Speaker 1: Hey, guys, Saga and Crystal here.
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Speaker 2: Good morning, everybody, Happy Friday, A little ladies Friday show
Speaker 2: for everyone. How's it going, Emily, It's going great. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I don't know what's up with the guys.
Speaker 4: They'd been working hard.
Speaker 2: We'll give it that.
Speaker 3: We'll give them that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, Ryan Griffin, we're both in New York.
Speaker 2: I mean, you know a lot going.
Speaker 5: There's a one hundred degrees.
Speaker 2: I am seriously, I don't know how you do in
Speaker 2: that weather. I just am not cut out for it.
Speaker 2: I will take a delicate flower.
Speaker 3: Hey, but you're a Virginians, so you should be used
Speaker 3: to it.
Speaker 2: I know, but I don't. I just can't. I don't know.
Speaker 2: There's something about the way I'm I'm put together that
Speaker 2: it just doesn't go that well. And I'm really and
Speaker 2: I'm a really sweaty person, like oh nice, oh I sweat,
Speaker 2: so it's disgusting. So yeah, I was very glad when
Speaker 2: I saw that situation because I was tempted to be
Speaker 2: jealous that they were the Zoran watch Party because that
Speaker 2: the like the energy seems super fun. But then I
Speaker 2: remembered it was like one hundred degrees and it was like, no,
Speaker 2: it's better for me to be here.
Speaker 3: So now I wish that I had seen you watch party,
Speaker 3: because you're making it sound like this like freakish, like
Speaker 3: there's some genetic anomaly in your.
Speaker 2: It borders it borders on freaquish, freakish. You have to
Speaker 2: be honest with you. I don't know if there's any
Speaker 2: other swimmers out there, but the many of the sweatiest
Speaker 2: women that I know are swimmers, so I don't know
Speaker 2: if there's something about like all that time in the pool. Anyway,
Speaker 2: this is way too much too much information for a friend.
Speaker 3: I know, it is but I'm okay with it.
Speaker 2: In any case, there's a lot to get to. We've
Speaker 2: got updates on Iran. We'll do play some clips from
Speaker 2: the little Pete heag Seth performance yesterday that was kind
Speaker 2: of interesting. And we've got new potential deal with Iran,
Speaker 2: new potential deal with Israel. Also some horrifying reporting from
Speaker 2: Haretz about this won't necessarily come as a surprise, but
Speaker 2: they actually got soldiers to confess that the AID massacres
Speaker 2: are intentional, that they know these are innocent people that
Speaker 2: they're sluttering as a matter of course. So talk about
Speaker 2: that bunch of stuff going on with Zoran Richie Torrez
Speaker 2: defending him, some Republican congressman saying he should be denaturalized
Speaker 2: and deported. You've got a bunch of Democratic leaders who
Speaker 2: are you know at Krek, Kirsten Gillibrand just like aggressively
Speaker 2: racistly attacking him, Kathy Hochel sort of I guess, keeping
Speaker 2: her options open. It's like, y'all, this is the Democratic nominee.
Speaker 2: Voters chose him, So what happened to the whole vote?
Speaker 4: Blue?
Speaker 2: No matter who?
Speaker 4: Thing?
Speaker 2: Zoren also was on CNN, so interesting clips there, so
Speaker 2: a bunch of stuff going on there. Donors are plotting
Speaker 2: to try to see what they can do to, you know,
Speaker 2: overcome this horrifying communist Muslim takeover of New York City
Speaker 2: that they're apparently terrified of. We've also got the Jeff
Speaker 2: Bezos wedding that you were interested in chatting about, so
Speaker 2: we got that. We also have Peter Teal getting asked
Speaker 2: if he's anti christ by Rosstatat of course, and it's
Speaker 2: sort of like yeah, and him, it's like sort of
Speaker 2: awkwardly contemplating whether that could be the case for a moment,
Speaker 2: so that.
Speaker 3: On the New York Times podcast. I mean, where else
Speaker 3: should you be contemplating such things? But on the podcast
Speaker 3: why not?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I mean I have Ross in a certain sense
Speaker 2: kind of the perfect person to ask this question. Right.
Speaker 3: You've also neglected to tease that we have a wonderful
Speaker 3: Eric Adams Club. It's not the best Eric Adams clip,
Speaker 3: but it's a good Eric Adams clip.
Speaker 2: I mean, the competition is so it's so stiff that.
Speaker 3: He's now he's now in competition with Lori Lightfoot for
Speaker 3: like Greatest Blue Mayor.
Speaker 2: Like it's oh, he's in terms of the content there
Speaker 2: he has no, there's no comparison. You know that the
Speaker 2: searching of the child's room video is legendary, Like, you
Speaker 2: can't beat that. And then the sum up the year
Speaker 2: in one word New York because you can see someone
Speaker 2: opening a business or the planes flying into the town. Like,
Speaker 2: you can't beat this guy in terms of content. You
Speaker 2: can't beat him.
Speaker 3: Sorry, you're cooked.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean your helal cart video was great, zoron,
Speaker 2: but I'm sorry. You just you can't compete with that
Speaker 2: kind of that kind of inspired content creation truly.
Speaker 3: Can't come for the king.
Speaker 2: That's right, Yeah, that's right, all right. So let's go
Speaker 2: ahead and jump in with some of what's going on
Speaker 2: with this Pete Hegseth presser yesterday. Should we start with
Speaker 2: him raging at his former colleagues or should we start
Speaker 2: with his uh dictating that the media needs to talk
Speaker 2: more about how how you know good our fighter pilots are?
Speaker 2: Which one do you prefer?
Speaker 3: Both are good? Maybe we shoul start at the fighter
Speaker 3: pilots because the Jennifer Griffin clip gets us into that
Speaker 3: question of what the intelligence actually says.
Speaker 2: Yes, very true, all right, let me get rid of
Speaker 2: my dms here, let me slow down to one point
Speaker 2: zero speed. All right, I think we're ready to go.
Speaker 2: Here is Pete Hegsath yesterday. And this whole purpose of
Speaker 2: this briefing was to rebut the idea that the nuclear
Speaker 2: program in Iran was not completely obliterated and to insist
Speaker 2: that it was, and mostly to berate the media, I
Speaker 2: think was the true purpose of it. So let's go
Speaker 2: ahead and take a.
Speaker 5: Listen to this.
Speaker 6: How many stories have been written about how hard it
Speaker 6: is to, I don't know, fly a plane for thirty
Speaker 6: six hours?
Speaker 5: Has MSNBC done that story? As Fox?
Speaker 6: Have we done the story how hard that is? Have
Speaker 6: we done it two or three times? So that American
Speaker 6: people understand, How about how difficult it is to shoot
Speaker 6: a drone from an F fifteen or sixteen or F
Speaker 6: twenty two or F thirty five, or what it's like
Speaker 6: to man a Patriot battery, or how hard it is
Speaker 6: to refuel mid air, giving the American people an understanding
Speaker 6: of how complex.
Speaker 5: And sophisticated this mission really was.
Speaker 6: There are so many aspects of what our brave men
Speaker 6: and women did.
Speaker 5: That because of the hatred of this press, corps.
Speaker 6: Are undermined, because your people are trying to leak and
Speaker 6: spin that it wasn't successful.
Speaker 5: It's irresponsible, and folks in this.
Speaker 6: Room are privy to that information because of the proximity
Speaker 6: here in the Pentagon.
Speaker 5: It's an important responsibility.
Speaker 6: And time and time again, classified information is leaked.
Speaker 5: Or pedaled for political purposes to try to make the
Speaker 5: president look bad.
Speaker 6: And what's really happening is you're undermining the success of
Speaker 6: incredible B two pilots and incredible F thirty five pilots,
Speaker 6: and incredible refuelers and incredible air defenders who accomplish their
Speaker 6: mission set back a nuclear program in ways that other
Speaker 6: presidents would have dreamed.
Speaker 2: How about so Emily, there's a lot going on here,
Speaker 2: but it reminds me so much of the attacks that
Speaker 2: those of us who were against the Iraq war received
Speaker 2: back in the days, in the day of like, oh,
Speaker 2: if you don't support this war, then you hate the troops,
Speaker 2: You hate the troops, you hate America, you're unpatriotic. And
Speaker 2: so here he is saying, like, you know, what the
Speaker 2: media really needs to cover is how difficult these missions are.
