker 2: it down for you, Rogan himself addressed whether he believed
Speaker 2: it or not.
Speaker 3: Here's what he had to say.
Speaker 6: It's hard to say, man.
Speaker 10: The thing about it is, I believe he's telling the
Speaker 10: truth as far as what he's experienced and the documents
Speaker 10: that he uncovered and the people that he talked to.
Speaker 10: But how do you know whether or not they're just
Speaker 10: using him as a useful idiot to just get out
Speaker 10: some silly story because they're covering up for the fact
Speaker 10: that there's some very advanced drone system that the United
Speaker 10: States government has they're trying to keep under wraps.
Speaker 6: Right, it might be both. I think it's probably both things.
Speaker 10: My theory is that they have this ability to make
Speaker 10: something move in this insane way with gravity, but they
Speaker 10: can't put a body in it, and they can't put
Speaker 10: weapons in it. They can't. It's just an object that
Speaker 10: they can get to move at insane rates of speed.
Speaker 6: That's what I think.
Speaker 10: I think the military applications of this thing have yet
Speaker 10: to be figured out, but I think they do have
Speaker 10: something that can do things that we have no knowledge of.
Speaker 10: But the United States governments probably they probably have in
Speaker 10: their possession something that was either back engineered from something
Speaker 10: from somewhere else or something that they developed in a
Speaker 10: completely top secret environment.
Speaker 2: Interesting. Okay, all right, so I'll break it down for you. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I disagree with Rogan, and I'll tell you why. Which
Speaker 2: is and this is actually I believe some of this
Speaker 2: was laid out on a show as well. Is at
Speaker 2: for to believe what he's saying there is that there
Speaker 2: are craft that move at high rates of speed that
Speaker 2: defy the.
Speaker 3: Laws of physics.
Speaker 2: Does not really, it does not bear historical precedent for
Speaker 2: breakthrough technology. So, for example, the atom bomb atom bomb,
Speaker 2: if you wash Oppenheimer, was theoretically possible in nineteen twenty
Speaker 2: three or so with the discovery of the atom in
Speaker 2: Einstein and all of that. It was a practical engineering question.
Speaker 2: That's why we were afraid that the Germans could do it.
Speaker 2: It's not that they had breakthrough research, it's that from
Speaker 2: an engineering point of view, splitting the atom, figuring out
Speaker 2: how to weaponize it. The practical implications were the hard
Speaker 2: engineering problem to be solved. It was both theoretical physics
Speaker 2: but actually why they had, you know, were fining plutonium.
Speaker 2: These were real questions about whether it was feasible as
Speaker 2: opposed to theoretically possible. There's nothing that exists in all
Speaker 2: of academia to suggest that. So to believe that this
Speaker 2: is some secret government program Chinese rush in US or
Speaker 2: any of that, you would have to believe that not
Speaker 2: only has the engineering been secretly done, that all the
Speaker 2: research from all the universities in the world had gone black,
Speaker 2: that it all happened top secret, behind the scenes that
Speaker 2: were able basically to classify it from inception onwards. And
Speaker 2: there's just no technological breakthrough, you know, to that bears
Speaker 2: comparison like the car was a engineering was an engineering
Speaker 2: problem and then a mass production problem. You know, even
Speaker 2: computers graphically, using interfaces, iPhones, all the things, they were
Speaker 2: implementation problems about how you can do this stuff at scale,
Speaker 2: whether you can really do it prototype, et cetera.
Speaker 3: None of that exists in the academic research.
Speaker 2: So that's why if that's the only other possible explanation
Speaker 2: that actually is easier for me to dismiss as opposed
Speaker 2: to this is all just fake and it's completely a
Speaker 2: sie of these are fake videos and all that. But
Speaker 2: I don't think that really bears scrutiny either. That's where
Speaker 2: a lot of my certainty comes from.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 2: Some of this does also connect to a basic question
Speaker 2: of Look, he's either lying or he's not.
Speaker 3: And I've said this before.
Speaker 2: If he's lying, I want him to be prosecuted because
Speaker 2: he's wasted my time, he's wasted a.
Speaker 3: Lot of the nation's time.
Speaker 2: But behind the scenes, I don't think it's deniable to
Speaker 2: say that the cover up of some kind is not happening.
Speaker 2: I don't know what they're covering up, but put this
Speaker 2: up there on the screen. This is from Liberation Times,
Speaker 2: the UFO based outlet. But I've gone through and I've
Speaker 2: confirmed some of this myself. Is that there is a
Speaker 2: big movement going on right now behind the scenes to
Speaker 2: actually go after the UFO transparency legislation that was slated
Speaker 2: to be enacted in the NDAA, the National Defense Authorization Act.
