Speaker 1: Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here,
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Speaker 3: Good morning, and welcome back to the Counterpoints.
Speaker 4: Later in the show, we're going to be interviewing Senator
Speaker 4: Rand Paul of Kentucky.
Speaker 3: Before that, we're.
Speaker 4: Going to get to some updates on the Israeli war.
Speaker 4: In guys that we're going to talk about some developments
Speaker 4: in the West Bank. Settlers have been rampaging abusing Palestinians there,
Speaker 4: and we're going to talk about a really disturbing new
Speaker 4: TikTok trend coming out of the coming out of the
Speaker 4: West Bank, where in which IDF soldiers and now it's
Speaker 4: really civilians are kind of humiliating Palestinians just for a
Speaker 4: kind of a TikTok dance.
Speaker 3: What else we got today, Well.
Speaker 5: They're elections next week, so We're now into November. Happy
Speaker 5: November everyone. That means next week Tuesday. There are some
Speaker 5: big elections coming up. Of course Ohio, we've been covering
Speaker 5: that for a little bit, but we're going.
Speaker 3: To abortion and marijuana in Ohio, yep.
Speaker 5: Both of them on the ballot.
Speaker 4: At the same time, my doppelganger, Tate Reeves, is facing
Speaker 4: off against Elvis Presley's cousin down in Mississippi.
Speaker 3: Do people say you little tight race?
Speaker 5: Is it just you that says you look like?
Speaker 3: I wish it was just me.
Speaker 4: It's not the most flattering thing that anybody's ever said
Speaker 4: about me.
Speaker 5: And a Republican of all people, Josh Holly is introducing
Speaker 5: a bill that would undercut Citizens United. We're going to
Speaker 5: dive into all of that, but Ryan, we have so
Speaker 5: many updates to get to. This situation in the Middle
Speaker 5: East changes on a minute by minute basis. We're always
Speaker 5: looking at regional what other developments are happening. Yemen, for example,
Speaker 5: yesterday is one of those examples of how this can
Speaker 5: become even bigger and broader. So we're going to talk
Speaker 5: a little bit about that. Let's start though, with the
Speaker 5: attack on the refugee camp Jibalia from yesterday. We have
Speaker 5: a first element here you can put on the screen.
Speaker 5: This is some footage from the bombing of the refugee
Speaker 5: camp in Jibalia. Fifty confirmed dead so far according to reports,
Speaker 5: about one hundred and fifty missing. Ryan since we saw this,
Speaker 5: and if you're watching this, you see people carrying bodies
Speaker 5: out of the rebel Since this happened yesterday, there was
Speaker 5: another bombing of the same camp, actually just today before
Speaker 5: we started taping this.
Speaker 3: Right right this hour, we're getting news.
Speaker 4: Yusef moone year, who's been a guest on this program before,
Speaker 4: actually just a couple of weeks ago, I believe, was
Speaker 4: reporting that there's been another air strike in this same
Speaker 4: refugee camp, just within the last couple of hours previous one.
Speaker 3: UH witnesses said seven or.
Speaker 4: Eight missiles struck the area, just annihilating entire apartment blocks.
Speaker 4: That the news strike, according to mune Or, is a
Speaker 4: similar annihilating, you know, blocks, blocks of apartments, creating massive craters.
Speaker 4: And what's remarkable is the way that even wolf Blitzer,
Speaker 4: and we'll talk about wolf Blitzer's background in a second,
Speaker 4: was appalled at the carnage that he was witnessing.
Speaker 3: I think we have him on CNN here last night.
Speaker 6: But even if that Hamas commander was there amidst all
Speaker 6: those Palestinian refugees who are in that in that Jebali
Speaker 6: refugee camp, Israel still went ahead and dropped a bomb
Speaker 6: there attempting to kill this Hamas, this Camas AMAS commander,
Speaker 6: knowing that a lot of innocent civilians, men, women and
Speaker 6: children presumably would be killed. Is that what I'm hearing?
Speaker 7: I know what you're hearing.
Speaker 8: Well, we again were focused on this commander again who
Speaker 8: You'll get more data who this man was. They killed many,
Speaker 8: many Israelis. We're doing everything we can. These are it's
Speaker 8: a very complicated battle space. There could be infrastructure there,
Speaker 8: there could be tunnels there, and we're still looking into
Speaker 8: and we'll give you more data as they are moves ahead.
Speaker 6: But you know that there are a lot of refugees,
Speaker 6: a lot of innocent civilians, men, women and children in
Speaker 6: that refugee camp as well.
Speaker 7: Right, this is the tragedy of war wolf.
Speaker 8: I mean we as you know, we've been seeing for
Speaker 8: days move south. The villains are not involved with please
Speaker 8: move south.
Speaker 6: And just trying to get a little more information. You
Speaker 6: knew there were civilians there, you knew there were refugees,
Speaker 6: all sorts of refugees, but you decided to still drop
Speaker 6: a bomb on that refugee camp, attempting to kill the
Speaker 6: SAMAS commander. By the way, was he killed.
Speaker 8: I can't confirm you. They'll be more updated. Yes, we
Speaker 8: know that he was killed.
Speaker 5: It's like the best journalism I've seen from Wolf Years
Speaker 5: and Wolf Bliss.
Speaker 4: And did you notice in there that he said that
Speaker 4: there might have been tunnels there. Yes, you can't blow
Speaker 4: up an entire refugee camp filled with people because there
Speaker 4: might be tunnels. Well the things I mean, clearly they
Speaker 4: can and they're going to.
Speaker 5: But if there are tunnels, then say there are tunnels.
Speaker 5: And if there is, they haven't named still yet.
Speaker 4: They just didn't know, they seem Abu A Gina who
Speaker 4: was listed as a battalion commander and was involved in
Speaker 4: commanding one of the battalions that was involved in a
Speaker 4: massacre at the kit Sim outside of Gaza. So but
Speaker 4: not a high a person with direct culpability in the
Speaker 4: atrocities that were committed on October seventh, but not a
Speaker 4: high level commander either.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and I think that was a big problem yesterday.
Speaker 5: I'm glad that they've since named him, but all day yesterday,
Speaker 5: as you're getting questioned like this and saying we can't
Speaker 5: name the guy yet, et cetera, et cetera, I think
Speaker 5: that's a real problem to not be able to say
Speaker 5: publicly why you did it. And if you're in the
Speaker 5: tunnel thing, your point actually reminded me of that. And
Speaker 5: so I mean, again, we've had these conversations for weeks now,
Speaker 5: and I think generally disagree on some big points. I
Speaker 5: do think, and we're going to get into actually another
Speaker 5: clip of wolf Blitzer. I think this is a really
Speaker 5: big problem going forward, obviously for public facing, forward facing
Speaker 5: Israeli officials who are going to go on the media
Speaker 5: and have this conversation.
Speaker 4: Right, And wolf Blitzer in the nineteen seventies was wrote
Speaker 4: and edited an APAC newsletter. He spent the nineteen eighties
Speaker 4: as a correspondent in Tel Aviv. Right before he became
Speaker 4: a household name in the Gulf War, he was Washing
Speaker 4: based correspondent for an Israeli newspaper. This is somebody who
Speaker 4: literally worked for APAC who is saying, let me get
Speaker 4: this right. You knew that there were hundreds thousands of
Speaker 4: civilians in this area and you dropped these high explosive bombs. Anyway,
Speaker 4: right there, he said, this is a truegy of war,
Speaker 4: is what the idea of spokesperson.
Speaker 3: Well, it's also a war crime.
Speaker 5: Well, and that's okay, So we're going to play the
Speaker 5: next clip. But we talked about this in reference to
Speaker 5: John Kirby last week. John Kirby gave that answer and
Speaker 5: we'll talk a little bit more about it in the
Speaker 5: next segment where he said war is ugly and I
Speaker 5: think he used the word messy, boy and bloody right right, Well, yes,
Speaker 5: and I think I said something like this is at
Speaker 5: least it's honest, and I mean that's the problem with
Speaker 5: In this clip in particular, at one point he says, well,
Speaker 5: it's the tragedy of war, and in the other points
Speaker 5: he sort of dodges and jumps around. It is true
Speaker 5: that Israel did tell people to evacuate. It's doing the
Speaker 5: same thing right now with hospitals and Gaza. Palestinians are
Speaker 5: saying we don't have anywhere to go because Israel has
Speaker 5: continued to bomb the South, and so you leave your house,
Speaker 5: you go to these According to the Associated Press. Some
Speaker 5: of these shelters are triple overflow. They're completely packed, yes, obviously.
Speaker 5: And so you just have this gospel situation where Israel
Speaker 5: has an enemy that says it should be wiped off
Speaker 5: the face of the earth and just massacred civilians. But
Speaker 5: that enemy also lives in a densely populated, tiny, crowded territory,
Speaker 5: is you know, careful about how it conducts its operations
Speaker 5: in civilian areas. So it's you know, it's a horrible situation.
Speaker 5: You have to be able to answer questions like that
Speaker 5: from wulf Blitzer.
Speaker 4: Right, and the US saying from the mouth of the
Speaker 4: President and then from the mouth of Kirby that civilian
Speaker 4: casualties are the price of war. They're unfortunate, but it's
Speaker 4: the price of war. It's it's just this is what
Speaker 4: happens in war is a green light to Israel to
Speaker 4: do what it's doing. And so as the United States
Speaker 4: expresses concerns about the loss of civilian life and this strike,
Speaker 4: remember that they are the ones that ahead of time
Speaker 4: gave it the green light by creating.
Speaker 3: The space to allow for it to happen.
Speaker 4: Somebody pointed out that in two thousand and two or
Speaker 4: maybe two thousand and three, right after, very soon after
Speaker 4: nine to eleven, Israel struck the leader of Hamas and
Speaker 4: a founder of Hamas and killed him along with seven civilians.
Speaker 3: George W. Bush put out one.
Speaker 4: Of the sternest kind of statements condemning the action, condemning
Speaker 4: the loss of civilian life, saying that there's no justification
Speaker 4: even if you're attacking the commander, like the commander, not
Speaker 4: a battalion commander, but like the head of Hamas, killing
Speaker 4: seven civilians along the way is an unacceptable price to pay.
Speaker 3: That's George W.
Speaker 4: Bush, who later would have more blood on his hands
Speaker 4: than probably any president in one hundred years.
Speaker 3: And for him to say that this is too much,
Speaker 3: and now.
Speaker 4: To get very little reaction from the White House to
Speaker 4: who knows how many civilian casualties we're going to have?
Speaker 4: And it's and it's almost untoward to be kind of
Speaker 4: quibbling over the numbers when you look at those those images.
Speaker 4: So here's Anthony blinkoln Scretary of State, testifying before Congress
Speaker 4: and getting interrupted by media Benjamin of Code Pink not
Speaker 4: shrinking back, not in the face of Russia's aggression against Ukraine,
Speaker 4: not in the face of an intensifying.
Speaker 7: Strategic competition in the Indo Pacific and around the world.
Speaker 5: If the witness will suspend, and I asked that everyone
Speaker 5: again respect this hearing, we will suspend and till the
Speaker 5: room misitary.
Speaker 4: So we still don't have any sense of other than
Speaker 4: the plan that was floated by the Military Intelligence Bureau
Speaker 4: to just completely clear out Kaza of where this is going, right,
Speaker 4: Like what okay? They they killed this battalion commander along
Speaker 4: with countless other civilians. They're going to try to kill
Speaker 4: other hamas battalion commanders. They say they're going to dismantle
Speaker 4: the organization whatever whatever that actually means, because the organization,
Speaker 4: you know, broadly speaking, has some significant level of support
Speaker 4: from the Palestinian people, which means that whatever organization you dismantle,
Speaker 4: the one that has put in its place will be
Speaker 4: will have a similar politics or else they won't win
Speaker 4: the support of the people. As you'll hear a lot
Speaker 4: of Palestinians say, we've the party that advocates negotiations with
Speaker 4: Israel Is out of political favor because they've been negotiating
Speaker 4: for thirty to forty years, and over those thirty to
Speaker 4: forty years, they've got less, the economy has gotten worse,
Speaker 4: they can their travel restrictions have gotten tighter, they're down
Speaker 4: at electricity four hours a day before the strike. There's
Speaker 4: no hope, no sense of dignity connected to those negotiations.
Speaker 4: So you're gonna wind up with somebody who says, well,
Speaker 4: we're going to then confront Israel likely So that so
Speaker 4: logically that seems to leave the idea of the intelligence
Speaker 4: ministry plan of we're going to clear out the North,
Speaker 4: occupy it, and then we're going to clear out the
Speaker 4: sale South and push the push the Palestinians into sin
Speaker 4: and Sinni peninsula. Is that your sense of what's your
Speaker 4: sense of what the actual plan is here?
Speaker 5: I have no sense of what the actual plan is.
Speaker 5: And that's not surprising at all because there was no
Speaker 5: sense of what the actual plan is in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Speaker 5: There's no sense of what the actual plan is short
Speaker 5: of quote whatever it takes in Ukraine to the tune
Speaker 5: of billions and billions of dollars. But perhaps you know
Speaker 5: close to one hundred thousand casualties on both sides, if
Speaker 5: not more, there is no plan, And I do like
Speaker 5: again this is not in we have to have room
Speaker 5: for Israel to disincentivize the conduct of Hamas. Israel cannot
Speaker 5: say we will not retaliate because that gives Hama green
Speaker 5: light to massacre more civilians, so that that can't be
Speaker 5: the case either. But I just don't have confidence in
Speaker 5: Western war strategy anymore. And I don't think I also
Speaker 5: think we're gonna talk about this with Lindsay Grammon a
Speaker 5: little bit. I think when you listen to IDF commanders,
Speaker 5: it's really hard to understand or to give them the
Speaker 5: benefit of the doubt and the fog of war mentality,
Speaker 5: because again, like some things are up in the air,
Speaker 5: but I don't see anything concrete. I don't see what
Speaker 5: are you going to do about. You know, let's say
Speaker 5: hundreds of civilians die hamas Is. You know, even though
Speaker 5: their leaders are in cutter, you know, you get the
Speaker 5: battalion commander, guys, they're they're out of the way. Does
Speaker 5: that make the situation better or worse? I mean, at
Speaker 5: what point does that make the situation better and worse?