Speaker 2: I don't doubt that's the case. But it also gets
Speaker 2: into this is the other part of this is one
Speaker 2: of many things that are driven me crazy about the
Speaker 2: way that the administration is talking about this is they
Speaker 2: act like it's something special for an American president to
Speaker 2: be able to drop bombs on a place, and that's
Speaker 2: actually the easiest thing in the world to do. The
Speaker 2: hard thing, apparently based on you know, the experience of
Speaker 2: our lifetimes is to not drop bombs and to get
Speaker 2: us out of conflicts rather than get us into conflicts.
Speaker 2: So what did you make of Pete Haggs's little performance here?
Speaker 3: He sort of reminded me of like my basketball coach, like,
Speaker 3: how many of you have thanked the point guard for.
Speaker 5: All these rebounds?
Speaker 3: How many of you have done that two times, three times?
Speaker 3: It was just like, you know, from their perspective, to
Speaker 3: be honest, it's politically smart right to go out there
Speaker 3: create this spectacle. And I feel like they're starting to
Speaker 3: do this more to stage the spectacle where you have
Speaker 3: a TV performer like Pete hegseth absolutely laying into the
Speaker 3: media over something. The kernel here is legitimate. Someone leaked
Speaker 3: part of an intelligence report and we're about to get
Speaker 3: into that to CNN and the New York Times, And
Speaker 3: it was something that said the administration strike was not successful.
Speaker 3: Now I'm curious whether these reporters, these Pentagon reporters, allow
Speaker 3: themselves to be used as props in these spectacles going forward,
Speaker 3: because that's basically what they were. That's it.
Speaker 2: But Emily, you also have to say, like, I think
Speaker 2: there's two things going on here. Number One, I don't
Speaker 2: doubt that whoever leaks this information wants us to get
Speaker 2: back into the lore. I don't doubt that that's the case, probably,
Speaker 2: But I also don't doubt that the information was accurate
Speaker 2: because we now have corroborating information from other sources that say, yeah,
Speaker 2: the enricheranium is probably removed, Yeah, it was not really
Speaker 2: completely obliterated. In fact, even the things this administration has
Speaker 2: put out has not say that, it said that it's
Speaker 2: been completely obliterated. So, yes, you have a motivated actor
Speaker 2: in putting out this leak, but the information is also accurate.
Speaker 2: So if you're a journalist, oh, you have a response,
Speaker 2: you have a response. It's not the journalists fault, Like
Speaker 2: you have a responsibility to put out information that is
Speaker 2: accurate and will help people understand the fact that the
Speaker 2: truth of the matter is. Trump wants to claim a
Speaker 2: victory and Okay, if that's going to let him not
Speaker 2: go back to this war, which by the way, I'm
Speaker 2: still skeptical about whatever, but it is probably a lie.
Speaker 2: And you know, so they want to attack the media
Speaker 2: over presenting what is in all likelihood accurate but yes,
Speaker 2: motivated information. But almost every leak, whether it's from within
Speaker 2: the government or from a source or whatever, it's very
Speaker 2: common that it will be a motivated leak to try
Speaker 2: to achieve some information, and you know, one way or another.
Speaker 2: So if you're as a journalist not going to publish that,
Speaker 2: then you're picking and choosing what information the American public
Speaker 2: is allowed to have access to.
Speaker 5: Oh totally.
Speaker 3: And it's interesting to see Pete Hegseth in this situation
Speaker 3: because to your point, and any Trump administration official in
Speaker 3: this situation, because to your point, this is the administration
Speaker 3: that campaigned on being anti war and the peace president
Speaker 3: or the President for peace, however they phrase it. And
Speaker 3: they now find themselves saying that the Pentagon Press Corps
Speaker 3: is insufficiently patriotic, which is amusing because the Pentagon Press Corps,
Speaker 3: I think crystal notoriously is like intertwined with the I
Speaker 3: don't know what was the best way, but like the
Speaker 3: military industrial complex and is eager to sell stories about
Speaker 3: how incredible these planes are, how incredible the you know,
Speaker 3: new munitions are, and like it. It's so to see
Speaker 3: the Trump administration then come in and say you're not
Speaker 3: selling this war enough after I mean, it's just it's
Speaker 3: a kind of an interesting like she was on the
Speaker 3: other foot moment, And I do have a lot of
Speaker 3: thoughts on the intelligence itself. I think I totally agree
Speaker 3: with you. So we should probably roll the Jennifer Griffin
Speaker 3: clip because that gets into what the administration is actually
Speaker 3: saying happened.
Speaker 2: Yeah, indeed, all right, let's take a listen to this.
Speaker 7: It's about highly enriched uranium. Do you have certainty that
Speaker 7: all the highly enriched uranium was inside the Four Dome
Speaker 7: Mountain or some of it? Because there were satellite photos
Speaker 7: that showed more than a dozen trucks there two days
Speaker 7: in advance. Are you certain none of that highly enriched
Speaker 7: uranium was moved?
Speaker 5: Of course, we're watching every single aspect.
Speaker 2: Before he answers ys, let me just say that is
Speaker 2: a totally legitimate question, and part of what the intel
Speaker 2: that was leaked said is that and there were satellite
Speaker 2: images of like trucks lined up to move the in richeranium,
Speaker 2: and there have been other assessments as well that indicate
Speaker 2: probably most of the highly in richeranium stockpile was moved.
Speaker 2: So this is the most basic, obvious, like legitimate question
Speaker 2: you could possibly ask. So let's see how Pete Hegseth
Speaker 2: responds to this perfectly legitimate, fair question being asked by
Speaker 2: his former colleague.
Speaker 6: But Jennifer, you've been about the worst, the one who
Speaker 6: misrepresents the most intentionally what the president says.
Speaker 7: I'm familiar the ventilations chefs on Saturday night, and in fact,
Speaker 7: I was the first to describe the B two bombers,
Speaker 7: the refueling, the entire mission with great accuracy. So I
Speaker 7: take issue with that.
Speaker 6: I appreciate you acknowledging that this was the first, the
Speaker 6: most successful mission based on operational security that this department
Speaker 6: has done since you've been here, and I appreciate that.
Speaker 6: So we're looking at all aspects of intelligence and making
Speaker 6: sure we have a sense of what was where.
Speaker 2: So she says, I did your bullshit propaganda, bro, Like,
Speaker 2: why are you coming at me? But she has also
Speaker 2: accurately reported on you know, some of the things he
Speaker 2: doesn't want to be put out there, and so he
Speaker 2: you know, he takes this moment to attack her as
Speaker 2: quote unquote one of the worst.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's not surprising at all because everyone at well
Speaker 3: everyone in like Trump world already doesn't like Jennifer Griffin
Speaker 3: because she does do a lot of the propaganda to
Speaker 3: the point that you just made Crystal and Tucker Carlson
Speaker 3: has since reacted by calling Jennifer Griffin a liberal. I
Speaker 3: think it's probably true that she's like anti Trump. I
Speaker 3: don't know if she's like conservative or liberal, but she's
Speaker 3: definitely sort of like pro military industrial complex and anti Trump.
Speaker 3: So it was like, and Heike Seth has attacked her before,
Speaker 3: so it was like he was ready to just unload
Speaker 3: this years of resentment from working at Fox towards Jennifer Griffin.
Speaker 3: Interesting that her voice sounded like it was shaking a
Speaker 3: little bit, like she was she was rattled and genuinely
Speaker 3: very angry. Totally totally fair. You are being dressed down
Speaker 3: on a Actually the question that she asked him, and
Speaker 3: this is how we queued up the video is completely, completely,
Speaker 3: completely legitimate. There were reports, obviously that trucks were moving
Speaker 3: away from the facility facility in the days before the strikes,
Speaker 3: and actually, if you I mean, there are a couple
Speaker 3: of ways that that could that could be a that
Speaker 3: could have been a deterrent and attempted to turrent to
Speaker 3: say like Trump, don't bomb for dough because we already
Speaker 3: moved everything. Or it could be legitimate, it could be real,
Speaker 3: and the administration is using two lines. They're saying total
Speaker 3: obliteration and severely damaged. There's daylight between those. There's actually
Speaker 3: a lot of daylight between those. So she actually was
Speaker 3: not asking a bad question, but it.