Speaker 2: It was called the UAP Disclosure Act. It was sponsored
Speaker 2: by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, I'm sorry, Senate Majority Leader
Speaker 2: Chuck Schumer and Senator Mike Rounds. However, now there's pushback
Speaker 2: inside of the Senate Armed Services Committee, led by Republican
Speaker 2: members of Congress, both on the Senate level and also
Speaker 2: in the House, in order to try and gut anything
Speaker 2: that would require the Department of Defense to simply disclose
Speaker 2: everything that they know for very specific questions, Crystal. So
Speaker 2: that's like my big metatake, which is, at the end
Speaker 2: of the day, government transparency on this issue, what's the
Speaker 2: problem here?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: What is the issue like, what are you covering up?
Speaker 2: At the end of the day, you know, on the
Speaker 2: JFK thing, it's the same question. We know, we actually
Speaker 2: know what they're covering up because we are a pretty
Speaker 2: good idea. We have a pretty good idea. We just
Speaker 2: don't want us to see official confirmation. So that's kind
Speaker 2: of where I stand on the whole thing. And how
Speaker 2: next also to what's going on.
Speaker 1: In Washington, right and Conmerson a new House Speaker of
Speaker 1: Mike Johnson one of the villains, and this attempts to
Speaker 1: quash the transparency legislation, and just so people know this
Speaker 1: legislative processes, it should get a lot.
Speaker 4: More attention and coverage.
Speaker 1: People use the National Offense Authorization Act to get all
Speaker 1: kinds of little you know, pet projects or things killed whatever.
Speaker 1: They use this process in order to achieve that. So
Speaker 1: that's why this is being used as a vehicle to
Speaker 1: try to kill this transparency.
Speaker 4: I mean, on the.
Speaker 1: On the whole matter, I guess I'm relatively agnostic. I
Speaker 1: do feel like me and most people are just going
Speaker 1: to need something more than one guy's work. And you
Speaker 1: should because it's not even and this is something Rogan
Speaker 1: points to you too. You could even accept that he's
Speaker 1: not lying, that he seems like a genuine sence here person,
Speaker 1: but he's being used for some other end like that
Speaker 1: is another possibility that's on the table. And in the
Speaker 1: absence of any sort of concrete proof of the things
Speaker 1: that he's discussing, you know, it's for me, I'm just
Speaker 1: gonna need a lot more to believe something that is
Speaker 1: so incredibly extraordinary, which you know, I think is fair
Speaker 1: for not just for me, but for people in general.
Speaker 1: The other thing I was going to ask you about
Speaker 1: soccer because I started to listen to some of the
Speaker 1: podcast is there was a lot of like, well, I
Speaker 1: can tell you this, but I can't tell you that.
Speaker 1: What was his rationalization for why there were certain things.
Speaker 4: That he could disclose and would disclose, and why there
Speaker 4: were certain things that he put out?
Speaker 2: So he went through something a pre publication review, as
Speaker 2: he described it, and as I understand it too, having
Speaker 2: talked to people who've published stuff that was had some
Speaker 2: class wide information or not, you basically admit to everything
Speaker 2: that you want to talk about publicly to the DoD.
Speaker 2: They're not confirming it happened or not. They are allowed
Speaker 2: to then come in and say Nope, can't talk about that.
Speaker 2: You can talk about that. Everything that they don't x
Speaker 2: out you are allowed to then publicly discuss. That doesn't
Speaker 2: mean that they're endorsing the claim. Let's not forget, though,
Speaker 2: that they did say that his accusations were credible and
Speaker 2: that they were urgent in terms of what he was
Speaker 2: alleging in for his whistleblower complaint. This is from the
Speaker 2: Inspector General of the overall Intelligence community.
Speaker 3: The reason why when he's like, well, what did you say?
Speaker 2: He either did not receive clearance to talk about that
Speaker 2: subject or he was.
Speaker 3: Told no, you can't talk about that.
Speaker 2: So all of the things that he's saying publicly are
Speaker 2: things of which there is either publicly available reporting and
Speaker 2: he was cleared to discuss or not.
Speaker 3: I'll give you a good example. I remember a long.
Speaker 2: Time ago reading the book by Rob O'Neill, who's the
Speaker 2: guy who shot Bin Laden and he was in Seal
Speaker 2: Team six. But in his book he has to black
Speaker 2: out the word Seal Team six six.
Speaker 3: Right, you can only say Seal Team X. It's stupid.
Speaker 2: Everybody knows Seal Team six exists, but they don't want
Speaker 2: to publicly acknowledged Seal Team six.
Speaker 6: No.
Speaker 2: So when he says, you know, I was in the
Speaker 2: Seal teams or I was in this, he is not
Speaker 2: that you know, and he removes the word six. It's
Speaker 2: because he specifically did not receive clearance to say that word.
Speaker 3: A lot of them are like that.
Speaker 2: There's you know, several other examples of these things. Even
Speaker 2: the Bin Laden.
Speaker 3: Rate itself had all sorts of secrecy around it.