Speaker 5: And how does that make the situation better or worse?
Speaker 5: And then what do you do afterwards? And actually the
Speaker 5: news reports into Kate. That's still being discussed as opposed
Speaker 5: to what We've had this terrorist threat living next to
Speaker 5: us for years. What is the if they mask her
Speaker 5: civilians and a ground war is necessitated, what is the
Speaker 5: next step. There's just I'm not saying it's easy, but
Speaker 5: I am saying that you have to have that if
Speaker 5: you are going to wage war on the scale.
Speaker 4: It's also not clear strategically what Hamas was going for,
Speaker 4: like where they saw this ending, and that kind of
Speaker 4: sets up our next conversation here. One of the things
Speaker 4: that Hamas leadership suggested in the wake of their October
Speaker 4: seventh masacer was that they were hoping for a broader
Speaker 4: conflagration that they were. You had to kind of read
Speaker 4: between the lines and some of their interviews. They were saying,
Speaker 4: you know, other actors can choose what they would want
Speaker 4: to do, but I hope that they would kind of
Speaker 4: live up to their broad commitments to Iran and others
Speaker 4: saying that they're Iran has claimed that it's you know,
Speaker 4: implacably hostile to Israel, so stand up, you know, defend
Speaker 4: us like.
Speaker 3: They they didn't.
Speaker 4: They didn't go all the way to saying that, but
Speaker 4: it was very clear that that's what they meant. So
Speaker 4: if we can put up this element, this is the
Speaker 4: uh Yemen's houthy government has now declared war on Israel,
Speaker 4: right Uh, and uh you know has this comes after
Speaker 4: they launched a couple of kind of drones and missiles,
Speaker 4: you know, toward Israel, but uh saying that they're going
Speaker 4: to be kind of ramping up the Uh, you know,
Speaker 4: they're going to be kind of ramping up.
Speaker 3: That that level of assault.
Speaker 4: What that what that exactly means, uh, is is unclear
Speaker 4: given kind of Israeli defenses iron Dome Uh.
Speaker 3: And also US.
Speaker 4: You know, the US said that they intercepted some of
Speaker 4: those hoothy missiles previously. So at the same time, you
Speaker 4: have Egypt, if we can put this up here, Egypt
Speaker 4: has moved tanks to the Rafa border. And this is
Speaker 4: not I don't think precipitating any type of invasion or
Speaker 4: anything like that. But I think this is a response
Speaker 4: to the public reports both from the Netnyaho connected think tank,
Speaker 4: which produced a paper basically calling for the ethnic cleansing
Speaker 4: of Gaza, plus the Israeli Intelligence Ministry, which is which,
Speaker 4: as everybody points out, as a small kind of just
Speaker 4: policy organization yet run by a you know, Lakud politician
Speaker 4: with links to Netyah who they also put out a
Speaker 4: paper gaming out what it would look like to ethnically
Speaker 4: cleanse Gaza and part of that plan, essential to that
Speaker 4: plan is pushing people through the Rafa border, closing into
Speaker 4: Signi Peninsula. So I think Egypt sending troops to that,
Speaker 4: sending tanks there is to say no, like you're not
Speaker 4: doing this, We're not going to allow this to happen.
Speaker 5: And back to the Huthis, I mean, so their slogan
Speaker 5: this Reuter's was I was reminded of this in a
Speaker 5: Reuters article yesterday is death to America, death to Israel,
Speaker 5: cursed the Jews, and victory to Islam.
Speaker 3: And this is the Houthis.
Speaker 4: Yeah, some of the hoothy rallies are just like wildly
Speaker 4: anti Semitic, like just that kind of rhetoric, right, like
Speaker 4: whereas Hamas has actually taken out of its charter. Yeah,
Speaker 4: this is not Hamas apologia, but like their charter used
Speaker 4: to say, you know, kill all the Jews.
Speaker 3: They literally like now they say it's.
Speaker 4: It's actually we're just against Israel, and it's Israel that
Speaker 4: links Judaism with Zionism, and when.
Speaker 5: We don't right, they like control f't for jew like
Speaker 5: they replaced Jews with Israel in their charter, like in
Speaker 5: twenty seventeen. It was like nineteen eighty seven, the original
Speaker 5: charter was blatantly anti Semitic, and then.
Speaker 3: The Houthis are still rocking with the original.
Speaker 5: Yeah there's yeah, exactly, but that's I mean, so again,
Speaker 5: I don't think it doesn't mean much as of right now.
Speaker 5: What it does mean, though, is that there's more potential.
Speaker 5: It's another sort of it's not a huge point of escalation,
Speaker 5: but it does show that as these things ratchet up,
Speaker 5: as you have one escalation on top of another and
Speaker 5: they start to snowball, other people get dragged into this.
Speaker 5: The Saudis can get dragged into this really easily in
Speaker 5: a way that I mean, it's just a total powder
Speaker 5: keg when these things start to the domino start to fall,
Speaker 5: and you know, I don't think this is the most
Speaker 5: concerning thing that's happened, but it's pretty concerning. I don't
Speaker 5: want to be numb.
Speaker 4: To it, right, And it comes after Airdawan's like hinting
Speaker 4: at a rally that he could send ships down there
Speaker 4: that he could intervene militarily, because I think a lot
Speaker 4: of people around the world are watching this and saying
Speaker 4: this can't happen right, like say, largely defenseless civilian population
Speaker 4: getting just pounded around the clock, and it feels like
Speaker 4: you should be able to call someone and say, look,
Speaker 4: what's happening this, This is happening in broad daylight. Somebody
Speaker 4: stopped this, And then there comes the realization that there's
Speaker 4: nobody to stop this, and so then you have pressure
Speaker 4: from populations in Turkey and Egypt elsewhere to say, do something,
Speaker 4: stop this. They don't want to get involved in a
Speaker 4: regional war either, But most wars start by people, are
Speaker 4: started by people, and are involved people who never wanted
Speaker 4: to be involved in war in the first place.
Speaker 5: And I do think there are some I mean the
Speaker 5: sort of access of resistance. I do think there are
Speaker 5: some people and some leaders who would gladly get into
Speaker 5: a regional war. I mean Hamas is a good example
Speaker 5: of that. That sort of question. Just to go back
Speaker 5: to your question about what was their strategy, what is
Speaker 5: their kind of end goal of the massacre that they
Speaker 5: plotted apparently for some two years I think obviously they
Speaker 5: had to know where that would go immediately, where that
Speaker 5: would I think everybody knew immediately where that would go.
Speaker 5: As soon as it happened, everybody understood that we were
Speaker 5: going to an all likelihood to see a ground invasion.
Speaker 5: We're going to see mass civilian casualties, and that's the problem.
Speaker 5: On the other hand, with a ceasefire, there's a really
Speaker 5: legitimate question about what that means for the safety of
Speaker 5: people in Israel, what that means for the future of Israel.
Speaker 5: But it's again like I think the media conversation about
Speaker 5: this is wildly unhelpful, and it allows and it enables
Speaker 5: the IDF representatives and Lindsay Graham, who we keep teasing
Speaker 5: we are going to get to him, because he was
Speaker 5: on CNN last night to make a lot of sort
Speaker 5: of facile statements, and you know, it's useless, Like what
Speaker 5: am I supposed to argue against what Lindsay Graham's crazy
Speaker 5: war mongering. I don't even think it represents the position
Speaker 5: of the Pentagon. I think he wants it to represent
Speaker 5: the position of the Pentagon and the White House, which
Speaker 5: is why he's out there wish casting.
Speaker 3: Last week in a low moment for this administration.
Speaker 4: President Biden was asked about the contradiction between net and
Speaker 4: Yaho's claim that he was doing all he could to
Speaker 4: minimize civilian casualties and the fact that on the ground
Speaker 4: more than six thousand people had been killed in just
Speaker 4: the first few weeks.
Speaker 3: He responded like this.
Speaker 5: Do these numbers say to you that he is ignoring
Speaker 5: that message?
Speaker 9: What did they say to me?
Speaker 6: Is I have no notion that the Palestinians are telling
Speaker 6: the truth about how many people are killed.
Speaker 5: I'm sure innocence had been killed, and that's the price
Speaker 5: of quagy to war.
Speaker 4: News outlets quickly noted that the numbers reported by Hamas
Speaker 4: in previous wars had been broadly found to be accurate
Speaker 4: by human rights and relief organizations, the United Nations, and
Speaker 4: even Israel itself, truly showing how absurd Biden's claim was.
Speaker 4: The State Department itself routinely relies on the Gaza Ministry
Speaker 4: of Health, despite his connections to Hamas, which rules over Gaza.
Speaker 4: Yet still, defenders of Israel's assault have suggested that the
Speaker 4: list released by the Ministry of Health is meaningless, that
Speaker 4: it might just be a collection of random names.
Speaker 3: Now it turns out that.
Speaker 4: A few weeks ago, I reached out to a source
Speaker 4: s iide met doing previous reporting. His name's Marum Aldada
Speaker 4: and he was born and raised in Godza but now
Speaker 4: lives in Orlando. Still he's been in regular contact with
Speaker 4: his family over there. Reached out to ask how his
Speaker 4: family was doing, and he said that thirty people on
Speaker 4: his mother's side and seven on his father's had been
Speaker 4: killed so far. A week later I had him on
Speaker 4: my Intercept podcast Deconstructed to talk about what life was
Speaker 4: like for his family in Gaza amid the bombing. But
Speaker 4: because Mariam had told me about the killings before the
Speaker 4: Ministry of Health's list came out, that meant we could
Speaker 4: compare the two lists, and if his relatives were on it,
Speaker 4: it would mean that the list is not just filled
Speaker 4: with random names, but that each name does represent the
Speaker 4: tragic snuffing out of a life. So the list was
Speaker 4: first released in Arabic and includes the ID numbers given
Speaker 4: out by Israel to Palestinians, as well as their age
Speaker 4: and gender. My colleague Mariamsala, who speaks Arabic, helped me
Speaker 4: go through it, and the ministry later released an English
Speaker 4: language version as well. We found forty three of his
Speaker 4: forty six relatives on the ministry's list. The youngest Tahani
Speaker 4: was just a baby, not yet a year old, and
Speaker 4: the oldest was a seventy.
Speaker 3: One year old grandmother.
Speaker 4: What has struck people the most about the denial of
Speaker 4: the slaughter and the hand waving it away is just
Speaker 4: the price of war. Is how different it was when
Speaker 4: the White House was talking about civilian casualties in Ukraine.
Speaker 3: Here's now this news with a quick comparison.
Speaker 10: Being honest about the fact that there have been civilian
Speaker 10: casualties and that there likely will be more is being
Speaker 10: honest because that's.
Speaker 7: What war is. It's brutal, it's ugly, it's messy.
Speaker 10: I've said that before. President also said that yesterday doesn't mean.
Speaker 1: We have to like it.
Speaker 10: It's hard to look at what he's doing in Ukraine,
Speaker 10: what his forces are doing in Ukraine, and think that
Speaker 10: any ethical, moral individual could justify that.
Speaker 1: It's difficult to look at the sorry, it's difficult to look.
Speaker 10: At some of the images and imagine that any well thinking, serious,
Speaker 10: mature leader would do that.
Speaker 4: Since the start of the war in Ukraine, by the way,
Speaker 4: there have been just under ten thousand civilian casualties in Gaza.
Speaker 4: Already more than three thousand children have been killed. The
Speaker 4: Health Ministry's new death toll has climbed above eight thousand.
Speaker 4: Hassan al Tayeb noted on Twitter that according to Save
Speaker 4: the Children, the number of children killed in Gaza over
Speaker 4: the last three weeks has surpassed a number of children
Speaker 4: killed in wars around the world over the past three
Speaker 4: years combined.
Speaker 3: And so now that we.
Speaker 4: Know that the Ministry of Health lists that is being
Speaker 4: put out in Gaza does have the names of real
Speaker 4: people who who have actually died, you know, it kind
Speaker 4: of I think puts the White House in a difficul
Speaker 4: whole position because.
Speaker 3: The attempt to say that, ah, well, this is.
Speaker 4: Just coming from Hamas, we can't really believe this is
Speaker 4: belied by that fact that we now there are real,
Speaker 4: real people on that list, real people who let real
Speaker 4: lives that were ended in the last couple of weeks.
Speaker 4: Combined with the images that we're seeing, and you you
Speaker 4: see John Kirby talk about how hard it is to
Speaker 4: look at the images of civilians killed in Ukraine, that's
Speaker 4: equally true in Gaza. And so I wonder if you're
Speaker 4: starting to see any shift.
Speaker 11: You had.
Speaker 4: John Kirby do this like weird West Wing video yesterday.
Speaker 4: Did you see this, He's like he's like walk, he's
Speaker 4: like doing a walk and talk and he's talking about
Speaker 4: how there's a humanitarian crisis in Gaza and and here
Speaker 4: here are all the things that the United States is
Speaker 4: doing to alleviate the humanitarian crisis, which seemed at least
Speaker 4: to suggest that there was some awareness that the world
Speaker 4: was turning on them on this. It's it's remarkable. Israel
Speaker 4: has taken global sympathy and torched it in the faster
Speaker 4: than anybody I've ever seen. Like the entire world was
Speaker 4: united behind Israel on October seventh, after the atrocity is
Speaker 4: carried out by Hamas, and the response has just obliterated
Speaker 4: that empathy and sympathy.
Speaker 5: And I think some of that was inevitable. Inevitable because
Speaker 5: I do think that there are some activists and particular
Speaker 5: lawmakers who had no room for almost immediately we're calling
Speaker 5: for a ceasefire and calling for Israel not to retaliate.
Speaker 5: And that's a ridiculous position. But even so, it's a
Speaker 5: ridiculous position that you know, we have no limit on
Speaker 5: civilian casualties, that the whatever it takes position in Ukraine
Speaker 5: like these are also ridiculous positions, and.