Speaker 2: Seems like, yeah, and this is the European assessment says
Speaker 2: Aron's uranium is largely intact. So yeah, it's you know,
Speaker 2: I mean, it's a pretty key question when you're thinking about, okay,
Speaker 2: well did you actually set them back and how much
Speaker 2: did you set them back by? This is you know,
Speaker 2: a core piece of this. And you have multiple assessments,
Speaker 2: including the one our own that was leaked to you know,
Speaker 2: New York Times among other places that says and CNN
Speaker 2: that says, no, the uranium stockpile is largely intact. So
Speaker 2: you know, I mean, which understores Listen again, if they
Speaker 2: want to pretend that you know, it's completely obliterated, and
Speaker 2: if that helps prevent us from getting into a war
Speaker 2: with Iran, okay, But it also underscores emily how stupid
Speaker 2: and pointless and risky this whole mission was and how
Speaker 2: ultimately counterproductive. Like if your goal was to actually set
Speaker 2: them back and make it impossible for them to develop
Speaker 2: nuclear weapon, there's no doubt that they that failed, like
Speaker 2: you have made it much more likely that they will
Speaker 2: rapidly pursue a nuclear weapon. The thing that had the
Speaker 2: chance to succeed was the negotiations that you yourselves blew up.
Speaker 2: So I think it is actually important for people to
Speaker 2: understand that no, not, actually nothing was accomplished by dropping
Speaker 2: these bombs. In fact, you have set back your own
Speaker 2: stated goals of preventing around developing nuclear weapon, not to
Speaker 2: mention that you have also set back the overall global
Speaker 2: goal of non proliferation, because other countries will be looking
Speaker 2: and assessing what happened in Libya, what happened here, you
Speaker 2: know what happened and what happened in Ukraine. Even and
Speaker 2: the fact that we don't mess with North Korea and
Speaker 2: we're fearful to get involved in a direct fight against Russia,
Speaker 2: and they will logically come to the conclusion that the
Speaker 2: only thing that can keep the US and Israel from
Speaker 2: completely fucking with you and trying to destroy your country
Speaker 2: is by developing a nuclear weapon.
Speaker 3: The administration is in I mean, this is why I
Speaker 3: think they put together that spectacle, because they need answers
Speaker 3: for what actually happened. And they keep saying that that
Speaker 3: initial report which was leaked was low confidence, and they've
Speaker 3: been using another word that illuse me at the moment,
Speaker 3: but it's a preliminary low confidence report, and that means
Speaker 3: they now have to convince the public that the strike
Speaker 3: was absolutely successful, but they don't actually seem to know.
Speaker 3: They don't actually seem to have the intelligence yet. And
Speaker 3: it seems crystal from all of the points you just
Speaker 3: laid out, there is a non zero chance that the
Speaker 3: Jennifer Griffin report, in this case, which likely was leaked
Speaker 3: by somebody who wants more action in Iran, she was
Speaker 3: reporting that it was set back by quote one to
Speaker 3: two months, and that's similar to The Times and to CNN.
Speaker 3: So that's why it's really getting under their skin because
Speaker 3: it undercuts the entire higher premise of what they did,
Speaker 3: and that's why, to your point, it was always really risky.
Speaker 3: So they need to they really need to come up
Speaker 3: with answers. I don't think it's impossible that the program
Speaker 3: was set back years. I don't think it was impossible
Speaker 3: that it was set back one to two months, but
Speaker 3: they haven't produced the intelligence yet to suggest that it
Speaker 3: was longer than one to two months.
Speaker 2: That's right. Yeah, just a couple more things on this topic.
Speaker 2: So we now have reporting that the White House is
Speaker 2: going to limit intelligence sharing with Congress. They are trying
Speaker 2: to blame Democrats for this leak possible, I don't know.
Speaker 2: I don't know how much access Democrats had to this
Speaker 2: intelligence to begin with. They also are additional sidelining Tulsi
Speaker 2: to a greater extent, apparently than she already was, So
Speaker 2: they planned to limit classified intelligence sharing with Congress after
Speaker 2: leaks amid a political battle over what the intelligence shows.
Speaker 2: White Houses expected to send four of its top national
Speaker 2: security officials to brief lawmakers Pete hag Seth, Marco Rubio,
Speaker 2: John Ratcliffe, and General Dan Caine that he's the chair
Speaker 2: of the Joint chiefs of Staff. You will note who
Speaker 2: is not there. The Director of National Intelligence. That would
Speaker 2: be Tulsi Gabbard. It says she testified March that US
Speaker 2: intelligence agencies assessed a Run was not building a nuclear weapon,
Speaker 2: and she will be notably absent. According to the senior
Speaker 2: Trump administration official, Ratcliffe will represent the intelligence community. The
Speaker 2: media is turning this into something it's not emily, so
Speaker 2: that is their line on that, any thought, any thoughts
Speaker 2: on that report and on the you know, the sidelining
Speaker 2: of Tulci Gabbard, which is significant at a time when
Speaker 2: they're claiming also that they're following more of her what
Speaker 2: she would want to see, right since they are claiming
Speaker 2: that this is, you know, the end of the war
Speaker 2: and the ceasefire will last forever and ever and peace
Speaker 2: will reign for all time, I don't know why you
Speaker 2: need to sideline, you know, one of your most prominent
Speaker 2: sort of anti interventionist voices.
Speaker 3: That's a good point. I you know, simultaneously love and
Speaker 3: hate these types of news cycles where you know that
Speaker 3: it's a matter of years until you find out what's
Speaker 3: actually going on behind the scenes because people just flatly
Speaker 3: will not talk about it about like the personnel conflicts
Speaker 3: with Tulsa Gabbard, which could be minor, could be major.
Speaker 3: She could be significantly pushing back, she could be not
Speaker 3: pushing back at all, But we don't really know right now.
Speaker 3: We just have to put together the pieces from reports,
Speaker 3: from what they're saying publicly, like Tulsa Gabbard coming out
Speaker 3: and putting that post up that said her presentation of
Speaker 3: the intelligence was being misconstrued and you know, taken out
Speaker 3: of context by the media ahead of the strike. That
Speaker 3: was quite an interesting moment. And it's came the week
Speaker 3: after she put out that cryptic video about her what
Speaker 3: Nagasaki and Hiroshima. So it seems that, you know, there's
Speaker 3: something serious brewing, but I don't know how serious it
Speaker 3: is behind the scenes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and she you know, it could be the case too,
Speaker 2: that she just like annoyed Trump, right because she sort
Speaker 2: of stepped out from the you know, she she freelanced
Speaker 2: with that video and that pissed him off, and so
Speaker 2: now she's just sort of like out of the in
Speaker 2: circle because certainly publicly she's been pulling the administration's line
Speaker 2: on everything and backing Trump up and claiming she didn't
Speaker 2: say the things that she said, et cetera. But it
Speaker 2: could just be he's sort of irritated with her on
Speaker 2: a personal level because she, you know, grabbed the spotlight
Speaker 2: in a way that was not sanctioned by him. We've
Speaker 2: actually got Dave Weigel standing by to talk about Zoron,
Speaker 2: which I'm excited about hearing, you know, to hear from
Speaker 2: Dave about what he's seeing inside of the Democratic Party
Speaker 2: and efforts to stop Zoron in the general election. But first,
Speaker 2: just let me just mention this. So there is reporting
Speaker 2: from CNN the Trump administration has discussed a new potential
Speaker 2: Iran deal helping them access as much as thirty billion
Speaker 2: dollars to build a civilian energy producing nuclear program, easing sanctions,
Speaker 2: freeing up billions of dollars in restricted Iranian funds, all
Speaker 2: part of an intensifying attempt to bring Tehran back to
Speaker 2: the negotiating table. For sources familiar with the matter said,
Speaker 2: and you know, listen, who knows what they really are
Speaker 2: aiming for here? Who knows if these new gestures towards
Speaker 2: diploma diplomacy are legitimate or part of some new ruse.