Speaker 2: And if you've ever read like Admiral mcraven's book who
Speaker 2: talks about it, there's a lot of things in there
Speaker 2: too that you have to submit for pre publication review. Again,
Speaker 2: they're not endorsing it. They're just like, there's some things
Speaker 2: which they do take out. Now that's his explanation. Doesn't
Speaker 2: sound fishing and annoying. Yeah, it's annoying to listen to.
Speaker 2: I agree with everybody. When he's like, no, I can't
Speaker 2: talk about this, it's like, ah, but that's what I
Speaker 2: want to know the most. So that's why I just
Speaker 2: come down on Okay, you got a whistleblower here, testified
Speaker 2: under oath. He submitted all these claims to members of Congress.
Speaker 2: The two members of Congress who wanted to hear questions
Speaker 2: from him said, I want to hear everything you've said
Speaker 2: as classified in a skiff, which is a secure, compartmentalized facility.
Speaker 3: Guess what.
Speaker 2: They won't give him skiff access inside of Congress. Nobody
Speaker 2: knows why that is. Again, why let the man talk,
Speaker 2: Let the members of Congress hear it out with Our
Speaker 2: elected representatives exist for the very reason that they can
Speaker 2: investigate on our behalf. And if it's so secret, then
Speaker 2: they can go find out for themselves. If it's urgent,
Speaker 2: they can bring it to us. Second is the matter
Speaker 2: of transparency and of legislation. What harm possibly could be
Speaker 2: done by having transparency around non human biological creatures. If
Speaker 2: they don't exist, then you can come out and say
Speaker 2: they don't exist. We have no evidence of that. And
Speaker 2: so there's a lot of reasons why I think this
Speaker 2: is trying to be quash and you know, to bring
Speaker 2: it back to the you know, the Okham's Raiser or
Speaker 2: the other side of what it could be secret government
Speaker 2: program and all that. You honestly would have to expect
Speaker 2: more competence from the government to do something like that
Speaker 2: than you would for covering up information, in my opinion,
Speaker 2: to secretly develop a Manhattan style project as it relates
Speaker 2: to aviation with no knowledge as opposed to keeping things
Speaker 2: secret for a long time.
Speaker 9: Now.
Speaker 3: The government is bad about both of those things, but
Speaker 3: I think.
Speaker 2: They're a lot worse at proactive innovation in complete darkness
Speaker 2: and secrecy than they are at a you know, some
Speaker 2: sort of program that's been running now for generations in
Speaker 2: order to try and keep the truth from the American
Speaker 2: people in from the world. So that's that's where I
Speaker 2: come on the whole thing. I've thought a lot about
Speaker 2: the government explanation. It just doesn't make any sense. But
Speaker 2: how that's possible.
Speaker 1: To me, almost none of it makes sense because you're
Speaker 1: not just talking about a US government cover up. You're
Speaker 1: literally talking about a global cover up, right. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's not like all of these incidents are happening in
Speaker 1: the US. In fact, Rush's talking about things that are
Speaker 1: happening overseas himself. So you have to you have to
Speaker 1: imagine that there's a global cover up, you know. I
Speaker 1: mean your objections to the idea that it's some like
Speaker 1: secret government technology that we have no awareness of, I
Speaker 1: think are also really founded. So I'm just sort of
Speaker 1: like in a hand, you know, hands thrown up. Let's
Speaker 1: have as much disclosure as possible and figure out what
Speaker 1: that well, And there's no downside.
Speaker 2: There's literally no downside to any sort of disclosure or
Speaker 2: transparency or investigation. If anything, the fact that they are
Speaker 2: trying so actively behind the scenes to try and kill
Speaker 2: the amendment. Christopher Mellen has also talked about this. Former
Speaker 2: Assistant Secretary of Defense. I would only say, like that
Speaker 2: tells you leaps and bounds and so yeah, you know,
Speaker 2: even if it is some sort of secret aviation program
Speaker 2: and all of that, think about the commercial applications of
Speaker 2: such technology. Then we should know about it because that
Speaker 2: sounds you know, I was on a red eye flight.
Speaker 2: It took a long time. Over this weekend. I'd love
Speaker 2: to be able to go at supersonic speed. So let's
Speaker 2: get it done. If that's the truth, and that's the case,
Speaker 2: let the people who supposedly paid for it, let it pass.
Speaker 2: My last thing I'll say of this is the Pentagon
Speaker 2: officially failed its audit for what the sixth time in
Speaker 2: a row as of a two weeks.
Speaker 1: Every time they've done an audit, they've failed it. However
Speaker 1: many times.
Speaker 3: That is where some of that money going.
Speaker 2: Let's move on to Fox New and their epics grew
Speaker 2: up or that happened over the Thanksgiving break.
Speaker 3: A lot of people were afraid after they saw a.