Speaker 3: So we have gram on that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, well I think we have something else before that,
Speaker 5: but yeah, it's it's that's a position that Lindsay Graham
Speaker 5: has taken. We'll get to that in just a second.
Speaker 5: We have actually right here, speaking of support, we can
Speaker 5: put the next element up on the screen. This is
Speaker 5: from time Biden's Goza stance spurs stunning drop in Arab
Speaker 5: American support. I'm just going to read a little bit
Speaker 5: from it here. The first national poll of Arab Americans
Speaker 5: since the war in Goza began shows how deep that
Speaker 5: sense of betrayal among Arab Americans goes, with only seventeen
Speaker 5: percent of Arab American voters saying they will vote for
Speaker 5: Biden in twenty twenty four, a staggering drop from fifty
Speaker 5: nine percent in twenty twenty. So in twenty twenty fifty
Speaker 5: nine percent of Arab American voters say they're going to
Speaker 5: vote for Biden. Now that number is seventeen percent. So
Speaker 5: James Zogby, who is the founder and the president of
Speaker 5: the Arab American Institute, says, quote This is the most
Speaker 5: dramatic shift over the shortest period of time I've ever seen.
Speaker 5: This is a really interesting point from time. The pole
Speaker 5: results are likely to increase concerns among Democrats about Biden's
Speaker 5: standing with Arab Americans heading into twenty twenty four, particularly
Speaker 5: in Mischi. We're roughly two hundred and seventy seven thousand
Speaker 5: Arab Americans call home and Biden won in twenty twenty
Speaker 5: by a margin of one hundred and fifty five thousand votes.
Speaker 5: That's a huge blow to his ability to win Michigan,
Speaker 5: that's for sure.
Speaker 4: There's an interesting primary unfolding in Houston, Texas. This Democratic
Speaker 4: challenger named Pervez Aguan, who actually wrote about a couple
Speaker 4: months ago maybe back at the Intercept, is challenging kind
Speaker 4: of a backbench Democrat Sturdy apac ally named Lizzie Fletcher.
Speaker 4: That primary I think is not until March, so we
Speaker 4: won't we won't get a look at how that's unfolding
Speaker 4: till then.
Speaker 3: But he is running his campaign.
Speaker 4: Just head on against Fletcher over Fletcher's support for Israel's
Speaker 4: war effort. Fletcher's unconditional support for Israel's war effort. And
Speaker 4: you know, if he is able to kind of campaign
Speaker 4: on that. He would be the basically the first candidate
Speaker 4: I think ever to Auston incumbent for being too unconditionally
Speaker 4: supportive of Israel.
Speaker 3: That has never happened before.
Speaker 4: And if that happens, you know, you still have nine
Speaker 4: months between that and the election.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 4: I don't think we should be making war and peace
Speaker 4: decisions based on polling and focused groups, because this is
Speaker 4: these are questions of morality and good and evil. On
Speaker 4: the other hand, that is an extraordinary swing away away
Speaker 4: from Biden, and it also puts voters, our voters in particular,
Speaker 4: or anybody who is sympathetic to Palestinian dignity in such
Speaker 4: a difficult position. Because you just had the Trump's ambassador
Speaker 4: to Israel. I think he was suggesting that anybody who's
Speaker 4: a foreign exchange student and is a quote quote unquote
Speaker 4: Hama supporter, he doesn't really mean Jama supporter. He means
Speaker 4: anybody who is kind of critical of Israel's war.
Speaker 3: And Gaza should be deported.
Speaker 4: And you've started to that from elements of the right
Speaker 4: that if you're here on a visa and we don't
Speaker 4: like your political views around the Israel Palestine question, you're
Speaker 4: out of here, and you're so people are faced with
Speaker 4: the choice of sitting election out or actively working against
Speaker 4: Biden and helping to elect someone who's then going to
Speaker 4: try to deport foreign exchange students calling them supporters of
Speaker 4: from US, or voting for Biden, who is actively overseeing
Speaker 4: this just ongoing war crime.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and without getting too much into the campus stuff,
Speaker 5: you know, if you look at the Students for Justice
Speaker 5: and Palestine toolkit, it does concern me if there are
Speaker 5: people who are on visa's here and we're sharing the
Speaker 5: paraglider me in paraglider template that was in the Students
Speaker 5: for Justice and Palestine toolkit. Like I actually went and
Speaker 5: looked at toolkit and I was like, holy spoke, this
Speaker 5: is some wild stuff. Not entirely unsurprising. But if there's
Speaker 5: somebody on a foreign visa here who's like, yay terrorism,
Speaker 5: which is what the paragliders engaged in, and that's not
Speaker 5: representative of Palestine, but it is Hamas, that's yeah, I
Speaker 5: mean I would have an issue with that. But I
Speaker 5: think the broader point about Arab Americans looking at the
Speaker 5: Biden administration is completely a serious one for Democrats and
Speaker 5: it's also I mean, in some respects Republicans had made
Speaker 5: inroads with the Arab Americans, especially in Michigan actually in
Speaker 5: the DC area on some of these education issues. That
Speaker 5: is not going to be a durable coalition, that's for
Speaker 5: sure going forward. Now, we do have the Lindsey Graham
Speaker 5: to a clip that we've been teasing because it's I
Speaker 5: think actually very useful. This is Lindsay Graham on Abby
Speaker 5: Phillips Show on CNN Tuesday night.
Speaker 12: Is there a threshold for you? And do you think
Speaker 12: there should be one for the United States government? And
Speaker 12: which the US would say, let's hold off for a
Speaker 12: second in terms of civilian catchup? Is there a point
Speaker 12: in which you would start to question.
Speaker 9: A lot if somebody asked us after World War Two?
Speaker 9: Is there a limit what you would do to make
Speaker 9: sure that Japan and Germany don't conquer the world? Is
Speaker 9: there any limit what Israel should do to the people
Speaker 9: who are trying to slaughter the Jews. The answer is no,
Speaker 9: there is no limit.
Speaker 3: But here's what you need to do. Be smart.
Speaker 9: Let's try to limit Savilian casualties the best we can.
Speaker 9: Let's put humanitarian aid in areas that protect Dennison.
Speaker 3: I'm all for that, but this.
Speaker 9: Idea that Israel has to apologize for attacking Hamas, who's
Speaker 9: embedded with their own population, needs to stop. The goal
Speaker 9: is to destroy Hamas. Hamas is creating these casualties, not Israel.
Speaker 5: So I'm supposed to trust Lindsay Graham, who just you know,
Speaker 5: was a huge backer of the wars in Iraq and
Speaker 5: Afghanistan and of drone strikes to limit civilian casualties.
Speaker 3: I don't, especially when you're saying he basically doesn't care.
Speaker 5: Well, and that's there's a really easy answer to that question,
Speaker 5: by the way, which is I cannot answer it. I
Speaker 5: cannot tell you because that's fodder for enemies. Benhapiro, who
Speaker 5: I'm sure a lot of our viewers don't like, I think,
Speaker 5: actually made a really legitimate point here when he said,
Speaker 5: if you answer the question, you allow Hamas to hit
Speaker 5: that number of civilian casualties and then pressure the West
Speaker 5: to just feel like, Okay, we're done, We're totally backing
Speaker 5: out of this. So just don't answer the question. You
Speaker 5: don't have to answer the question. You can actually explain
Speaker 5: that if that's really what your concern is. But then again,
Speaker 5: that's asking us or ascribing to Lindsay Graham the sense
Speaker 5: of concern about it that I'm genuinely unclear on whether
Speaker 5: that actually exists.
Speaker 4: But I think the question would not be asked if
Speaker 4: there was there was a sense that there was genuine
Speaker 4: concern about civilian casualty and there was an actual attempt
Speaker 4: being made. It's only when you have people start to say, look,
Speaker 4: it's just a price of doing business.
Speaker 3: It's sad, but we just have to do it.
Speaker 4: Then that's when you say, okay, well what's the price,
Speaker 4: Like you're just saying it's a price.
Speaker 3: What's the price?
Speaker 4: And if the posture were no civilian casualies are okay,
Speaker 4: we're going to do everything we can to minimize them,
Speaker 4: and we're going to and we're going to be, you know,
Speaker 4: critical of Hamosfort's hiding behind civilians, but we're going to
Speaker 4: be the civilized ones.
Speaker 3: And so okay, we're going to say that they have
Speaker 3: a human shield.
Speaker 4: We're not going to shoot at them to say that, well,
Speaker 4: they have a human shield. Therefore, unfortunately we had to
Speaker 4: shoot and kill the innocent civilian. Right does not make
Speaker 4: you the civilized one in that exchange, Kirby was actually
Speaker 4: asked about this from a Palestinian reporter in the White
Speaker 4: House Guard basically the same question.
Speaker 3: Interesting back and forth.
Speaker 11: Let's roll that thousands of Palestinian civilians have fallen so far,
Speaker 11: including one hundred and sixty of my own relatives, and
Speaker 11: I'm just wondering how many Palestinian civilians need to be
Speaker 11: killed before the United States called for a ceasefire.
Speaker 10: First of all, my condolences to you and your family.
Speaker 7: Are you in touch with some well that.
Speaker 11: There's as much as I can not as much as
Speaker 11: you'd like to be.
Speaker 10: Yeah, but I'm very sorry to hear that. I'm very
Speaker 10: sorry to hear that, And so I can see this
Speaker 10: is obviously personal for you. I can tell you it's
Speaker 10: personal for the President too. We don't want to see
Speaker 10: anymore civilian casualties. So in terms of the ceasefire, our
Speaker 10: concern with that is that HAMAS benefits to the tune
Speaker 10: of being able to refit, renew themselves, plan and execute
Speaker 10: additional attacks. And as I said yesterday, right now is
Speaker 10: not the time for a general ceasefire.
Speaker 7: It is, however, the.
Speaker 10: Time to consider pauses in the fighting long enough so
Speaker 10: that folks like your relatives and family members can get
Speaker 10: this incredibly needed humanitarian assistance and perhaps a way to
Speaker 10: get out if they want to get out. So we're
Speaker 10: supporting that and we'll see what we can do.
Speaker 4: Do you notice what he said, well, humanitarian pauses from
Speaker 4: time to time, Like that's kind of an assumption that
Speaker 4: this is going to go on for a very long time.
Speaker 4: I was kind of chilling and distarving to hear. You
Speaker 4: saw him raise his hand right afterwards that His next
Speaker 4: question was also a good one. He asked about whether
Speaker 4: or not the United States would guarantee that if the
Speaker 4: civilians were pushed out of Gaza, that they'd be allowed
Speaker 4: the right of return, because a lot of Palestinian civilians
Speaker 4: were guaranteed that right in both in nineteen forty eight,
Speaker 4: nineteen sixty seven, ninety seventy three, and it never came
Speaker 4: to pass. And a lot of people in Gaza can
Speaker 4: see their old farms and old land from behind the fence,
Speaker 4: and so a lot of them say, we're not going
Speaker 4: to the desert because we're not going to be able
Speaker 4: to come back. And Kirby's response was, our policy is
Speaker 4: not to have some sort of permanent settlement outside of
Speaker 4: Gaza for the people who call that home, we want
Speaker 4: them to be able to go back home and do
Speaker 4: so safely and effectively. We are not calling for them
Speaker 4: their permanent refuge from the country.
Speaker 3: But again, it's good to have that on the record.
Speaker 3: But if you try to kind.
Speaker 4: Of show this clip at the border when you're trying
Speaker 4: to get back in, I'm not sure it's going to work.
Speaker 5: No, And that's exactly what we were just talking about. Okay,
Speaker 5: So what is your plan you're evacuating if we already
Speaker 5: have what some one point four million I think is
Speaker 5: the latest report I saw displaced Gazans that have have
Speaker 5: gone south to the South of gazas Israel in the
Speaker 5: United States have said as the plan, and then to
Speaker 5: move people into Egypt as it's possible, et cetera, et cetera. Okay,
Speaker 5: So what is the plan to bring people back in
Speaker 5: a way that makes Israel feel as though, and reasonably
Speaker 5: they have concerns it can exist safely without another October
Speaker 5: seventh happening right away or in the near future. How
Speaker 5: do you do that and how do you tell people
Speaker 5: to leave their homes and the land that they're clinging
Speaker 5: to and that they believe in and then you know,
Speaker 5: say yeah, you're going to come back. And this is
Speaker 5: also going to please the other stakeholder who's prosecuting this war.
Speaker 5: We have basically just John Kirby saying we want to
Speaker 5: do it. That is the extent of what we know
Speaker 5: about this plan from both Israel and the United States,
Speaker 5: is that we know that we want to do it.
Speaker 5: Great step, How are you going to do it? Because
Speaker 5: it's an impossible it's a feat, it's a feed, and
Speaker 5: there's just no clear sign. And again this is also
Speaker 5: what happened in Iraq and Afghanistan. We had really nebulous
Speaker 5: goals and we had a you know, adjust and well
Speaker 5: I shouldn't say that we had I definitely shouldn't say that,
Speaker 5: but we had so after nine to eleven, obviously we
Speaker 5: had reason to go after al Qaeda, so that pretense
Speaker 5: had that sort of sheen of a just cause, and
Speaker 5: what happened was a disaster, just a let's let's use
Speaker 5: the word quagmire. It was a quagmire because we had
Speaker 5: nebulous plans for what we would do in the power vacuum,
Speaker 5: that continue, what we would do with civilians, and as
Speaker 5: as much as I understand, and you support Israel's rights
Speaker 5: to retaliate. I know we disagree on that point, and
Speaker 5: you know, believe that Israel faces an existential threat. I
Speaker 5: don't trust our government. I don't trust Western governments to
Speaker 5: prosecute this ward justly.
Speaker 4: Moving to the West Bank, and there's a related point
Speaker 4: to be made there. In that Ministry of Intelligence Intelligence
Speaker 4: Ministry document that was leaked the other day, there was
Speaker 4: a point a piece that didn't get talked about much,
Speaker 4: but it proposed, you know, one of the one of
Speaker 4: the proposals was a complete cleansing of of Gaza, pushing
Speaker 4: everyone into the Sinai desert. Another of the proposals in
Speaker 4: there was which they rejected, but said, here's here's an
Speaker 4: idea that you could consider, was to have the Palestinian Authority,
Speaker 4: which kind of which operates in the West Bank, also
Speaker 4: run Gaza. And it said that is not desirable for
Speaker 4: Israel because the status quo of Hamas in Gaza and
Speaker 4: the PA in the West Bank keeps Palestinians divided, which
Speaker 4: is then an obstacle to Palestindian statehood.