Speaker 2: But it's clear that if you're the Iranians like you're
Speaker 2: not going to trust these people there's no way you're
Speaker 2: going to trust these people. And so even the framing
Speaker 2: here that they would have to offer all of these
Speaker 2: things in advance in order to get them back to
Speaker 2: the negotiating table where they previously were, and there were, like,
Speaker 2: you know, indications that it was fairly close to being
Speaker 2: able to make a deal if the Trump administration didn't
Speaker 2: have this hardline zero enrichment policy. It shows you that
Speaker 2: again in terms of their stated goals, the military action
Speaker 2: set them back from being able to achieve some sort
Speaker 2: of diplomatic and may have made such a thing completely impossible.
Speaker 3: And that gets again to the question of what the
Speaker 3: intelligence actually is, because if Iran is coming to the
Speaker 3: table with no nuclear weapons or well not weapons but
Speaker 3: no nuclear capacity and no highly enriched uranium or no
Speaker 3: ability to quickly enrich uranium, then they're in a different
Speaker 3: spot at the negotiating table. So it's just we don't
Speaker 3: know right now, and I don't know that the Trump
Speaker 3: administration knows right now because they don't have full intelligence yet.
Speaker 2: All right, well, let's go ahead and jump to Zoron.
Speaker 2: Since we've got Weigel waiting, let me go ahead and
Speaker 2: welcome him in. Hey, Dave, Weigel. How's it going.
Speaker 4: That's good, Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no problem, you hear, It's okay, and all that
Speaker 2: good stuff I do. Yeah, excellent. So curious to get
Speaker 2: your thoughts first of all, before I planning elements or whatever.
Speaker 2: I mean, what is just your sort of takeaway of
Speaker 2: the significance of Zoran's win and decisive victory over Andrew
Speaker 2: Cuomo in this week's Democrat A primary for New York
Speaker 2: City mayor.
Speaker 4: I don't you want to argue with the hyperbole. Often
Speaker 4: people overrate. I think there's an overrating of what this
Speaker 4: means for every Democrat everywhere. For what it means in
Speaker 4: New York, this city has been Democrats have been voting
Speaker 4: for progressive candidates people they thought for progressive candidates for
Speaker 4: a while, since twenty thirteen, build a Blasio. But the
Speaker 4: amount of things Zorn did and said that the media
Speaker 4: establishment said we're disqualifying, and the voters didn't care about
Speaker 4: that was fascinating. So the idea that New York Democrats say,
Speaker 4: we're tired of austerity and we don't need it right now.
Speaker 7: And we.
Speaker 4: That I think was intensified because Trump was president and
Speaker 4: Zorn's strategy was always see where the puck is moving.
Speaker 4: Don't just run a twenty twenty two campaign where you're
Speaker 4: going to apologize for their being crime. Run on affordability,
Speaker 4: run on housing. That made sense, But the degree to
Speaker 4: which he got more votes than Eric Adams did in
Speaker 4: the final round of voting last time, he got more
Speaker 4: votes than I think anyone who's won this primary since
Speaker 4: David Dinkins in eighty nine.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 4: This Yeah, And you know New York's population has grown
Speaker 4: a bit, but the Democratic Democratic electorates has dipped. Sometimes.
Speaker 4: They just didn't the idea that he was going to
Speaker 4: be disqualified by being a socialist or criticizing Israel in
Speaker 4: the ways that he was happy to do, or having
Speaker 4: tweeted about defunding the police. That was significant, just that
Speaker 4: he was not disqualified, That Guomo was disqualified. There are
Speaker 4: so many elements to this, but just the reason he
Speaker 4: was covered to somebody who was interesting but probably not
Speaker 4: going to win those merits and re examination. A lot
Speaker 4: of New Yorkers said, no, I'm fine with it. I'm
Speaker 4: fine with everything else he's saying, because I went to
Speaker 4: my city to be more affordable.
Speaker 3: Right, And the question now is whether that extends beyond
Speaker 3: the Democratic primary, we have this video. Ken Clippenstein posted
Speaker 3: that we'll get your reaction to Dave of Zoran going
Speaker 3: on CNN with Burnette. Much more of this to come, surely,
Speaker 3: but let me go ahead and play this video and
Speaker 3: get your reactions of capitalism.
Speaker 8: And I think ultimately the definition for me of why
Speaker 8: I call myself a democratic socialist is the words of
Speaker 8: doctor King decades ago. He said, call it democracy or
Speaker 8: call it democratic socialism. There must be a better distribution
Speaker 8: of wealth for all of God's children in this country.
Speaker 8: And that's what I'm focused on, is dignity and taking
Speaker 8: on income inequality.
Speaker 4: Do you like capitalism?
Speaker 8: No, I have many critiques of capitalism, and I think
Speaker 8: ultimately the definition Yeah.
Speaker 3: Okay, he's going to get this NonStop from now until November. Yeah.
Speaker 4: And also but look at LOOKU won the financial district.
Speaker 4: It's not that everyone who works in financially they live,
Speaker 4: they live, they live in fancier places people who work
Speaker 4: in financial districts. But yeah, this was not an athema,
Speaker 4: This was not just qualifying for people. And I mean
Speaker 4: trying not to just recapitulate the last fifteen years of
Speaker 4: politics Plicans. No, Republicans who are now attacking him. They
Speaker 4: know that there's just a collapse of faith in every institution,
Speaker 4: uh even even theirs, even the even even the ones
Speaker 4: that they control right now. But being the party side
Speaker 4: of Donald Trump win and down Trump win by saying
Speaker 4: I'm going to protect Wall Street. I love capitalism, he didn't.
Speaker 4: It's assumed he loves capitalism and say he hates it
Speaker 4: is he's a critic. But the idea of a rig
Speaker 4: of a rig system, there have been different ways to
Speaker 4: talk about that. We've had ten years now at Bernie
Speaker 4: Sanders talking about it his way. We've had ten years
Speaker 4: of polls. Now, Bernie has never been a general election
Speaker 4: where he could beat him up with a billion dollars
Speaker 4: of ads. But but Poles saying, yeah, the guy who
Speaker 4: says as a socialist need and he thinks banks are
Speaker 4: destroyed or screwing us, and healthcare companies screwing us, I
Speaker 4: agree with that guy. There's just so much overlap. Joe
Speaker 4: Rogan's very helpful here, but shows like this personify this.
Speaker 4: And so when I hear the Bill Lackman's of the World,
Speaker 4: you shudder at that and say, well, this is going
Speaker 4: to make capital flee from from the city. Look, there
Speaker 4: are other externalities there but you but there are there
Speaker 4: are Trump voters. There are people who vote who voted
Speaker 4: against Harris for Trump, I should say, in New York
Speaker 4: who voted for Mom Donnie. And it's in that delta
Speaker 4: is those people who say, yeah, all the systems are rigged.
Speaker 4: And Eric Adams, who a lot of them probably also
Speaker 4: voted for, seemed like he was bowing down to donors,
Speaker 4: cutting services, reversing promises he made when people gave him money.
Speaker 4: If you say you're against that, even if you say
Speaker 4: you don't love capitalism, again, I'm pretty easy for a
Speaker 4: lot of people to swallow.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so let's talk about some of the scrambling you mentioned,
Speaker 2: Bill Ackman that's happening right now behind the scenes to
Speaker 2: try to you know, for anyone but zoron effort for
Speaker 2: this fall. And let's also keep in mind Eric Adams
Speaker 2: has a twenty percent approval rating in New York City.
Speaker 2: That is the lowest for any New York City mayor
Speaker 2: as long as they've been doing polling, and well earned
Speaker 2: because he is a sort of cartoonishly corrupt, likely criminal mayor.
Speaker 2: The number of people who were like indicted or resigned
Speaker 2: from his administration in shame. I've completely lost track of
Speaker 2: at this point, he only is able to get out
Speaker 2: of his charges by appearing to make some directly corrupt
Speaker 2: deal with the Trump administration. Not exactly beloved within New
Speaker 2: York City. And yet now you have business leaders who
Speaker 2: are like, uh, maybe we've got to just stick with
Speaker 2: Eric Adams. Cuomo was also now said he's sort of
Speaker 2: waiting to see he's going to keep his ballot line
Speaker 2: and wait to see whether he actively competes in the fall.
Speaker 2: But you've got this New York Times report about Eric
Speaker 2: Adams meeting with business leaders who are desperate to stop
Speaker 2: mom Donnie's rise. Mentioned in here is you've got the
Speaker 2: Polymarket CEO in here, among others. Uh so, what do
Speaker 2: you know, Dave, about the sort of efforts that are
Speaker 2: going on with these business leaders to try to figure
Speaker 2: out some anyone but Zoron kind of a strategy.