Speaker 2: High speed crash and explosion at the border between the
Speaker 2: US and Canada. So Fox News immediately almost jumps on
Speaker 2: their air and reports something shocking that it was a
Speaker 2: full blown terrorist attack, that there were quote a lot
Speaker 2: of explosives in the vehicle. After all of this happened,
Speaker 2: listen to what they said, which turned out to be
Speaker 2: completely false.
Speaker 3: Let's take a listen.
Speaker 11: Yes, oh here we go, Oh a Lexus McAdams is
Speaker 11: reporting that, according to high level police sources, the explosion
Speaker 11: was an attempted terrorist attack, a lot of explosives in
Speaker 11: the vehicle at the time. The two people who were
Speaker 11: in the car are deceased. One Border Patrol officer was
Speaker 11: injured driving from the US apparently to Canada, and we're
Speaker 11: trying to drive toward the CBP building.
Speaker 6: So all bridges in the.
Speaker 11: Area have and closed, All government buildings in the area
Speaker 11: have been evacuated.
Speaker 2: Well, it turns out, Crystal literally none of that was true,
Speaker 2: and the same reporter who put that to the network
Speaker 2: then had to walk back hours later what she said.
Speaker 2: The thing is on this before we even play what
Speaker 2: she said. Maybe if it was an official who said that,
Speaker 2: and you're citing a law enforcement official who said that publicly,
Speaker 2: you know, and claimed it and everybody reported and had
Speaker 2: to walk it back later, that's different.
Speaker 3: That's a government screw up.
Speaker 2: This is a reporter basically going off of what she
Speaker 2: claims to have heard. Fox is the only outlet which
Speaker 2: runs with this, and then it takes forever to correct
Speaker 2: the record.
Speaker 3: Here's what she said in terms of why she screwed
Speaker 3: it up.
Speaker 4: Yeah, they're collecting it all.
Speaker 9: But I think the point that you know, I want
Speaker 9: to point out here is that when we were told
Speaker 9: that this was being investigated as a terrorist attack, it's
Speaker 9: because of the explosion and the sides of the explosion,
Speaker 9: so much so that it caused them to evacuate government
Speaker 9: buildings in and around that area. Yeah, and also to
Speaker 9: close the airport down. So when I just checked back
Speaker 9: in with these investigators who are out there working the scene,
Speaker 9: they said, that is not write a typical response to
Speaker 9: something that would have been a car explosion. So that's
Speaker 9: why that information came in as it did, and then
Speaker 9: we started seeing those conflicting reports. But that's what happens
Speaker 9: with breaking news. They get new information, they give it
Speaker 9: to us, and we bring it back to the viewers.
Speaker 9: So as of now, they've walked back that it was
Speaker 9: a possible terrorist attack, but say they've never seen a
Speaker 9: car explode in that way, So there's still a lot
Speaker 9: more investigating that needs to go on.
Speaker 2: Edward, Yeah, I mean, the thing is Crystal is not
Speaker 2: only did they were they the only ones who reported that,
Speaker 2: but that also that they were brought on experts in
Speaker 2: an hour afterward to discuss what all of the implications
Speaker 2: to that, could it be? It was then clear that
Speaker 2: there were no explosives in the vehicle and that the
Speaker 2: crash is a result of reckless driving. To me, this
Speaker 2: is such an indictment a of live news, but really
Speaker 2: of running with extraordinary incendiary claims in the immediate aftermath
Speaker 2: and then really refusing I think to take me major accountability.
Speaker 3: Absolutely for a good example, so everyone knows.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for people who have been following the news, there
Speaker 2: were three Palestindian guys who were shot in Burlington, Vermont,
Speaker 2: and you know what, I can mention that and I
Speaker 2: don't know a damn thing else because we are not
Speaker 2: going to cover it here until we know more details
Speaker 2: and can provide people context.
Speaker 3: Otherwise, if you're going to sit here and clean oh.
Speaker 2: The shooter was this or possible implications all that, you're
Speaker 2: just talking that's nothing else. Yeah, you know, you're fanning
Speaker 2: the flames. And what Fox did in this instance really
Speaker 2: with this reporter just you know, according to these sources,
Speaker 2: A these sources like you probably never trust them again.
Speaker 2: But what editorial standards do you have for going to
Speaker 2: air with something like this? They set off a firestorm.
Speaker 2: I was in I was like oh my god, like
Speaker 2: this is not good, you know, full blown attack on
Speaker 2: the northern border something like this, and it ignited this
Speaker 2: whole thing, and then immediately it's like as if it's
Speaker 2: totally forgotten.
Speaker 4: A couple things.
Speaker 1: Number one, it's very clear they were basically cheering for
Speaker 1: this to be a terrorist attack, which is why, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's confirmation biased. Right, They've been for weeks, Oh there's
Speaker 1: Hamas terror cells and we're all at risk and after
Speaker 1: the gaza strip in Israel, America is going to be next,
Speaker 1: which is absurd and there's zero evidence for. But so
Speaker 1: they're all hyped up on this idea that we're at
Speaker 1: some elevated risk for a terror attack, and then this
Speaker 1: thing happens at the border.