Speaker 3: And so it's that it's described.
Speaker 4: The obstacle is described in the document as a good
Speaker 4: thing for Israel, like they want the division, and that
Speaker 4: is reflective of this long time kind of net Yahoo
Speaker 4: policy that Hamas is actually good for the interests of
Speaker 4: Israel because the Hamas is not a negotiating partner that
Speaker 4: can be taken seriously.
Speaker 5: Just credits the Palestinian cause.
Speaker 4: And you know, implicitly in that there's there's going to
Speaker 4: be some Israeli civilian casualties from Hamas rockets and Hamas
Speaker 4: border raids. But that's that's the price of making sure
Speaker 4: that there's no Palestindian statehood. October seventh put a price
Speaker 4: tag on that far beyond you know what what yah
Speaker 4: who could have expected to see a document post October
Speaker 4: seventh still say that the status quo of a divided
Speaker 4: Gaza and West Bank is preferable because it prevents Palestinian
Speaker 4: statehood is just chilling because it does it desecrates the
Speaker 4: memory of all of the Israeli civilians who were killed
Speaker 4: as a consequence of that strategy, and so that also
Speaker 4: raises the question of what is going on in the
Speaker 4: West Bank.
Speaker 3: That's what we're going to talk about here.
Speaker 4: If we can put up this first elements, this is
Speaker 4: Palestinian authority run West Bank Settler violence against Palestinians in
Speaker 4: the West Bank.
Speaker 3: Is rising now over the past year.
Speaker 4: Violence in the in the West Bank from settlers and
Speaker 4: from the idea of toward Palestinians was already at kind
Speaker 4: of record levels over the years we've seen, but we've
Speaker 4: seen pagrams directed at Palestinians that have been you know,
Speaker 4: kind of ramped up to you know, a completely new level.
Speaker 3: And again there's no, there's not amas.
Speaker 4: This is a Palestinian authority which Palestinians see as a
Speaker 4: as an arm of the Israeli occupation, like at Post Arafat,
Speaker 4: who there's an interesting die documentary on how he was
Speaker 4: killed that alleges that Israel poisoned Arafat. Post Arafat, the
Speaker 4: Palasting authority is seen by a lot of Palsetatians is
Speaker 4: just kind of another just a wing, just an arm
Speaker 4: of the Israeli occupation. Yet this is what we're getting
Speaker 4: in the West Bank.
Speaker 5: Well, I think that's actually an important point of context.
Speaker 5: In before October seventh, violence and casualties were already basically
Speaker 5: coming close to record levels of the past couple of decades,
Speaker 5: both for Israelis and Palestinians, and so tensions, you know,
Speaker 5: it did come out of it. If it felt like
Speaker 5: it came out of the blue, it did not actually
Speaker 5: really come out of the blue. There was a lot
Speaker 5: of I mean, there was an incredible amount of tension.
Speaker 5: And that's another reason that you know, instead of and
Speaker 5: we were just talking about this in the last segment,
Speaker 5: instead of the paragliders and whatever else, what Hamas did.
Speaker 5: And to your point, it's likely that Netanyahu knows this,
Speaker 5: and people in Israel knows this, know this. What they
Speaker 5: did was set back the cause of Palestinians. And so
Speaker 5: instead of the paragliders and you know, saying that this
Speaker 5: is the cost of decolonization, et cetera, et cetera, that's
Speaker 5: completely misplaced celebration of you know, the what has it
Speaker 5: been called, the you know, the the the decolonization effort,
Speaker 5: the you know, retaliation, et cetera, et cetera. That set
Speaker 5: back the Palestinian cause enormously. And Israel knows that, many
Speaker 5: Palestinians know that, and so again, like that's just another
Speaker 5: example of how poorly served so many civilians are by
Speaker 5: world leadership, their own leadership in that area.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and it feels like the settlers and the IDF
Speaker 4: in the West Bank are using the focus on the
Speaker 4: war in Gaza to ramp up the polity that was
Speaker 4: already being implemented. Put up C two here this from
Speaker 4: hot retz Us threatens to stop supplying guns after Ben
Speaker 4: Gavier gives them out at political events. Ben Gavier ultra
Speaker 4: far right like there isn't there is enough adjectives to
Speaker 4: describe how far right this net Yahoo minister is.
Speaker 3: And he wouldn't rebuke that, No, he'd say to add
Speaker 3: some more onto it.
Speaker 4: He's handing out weapons to Israeli settlers who can then
Speaker 4: kind of use them in the put grams and the
Speaker 4: clearing out of of these of these territories. I think
Speaker 4: we're decided we're not going to play it. People can
Speaker 4: find it on their own. There is extremely disturbing Abu
Speaker 4: Graban like footage circulating online of Palestinian civilians in the
Speaker 4: West Bank being kind of beaten, held naked, dragged across
Speaker 4: you know, hard scrabble dirt ground just abused in some
Speaker 4: of the some of the most horrific ways you can imagine.
Speaker 4: And again West Bank, this is happening in the West Bank. Uh,
Speaker 4: this is not happening in Hamas controlled Gaza. I think
Speaker 4: I think we have c three here Jewish voices for
Speaker 4: piece saying that the footage of Israeli soldiers torturing Palestinian
Speaker 4: men in the West Bank is horrific. The Israeli military
Speaker 4: has brutally abused Palestinian prisoners for decades. As the Israelian
Speaker 4: military wages a genocidal war in Gaza, its soldiers are
Speaker 4: no longer hiding this abuse from the public. And part
Speaker 4: and parcel of this entire strategy is also humiliation. And
Speaker 4: that gets us to the TikTok trend that we're talking
Speaker 4: about here. There's a song, it has a name. I
Speaker 4: don't know the name of the song, but it's a
Speaker 4: typical TikTok trend where people are doing basically the same
Speaker 4: thing to a little dance to the same song, and
Speaker 4: everybody's participating across society. Except this one is people who
Speaker 4: have captured, you know, young Palestinians and blindfolded them in
Speaker 4: handcuffs and then humiliating them with this dance being done
Speaker 4: at kind of weddings being you know, children, you know,
Speaker 4: it's really children are doing it. We could play we
Speaker 4: could play a couple of the of the clips here, So.
Speaker 5: If you were listening to that, what you saw was
Speaker 5: a couple of videos, or what you would have seen
Speaker 5: if you were watching a couple of videos of Israeli's
Speaker 5: driving cars. The first video had what appeared to be
Speaker 5: a group of Palestinian hostages in the back of the
Speaker 5: car and the driver was sort of laughing along to
Speaker 5: the meme. And then in the second video, again Israeli
Speaker 5: driving a car and a.
Speaker 3: Group of kids prominent journalists, I believe, so a group.
Speaker 5: Of kids sort of mock having their hands tied together,
Speaker 5: having their hands cuffed, kind of bopping along to the
Speaker 5: song and smiling in the back ground.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and.
Speaker 4: Palace Citians and Israelis have to live together in this
Speaker 4: part of the world, like they have all decided that
Speaker 4: this is where they're going to live. And it just
Speaker 4: seems like there's just no recognition of that fact that
Speaker 4: I feel like that there can be an if there's
Speaker 4: just you know, enough enough walls built, enough fences, enough
Speaker 4: attacking back and forth, that somehow that will resolve itself.
Speaker 3: But that's not the case.
Speaker 5: It's just enormously difficult to imagine, you know, the effort
Speaker 5: that it takes to resist that sort of human the
Speaker 5: negative human impulses when you've seen and you know, just
Speaker 5: given the numbers, basically everyone in Israel knows somebody who
Speaker 5: was killed slaughtered by terrorists in the massacre. And the
Speaker 5: worst human impulses bring us to positions like those bring
Speaker 5: us to sort of laughing and smiling about the mistreatment
Speaker 5: of other people, of civilians, and we saw that again.
Speaker 5: They keep going to Iraq and Afghanistan and you invoked
Speaker 5: Abu grab We have seen that impulse take us. And
Speaker 5: I do think over Amas we have the moral high
Speaker 5: ground that that that is not helpful, that is allowing
Speaker 5: us to forfeit the moral high ground in in ways,
Speaker 5: and I'm sort of conflating the US and Israel and
Speaker 5: appropriately so in the broader West. But that's giving into
Speaker 5: the very very worst of us.
Speaker 3: And it's not easy.
Speaker 4: And a lot of this is going on post October
Speaker 4: seventh in the West Bank. But these these types of
Speaker 4: humiliations are endemic to the occupation and so that's that's
Speaker 4: also why it's an interesting question of what would the
Speaker 4: Gazins even say if you said, Okay, the palest any
Speaker 4: authority is going to be administering Godz at this point, Well,
Speaker 4: the palting authority administer is the West Bank, and it's brutal,
Speaker 4: like why would we want that?
Speaker 5: And there's I mean, there's there's generations of anti Semitism
Speaker 5: in uh. You know, there's just such a deep seated
Speaker 5: and endemic hatred. You know that we would be foolish
Speaker 5: to ignore in Gaza in the West Bank. But there's
Speaker 5: also you know, we can't ignore it when you see
Speaker 5: videos like this either, absolutely not. And what we can
Speaker 5: do is not have John Kirby say, well, we want
Speaker 5: to be able to have Palestinians come back, like we
Speaker 5: want them to leave and be confident that they'll be
Speaker 5: able to come back when the plan is to have
Speaker 5: again people living in extremely close proximity. You know, there
Speaker 5: is no end to the October seventh cycle and the
Speaker 5: post October seventh cycle, there's just going to be a
Speaker 5: whole lot of civilians caught in a rinse and repeat.
Speaker 4: Let's do some rapid fire election stuff back here in
Speaker 4: the United States.
Speaker 5: You've told some examples that I didn't even know we're
Speaker 5: on the ballot, and actually one is the first one
Speaker 5: is a really important one. This is Ohio, the story
Speaker 5: that we've been covering on Issue one in Ohio. I
Speaker 5: had no idea, And this seems to me so importan
Speaker 5: to the story that weed is also on the ballot,
Speaker 5: that when people are going to vote on Issue one,
Speaker 5: which we covered similar ballot measures in Michigan and Kansas
Speaker 5: over the course of the last year, that's actually partially
Speaker 5: what inspired pro abortion activists and actually anti abortion activists
Speaker 5: to want this on the ballot and to fight for
Speaker 5: this on the ballot going forward. That's really what they
Speaker 5: were looking at. And now you add to all of
Speaker 5: that energy, people are going to be going to vote
Speaker 5: on Weed. Not a good sign for the anti abortion
Speaker 5: people on my side of that issue.
Speaker 3: No Emily saw that. Oh boy, five points.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So the reason that the anti abortion crowd pushed for
Speaker 4: that amendment back in August, which would have made which
Speaker 4: would have required a sixty percent threshold for questions to
Speaker 4: be successful, was because this has been polling at fifty
Speaker 4: eight fifty nine percent right at the threat. Right at
Speaker 4: that line, maybe they would have gotten over, maybe it
Speaker 4: wouldn't have. Now it only needs fifty percent because that
Speaker 4: that maneuver was defeated.
Speaker 5: To amend the Ohio Constitution that would in shrines, basically
Speaker 5: says that you can make, as NPR describes it, reproductive
Speaker 5: health care decisions, including abortion. That is a constitutional guarantee
Speaker 5: in Ohio. Should this pass next week?
Speaker 4: So I think it's going to pass. You've probably been
Speaker 4: filling a little bit more closely. Just generally it seems
Speaker 4: like the it's well ahead. But what's your sense from
Speaker 4: people on the ground.
Speaker 5: I think it's absolutely going to pass, And now that
Speaker 5: I know weeds on the ballot, I don't even think
Speaker 5: it's going to be that close.
Speaker 4: It should pass to this is a recreational it would
Speaker 4: allow stores, it would allow it's basically would regulate it
Speaker 4: similarly to alcohol. Would have a Bureau of Cannabis or
Speaker 4: whatever help to oversee it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it creates like an entire department, right, an entire
Speaker 5: sort of regulatory.
Speaker 4: INFRASTRUCTIONACK structure that then funds schools, treatment centers, and all
Speaker 4: that sort of stuff.
Speaker 5: So, yeah, you can have two and a half ounces
Speaker 5: of cannabis and up to fifteen grams of cannabis extract
Speaker 5: if you're over the age of twenty one, and that's possession.
Speaker 5: You can have up to six cannabis plants, or as
Speaker 5: many as twelve if there are at least two adults
Speaker 5: twenty year older in the household, which is kind of
Speaker 5: a funny detail, Like if there's two of you, you
Speaker 5: can go up to twelve plants.
Speaker 3: Fair enough.
Speaker 4: So if you're in Ohio, do go out and vote.
Speaker 4: Come on, do your civic duty, get this done.
Speaker 5: You know what. And again, like as we talk about
Speaker 5: issue one, it's incredibly serious because people in the anti
Speaker 5: abortion side, in the kind of conservative movement space, say,
Speaker 5: we saw what happened in Kansas, we saw what happened
Speaker 5: in Michigan. We're basically getting routed in red and purple states,
Speaker 5: states that we feel comfortable in, states like you know, Kansas.
Speaker 5: Ohio is a place where they see this as kind
Speaker 5: of the test lab for the United States. Like this
Speaker 5: is a state that has rural areas, urban areas, that
Speaker 5: has a total cross section of America in it, but
Speaker 5: generally is red, generally in recent years has lean right.
Speaker 5: And if you can't keep abortion out of the constitution
Speaker 5: in Ohio, all of the dominoes will fall across the
Speaker 5: rest of the country, and the left is going to
Speaker 5: pour money into those remaining red states because a lot
Speaker 5: of blue states post Doobs were able to sort of
Speaker 5: shore up their constitutions or allow for abortion, find ways
Speaker 5: to allow for abortion. And the aftermath of Dobbs and
Speaker 5: the sort of post Row landscape, they say, well, we
Speaker 5: can basically do this in all of these individual states
Speaker 5: if we put enough money into it. And because it's unpopular.