Speaker 4: You summed it up pretty well. They're they're flopping around,
Speaker 4: They're not they're not quite sure what to do. They're
Speaker 4: they're looking for some diotix mac gonna that that will
Speaker 4: prevent him. You even have Andy Ogle's the trollish congressman
Speaker 4: from Nashville. I wonder if there's some way to board him.
Speaker 4: There was a panic because they know that, Yes, it.
Speaker 2: Was so aggressive that it caused even Richie Torres to
Speaker 2: defend Zoron.
Speaker 4: No totally tell him how out there that was. Yeah,
Speaker 4: absolutely absolutely, and I do I wonder for them that's
Speaker 4: going to backfire. But what they're what they're doing right
Speaker 4: now is honestly, again, people forget that a Blasio reaction
Speaker 4: a different, different climate. But if you go back and
Speaker 4: read the coverage whin to Blasio won the primary in
Speaker 4: twenty thirteen because he won a large part running and
Speaker 4: stopping frisk, there was a lot of the same editorializing
Speaker 4: it was New York is going to implode, crime is
Speaker 4: going to surge, the wealthy are going to leave the city,
Speaker 4: and Mom Donnie other parts of that scene and interview
Speaker 4: which I watched yesterday, he says, one, there's data that
Speaker 4: says most people who are leaving New York are actually
Speaker 4: working class people who can't afford it. And two they
Speaker 4: say this all the time, and the other just to say,
Speaker 4: Mom Donnie's premise and this is the thing that to
Speaker 4: be fair to actman if I want to. He just
Speaker 4: doesn't believe Mondanni's premise. And I interviewed him a few
Speaker 4: weeks ago about this is you need to prove that
Speaker 4: you vote for progressive you pay taxes and things get better,
Speaker 4: and people have not been doing that. Every Democrat agrees
Speaker 4: like there's has been this overlap between the as reclined
Speaker 4: abundance people and this are on people, whether I've like
Speaker 4: it or not, because that's where they agree. They want
Speaker 4: Republicans to not win elections, and they worry when Democrats
Speaker 4: win and screw up their Republicans win. So this is
Speaker 4: where the Adams theory is not very compelling. He's saying
Speaker 4: that the city has improved since he got elected, and
Speaker 4: it has in some ways. Crime is down, but it
Speaker 4: got more expensive. He has no answer for how it
Speaker 4: got more expensive. It's is the same position Kamala Harris
Speaker 4: is in last year and the Mandanni. It's very well
Speaker 4: put up put by him. I have to I praised
Speaker 4: him too much, but I interviewed him. He says it everywhere.
Speaker 4: It's he looks at Bernie Sanders and Burlington or progressive
Speaker 4: mayors in other cities.
Speaker 3: They have it.
Speaker 4: All the successes who raise some taxes and then suddenly
Speaker 4: you're seeing more public transit, you're seeing better services. Is
Speaker 4: if you gave an actman the chance to pay her
Speaker 4: taxes and he never had to be not that he
Speaker 4: takes a subway, but see homeless people sleeping on the subway,
Speaker 4: would he take it. It's a quality of life thing
Speaker 4: that mont Donnie's running on. These folks were talking about,
Speaker 4: don't believe because they have a vision that socialists are
Speaker 4: just going to direct the economy and everyone's gonna be
Speaker 4: on the streets. This is their view of what happened
Speaker 4: in San Francisco. I get that, but the Mount Donnie
Speaker 4: premise is, you know, we're going to raise taxes and
Speaker 4: improve things to everybody. When congestion pricing, I'm not trying
Speaker 4: to swerve too much, but talking to people when I
Speaker 4: was in New York covering this race, they're saying, that's
Speaker 4: an example. It's a tax. It has made more people
Speaker 4: go in public transit. That's been fine. There have not
Speaker 4: been a crisis. It's not really been working class people
Speaker 4: use who are changing their habits. That's been well. For
Speaker 4: people who are no longer driving into the city. They progressive.
Speaker 4: If there are anything, but please vote for us because
Speaker 4: Republicans screwed up. They need to be the party that
Speaker 4: can win and govern well and will include raising taxes
Speaker 4: on people. That that is the premise. They just don't
Speaker 4: buy it because every in their mind, every liberal city
Speaker 4: is San Francisco, but some liberal cities are Boston. Some
Speaker 4: cities are able to do this a lot better.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think Mayor Wilhelm does also loom large over
Speaker 3: this because and I but I also sense that mom
Speaker 3: Donnie is aware of that because as he has his
Speaker 3: communications director told us on election night that it's really
Speaker 3: important for them to talk about tangibles and deliverables instead
Speaker 3: of values are actually Mom Donnie told us instead of
Speaker 3: values and ideas, And that juxtaposition that like it has
Speaker 3: to be about it sort of reminds me what you're
Speaker 3: saying on the abundance front. It's like about putting things
Speaker 3: in front of people and making the social compact like
Speaker 3: more obvious so that it doesn't look like somebody's just
Speaker 3: talking about the police being racist and then crime goes up.
Speaker 3: You want people talking about the city being too expensive
Speaker 3: and having the rent go down or their rent be
Speaker 3: frozen or something like that. It just seems that he's
Speaker 3: actually sort of very aware of that dynamic too.
Speaker 6: He is.
Speaker 4: And there are people we have been talking about who
Speaker 4: view this a different way because the left is pretty
Speaker 4: global and it's thinking, as you guys know, the right,
Speaker 4: here's socialism, it thinks pulpot and the left says, here's socialism,
Speaker 4: it thinks like Oslo or Stockholm or Copenhagen or something.
Speaker 4: And what you've seen in the last forty eight hours
Speaker 4: is other elements of the right not even going beyond
Speaker 4: what Ackman's saying and saying. This is Charlie Kirsch, this
Speaker 4: is Matt Walsh, this is Ogels to an extent, saying well,
Speaker 4: this is what happens when you let in immigrants and
Speaker 4: they turned the city into a Third world hellhole. And
Speaker 4: their premise is that is going beyond the economic argument
Speaker 4: and saying that, well, pluralism and mass immigration doesn't work,
Speaker 4: and he's going to be the mayor of mass immigration
Speaker 4: that'll wreck the city. He wants to bring his anti
Speaker 4: colonial values from Uganda and India and wreck the cunt tree.
Speaker 4: I've noticed. I bring that up not because Acman's saying that,
Speaker 4: it's because there really is this cacophony of reasons not
Speaker 4: to trust Mom Dannie. And you've seen also this comparison
Speaker 4: to London, which is very popular JD Vans who made
Speaker 4: this joke, I think just once, but you've seen the
Speaker 4: clip a bunch of times saying you know, what's what's
Speaker 4: the first Islamist nuclear power going to be? It might
Speaker 4: be the UK because there are all these Muslims living
Speaker 4: living in the UK living, and there's a Muslim mare
Speaker 4: of London. But again I've I've been London fairly recently.
Speaker 4: There are things that could improve, but people pay a
Speaker 4: lot to live there. It has congestion pricing, it has
Speaker 4: some homelessness, it has a lot of things where if
Speaker 4: you copied them in American City, you'd say that's working
Speaker 4: really well and it's worth paying for all that. So
Speaker 4: that is that is the challenge is part of you're right,
Speaker 4: the Deblaso experience looms. But the first term in Deblasio
Speaker 4: people were pretty happy with it was the criminal defist
Speaker 4: perform movement and the other big topics that you put
Speaker 4: into it. But the intersection of crimindust reform happening just
Speaker 4: when COVID happened, how much of the rising crime was
Speaker 4: people shutting down and social cohesion breaking down? How much
Speaker 4: of it with bail reform and things like that. Yeah,
Speaker 4: Tom Dundee, and I did not run on his twenty
Speaker 4: twenty positions about defunding the police. He said that he's
Speaker 4: just going to hire more people to make the city
Speaker 4: safer without fighting with the end of NYPD, without shrinking it.