Speaker 4: You get apparently one cop.
Speaker 1: Who's like, I don't know on an arsena explosion like that,
Speaker 1: maybe it was a terrorist attack, and they run with it.
Speaker 1: They run with it because they want that to be
Speaker 1: the story, because that's the story they've been selling to
Speaker 1: their audience now for weeks. So that's part of why
Speaker 1: all the guardrails are taken off. In addition to all
Speaker 1: of the normal incentives to just like be the first,
Speaker 1: even if you end up being completely and wildly wrong.
Speaker 1: So I also thought it was very revealing the way
Speaker 1: that she walked it back, which again was not to
Speaker 1: say I'm sorry we made the error, I'm sorry we
Speaker 1: reported totally inaccurate information. It was to explain this like
Speaker 1: bs rationalization of like, well, it was a really big
Speaker 1: explosion and they close the air airport, so never seen
Speaker 1: anything like that. That's why they said it was being
Speaker 1: investigated as a terror attack, which, even if that was
Speaker 1: in the early minutes accurate, being investigated as a terror
Speaker 1: attack and looking into that is very different from having
Speaker 1: any evidence that it actually is a terrorist attack, any
Speaker 1: evidence of any sort of motive intent or explosives in
Speaker 1: this vehicle, which is what they ran out and sold.
Speaker 1: And by the way, Center Ted Cruz and all court
Speaker 1: kinds of others jumped right on and definitively claimed that
Speaker 1: was exactly what was going on. And there will be
Speaker 1: a lot of people who never see the walk back
Speaker 1: who actually think that is what unfolded, and it's going
Speaker 1: to impact the way they view, you know, events that
Speaker 1: are unfolding in their own sense of personal safety day
Speaker 1: to day.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it really is.
Speaker 2: This is a just you know, it shows you why A,
Speaker 2: you shouldn't trust first reports. B you should have way
Speaker 2: higher editorial standards or bring something to air and you're
Speaker 2: going to claim something so completely insane and then walk
Speaker 2: it back quietly and not even fully take responsibility. You
Speaker 2: should just be like, yeah, are either you should say
Speaker 2: we got it wrong or our sources screwed up. They
Speaker 2: lied to us. We're going back to them and saying, hey,
Speaker 2: what's going on here? How can you claim that the
Speaker 2: car was filled with explosive Their explanation was, well, we've
Speaker 2: never seen a car explode like them. Then say that
Speaker 2: our sources claim that they have never seen a car
Speaker 2: explode like that before, right, not that they're explosives inside
Speaker 2: of a car. Those are two very different things. One
Speaker 2: is responsible the way that I put it, and then
Speaker 2: this was the way that they tried to clean it
Speaker 2: up later on their so called media watchdog show about
Speaker 2: why it wasn't really their fault it was everybody's fault
Speaker 2: that went with it.
Speaker 3: Let's take a listen.
Speaker 12: The cable news networks went wall to wall when a
Speaker 12: car exploded on a bridge on the New York side
Speaker 12: of Niagara Falls, and the speculation began.
Speaker 7: The thread environment is, to quote FBI Director Ray.
Speaker 12: Sort of is high.
Speaker 9: We know it because of international terrorism and what's going
Speaker 9: on in the Middle East and also how domestic terror
Speaker 9: terror groups have been activated.
Speaker 8: Or Julie ansdem tied to something more on the local side.
Speaker 8: Or was this an intentional act and if it was
Speaker 8: an intentional, what is the motive, what is behind this?
Speaker 6: And is it in fact terrorism? It's just too soon
Speaker 6: to say.
Speaker 12: Ted Cruz said it was terrorism, flatly, declaring that before
Speaker 12: we found out that in fact it was not so crystal.
Speaker 2: Their coverage is that well, everybody was talking about the
Speaker 2: implications of terrorism.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: The differences the other two were like thread environment's high,
Speaker 2: we don't know anything, it's too soon to say.
Speaker 3: And you were the ones who.
Speaker 2: Were like, it's a straight up apparent terrorist attack and
Speaker 2: the car was full of explosives.
Speaker 3: Those are two very very different things.
Speaker 2: Even frankly, the other people who were just sitting there
Speaker 2: be like it may be a terrorist Even that is
Speaker 2: I think bringing on a guest to talk about the
Speaker 2: thread environment. It's a little bit ridiculous, and maybe it
Speaker 2: implies they were receiving some of the same reporting and
Speaker 2: they were preparing for it. But couching it and saying
Speaker 2: things that what you know and what you don't know
Speaker 2: is the most important thing in this business.
Speaker 3: And they just threw that out the way.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and never once to see mentioned.