Speaker 4: Right so far, the anti abortion movement has taken l's
Speaker 4: in Kansas, Kentucky, Montana looking like Ohio and yeah, like
Speaker 4: you said, it raises the question where can they win?
Speaker 4: What would be a state if they can't win Kansas, Mississippi,
Speaker 4: maybe Kansas.
Speaker 5: I actually intempted to give people the sort of devil's
Speaker 5: advocate argument in Kansas because the way that referendum was
Speaker 5: written was insane, I think it was. And they yeah,
Speaker 5: and the Kansas one was, if I'm remembering correctly, that
Speaker 5: was the first one, and it really caught people off
Speaker 5: right right, And so people didn't immediately realize, you know,
Speaker 5: how unpopular. A lot of people on the right didn't
Speaker 5: immediately realize how much they were actually going to have
Speaker 5: to make that argument that the ball was in their court,
Speaker 5: that they were going to have to proactively sort of
Speaker 5: make the argument for what you know, abortion law looks
Speaker 5: like after Row, and they allowed the left to come
Speaker 5: in and just absolutely bulldoze them. They didn't realize how unpopular.
Speaker 5: And that's actually I think a real problem with the
Speaker 5: pro life movement is not sort of understanding how unpopular
Speaker 5: the position is. Yeah, oh yeah, and so and and
Speaker 5: understand the reality on the ground, which is that these
Speaker 5: arguments are really really hard to make. It doesn't mean
Speaker 5: you shouldn't make them, of course, I don't think that,
Speaker 5: but you have to. You have to make them well.
Speaker 5: And so the consequence of what happens in Ohio could
Speaker 5: be tons of money and political resources being expended around
Speaker 5: the country to specifically target red states. And I think
Speaker 5: it's very likely that this passes. And I think that's
Speaker 5: very likely that dominoes from the perspective of somebody on
Speaker 5: the right and in the pro life space, those dominoes
Speaker 5: are going to continue to fall around the country after next.
Speaker 4: Week potentially groundbreaking referendum in Maine.
Speaker 5: This is an interesting Yeah.
Speaker 3: So right now there's.
Speaker 4: Two utilities and utility monopolies in Maine. This would be
Speaker 4: I think D three. People hate their utility monopolies. There's
Speaker 4: nothing that unites people, you know, more more quickly and
Speaker 4: more strongly than hatred of your local utility. And so
Speaker 4: what this would do is it would create Pine Tree Power,
Speaker 4: which would be a basically publicly owned and run, consumer
Speaker 4: owned and run power company where the positions would be elected,
Speaker 4: which would be interesting because now you've got you're going
Speaker 4: to have like nuclear and gas and solar and when
Speaker 4: people like running candidates to be on the utility.
Speaker 3: I'm sure that I'm sure thought thought all this through.
Speaker 5: Yes, I would hope.
Speaker 3: So at least there's.
Speaker 4: A huge debate over is this going to say money?
Speaker 4: Because ultimately what this comes down to people you know,
Speaker 4: like the ideas in general, but the real question is
Speaker 4: am I going to pay more?
Speaker 3: Am I going to pay less? For electricity?
Speaker 4: And importantly in Maine, is it going to be more
Speaker 4: reliable or less reliable a place like Maine with you know,
Speaker 4: it's called pine Dream power. When you've got trees all
Speaker 4: over the state and you're getting snow four or five
Speaker 4: months out of the year, you can have you can
Speaker 4: have a lot of power disruptions, and so the ability
Speaker 4: to keep power going is key to keeping popularity. And
Speaker 4: so this referendum would then would basically get rid of
Speaker 4: both utilities and combine them into one, one kind of
Speaker 4: people owned utility, which should I think it would be.
Speaker 4: It's worth a shot, Come on, Maine, try it well.
Speaker 5: The industry, interestingly enough, has been sort of dangling the
Speaker 5: and this is from main public the article just on
Speaker 5: the screen and arguing that quote this could ultimately star
Speaker 5: renewable energy development of it, So trying to drive the
Speaker 5: wedge between the hippies and their their quest for a
Speaker 5: public utilities, saying it's either the environment here or it's
Speaker 5: the duopoly.
Speaker 4: I'm sure, yes, the diopoly deeply cares about the transition
Speaker 4: to renewables, no doubt. The independent economic analysis suggested there
Speaker 4: was what it could save potentially eight hundred million dollars
Speaker 4: over the next however many years, But there will be
Speaker 4: some upfront costs basically to buy out the utilities and
Speaker 4: transition over. So we'll see, we'll see if people's kind
Speaker 4: of fear of the unknown and fear of change overrides
Speaker 4: their kind of desire to take control of their own utility,
Speaker 4: and how much faith people have in their kind of
Speaker 4: own collective democratic ability to run to do big things.
Speaker 5: Well, surely this also I mean really really fascinating A
Speaker 5: the initiative and b what could come of it, but
Speaker 5: also surely there's this is opening a lot of doors
Speaker 5: and peaking the interest of the industry as of right now.
Speaker 5: They obviously don't want to get obliterated, but they have
Speaker 5: to know that there will be plenty of opportunities for
Speaker 5: grift and cronyism should this actually pass, because the transition
Speaker 5: period sounds like it'll be a mess.
Speaker 3: True, but hard to be more corrupt than a than
Speaker 3: like an energy monopoly.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's like like PGN like at this point, just
Speaker 5: formalize the public nature of it and let people vote.
Speaker 4: Right, There's never been a benign monopoly Like, that's just
Speaker 4: not how they work.
Speaker 3: That's happened. So moving down to Mississippi, my man Tate Reeves.
Speaker 5: Ryan gets apparently Ryan is told he looks like Tate Reeves.
Speaker 3: I told that too often. We put up D four here.
Speaker 4: These are numbers from five thirty eight which show if
Speaker 4: your Reeve's a disturbingly close race. The Democratic Governors Association
Speaker 4: kind of put out its own pole, which take with
Speaker 4: a grain of salt, obviously from mid October that has
Speaker 4: Reeves only up one previous polling had Reeves up anywhere
Speaker 4: between eight and seventeen points. Aside from kind of Brandon
Speaker 4: Presley internal poll that they put out in the summer,
Speaker 4: you should take with the extra extra grains of salt
Speaker 4: that had the race even now, Brandon Presley, if that
Speaker 4: name sounds familiar to you, Yes, that is the king's cousin.
Speaker 5: It's Mississippi.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it is Elvis Presley's cousin.
Speaker 4: So and we can put up this next one here,
Speaker 4: I guess was just D five of so Tate Reeves.
Speaker 3: This is Mississippi today.
Speaker 4: A huge story breaking late in the campaign, Tate Reeves
Speaker 4: top political donors received one point four a billion with
Speaker 4: a B in state contracts from his agency. This kind
Speaker 4: of slots into the public scandal that you're probably already
Speaker 4: familiar with involving Brett farre And, you know, using welfare
Speaker 4: money to do whatever Brett Farv was dealing with welfare money.
Speaker 4: And so it raises the question like, is there any
Speaker 4: way that a Republican can lose in Mississippi? And if
Speaker 4: there is, it's this, it's at the hands of Brandon
Speaker 4: Presley Els. He's not just Elvis's cousin, he's an elected
Speaker 4: official in a Republican leaning district who the Republican's over
Speaker 4: there love him. So he speaks like a good pop
Speaker 4: he speaks the populist language. So it's like, you have
Speaker 4: an ideal Democratic candidate on one hand, you have just
Speaker 4: the platonic anti ideal of a candidate on the Republican side,
Speaker 4: no offense to my man, Is that enough to lose
Speaker 4: in Mississippi?
Speaker 3: I doubt it? But what do you think?
Speaker 5: You know, it's funny. I was talking to actually some
Speaker 5: journalism students from Mississippi yesterday before we even decided to
Speaker 5: cover this topic, and they specifically mentioned Mississippi Today's coverage
Speaker 5: of the election. We're kind of talking about journalism, and
Speaker 5: they said, it's a little bit delusional. There's this this
Speaker 5: kind of idea that Presley's really close, when from some
Speaker 5: of the perspectives that I was hearing, it's still kind
Speaker 5: of a real long shot that Mississippi is really, you know,
Speaker 5: not vulnerable.
Speaker 3: I don't obviously, you might be right.
Speaker 5: I have no idea. That's just what I heard from
Speaker 5: those folks, and it does seem to me like the
Speaker 5: Democratic poll there is an outlier. There was one poll
Speaker 5: that had them, even from back in August. But the
Speaker 5: other right, yeah, the others from the last couple of months,
Speaker 5: look like you have Reaps up by a fairly comfortable
Speaker 5: margin eight to eleven points. Although polling in these state
Speaker 5: races is just really hard to trust anymore, extremely hard
Speaker 5: to trust anymore. I think they probably feel pretty pretty
Speaker 5: okay on the Tate Reefs campaign, and pretty okay is
Speaker 5: you know, what can you do in the age of
Speaker 5: Trump and Biden, both Democrats and Republicans. If you have
Speaker 5: a couple of pole that have you up eight and
Speaker 5: eleven and you're like, I'm pretty okay, that's probably the
Speaker 5: best you can do.
Speaker 4: And it feels like deep blue states are so much
Speaker 4: more willing to elect Republican governors than the reverse, like
Speaker 4: Vermont the Republican governor, Kentucky's I'm sure Kentucky has it down,
Speaker 4: but almost all of New England had Republicans in the
Speaker 4: last ten years. Maryland doesn't right now, but for a
Speaker 4: long time had Larry Hogan. Louisiana elected a Democrat who
Speaker 4: was just that they now have a Republican there. But
Speaker 4: that's kind of interesting because Kansas actually has a democratic government.
Speaker 5: And those are two areas where there's still that transit,
Speaker 5: Like there's such a historical gravitation towards Republicans in New
Speaker 5: England and a historical gravitation towards Democrats. And so I
Speaker 5: think those margins when there are marginal elections, the margins
Speaker 5: of people who will still vote. You know, people in
Speaker 5: my family, for example, in Wisconsin, you know lifetime union members,
Speaker 5: deep Catholics, who will literally not vote for Republican even
Speaker 5: though they probably a lot with Republicans on almost every
Speaker 5: issue except for probably like union support, but almost everything
Speaker 5: else down the line, They'll never vote for a Republican.
Speaker 5: And we all kind of know people who are in
Speaker 5: that camp. I think that's probably still is why Republicans
Speaker 5: are able to get elected in New England and Democrats
Speaker 5: are able to get elected in Louisiana. I mean, Richard
Speaker 5: Shelby of Alabama was a Democrat. He was till I think, yeah,
Speaker 5: he just left eighty two the Senate, but yeah, I
Speaker 5: think there's still some of that muscle memory.
Speaker 3: And so.
Speaker 4: The reverse is going on in western Pennsylvania. If we
Speaker 4: can put up D five, got some interesting elections there.
Speaker 4: First of all, there's a Pennsylvania Supreme Court election, which
Speaker 4: Democrats could lose and still control the court four to three,
Speaker 4: but if they win it that kind of locks them
Speaker 4: in for a long time. Pennsylvania Supreme Court obviously insanely
Speaker 4: important for elections, yes, just like the Wisconsin Supreme Court is,
Speaker 4: but in Alligating County, two really important races.
Speaker 3: Going on there.
Speaker 4: So the executive is a kind of berniicrat Lefty Sarah
Speaker 4: and Mamrano won the primary there but is now locked
Speaker 4: in a very fierce race with a with a popular Republican,
Speaker 4: and Republicans feel like if they ever have a chance
Speaker 4: to win, and county executive is the biggest position in right,
Speaker 4: that's that's the uh in in the Pennsylvania political structure,
Speaker 4: like to be Allegheny County Executive is bigger. That's a
Speaker 4: bigger deal than like being Pittsburgh mayor or whatever.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 4: And so they feel like they have they have a
Speaker 4: real chance to upset Democrats here.
Speaker 3: They're there.
Speaker 4: Their argument is that Sarah's too far left and and
Speaker 4: it'll be interesting to see how the or if the
Speaker 4: kind of war in Gaza, you know, plays into this election.
Speaker 4: It shouldn't because obviously the Alleghany County Executive has nothing
Speaker 4: to do with what's going on in Israel Palestine, but
Speaker 4: it's it's a hot issue and is an emotional one
Speaker 4: is going to and is going to probably bring people
Speaker 4: out on both sides. And so if I forget the
Speaker 4: guy's name, even but if the Republican wins, will have
Speaker 4: to learn his name because he will immediately become a
Speaker 4: candidate for governor and for Senate, having you know, having
Speaker 4: one in a blue area. We'll see separately the there's
Speaker 4: a DA race where a criminal justice reformer won previously
Speaker 4: and is kind of being challenged by a Democrat who
Speaker 4: just registered as a Republican.
Speaker 3: And so that's one way that.
Speaker 4: In these kind of deep blue areas you can get
Speaker 4: around to have the fact of not being able to
Speaker 4: win a primary, you just switch parties and run in
Speaker 4: the general election. So that that'll be an interesting one too,
Speaker 4: and a test of kind of the criminal justice reform,
Speaker 4: which reminds me we should mention Wesley Bell, a criminal
Speaker 4: justice reformer in Saint Louis, you know, was elected prosecutor
Speaker 4: out there.
Speaker 3: It's now challenging Corey.
Speaker 4: Bush with and and really hitting her kind of from
Speaker 4: the right, and I suspect it's going to have a
Speaker 4: lot of report yeah from I don't think he's hit
Speaker 4: her yet on that, but I suspect that, Uh, we'll
Speaker 4: see a lot of well, I think I suspect we'll
Speaker 4: see Israel Palace.
Speaker 3: I'm playing that race.
Speaker 5: A robust Jewish community in the Saint Louis area, isn't there.
Speaker 4: I don't know much about Saint Louis. Actually, screw, I
Speaker 4: really don't know much about that. I've driven through it.