Speaker 4: That is important too. I want to see how that
Speaker 4: is litigated because right now there is Democrats who's like
Speaker 4: Cursey jail Brand, who have not endorsed him yet are
Speaker 4: saying they want to talk to him, and I, honestly
Speaker 4: I have an open mind about that. I want to
Speaker 4: see as he does these interviews. He's very accessible. What
Speaker 4: he says he might tack in if he no longer says, hey,
Speaker 4: I'm going to I'm going to be there and we're
Speaker 4: actually not going to touch the NYPD, We're just going
Speaker 4: to hire more public safety officials. Is that offensive to
Speaker 4: Bill Ackman? Do they not trust it? Because that's actually
Speaker 4: what's been happening in places like Philadelphia and Boston Standy
Speaker 4: eggobs obviously places where Democrats run things, but you don't
Speaker 4: care nightmare stories about how scary they are.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean Bill Ackman and the CNBC crew. There's
Speaker 2: nothing that Zoron is going to say that's going to
Speaker 2: satisfy you know. I mean Akman has the twin concerns
Speaker 2: of like, oh my god, he's an anti Semiti and
Speaker 2: it's going to be sure Rea law and also that
Speaker 2: you know, God forbid that people get taxed a little
Speaker 2: bit more and buses are free, you know, like he has.
Speaker 2: And there's no amount of assuaging of those types that
Speaker 2: is going to ultimately satisfy them. And I don't even
Speaker 2: know that that would benefit Zoron because the fact of
Speaker 2: their freak count, in my opinion, benefits him. It proves
Speaker 2: that he's uncomfortable for them. But you brought up Kirston Jilbrand.
Speaker 2: I want to get your reacting. I'm sure you listen
Speaker 2: to her on this radio show. I'm just going to
Speaker 2: play a piece of it because it's like six minutes long,
Speaker 2: but you'll get a sense. So a caller calls into
Speaker 2: Brian Lair's radio show and is asking about, you know,
Speaker 2: oh my god, isn't Zoron antisemitic? And what's your response
Speaker 2: to this? And Center Kirsten Gillibrand is on the show,
Speaker 2: and interestingly, Larr is actually trying to someone defends. Zoron,
Speaker 2: who he spoke with, had asked some of these questions too,
Speaker 2: and the specific thing they start getting hung up on
Speaker 2: was Zorn's explanation of why he won't condemn the phrase
Speaker 2: globalize the into fada, and I'm going to pick up
Speaker 2: here you can hear. I think this part that I'm
Speaker 2: about to press play on is where Lair is trying
Speaker 2: to say, you know, I uh, I understand, this is
Speaker 2: why people are concerned, but this is also something that
Speaker 2: he hasn't himself personally said. So let me go ahead
Speaker 2: and see if we can start this here.
Speaker 9: Then he has supported or has supported violenceihawk, As that
Speaker 9: caller was asserted, can you.
Speaker 10: Again, Brian, I don't have all the data information, and
Speaker 10: I've never sat down with mister mom Donnie, so I've
Speaker 10: asked to have that meeting. I'm going to have that meeting.
Speaker 10: We will talk through all these things. He can tell
Speaker 10: me his views of the world and I can learn
Speaker 10: them firsthand. I think the reference that I had read
Speaker 10: with global intofada specifically, which is has very serious meetings
Speaker 10: that are violent and destructive.
Speaker 9: So it's which he says, and I pressed him on
Speaker 9: this on the show on Monday, but which he says
Speaker 9: are not calls for violence because into fada is a
Speaker 9: much broader term involved in all kinds of uprisings and
Speaker 9: resistance and things like that. So I just want to
Speaker 9: be clear about how, at least he defines it, and
Speaker 9: maybe he needs to be more clear. I don't mean this.
Speaker 9: I don't mean that. He did say here that he
Speaker 9: didn't want to be the word police, even as the
Speaker 9: mayor of New York if he's elected. But I do
Speaker 9: also want to be clear, and he said he does
Speaker 9: not support violent into fada. Is that there?
Speaker 10: So, Brian, I didn't hear your exchange with him, but
Speaker 10: if I was speaking to him directly, I would simply
Speaker 10: say that is not how the words are received. And
Speaker 10: it doesn't matter what meaning you have in your brain,
Speaker 10: it is not how the word is received. And when
Speaker 10: you use a word like intofada to many Jewish Americans
Speaker 10: and Jewish New Yorkers, that means you are permissive for
Speaker 10: violence against Jews. It is a serious word. It is
Speaker 10: a word that has deep meaning. It has been used
Speaker 10: for wars across time and violent and destruction and slaughter
Speaker 10: and murder against the Jews. It is a harmful, hurtful,
Speaker 10: inappropriate word for anyone who wants to represent a city
Speaker 10: as diverse as New York City with eight million people.
Speaker 10: And I would be very specific in these words, and
Speaker 10: I would say you may not use them again if
Speaker 10: you expect to represent everyone ever again, because they are
Speaker 10: received as hateful and divisive and harmful.
Speaker 2: And that's it.
Speaker 10: So I appreciate that he told you he didn't mean that,
Speaker 10: and that's great.
Speaker 9: That's also clarify or he was clarifying that he never
Speaker 9: said globalized the antifader. He was asked in an interview
Speaker 9: if he would denounce the phrase globalize the Intifada, and
Speaker 9: then that led to this kind of conversation. You know
Speaker 9: that you were just referring to, but that he was
Speaker 9: never out there saying globalized the antifighter. He was asked
Speaker 9: about other people who used it. So just just to
Speaker 9: be precise about about what happened there.
Speaker 10: Yes, well, as a leader of the city of diverses,
Speaker 10: New York City with eight million people, as the largest
Speaker 10: Jewish population in the country, he should denounce it. And
Speaker 10: that's it, period, and you can't celebrate it. You can't
Speaker 10: value it, you can't lift it up. And that is
Speaker 10: what That is the challenge that Jewish New Yorkers have had,
Speaker 10: certainly since October next it is assuming October seventh. It
Speaker 10: is exactly what they have felt. It is why Jewish
Speaker 10: students in our universities have felt unsafe. It is why
Speaker 10: Jewish students have felt that their schools did not have
Speaker 10: their backs and cared about them or their learning. Because
Speaker 10: the people doing these protests use words that have meetings
Speaker 10: that are far more violent and horrific than they may
Speaker 10: have intended.
Speaker 2: So anyway we get the sense of what a Delibrand
Speaker 2: is up to there, David, what is your reaction to
Speaker 2: Kirsten Gilibrand, you know, picking up on this is one
Speaker 2: of the things that Cuomo and Whitney Tilson and all
Speaker 2: sorts of others in the primary tried to, you know,
Speaker 2: to corners or on on and to make him unacceptable
Speaker 2: because he's supposedly anti Semite, who you know, supports violence
Speaker 2: against Jewish people. And clearly in the primary context this
Speaker 2: did not work. And in fact, I think it's possible
Speaker 2: actually inord to his benefit, because while on the debate stage,
Speaker 2: all the other candidates were clamoring for saying how quickly
Speaker 2: they would run to this or that foreign country, most
Speaker 2: prominently Israel. He says, I'm going to be the mayor
Speaker 2: who stays here in New York and delivers for people,
Speaker 2: including Jewish people here in the city.
Speaker 4: A couple of things about that interview, I think a
Speaker 4: different part she says she doesn't want to be the
Speaker 4: word police, but being mayor sometimes you got to be
Speaker 4: the word police. That's not crazy. So when I heard
Speaker 4: that Bulwark interview, which is where this answer came from,
Speaker 4: I remind me a little bit of Bernie Sanders winning
Speaker 4: the Vada caucuses and then Anderson Cooper Asenholm that Cuba
Speaker 4: not a top voting issue for Democrats and standers is
Speaker 4: not backing down, and you do have that choice right
Speaker 4: as politicians to not back down. And generally Mom, Donnie
Speaker 4: has never has not backed down. This is a answer
Speaker 4: on should Israel exist as a Jewish state has been
Speaker 4: it should exist as a democratic state with rights for everybody.
Speaker 5: I E know, I E.
Speaker 4: It shouldn't be what it is right now, which should
Speaker 4: it should change its constitution basically, and that shocked people
Speaker 4: because you're usually not you know, can't say that in
Speaker 4: New York can win election. An he won an election.
Speaker 4: So you're right that Democratic voters did not see this
Speaker 4: as a litless test worth voting against him on. That
Speaker 4: is that is a factor in this race that has
Speaker 4: huge applications for.
Speaker 2: Many Jewish voters, including well, yeah.