Speaker 1: And by the way, ye Fox News, my employer blatantly
Speaker 1: got it wrong, so kind of lessons his credibility on
Speaker 1: this matter.
Speaker 4: But yeah, I mean I do think.
Speaker 1: Listen, I've been in the anchor chair at MSNBC when
Speaker 1: you have some friggin breaking news whatever, you know, a
Speaker 1: potential school shooting, a potential I remember there was like
Speaker 1: a potential school stabbing that they of course want you
Speaker 1: to go wall to wall on your coverage. Yes, you
Speaker 1: know nothing right, you have like a headline, and even
Speaker 1: that maybe inaccurate. They're scrambling behind the scenes to bring
Speaker 1: on guests just to fill the air. And in that
Speaker 1: space of filling the air, people engage in all sorts.
Speaker 4: Of wild speculation.
Speaker 1: And I think you as news consumers, hopefully not of
Speaker 1: cable news, but in case someone you love is a
Speaker 1: consumer of cable news, it's important for you to understand
Speaker 1: what's happening behind the scenes.
Speaker 4: They're floating things.
Speaker 1: Because they have to say words and fill the time
Speaker 1: until they actually know something, and so that's why you
Speaker 1: end up. What the hell, let's bring on a terror
Speaker 1: as am expert and see if they have some interesting
Speaker 1: to say about this.
Speaker 4: How does this compare to past explosions? Look at this video?
Speaker 4: What do you think?
Speaker 1: They don't freaking know anything? So keep that in mind,
Speaker 1: because I agree with you. Even the like tendency to, oh,
Speaker 1: this could be a big event, let's wildly speculate about
Speaker 1: it until we actually know anything about it. Even that
Speaker 1: is pretty irresponsible. But Fox News just took that extra
Speaker 1: level of blatantly reporting something that ends up being utterly
Speaker 1: false and then not even having the decency to fully
Speaker 1: correct and acknowledge that they got it blatantly.
Speaker 3: To totally totally agree.
Speaker 2: Okay, Crystal, it's been a long time since I said this.
Speaker 2: What are you taking a look at?
Speaker 13: Well, it's hard to look at what he's doing in Ukraine,
Speaker 13: what his forces are doing in Ukraine, and think that
Speaker 13: any ethical, moral individual could justify that. It's difficult to
Speaker 13: look at the Sorry, it's difficult to look at some
Speaker 13: of the images and imagine that any well thinking, serious,
Speaker 13: mature leader would do that. So I can't talk to
Speaker 13: a psychology but I think we can all speak to
Speaker 13: us depravity. This is war, it is combat, it is bloody,
Speaker 13: it is ugly, and it's going to be messy, and
Speaker 13: innocent civilians are going to be hurt going forward. I
Speaker 13: wish I could tell you something different. I wish that
Speaker 13: that wasn't going to happen, but it is going to happen.
Speaker 1: That was National Security Council spokesman John Kirby holding back
Speaker 1: tears as he spoke of innocence killed by Russia and
Speaker 1: then casually dismissing innocence killed by Israel as mare collateral damage.
Speaker 1: Shocking up to the unavoidable costs of war. The Biden
Speaker 1: administration has spent the last several years now rending their
Speaker 1: garments about the international rules based order, decrying with plenty
Speaker 1: of justification by the way Russian atrocities committed against Ukrainians.
Speaker 1: Biden framed this struggle in grand, idealistic terms as a
Speaker 1: fight to protect the post World War II order, our
Speaker 1: arming of the Ukrainians as a noble front in our
Speaker 1: war for democracy, for human rights. My, what a difference
Speaker 1: a new war makes. Democrats and other administration officials who
Speaker 1: had no troubles spotting war crimes when they were committed
Speaker 1: by resistance lib boogeyman Putin suddenly decided they really weren't
Speaker 1: qualified to a pine on the topic. Once Israel launched
Speaker 1: a complete siege of Gaza and bombed everything from refugee
Speaker 1: camps to schools, to hospitals to every sort of critical infrastructure.
Speaker 1: In the early days, this took the form of vaguely
Speaker 1: encouraging Israel to not commit any war crimes please.
Speaker 4: Once it became.
Speaker 1: Absurdly obvious that the entire military operation was being conducted
Speaker 1: on the basis of seeing how many war crimes Israel
Speaker 1: could get away with, they then shifted tactics, adopting a
Speaker 1: more philosophical posture. You might say, who can really say
Speaker 1: whether they're committing war crimes?
Speaker 4: What even are war crimes? Really? Now?
Speaker 1: There are a wealth of examples here, but let me
Speaker 1: give you just a few. Here's Senator Ben Carden on Russia.
Speaker 7: There's no question about Russia's crime of aggressions, no question
Speaker 7: about their committing crimes against humanity and genocide. We've had
Speaker 7: hearings in this committee that have established that. We've had
Speaker 7: hearings in the USL Sinki Commission that has established the
Speaker 7: fact that all the conditions for genocide have been committed
Speaker 7: by Russia.