Speaker 4: It's got that arch. Yes, I stopped and we looked
Speaker 4: at the arch. That's about all I got.
Speaker 3: I'll say lowis for you.
Speaker 5: So these races are happening on Tuesday. We'll be back
Speaker 5: here on Wednesday. And actually, Brian, I feel like this
Speaker 5: is your bread and butter. I love covering elections with
Speaker 5: the election.
Speaker 3: Nights right, it will be we'll be here the day
Speaker 3: after the elections.
Speaker 5: You have eyes all over the country. It's actually amazing
Speaker 5: you have all of these like little it's your memory.
Speaker 5: You're able to just like recall these little races and
Speaker 5: know the dynamics.
Speaker 4: I just mostly follow the uh the Twitter account at
Speaker 4: Daniel ta and I e I'll just follow him on
Speaker 4: every election and seemed like an expert.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he'll tell you what you need to know.
Speaker 5: Although obviously some usually consequential things on the ballot, things
Speaker 5: that are not just important for people in states like
Speaker 5: Ohio and Pennsylvania. But we'll have ramifications in terms of
Speaker 5: funding and money all over the country, ripple effect for
Speaker 5: the next couple of years and in the presidential cycle
Speaker 5: as well, because everyone here in Washington is taking cues
Speaker 5: from these races in terms of what's going to happen
Speaker 5: over the course of the next year.
Speaker 4: Also, Virginia, of course, that's right, Virginia. Let's let's put's
Speaker 4: put Betts. Now that they the woman who.
Speaker 3: Was busted, oh, the Washington Post woman.
Speaker 4: The Washington Post busted on camera doing like what was
Speaker 4: the whatever the website was.
Speaker 5: I don't know. I ignored the entire story.
Speaker 4: Say that the Republicans have since taken like explicit photos
Speaker 4: of her and mailed them to like every voter in
Speaker 4: the district.
Speaker 5: This is counterproductive.
Speaker 4: This with a like note on the mail that said
Speaker 4: do not open if you're under eighteen, which every fourteen
Speaker 4: year old in that district immediately opened.
Speaker 5: And they're like porn is discussing and unbecoming. Here's something here's.
Speaker 4: Here's something mailed directly to your house orchect pointed out
Speaker 4: the amily throughout most of the twentieth century, that would
Speaker 4: have been intercepted and they would have been arrested. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 4: thankfully those laws have been overturned.
Speaker 3: But and Republicans are taking advantage of it. So does
Speaker 3: she win or what?
Speaker 5: I don't know, I actually don't know.
Speaker 4: It's a Richmond suburb and her seat could decide control
Speaker 4: of the Chamber, which would then put pressure on Youngkin
Speaker 4: to push forward on like an abortion ban or something. So, uh,
Speaker 4: it's we'll see if the Republican kind of moved backfired
Speaker 4: or if this district is not also not it's kind
Speaker 4: of a buttoned up place.
Speaker 5: So and remember with Virginia, Younkin as really stakes his
Speaker 5: political future on the outcome of this election. And I
Speaker 5: think a lot of the signs are really not great
Speaker 5: for Youngkin at this point. I think he wasn't able
Speaker 5: to get as much money for the races that he
Speaker 5: wanted to out of national publican organizations. So just a
Speaker 5: really important night next Tuesday, and some of these random
Speaker 5: races that when they're settled, will help us piece together
Speaker 5: a better puzzle of what the landscape looks like going
Speaker 5: into the presidential election and will obviously affect voters and
Speaker 5: people living in these states that have big ballot measures
Speaker 5: and elections coming up.
Speaker 3: I kind of want to go to that Richmond district
Speaker 3: and go to that far.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we go to some precincts and just ask people
Speaker 4: get their take on how they're voting on this because
Speaker 4: people have written her off. I don't think you can.
Speaker 4: I think it's I think I think it's gonna be close.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean my instinct would be to say that,
Speaker 5: actually that she wins, because I don't think this stuff
Speaker 5: lands like it used to. It's an absurd story, but
Speaker 5: this is a post Trump era and people have sort
Speaker 5: of put those usual kind of boundaries aside and said,
Speaker 5: you know, I mean that's how Joe Biden want. Everybody's
Speaker 5: looking at this guy he's seen now and they're like, well,
Speaker 5: we just don't want.
Speaker 3: Donald Trump, we don't want person.
Speaker 5: Yeah, exactly. So we've kind of crossed that rubicon.
Speaker 3: And was her husband she was on camera with, you're
Speaker 3: come on.
Speaker 5: Family values, Come on, it was monogamous in the bounds
Speaker 5: of marriage, and she did it voluntarily.
Speaker 3: Of course, Yes, consenting adults. Leaves people alone, you leave
Speaker 3: them alone.
Speaker 4: Well, I don't know, Josh Hawley is now wants to
Speaker 4: overturn Citizens United.
Speaker 5: This isn't amazing about this. This is just an amazing story.
Speaker 5: So this was a scoop from a real clear politics
Speaker 5: Bill Wegman yesterday, obviously friend of the show, Josh Holly
Speaker 5: told him that he was introducing a bill that would
Speaker 5: undercut Citizens United. Obviously, a legislator can't reverse the Supreme
Speaker 5: Court decision, but you can introduce a bill that's kind
Speaker 5: of a ridiculous rebuttal, actually, because that's sort of the
Speaker 5: whole point of Congress is to make these laws, and
Speaker 5: the courts interpret them and say when something is unconstitutional
Speaker 5: or goes too far. But very much money in politics
Speaker 5: is the business of Congress. Congress just refuses to act
Speaker 5: on some of these questions, and it's unlikely that this
Speaker 5: Holy Bill will go particularly far. But Holly makes this
Speaker 5: argument against Citizens United, which was the rallying cry of
Speaker 5: the conservative movement just ten years ago. Because Citizens United
Speaker 5: itself is a group of the conservative movement. Dave Bossi,
Speaker 5: who became very instrumental in Trump world as the leader
Speaker 5: of Citizens United, they were punished essentially by a law
Speaker 5: that was interpreted in a way that was not allowing
Speaker 5: them to broadcast anti Hillary, anti anti Hillary Clinton, anti
Speaker 5: sort of political establishment messaging. And the court made that
Speaker 5: decision back in twenty ten. It paved the way for
Speaker 5: basically the super pack structure. You've been covering this longer
Speaker 5: than I haven't, probably have some interesting thoughts on this.
Speaker 5: But Josh Holly is making his argument in the language
Speaker 5: of originalism. He's saying there is no originalist argument for
Speaker 5: equating corporation's speech and human beings speech and saying that
Speaker 5: that is both equally protected under the First Amendment. So
Speaker 5: did he sort of come out and make this absolute
Speaker 5: and absolutely vigorous argument against this long standing conservative position
Speaker 5: on speech. Mitch McConnell himself has been a huge champion
Speaker 5: of Citizens United and a huge opponent on any limits
Speaker 5: to political spending and elections. Holly comes out on fire
Speaker 5: against that and also makes the argument from a conservative perspective.
Speaker 5: So he's sort of using ROOSEVELTI and the phil points
Speaker 5: this out in the story. Arguments about business and lobbying
Speaker 5: and private interests, influence and politics, but then he also
Speaker 5: talks about originalism and the sort of conservative approach to
Speaker 5: constitutionalism and says Citizens United flies in the face of
Speaker 5: all of that. Now, this obviously rankled Mitch McConnell. We
Speaker 5: can put the next element up in the screen. I
Speaker 5: actually shouldn't say obviously, because why is Mitch McConnell getting
Speaker 5: all upset and hot and bothered about a bill that
Speaker 5: is likely going nowhere? Well because he knows that this
Speaker 5: is a really powerful argument with Republican voters. Jake Sherman
Speaker 5: of punch Bowl reports that McConnell went after Holly in
Speaker 5: a closed Senate Republican meeting yesterday. Holly signed onto the
Speaker 5: end Citizens Knightabille. McConnell told Holly that he's only in
Speaker 5: the Senate because of the Senate Leadership Fund, which accepts
Speaker 5: unlimited contributions, and then McConnell warned that anyone who signs
Speaker 5: on will get heavy incoming from the right. Absolutely true,
Speaker 5: total threat and a serious threat. But by the way,
Speaker 5: Mitch McConnell saying, as your argument that because Josh Holly
Speaker 5: was elected by bad rules, he should not protest those
Speaker 5: bad rules, that is not an argument. It is the
Speaker 5: laziest argument, and the dumbest argument you could possibly muster
Speaker 5: in defense of your position.
Speaker 4: But McConnell probably feels like a parent, you know, who's
Speaker 4: like left left wing kid is complaining about whatever.
Speaker 5: Just got back from his first semester at Oberlin.
Speaker 4: Right, How do you think this Without this inequality and
Speaker 4: this tax structor, you wouldn't have been at Oberlin, right,
Speaker 4: You never would have done it.
Speaker 3: So that's Holly. He's the Oberlin kid complaining about it.
Speaker 5: Good though, But Holly is more than the Oberlin kid.
Speaker 5: I mean, this is a guy who's legal pedigree is
Speaker 5: in terms of like conservative legal circles. He's very accomplished,
Speaker 5: Like he's a former state attorney general. I think he
Speaker 5: clerked for Alito on the Supreme Court has I mean,
Speaker 5: his pedigree is very impressive. So it's not as though
Speaker 5: he's like some young whipper snapper who doesn't really know
Speaker 5: much about the court and is coming in firing off.
Speaker 5: And I think that's why it bothered McConnell.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and look, I welcome converts.
Speaker 4: I question how sincere it is, you know, is it
Speaker 4: just political posturing because he knows it's not going to pass.
Speaker 4: But his argument, as Philip Quoter means I am an originalist,
Speaker 4: and I don't think you can make an originalist case
Speaker 4: for business corporations being treated like individuals when it comes
Speaker 4: to the right to political speech. And I think from
Speaker 4: an intellectual perspective, he's completely right.
Speaker 3: You can't.
Speaker 4: You have to just do it from a raw power
Speaker 4: person act of the way that McConnell and the Conservative
Speaker 4: Supreme Court kind of rammed it through. Up until Sits United,
Speaker 4: it was broadly understood that the Constitution gives the government
Speaker 4: broad power to regulate elections because without faith and elections,
Speaker 4: everything else crumbles. Like you need that, and so therefore
Speaker 4: you can do a little extra to make sure that
Speaker 4: people believe in them. When in Citizens United, the argument
Speaker 4: was made that as long as spending is done independently's
Speaker 4: and that's their word, independently, then there can't be a
Speaker 4: quid pro quo because you gave to a super pac, Right,
Speaker 4: you gave to a super pac, not to the candidate.
Speaker 4: And if songs a super pac never spoke to the candidate,
Speaker 4: then you know, how could the candidate possibly owe the
Speaker 4: super pac anything that was transparently silly? Right, But we've
Speaker 4: since seen that people who are elected by super packs
Speaker 4: or beaten by super packs very much, are then kind
Speaker 4: of controlled by those super packs. McConnell undermines the entire
Speaker 4: argument right there. He says, look, you're dependent on these
Speaker 4: super PACs.
Speaker 3: How dare you?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Well, the whole.
Speaker 4: Reasoning in Citizens United was that there's independence between super
Speaker 4: PACs and the candidates.
Speaker 3: So then how can McConnell come in and say that's
Speaker 3: a good point, like it's such a good paint you
Speaker 3: depended on them?
Speaker 5: He just made the counter argument proudly right.
Speaker 4: But it's not an intellectual argument. It's a power argument.
Speaker 5: Well, and that's okay. So from the conservative perspective, by
Speaker 5: talking about Citizens United, the group Citizens United not the case,
Speaker 5: they will make this point, and there is very much
Speaker 5: legitimate there's very much a legitimate argument here that the
Speaker 5: left sort of controls the federal bureaucracy. And when I
Speaker 5: say the left, I mean really the kind of center left,
Speaker 5: not the left left, not like Bernie people, the federal bureaucracy,
Speaker 5: but the sort of center left controls the federal bureaucracy.
Speaker 5: They control Hollywood, they control these various institututions, levers of power.
Speaker 5: The one thing conservatives have any say in the one
Speaker 5: like kind of major institution. Again, this is, as the
Speaker 5: argument goes, is wall Street is the business sector. Like,
Speaker 5: that's the one place where conservatives feel like they have
Speaker 5: allies in this larger this larger landscape. And so that's
Speaker 5: why they said, you know, citizens united, the raw power argument.
Speaker 5: Here's the legitimate here, here's the sort of the virtue
Speaker 5: behind equating corporations and people. It's because we have absolutely
Speaker 5: like we will be punished if we air something critical
Speaker 5: of Hillary, because the federal bureaucracy and all of these
Speaker 5: laws about campaign finance, et cetera, will be weaponized by
Speaker 5: the kind of center left bureaucracy against conservative speech. And
Speaker 5: so opening up this can of worms on super packs
Speaker 5: and campaign spending is the only way that conservatives can
Speaker 5: compete with the Hollywood superstructure, can compete with all of
Speaker 5: these various institutions holding them back. But now Josh Holly
Speaker 5: sees that it is like Wall Street, and this is
Speaker 5: part of the argument he's making to people like McConnell.
Speaker 5: Wall Street actually hates Conservatives. It might find alliances with
Speaker 5: Republicans when it comes to taxes and like limited government,
Speaker 5: Like does wall Street love limited government? No of course not,
Speaker 5: but they do. Sometimes sometimes they really want to limit
Speaker 5: a government. Other times they want more government because it
Speaker 5: will help their monopoly or whatever it is, as we
Speaker 5: were talking about earlier, and so they will sometimes make
Speaker 5: these alliances with Republicans more often than not. But then
Speaker 5: on the cultural side, Josh Holly looks at, for instance,
Speaker 5: what the MLB did with Georgia's voting law back in
Speaker 5: twenty twenty, and it's like, these people are not your friends,
Speaker 5: Like you seriously thought that this was the one alliance
Speaker 5: in all of these institutions that would benefit you. You're
Speaker 5: wrong about that. And maybe Josh Holly was wrong about that.