Speaker 4: Look a the neighborhoods he won.
Speaker 7: Uh.
Speaker 4: And so the idea that and this is very very
Speaker 4: prominent story is you go to the neighborhood, you ask
Speaker 4: me what they're They're scared. They say they're scared. What's
Speaker 4: the context though? Six months of don Trump being president
Speaker 4: and Columbia University having money pulled away from it, people
Speaker 4: being deported because they criticize this role and they have visus. Uh,
Speaker 4: the context changed in the last six months. It went
Speaker 4: from who I feel unsafe because of this rhetoric to
Speaker 4: it looks like I'm not allowed to criticize this country anymore.
Speaker 4: And I'm not saying these are different people we're talking
Speaker 4: about who had these reactions. But I think, one, mom,
Speaker 4: Donny benefit from that, but two he has what is
Speaker 4: he going to choose just to not say some things that,
Speaker 4: beyond losing votes, would make people worry? And he said that.
Speaker 4: Another point says victory speech, he sort of needs to
Speaker 4: he needs to speak for everybody, even if he didn't
Speaker 4: vote for him. How was he going to interpret that?
Speaker 4: Does that mean he's gonna he's going to piss off
Speaker 4: some people who vote over him by not renouncing bds,
Speaker 4: which he has not renounced these sports bds, but not
Speaker 4: using some of these phrases. You don't want to be
Speaker 4: in an announcement with Olympics, which which sometimes happens in
Speaker 4: campaigns where you're asking to anounce this statement, that statement,
Speaker 4: this Endorsemer saysn't crazy to do denounce it. But again
Speaker 4: he said in November twenty twenty on Twitter, queer liberation
Speaker 4: means defund the police. And he's not running around every
Speaker 4: TV show is saying yes, I still mean the queer
Speaker 4: liberation means to the police. So I think he's going
Speaker 4: to be consistent as a progressive who thinks that Israel's
Speaker 4: one committing a genocide to should have its government changed constitutionally,
Speaker 4: three in the meantime should be boycotted. He believes those things.
Speaker 4: There might be a mayor of New York who believes
Speaker 4: those things, which is unprecedented. But how do you express it,
Speaker 4: that's the question. The only thing I'd say is that
Speaker 4: the interview is not very long, the bull arg interview.
Speaker 4: And if Democrats, i think, are risking a backlash that
Speaker 4: will help Mandanni if they Russian and repeat what somebody
Speaker 4: else said about him and don't look at what he's
Speaker 4: what he said. Adams has already been doing this. Adams
Speaker 4: just accused him of saying things he never said, supporting
Speaker 4: hamas being an anti anti semi and Adams Adams is
Speaker 4: not just generally not very honest. But there is a well, yeah,
Speaker 4: there is a risk. There is a risk though if
Speaker 4: if Mount Donnie is called out for something he said,
Speaker 4: that's a problem. But if he's slandered you've already seen
Speaker 4: Democrats are pretty sympathetic to that, and they're a little
Speaker 4: bit tired. Not all of them, but let's say forty
Speaker 4: four percent of New York are a little bit tired
Speaker 4: of being told you might lose your job. Well, the
Speaker 4: port you will shame you if you criticize what is
Speaker 4: Reel's doing. That is that doesn't feel very American to people,
Speaker 4: even if they even if they agree with with with
Speaker 4: like eighty percent of what is Reel's doing.
Speaker 2: Oh, Emily, we lost you. We're not hidding you.
Speaker 5: Here.
Speaker 2: Let me pull up for you, David. I wanted to
Speaker 2: get your reaction to Kathy Hochel getting asked about Zorn,
Speaker 2: so you can talk about some of you know how
Speaker 2: the the powers that be in New York are responding,
Speaker 2: and they don't seem to be responding with a vote blue,
Speaker 2: no matter who message here. They seem very much to
Speaker 2: be weighing their options, which again is it's extraordinary. I mean,
Speaker 2: this guy won, he didn't. It wasn't a squeaker. He
Speaker 2: went overwhelmingly Democratic voter said this is the person who
Speaker 2: we would like to see normally, that's the end of
Speaker 2: the story in terms of the Democratic Party supports the nominee.
Speaker 2: And that does not seem to be the end of
Speaker 2: the story here. So let's take a listen to this.
Speaker 2: Will you support his candidacy and will you back him?
Speaker 3: The election is just completed.
Speaker 11: I get a chance to call and congratulate him on
Speaker 11: the Tuesday's primary and look forward to having a conversation. Honestly,
Speaker 11: there's areas of difference in our positions, but I also
Speaker 11: thinking have those conversations in the meantime. I really am
Speaker 11: not focused on the politics for six months away from
Speaker 11: the inauguration date, and that will determine who I'm working
Speaker 11: with for the next four years. And that's important that
Speaker 11: I'm doing on affordability and making New York City state and.
Speaker 7: Making the state. So that's my primary objective right now.
Speaker 4: So are you skeptical then of him?
Speaker 11: And then also the will of New York City voters
Speaker 11: new York Democratic primary voters.
Speaker 4: Do you think that their choice is not valid?
Speaker 6: No?
Speaker 11: I don't see how you can possibly include that from
Speaker 11: what I just said. I said that I'm going to
Speaker 11: be having conversations. I want to find out your positions
Speaker 11: on specific issues. But in the meantime, I'm working closer
Speaker 11: with Eric Adams, who is the mayor who we have
Speaker 11: a lot of work to do to get through a
Speaker 11: crisis right now. We just have a lot of people
Speaker 11: in our city under siege with expressive temperatures. We have
Speaker 11: to making sure our subways are safe, building more housing
Speaker 11: on the city of yes, which were the finish line.
Speaker 11: So as much as there's a lot of people, perhaps
Speaker 11: even in this room, who are very focused on the politics,
Speaker 11: I don't have the luck. I focus on governing and
Speaker 11: delivering for New Yorkers and working with the people that
Speaker 11: are in government today.
Speaker 2: What do you make of this, Dave? And how do
Speaker 2: you think Democrats ultimately, I mean you have seen so
Speaker 2: like came Jeffreys and Chuck Schumer said basically congratulations, will
Speaker 2: meet with you, but noncommittal. You saw Jerry Nadler come
Speaker 2: out and you know, directly support zora On. You actually
Speaker 2: saw Bill Clinton come out and basically say good luck
Speaker 2: in November, which you know seems to be a direct
Speaker 2: support even though Clinton was behind Cuomo in the primary.
Speaker 2: Where do you think that this is going? Are they
Speaker 2: going to try to pull basically another India Walton, who
Speaker 2: was the lefty candidate in Buffalo who knocked down a
Speaker 2: long time corrupt incumbent and then he came back and
Speaker 2: was able to defeat her in the fall with the
Speaker 2: coalition of establishment Democrats or like corporate Democrats and Republicans.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I covered that race and honestly that was
Speaker 4: that was no offense to Buffalo, but it's Buffalo is
Speaker 4: not the media center of the world. And also Walton.
Speaker 4: The way that they went after Walton and beat the
Speaker 4: Democrat who ended up beating her was just going after
Speaker 4: her poverty, basically just unpaid taxes. Then she later paid
Speaker 4: stuff like that, and it was a lower profile race
Speaker 4: that they could do it with Doron. We just talked
Speaker 4: about all the flailing they're doing, and Adam's just done
Speaker 4: some of this, all the truss On baby did not
Speaker 4: figured out an effective line. But if you're a national Democrat,
Speaker 4: what is the risk of something this sign profile ending
Speaker 4: with Democrats betraying the Democratic nominee? How does that play
Speaker 4: out in two years? Four years? Look at how much
Speaker 4: anger Bernie Sanders engendered just for saying he was recruiting
Speaker 4: candidates to run for office Democrats or independents. And he
Speaker 4: would tell anybody he told me, but anybody who asked
Speaker 4: him he meant independence in like a place where Democrats
Speaker 4: can't win. He did not mean I'm a recruiting be
Speaker 4: able to run against them. But you saw the knee jerk.
Speaker 4: How dare he do this? He's not a real Democrat reaction.