Speaker 1: This same senator was suddenly less sure of himself in
Speaker 1: a recent interview by The New Yorkers Isaac Chattner. CHOHn
Speaker 1: Er asked Carden, do you have a sense of whether
Speaker 1: Israel is operating according to the rules of war? Carden
Speaker 1: dismissively responds, I know that once elected to the United
Speaker 1: States Senate, I'm supposed to be an expert on every subject.
Speaker 1: Chautner then replies, sir, you are the head of the
Speaker 1: Foreign Relations Committee. But I suppose it would be unfair
Speaker 1: to pick on Senator Carden here, who is simply taking
Speaker 1: his cues from so many others. Here's White House National
Speaker 1: Security Advisor Jake Sullivan on in Russia versus Jake Sullivan
Speaker 1: on Israel.
Speaker 6: I think we can.
Speaker 14: All say that these are mass atrocities, These are war crimes.
Speaker 14: These are shocking and brutal acts that are completely unacceptable
Speaker 14: beyond the pale for the international community. So whatever label
Speaker 14: one wants to affix to them, the bottom line is this,
Speaker 14: there must be accountability, and the United States will work
Speaker 14: with the international community to make sure there's accountability.
Speaker 15: You said today, as you said a number of times
Speaker 15: about the importance of the laws of war being upheld,
Speaker 15: Israel has killed Iran eleven thousand thouarst inians Iran. Two
Speaker 15: thirds of those are women and children. The situation in
Speaker 15: the hospitals is there. Israel has dropped an astronomical amount
Speaker 15: of ordinance and very det up areas is Israel and
Speaker 15: your viewing abiding by the laws of war when you
Speaker 15: come to that.
Speaker 8: Conclusion, well, as I said yesterday, I, Jake Sullivan, standing here,
Speaker 8: am not in a position to judge and jury to
Speaker 8: make that determination. It's a legal determination.
Speaker 1: This not a judge and jury formulation has become the
Speaker 1: standard go to when anyone is asked about Israeli war crimes.
Speaker 1: I have lost track of how many cowardly Democrats have
Speaker 1: deployed this moral cowardice in the face.
Speaker 4: Of undeniable horrors.
Speaker 1: Republicans, for their part, they're mostly more brazenly blood thirsty
Speaker 1: in their own justifications. This tone, of course, comes right
Speaker 1: from the top. President Biden himself no trouble calling Putent
Speaker 1: a war criminal, accusing him of genocide on Israel. He
Speaker 1: has not only demurred as his advisors did there, but
Speaker 1: he has actively defended war crimes such as rating Alshifa Hospital,
Speaker 1: causing untold civilian death numbering and at least the dozens
Speaker 1: including premature babies. Now, if you're thinking this war doesn't
Speaker 1: compare in any way to the brutality that was unleashed
Speaker 1: on Ukrainians, you are one hundred percent correct. What Russia
Speaker 1: unleashed pales in comparison to the horrors inflicted on all
Speaker 1: two point two million people in Gaza. It's not even
Speaker 1: close in the amount of destruction, in the absolute number
Speaker 1: of civilians killed, in the targeting of civilian infratry structure,
Speaker 1: and in the denial of.
Speaker 4: The basic needs of life.
Speaker 1: SUBSEEC journalist Caitlin Johnstone recently did announcence comparing just the
Speaker 1: impact on children alone. As she writes, Israel has killed
Speaker 1: as many children as Russia reportedly kidnapped, an action which
Speaker 1: led to charges being filed at the International Criminal Court
Speaker 1: against Putin. Why, she asks, is one a war crime
Speaker 1: and the other apparently fine? Both are awful, obviously, but
Speaker 1: it would seem pretty obvious that murder is worse than kidnapping. However,
Speaker 1: we're supposed to, somehow supposed to reserve our horror only
Speaker 1: for Putin. Of course, we all know the answer to
Speaker 1: why we're supposed to apply completely different standards to these
Speaker 1: two atrocities. It's never been more blatantly clear than right now.
Speaker 1: International law is nothing but a cudgel to be used
Speaker 1: against official enemy states. Once the US it's our allies.
Speaker 1: Suddenly these crimes are erased, They're excused. The people who
Speaker 1: were just pretending to care so deeply suddenly plead complete ignorance.