Speaker 5: I don't know where he stood on Citizens United originally.
Speaker 5: But to the point about the sort of the raw
Speaker 5: power argument, yeah, I mean, I think punishing people for
Speaker 5: being critical of Hillary Clinton is a real problem. At
Speaker 5: the same time, equating corporations with human beings as mitt
Speaker 5: Ronnelly sort of smugly, famously quick about people my friend. Yeah,
Speaker 5: it just sort of smuggly look like winking into the
Speaker 5: camera when he says it. It's just disgusting.
Speaker 4: And I think before we move on to Rampaul, it's
Speaker 4: interesting to think about whether or not. The FEC really
Speaker 4: blew it and going after Citizens United. So for people
Speaker 4: that don't know the story, Citizens United created a basically
Speaker 4: a documentary hit piece on Hillary.
Speaker 3: It was an AD, but it was like an hour
Speaker 3: and a.
Speaker 4: Half long ad or something like that, and they wanted
Speaker 4: to then spend his money to air it, and the
Speaker 4: FEC said you can't do that within you know, sixty
Speaker 4: days of the general election or thirty days at the primary,
Speaker 4: whatever it was.
Speaker 3: And they said, well, that's not fair. This is just speech.
Speaker 4: And FEC should have been like, you know what, run
Speaker 4: your just run your little Hillary documentary.
Speaker 3: It's fine.
Speaker 5: We don't need to set precedent in the landmark case,
Speaker 5: right because the court's not looking good for us right now,
Speaker 5: and we're going to just obliterate our ability to regulate
Speaker 5: anything in which they did. Yeah, I mean this is
Speaker 5: Citizens United. And again, like you, I really value your
Speaker 5: perspective on this because you saw this happen in real time.
Speaker 5: What it did to campaign spending was enormous, and I
Speaker 5: have heard I was, I was glad Holly introduced this bill.
Speaker 5: And I don't know if this bill itself is the
Speaker 5: right answer. But conservatives have basically completely swept under the
Speaker 5: rug the issue of campaign spending and finance campaign finance reform.
Speaker 5: And again that's not to endorse like a McCain fine
Speaker 5: Gold solution either. It is simply to say that since
Speaker 5: Citizens United campaign spending has gotten so completely insane and
Speaker 5: out of control, there's there has to be a conservative
Speaker 5: answer that is not good. Prusions are people, my friend,
Speaker 5: And there's literally no conversation about it. I've heard it
Speaker 5: from or in cass and now from Josh Holly, but
Speaker 5: there's basically been no discussion about it. So let's have
Speaker 5: the conversation because we have to come to some solution here.
Speaker 5: The status quo is horrific.
Speaker 4: Always welcome, that's right. You can see where ran Paul
Speaker 4: sits on this.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's right. We have Senator ran Paul is going
Speaker 5: to be with us right after this.
Speaker 3: We are very.
Speaker 5: Pleased to be joined now by Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky,
Speaker 5: who is the author of the new book Deception, the
Speaker 5: Great COVID cover Up. We're eager to dive into this
Speaker 5: book and all of Senator Rand Paul's work on this
Speaker 5: extremely important issue. First, I want to get your thoughts,
Speaker 5: Senator Paul, on your exchange yesterday with Christopher Ray, which
Speaker 5: is actually entirely related to what you wrote about in
Speaker 5: the book, and I just want to ask you about
Speaker 5: one of his quotes. In particular, you're pushing him on
Speaker 5: the FBI's conduct with social media companies, and you say,
Speaker 5: to my knowledge, or Christopher Ray said, and answer to
Speaker 5: your question, to my knowledge, our agents conducted themselves in
Speaker 5: compliance the law throughout. And that's in response to your
Speaker 5: question about whether or not they were attacking constitutionally allowed
Speaker 5: protected speech. I want to ask, did Christopher Ray perjure
Speaker 5: himself yesterday based on what we know from reporting and
Speaker 5: other sources. You mentioned depositions about how the FBI conducted
Speaker 5: itself during the pandemic in relation to constitutionally protected speech.
Speaker 7: You know, I think it's an open question.
Speaker 13: You know, one of the things that they say they
Speaker 13: were involved with was election integrity. Well, what if election
Speaker 13: integrity involves the dossier that was forwarded by a campaign,
Speaker 13: a political campaign, the Clinton campaign, the Steele dossier forwarded
Speaker 13: and then a lot of these things are predicated upon that.
Speaker 13: What if there's a Hunter Biden laptop that then is suppressed.
Speaker 13: It seems to me that there is in this area
Speaker 13: constitutionally protected speech that you could have an opinion one
Speaker 13: way or the other. But to somehow say that the
Speaker 13: government should be suppressing this is.
Speaker 7: A real problem. Now.
Speaker 13: To my mind, what I've been most interested in is
Speaker 13: whether or not the virus originated in the Labin Wuhan.
Speaker 13: For over a year, Facebook suppressed that, and they said
Speaker 13: they did it at the behest of the FBI.
Speaker 7: They basically said, the FBI.
Speaker 13: Came to us and said there's going to be a
Speaker 13: lot of misinformation out there, particularly maybe misinformation with guard
Speaker 13: to elections, but also misinformation about China.
Speaker 7: And they were worried that too much bashing of China
Speaker 7: was going on.
Speaker 13: And so there is a question of whether or not
Speaker 13: the FBI, or the Department of Homeland Security, or frankly,
Speaker 13: the CDC or the White House directly was involved. I
Speaker 13: want to know what was going on in these meetings.
Speaker 13: I want to see the minutes of these meetings. I
Speaker 13: don't want to hear the characterization from Director Ray or
Speaker 13: the characterization from Secretary of my org is that they
Speaker 13: weren't censoring. Let's hear what they were discussing. And what
Speaker 13: I asked people to imagine is imagine at the end
Speaker 13: of this interview you are given a surprise visit by
Speaker 13: the FBI and they want to discuss our interview, and
Speaker 13: they want to discuss which portions of what I said
Speaker 13: did they consider to be misinformation or disinformation. I'm guessing
Speaker 13: you would resist. I'm guessing you would be outraged. It's
Speaker 13: the same outrage we should have towards any from anybody
Speaker 13: from the government meeting with social media companies as well.
Speaker 4: On the question of the origin of COVID's really the
Speaker 4: subject of this book. I'm curious what your interactions have
Speaker 4: been like. You're kind of behind the scenes with Democrats
Speaker 4: over the last couple of years. As I try to
Speaker 4: think about Democrats who are open to even kind of
Speaker 4: interrogating the question, I can think of Representative Brendan Boyle,
Speaker 4: a Democrat over in the House, and a handful of
Speaker 4: other Democrats. I'm not sure I can think of many
Speaker 4: on the Senate side, if any. And I'm wondering, what
Speaker 4: was it like. Did you try to reach across the
Speaker 4: aisle and find democrats who could make this less of
Speaker 4: a partisan issue so that you could get to the
Speaker 4: truth of the matter, And what were those what were
Speaker 4: those conversations.
Speaker 13: Like from the very beginning, I've reached out Tomocrat chairman's
Speaker 13: of Committee because the Biden administration, and to be fair,
Speaker 13: the Trump administration said they wouldn't reveal any data to
Speaker 13: anyone who didn't have the signature of a chairman. So
Speaker 13: I've worked with both the chairman of the Health Committee,
Speaker 13: Bernie Sanders, as well as the Homeland Security both of
Speaker 13: which I'm one of the top Republicans on to try
Speaker 13: to get information. But I have to get their signature.
Speaker 13: But the only way I've been able to get the
Speaker 13: signature is really usually by trading. I have to hold
Speaker 13: up like a dozen nominees, hold up two dozen pieces
Speaker 13: of legislation, and I have to play hardball and I
Speaker 13: release things in exchange for signatures to get records.
Speaker 7: But then the White House still resists.
Speaker 13: Even when I get a Democrat to sign on, the
Speaker 13: White House resists. I'm having more trouble getting NIH grants
Speaker 13: that are unclassified than I am in talking to the CIA,
Speaker 13: and that's saying something because the CIA doesn't divulge much
Speaker 13: of anything, but the NIH and HHS is actually worse.
Speaker 13: So it's been a real struggle, but it's not for
Speaker 13: lack of trying, and it is still to me a
Speaker 13: curious fact that the Democrats are disinterested. There just has
Speaker 13: been no interest on the side of Democrats to investigating
Speaker 13: this or to doing much.
Speaker 7: Now we're slowly getting breakthroughs.
Speaker 13: I've started working with Chairman Peters and he signed a
Speaker 13: few letters and we're actually talking about doing some joint.
Speaker 7: Hearings, but it's very, very slow.
Speaker 13: And to me, the comparison I like to make is
Speaker 13: that if you want to have a hearing and your
Speaker 13: allegation is that the plastic in your water bottle causes cancer,
Speaker 13: I think we've had two dozen of those hearings. But
Speaker 13: if a million people died from a disease, and we
Speaker 13: all can pretty much document a lot of people died
Speaker 13: from COVID, both here and worldwide, we haven't had real
Speaker 13: hearings as could we possibly have been the cause, could
Speaker 13: we possibly have funded the lab that allowed this leak
Speaker 13: to happen, And shouldn't we reform our safety procedure as
Speaker 13: our scrutiny.
Speaker 7: You would think they'd be all over.
Speaker 13: This, and yet the mainstream media as well as a
Speaker 13: Democrat party which sometimes there's not much difference, really have
Speaker 13: done nothing other than sort of recommend million dollar prizes
Speaker 13: for Anthony Falci and put his he's got his mask
Speaker 13: now on the Smithsonian, his Washington National's mask, which is
Speaker 13: of absolutely no health benefit and actually was a disservice
Speaker 13: to all of us to recommend anybody at risk would
Speaker 13: wear a cotton mask, because basically that's just malpractice, it's
Speaker 13: bad advice.
Speaker 4: Back on the code origin question, what would they say
Speaker 4: when you're meeting with say a Senator Bernie Sanders and
Speaker 4: saying like, look, we need these documents because it is
Speaker 4: possible that it leaked from this lab, and we need
Speaker 4: to think about tighter regulations for the health and safety
Speaker 4: of the entire globe. And these are very democratic sounding arguments.
Speaker 4: You know, you're a libertarian talking about more regulations. You
Speaker 4: would think that they're kind of intent. Would go and say, hey,
Speaker 4: there might be even if I don't want to get
Speaker 4: into some China bashing, we should regulate this mortally. So
Speaker 4: would you hear back, did they under stand the underlying
Speaker 4: kind of.
Speaker 5: Information or no?
Speaker 13: I think that you know, we live in different worlds,
Speaker 13: we have different tribes, we look at different news. I
Speaker 13: don't think they've really read or have been too much
Speaker 13: interested in the origins of this. But here's what I've
Speaker 13: tried with Bernie Sanders. Jeffrey Sachs is a progressive economist.
Speaker 13: He's been a high ranking UN consultant, He's been in
Speaker 13: every progressive wing of a lot of things you can imagine.
Speaker 13: But he's also an honest progressive and I'm a big
Speaker 13: fan of his. Actually, he headed the Lancet Report. He
Speaker 13: initially started out thinking that in all likelihood, Anthony Fauci,
Speaker 13: Peter Daizak, all these people write it probably game from animals.
Speaker 13: He investigated it for eighteen months and came to the
Speaker 13: opposite conclusion. Well, he was also known as Bernie Sanders' economists.
Speaker 13: I mean, he was a supporter of Bernie Sanders during
Speaker 13: his presidential election.
Speaker 7: I thought, well, wow, why.
Speaker 13: Don't I get him to see if he can help
Speaker 13: me get Bernie to be interested. And we actually did
Speaker 13: set up a meeting where he was there, and Bernie
Speaker 13: came by, I believe, and said hello. But we still
Speaker 13: have had trouble, and Bernie privately will say, well, yeah,
Speaker 13: maybe you know you've got a point.
Speaker 7: And this and that.
Speaker 13: Then we get stiff armed by his staff and todate.
Speaker 13: We haven't had one signature. We're not even talking about
Speaker 13: a hearing. We're talking about a signature requesting records. And
Speaker 13: this really at one point in time, it was us
Speaker 13: against them, the legislative branch against the executive branch. Now
Speaker 13: it's all Republican Democrat and they on this issue have
Speaker 13: decided that the Democrat position is to support the government
Speaker 13: and government secrecy. And it's disappointing, but it's not for
Speaker 13: my lack of trying to get cooperation.
Speaker 7: It's just that I've gotten no cooperation.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And I want to get to that question actually
Speaker 5: of motivation in Peter Dajac, because you have a quote
Speaker 5: in your book from Peter Dasjac where as you say
Speaker 5: he's sort of bragging about all of the different coronaviruses
Speaker 5: that could exist. He said, you know, the Wuhan Institute
Speaker 5: of Orology had discovered over one hundred new stars related coronaviruses,
Speaker 5: and you right, So, yes, it's quite possible. There are
Speaker 5: many coronaviruses that Chinese have not been forthcoming about. You
Speaker 5: also write about Fauci. He knew one thing for certain.
Speaker 5: He had funded those labs, he had publicly supported gain
Speaker 5: of function research and had purposely allowed that research to
Speaker 5: avoid the scrutiny of the Pandemic Pathogen Committee. And we
Speaker 5: can only conclude that he weighed the odds and decided
Speaker 5: that the cover up was his best option. This is
Speaker 5: all happening under the nose of the Trump administration, and
Speaker 5: I wonder to what extent you believe this implicates the
Speaker 5: United States government. You talked about it a little bit
Speaker 5: earlier in this conversation, but the Chinese government is certainly
Speaker 5: implicated here. It's just it's hard to get around the issue,
Speaker 5: given all we know about Dazac and Fauci at this point,
Speaker 5: that the United States may have been complicit a in
Speaker 5: the pandemic, complicit at best A in the pandemic, and
Speaker 5: then B in covering up our role in the pandemic's origins.
Speaker 5: And that seems to be a grave reflection on America.
Speaker 13: You know, The thing is is that it's easy for
Speaker 13: us to believe that the totalitarian government in China might
Speaker 13: cover things up. In fact, they've covered up their death rate,
Speaker 13: they covered up the transmissibility. They initially said it didn't
Speaker 13: transmit human to human. We now know that the three
Speaker 13: people who got sick first with this in all likelihood
Speaker 13: worked in the lab of the gain of function scientist
Speaker 13: doctor She and it occurred in November of twenty nineteen,
Speaker 13: didn't start in January, and it was riproaring by January,
Speaker 13: but it really probably started in November. So we expect
Speaker 13: that from Chinese totalitarian government. You wouldn't expect it so
Speaker 13: much from our government.
Speaker 7: Sort of.
Speaker 13: One of the things about democracy or representative government is
Speaker 13: supposed to be openness and transparency. That makes us so
Speaker 13: much different. But we've had the same thing here. And
Speaker 13: I've told people that this conspiracy involves hundreds of people
Speaker 13: in our government, and people are aghast and they say, oh,
Speaker 13: no way, that's crazy. Hundreds of people. Well, I think
Speaker 13: George Carlin explained it best. Conspiracy theories are not necessary
Speaker 13: where interests converge, and the interest here is that if
Speaker 13: you touched any money that went to Wuhan and you
Speaker 13: think the virus might have come out of that lab,
Speaker 13: anybody that was involved with funding the lab or involved
Speaker 13: with this at all, feels a self interest in preserving
Speaker 13: or obscuring.
Speaker 7: The fact that they were related to this.
Speaker 13: So Anthony Fauci's first responses were no, funding went to
Speaker 13: wu Hunt at all, and he's basically lying because it
Speaker 13: went to a conduit, it went to an EcoHealth and
Speaker 13: a secondary gram.
Speaker 7: And then he got over that argument and he.
Speaker 13: Said, well, no gain of function research went there. But
Speaker 13: then we find private emails or that everything virtually that
Speaker 13: he said in private is the opposite of what he
Speaker 13: was saying in public. We find a private email that
Speaker 13: summarizes the February first, twenty twenty conversation, and in that
Speaker 13: in that email, he says, all the virologists got together
Speaker 13: today worldwide and we all kind of agree it looks
Speaker 13: like the virus has been manipulated in the lab, and
Speaker 13: so we think that it's, you know, very possible that
Speaker 13: it came to the lab, and we're equally suspicious or
Speaker 13: even more suspicious because we know they do gain and
Speaker 13: function research.
Speaker 7: And he described some experiments. Well, the experiments he described.
Speaker 13: Were funded by the NIH, funded by his division. They
Speaker 13: have a grant number on their acknowledging their funding. And
Speaker 13: so basically in private, he's basically admitting that exactly everything
Speaker 13: that he denies in public.
Speaker 7: And it's the same for the others.
Speaker 13: There's a Christian Anderson who says at one point, this
Speaker 13: is no fringe theory, this is no conspiracy theory in
Speaker 13: a private email, but in public he's calling everybody a
Speaker 13: kook or a nut who brings this up. And then
Speaker 13: you have the whole idea that was the government involved
Speaker 13: in suppressing the knowledge of this on social media? And
Speaker 13: I absolutely believe that we will find I think actually
Speaker 13: the Missouri versus Biden depositions have already shown the government
Speaker 13: was involved wei trying to suppress anybody or any story
Speaker 13: that had to do with the virus coming from the
Speaker 13: lab in Wuhan.
Speaker 4: And we're at a place now where Anthony Fauci himself
Speaker 4: even acknowledges that it is an open possibility that the
Speaker 4: Wuhan lab may have been kind of the origin of
Speaker 4: the coronavirus. So given that he acknowledges that at this
Speaker 4: point that it's possible, that raises a lot of questions
Speaker 4: about how we ought to think about gain of function
Speaker 4: research going forward. We have more labs around the world
Speaker 4: doing this dangerous research than we had before the pandemic started.
Speaker 4: Monica Berknoli has been nominated to run the NIH. You
Speaker 4: asked her what her position was on gain of function research.
Speaker 4: I think white Coat Waste published some of those responses.
Speaker 4: You've obviously seen them since he responded to you, how
Speaker 4: would you characterize her response and do you how will
Speaker 4: you be voting on her when she comes if and
Speaker 4: when she comes to the floor.
Speaker 13: I'd say her responses were mostly bureaucrat tease, mamb pamby
Speaker 13: nothing definitive, but really no acknowledgment of the danger of
Speaker 13: gain of function, saying we've got all these controls in
Speaker 13: place and we're.
Speaker 7: Doing a good job. Just look the other way.
Speaker 13: Well, we do have some controls, but one of the
Speaker 13: points we make in the book is is that the
Speaker 13: Pandemic Safety Committee the research never went there. The Pandemic
Speaker 13: Committee doesn't have the ability or power to reach out
Speaker 13: and look at grants.
Speaker 7: They have to be volunteered. And so what I asked
Speaker 7: Fauchi about this, he.
Speaker 13: Says, my experts have looked up and down, they've.
Speaker 7: Looked at this research and it's not gain a function. Well,
Speaker 7: then show us the deliberations.
Speaker 13: We still haven't seen those deliberations, and explain yourself why
Speaker 13: you chose to go around the Pandemic Safety Committee and
Speaker 13: allow this funding to go to Wuhan and understand that
Speaker 13: it was a terrible judgment error on his part to
Speaker 13: allow it to go around the Safety Committee and make
Speaker 13: the judgment on his own, because in.
Speaker 7: The end this may well have led to the pandemic.
Speaker 13: So there are a great deal of problems, and I
Speaker 13: don't think she recognizes the absolute need to reform the system.
Speaker 13: We need a much strengthened regulatory apparatus pandemic regulatory safety
Speaker 13: apparatus over this. I don't think she recognizes that. The
Speaker 13: other reason I'll vote against her is that in her
Speaker 13: career she's received over two hundred million dollars in grants
Speaker 13: from Advisor, and if Visor were just developing drugs, it
Speaker 13: wouldn't be such a big deal. But they developed drugs
Speaker 13: that then the government mandates and the government pushes and
Speaker 13: they may say, oh, it's not a mandate. Well, once
Speaker 13: you make it sort of strongly worded by the CDC,
Speaker 13: and government filters down to governors who may mandate it,
Speaker 13: but also filters to school systems who say, oh, we're
Speaker 13: making the kids get this because the CDC says we should.
Speaker 13: So in some ways, they are giving mandates to for
Speaker 13: a drug that a private company makes money off of,
Speaker 13: and she's been intimately associated with that company in a large,
Speaker 13: multi million dollar way.
Speaker 7: I just think it'll be hard.
Speaker 13: I mean, I think she should Probably the better part
Speaker 13: of valor would be to recuse herself from all decisions
Speaker 13: concerning Advisor, and I didn't get that in my answers either.
Speaker 5: Republicans have been focused a lot on Chinese culpability, and
Speaker 5: we'll say China unleashed this deadly virus on the world.
Speaker 5: Do you think Republicans have done too much fingerpointing at
Speaker 5: China and not enough You're pointing at our own government
Speaker 5: for what it may have unleashed on the world.
Speaker 7: You know, I met with the Chinese at Tache.
Speaker 13: The ambassador wasn't here, so I met with the second
Speaker 13: in charge, and I tried to convince her of that
Speaker 13: that this doesn't have to be about just beating up China.
Speaker 13: We funded most of this, we were complicit in it.
Speaker 13: So really the blame should go all around and shouldn't
Speaker 13: be just directed at China. And I'm not a big
Speaker 13: bashler of things of things China. I'm not for trade embargoes,
Speaker 13: I'm not for banning all business with China. I'm for
Speaker 13: not giving the research money and making sure that we
Speaker 13: try to get answers from them.
Speaker 7: But I think trade with.
Speaker 13: China has largely benefited the United States, and so I'm
Speaker 13: not for abolishing trade. So I do think the voices,
Speaker 13: particularly in my caucus, are beating the drums daily for war,
Speaker 13: and I think that left unabated, we will have problems
Speaker 13: with the rashness of the voices, particularly coming from my side,
Speaker 13: but really both sides.
Speaker 7: And so whenever I.
Speaker 13: Here everybody wanting to engage in war, particularly with another
Speaker 13: nuclear power, I've tried to become, hopefully a saner voice
Speaker 13: for moving slowly diplomacy and not Even though I do
Speaker 13: blame the virus on the coming out of the lab,
Speaker 13: I also blame ourselves as well, and don't want to
Speaker 13: make it just that, oh, this is we're going to
Speaker 13: rupture and have no relations with China, which I think
Speaker 13: would be a mistake.
Speaker 4: And speaking of where, I wanted to ask you one
Speaker 4: question about the war that's going on in Gaza right now.
Speaker 4: A couple of days after October seventh, you were on
Speaker 4: Fox News and you said, let's let Israel do what
Speaker 4: they need to do, which is to have a punishing
Speaker 4: response the people in Gaza to say no more, we
Speaker 4: are not going to let this happen. We've now seen
Speaker 4: what that punishing response has been, a minimum of eight.
Speaker 3: Thousand plus casualties.
Speaker 4: We've seen what appear to amount to war crimes from
Speaker 4: Israeli israel defense forces targeting the entire apartment buildings, entire blocks.
Speaker 4: Do you stand by the original claim and where do
Speaker 4: you what do you feel like should be done now?
Speaker 4: Should there be a ceasefire at this point?
Speaker 13: And you know, I think when you see the horrific
Speaker 13: images of young people being mowed down with automatic weapons
Speaker 13: at a concert, images of whole families being killed, it's
Speaker 13: hard not to be moved by that and understand Israel's
Speaker 13: desire to want to respond and to try to wipe out,
Speaker 13: particularly the military leadership of this. But you're right, they're
Speaker 13: embedded in a civilian population and many civilians have died.
Speaker 13: And this is ultimately a judgment that Israel will have
Speaker 13: will have to make whether or not the disruption of
Speaker 13: Hamas chain and command is now sufficient or whether they
Speaker 13: go on. Because you are right, as more civilians die
Speaker 13: in Gaza, not intentionally, but as they die in Gaza,
Speaker 13: there's always the question, are ten new terrorists created for
Speaker 13: every civilian that was killed. The same can be said
Speaker 13: of the drone attack throughout Africa, the drone attacks that
Speaker 13: killed a humanitarian worker after our soldiers died in Afghanistan
Speaker 13: as we were leaving.
Speaker 7: So there always is the.
Speaker 13: Question of blowback, and ultimately that decision has to be
Speaker 13: has to be made by Israel, and I think that
Speaker 13: the reporting on it will make a big difference. There
Speaker 13: was a great article recently talking about this by Bonnie
Speaker 13: Christian that was in Reason magazine, and the way she
Speaker 13: ended her article to me was just amazing, almost poetic
Speaker 13: or from a novel, talking about how we descended to
Speaker 13: moral chaos if we let ourselves be consumed by revenge,
Speaker 13: either revenge of Palestinians civilians that were innocently killed, or
Speaker 13: Israeli citizens that were innocently killed. If we let ourselves,
Speaker 13: we'll descend into sort of a moral chaos that really
Speaker 13: is ever escalating and never ending. And so there has
Speaker 13: to come a time when we do talk about how
Speaker 13: do you make things better in Gaza. But I'll tell
Speaker 13: you it's hard to in the midst of the death
Speaker 13: and carnage. I was there in twenty thirteen and spoke
Speaker 13: with net and Yahoo about trying to facilitate and allow
Speaker 13: Gaza to open their own port, and I said, maybe
Speaker 13: you do it like they did the Panama Canal.
Speaker 7: For so many years with joint security.
Speaker 13: By Israel and Gaza, but allow them to collect their
Speaker 13: own duties and allow them to have some income coming
Speaker 13: into a port. And his response to me, and this
Speaker 13: wasn't after a massacre, this was in more of a
Speaker 13: relative time of peace.
Speaker 7: He says, they have a port in Israel.
Speaker 13: And that kind of thinking won't get to a point
Speaker 13: where we can have a peaceful arrangement.
Speaker 7: But on the other side, I mean, if.
Speaker 13: They were sitting here they say, how do you negotiate
Speaker 13: with the country, it says we.
Speaker 7: Want to wipe you off the map, and they kill civilians.
Speaker 13: It's very, very difficult situation. But ultimately, if you want peace,
Speaker 13: you want stability, and you want the end of a
Speaker 13: lifetime of terrorism, there has to be something that allows
Speaker 13: the Gaza, those who live in Gaza to prosper and thrive.
Speaker 13: But you understand the problem. If they're bombing Israel, it's
Speaker 13: going to be very hard as well.
Speaker 5: Senator rand Paul, also the author of the new book deception,
Speaker 5: the great COVID cover up. Thank you so much for
Speaker 5: your time this morning.
Speaker 7: Thank you.
Speaker 5: That does it for us today on this edition of Counterpoints.
Speaker 5: It was a really interesting interview.
Speaker 7: Ryan.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think he's I think he's right, and I
Speaker 4: think he needs to in the sense that you had
Speaker 4: a lot ask a lot of questions about what the
Speaker 4: goal is here of this assault at this point and
Speaker 4: whether it's it's even going to kind of blow back
Speaker 4: on Israel, like if that, if that's how people need
Speaker 4: to need to think about it to get themselves into
Speaker 4: a place where they think about a ceasefire.
Speaker 3: I guess we'll take that.
Speaker 4: The book, by the way, it's like five hundred and
Speaker 4: fifty pages or something, very long book.
Speaker 5: It's a big book. And you know, we saw a
Speaker 5: lot of bluffs just on that point between Rand Paul
Speaker 5: and Lindsey Graham type Republicans during the Obama years. He
Speaker 5: was a really interesting voice during the Obama years actually,
Speaker 5: and he mentioned dronings just now, and so I actually wonder,
Speaker 5: I think your question was really helpful. I actually wonder
Speaker 5: to what extent we're going to see that going forward
Speaker 5: during this administration. All right, Well, that does it for
Speaker 5: US elections next Tuesday, We'll be here. We'll be helping
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Speaker 3: Hope you have a great week all right, See you
Speaker 3: next week.