Speaker 1: Even the New York Times has begun to report on
Speaker 1: the unprecedented horrorse being unleashed on the people of God's
Speaker 1: just based simply on the likely understated numbers which we
Speaker 1: know today. They report that, quote, Gaza civilians under Israeli
Speaker 1: Barraj are being killed at a historic pace. They go on,
Speaker 1: while wartime death tolls will never be exact, experts say
Speaker 1: that even a conservative reading the casualtly figures reported from
Speaker 1: Gaza shows the pace of death during Israel's campaign has
Speaker 1: few precedents in this century. People are being killed in
Speaker 1: Gaza war quickly, they say, than even in the deadliest
Speaker 1: moments of US led attacks in a Raq, Syria and Afghanistan,
Speaker 1: which were themselves widely criticized by human rights groups. This
Speaker 1: article cites the number of targets and the wildly destructive
Speaker 1: two thousand pound bombs that have been used for reference
Speaker 1: in the US bobbing of Mosil. We judged even five
Speaker 1: hundred pound bombs to be too large for that type
Speaker 1: of urban combat. A number of women and children killed
Speaker 1: in Gaza's fast approaching the number that the US killed
Speaker 1: in twenty years of war and occupation in Afghanistan. It's
Speaker 1: double the number who've been killed in two years of
Speaker 1: Russia's war in Ukraine. Now Ukraine is, of course a
Speaker 1: nation of nearly forty four million, tiny Gaza is home
Speaker 1: to roughly two million, more than sixty thousand buildings of
Speaker 1: that destroyed in Gaza, and between the level of destruction
Speaker 1: and the leveling of critical civilian infrastructure, all of northern
Speaker 1: Gaza has.
Speaker 4: Been rendered unlivable.
Speaker 1: All of this before we talk about the desperate siege
Speaker 1: conditions clearly amounting to collective punishment, which have been posed
Speaker 1: on everyone from the elderly to the premature babies gasping
Speaker 1: for air in hospitals with no electricity. If these politicians,
Speaker 1: it's so called diplomats are suddenly ignorant of the laws
Speaker 1: of war, They should feel free to seek the advice
Speaker 1: of experts such as this, gentleman, you and Relief Chief
Speaker 1: Martin Griffiths.
Speaker 16: So you have been, you know, on the front line
Speaker 16: of this since the beginning, but you've also been you know,
Speaker 16: un special envoy and advisor to many, many, many issues. Yeah,
Speaker 16: Man Syria, you've been in UNISEF, you've been doing this
Speaker 16: for a long time. Head of Relief Operations NGOs, the
Speaker 16: whole lot. Have you ever seen anything like this? Well,
Speaker 16: how do you assess what's happening right now in terms
Speaker 16: of humanitarian needs? In Gaza?
Speaker 17: The worst ever Christian? And I don't say that lightly.
Speaker 17: I mean I started off in my twenties dealing with
Speaker 17: the Khmer rouge, and you remember how bad that was,
Speaker 17: the killing feels and so forth. But sixty eight percent
Speaker 17: of the people killed in Gaza are women and children.
Speaker 17: They stopped counting the numbers of children killed after foreuna
Speaker 17: half thousand had been counted. Nobody goes to school in Gaza.
Speaker 17: Nobody knows what their future is. Hospitals have become a
Speaker 17: place of war, not of curing. No, I don't think
Speaker 17: I've seen anything like this before. It's complete and utter carnage.
Speaker 1: I would ask you to really take those words in
Speaker 1: when even typical israel pologies soundlet the New York Times
Speaker 1: is acknowledging that the scale of the trast he's committed
Speaker 1: to your outpace any that we've seen in modern history.
Speaker 1: You know we are watching something historic in the level
Speaker 1: of evil and butchery. And make no mistake, for all
Speaker 1: their pleading ignorance, the Biden administration.
Speaker 4: Knows that too.
Speaker 1: That's why they worried that this temporary pause might allow
Speaker 1: the world to see and really understand what has been
Speaker 1: done with our backing, with our bombs, with our support
Speaker 1: by our client state. Apparently, hypocrisy and selective outrage has
Speaker 1: always been the rule of the international rules based order.
Speaker 1: Not a soul could deny that. Now history will judge
Speaker 1: with horror those with power who enabled these crimes against humanity.
Speaker 1: Historians will write that this was when the US discarded
Speaker 1: its last tattered thread of credibility and sager, you know
Speaker 1: the world that we pretended to be in.
Speaker 2: And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue,
Speaker 2: become a premium subscriber today at breakingpoints, dot Com. Okay,
Speaker 2: just so you know, monologues are going to be interspersed,
Speaker 2: you know, throughout the weeks. We're not necessarily gonna be
Speaker 2: able to do them everyday. Chrystal, we wanted to do
Speaker 2: this one today. I'll probably do want to think on Thursday.
Speaker 2: I'm thinking we're trying to fit them back into the workflow.
Speaker 2: Is we're trying to manage Israel palestigns. But we support everybody.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for your support for the show,
Speaker 2: and yeah, it just means a lot to us as
Speaker 2: we continue to try and work through.
Speaker 12: All of this.
Speaker 2: The crew and all the moving parts in this beautiful
Speaker 2: holiday set that they were able to pull off.
Speaker 3: We appreciate you very much and we'll see you all tomorrow.