Speaker 4: The party has very little credibility left, and I might
Speaker 4: be overstating it by saying very little. If it looks
Speaker 4: like it is undermining a duly nominated Democratic candidate, then
Speaker 4: it will be hurt in ways that we can't even
Speaker 4: predict right now. And I think that's where clets to
Speaker 4: me from what we're Hope's doing, because Hopel if I
Speaker 4: were calling, correctly endorsed Walton but didn't do anything for
Speaker 4: if she does that in this race, well, the complication
Speaker 4: is that she's got a challenger at Tendo Dogatu who
Speaker 4: is very pro Zorn and endorsed him already and says
Speaker 4: she should what she's doing right now. I was giving
Speaker 4: some giving space, I suppose for the Gila brands and
Speaker 4: vocals if they do want to have conversations with him
Speaker 4: and say, look, this is what happened with Trump in
Speaker 4: twenty sixteen. Trump wins the nomination and there are a
Speaker 4: lot of people who didn't support Trump who get meetings
Speaker 4: with him and say, hey, I represent ten million pro
Speaker 4: life voters. You should really be doing this and say
Speaker 4: this now, and you should can't this interview answer you
Speaker 4: gave and he did. Like this is the thing that
Speaker 4: actually Zorn learned a lot from having talked to him
Speaker 4: in the campaign that it's not like Trump got away
Speaker 4: with everything. Trump actually did change some of his rhetoric,
Speaker 4: change some of his answers moderate and so if they're
Speaker 4: doing that, I feel like they can get away with
Speaker 4: that if they if they undercut him, it will hurt
Speaker 4: the party long term. What would Democrats prefer? Would they
Speaker 4: prefer this situation or one where they can ever winn'
Speaker 4: the Senate ever again? Because there's a fifty to third
Speaker 4: party left wing organization that gets fifteen percent of the vote,
Speaker 4: Like that is that is the risk right now they
Speaker 4: have progressives in the tent and the best situation, I
Speaker 4: might sound what to do. It's the best situation for
Speaker 4: them clearly is Zoran Mom Dannie winning the election, being
Speaker 4: successful and in four years people saying that wasn't so bad.
Speaker 4: That is for the party. That's what makes sense. For
Speaker 4: some donors in the party, they don't want that, and
Speaker 4: that's complicated. But if you're elected Democrat and you want
Speaker 4: Democrats to want elections, your your choices are sabotage him
Speaker 4: and sabotage yourself, or try to just get him to
Speaker 4: move in your direction so you're both successful.
Speaker 3: It's been interesting to see the pod bros. I shouldn't
Speaker 3: use that as kind of derogatory, but like.
Speaker 2: We've decided bros as a slur now that yeah, I
Speaker 2: don't know. I don't know, I don't know.
Speaker 3: Dan Feiffer and others being like, well, I just think
Speaker 3: it diminishes podcasting. Actually not not bros to be, to
Speaker 3: be honest.
Speaker 6: But.
Speaker 3: They have sort of started saying, what the hell is
Speaker 3: the Democratic Party doing in its reaction to Zoron? And
Speaker 3: that's been I guess I'm just curious if you think
Speaker 3: that's indicative of where other sort of younger establishment Democrats
Speaker 3: are going.
Speaker 4: I've been careful with this. I was joking with an
Speaker 4: editor that I probably popped myself traffic because I I
Speaker 4: think I my headline said that Democrats are keeping a
Speaker 4: respectful distance, and then some people said Democrats are in
Speaker 4: disarray and pointing fingers, and if we quoted the same people,
Speaker 4: there are some there are some suburban Democratic congress who
Speaker 4: are not endorsing Mom Donnie. I don't think Tom Swasey
Speaker 4: ever will. For example, even I just said that Swazi
Speaker 4: has to win a seat that's a tiny bit of
Speaker 4: Queen's and mostly in Nassau County. Pat Ryan in Westchester
Speaker 4: County hasn't said something the Mom Donnie. My understanding of
Speaker 4: Mom Donnie, I haven't talked to I talked to him
Speaker 4: last night. But about this is yes, he's going to
Speaker 4: give some people some room to not get on board
Speaker 4: with everything, which is what again Donald Trump did in
Speaker 4: twenty sixteen. He is not demanding every Democrat anywhere around
Speaker 4: the country. He says, I love Zora Mandanni. He's the
Speaker 4: future of the party. I agree with him on everything
Speaker 4: that he's not doing that. It's actually us in the
Speaker 4: media who were asking Democrats if they agree and the
Speaker 4: answer we're getting are I guess they're this in the
Speaker 4: two camps. One is or three one is just pure excitement,
Speaker 4: like AOC Yes, this is the way the party should go,
Speaker 4: or Bernie one is. Alyssa Slockin did this. I was
Speaker 4: talking to Abigas Banger span Burgerk yesterday and she did
Speaker 4: this is well, voters want things be affordable. We learn
Speaker 4: it in November. We're learning that now, which is a
Speaker 4: very diplomatic way. I think that's where most Democrats will
Speaker 4: end up. Is I don't agree with on everything, but
Speaker 4: if somebody like him can win. This is what they
Speaker 4: say about Trump, right, Like Trump's victory proves that people
Speaker 4: are worried about some of these issues and we need
Speaker 4: to we need to figure that out. That is the
Speaker 4: diplomatic way to do it. The least diplomatic is the
Speaker 4: Swazi way of I can't support this guy, and that
Speaker 4: camp is pretty small. So right now they're still on
Speaker 4: the hill. They're gonna be chased around, asked if they
Speaker 4: endorse them or not. I think that'll last for two
Speaker 4: or three more days. It might pop up again, because look,
Speaker 4: I have mentioned New York as the media capital the world,
Speaker 4: so specifically New York Post is there, and Fox News
Speaker 4: is there, and the New York Post can make anything famous.
Speaker 4: So there will be news cycles or Zoran does something
Speaker 4: where something is revealed and Democrats are asked about it.
Speaker 4: But I don't think that there'll be other stories that happen.
Speaker 4: I think the Democrats were safest will be the ones
Speaker 4: who have some yeuristic that says, yeah, I see why
Speaker 4: he's winning and people are angry, but I don't agree
Speaker 4: with him on X y Z. That's where I think
Speaker 4: most of them are ending up, because that's my conversation
Speaker 4: so far, and that's what makes the most sense.
Speaker 2: Gotcha all right, Dave Weigel, thank you so much for
Speaker 2: your reporting and for jumping on with us this morning.
Speaker 2: Always a pleasure to see you.
Speaker 4: Sir, thank you, no gree to do it.
Speaker 2: Interesting perspective from him about where the Democrats are right now,
Speaker 2: basically like most of them are going to get to
Speaker 2: the Slotkin answer of like, well, he ran on affordability,
Speaker 2: and that's what we need to focus on. So at
Speaker 2: the same time, you've got you know, you do have
Speaker 2: these Concerner, you still have Cuomo hanging out there, You've
Speaker 2: got Eric Adams obviously on the ballot line. Apparently there
Speaker 2: was some effort to try to pressure Curtis Leewa, who's
Speaker 2: the Republican nominee, to take some Trump administration job. He
Speaker 2: has ruled that out quite definitively, in a very Curtis
Speaker 2: Leewa kind of a way, with rhetorical flourish, and you're
Speaker 2: not gonna. But I think I think probably the most
Speaker 2: important point is that if Democrats really do try to
Speaker 2: rat fuck him, or even appear to try to rat
Speaker 2: fuck him, then it is devastating for them because here
Speaker 2: you have them having just lost this election, and they're
Speaker 2: all running oud, oh, we need someone who's younger and
Speaker 2: has ideas and that the bros Are into, and you know,
Speaker 2: can we back young people? And you know, create new
Speaker 2: energy in the party. And then he shows up and
Speaker 2: they're like, nope, we want Andrew Cuomo over the sky.
Speaker 2: It's crazy, and it comes at a time when democratic
Speaker 2: leadership is already deeply unpopular with their own base. And
Speaker 2: this is what's so different this that's what makes this
Speaker 2: moment so different, even from the burning moments, from the
Speaker 2: AOC moment, is at that time, most of the Democratic
Speaker 2: base was still enamored with democratic leadership. That is not
Speaker 2: the case anymore, so, you know that, which is part
Speaker 2: of why Zorn's able to succeed. Even though you had
Speaker 2: all of the establishment lining up behind Cuomo and saying
Speaker 2: you can't possibly elect this guy. He's an anti Semite,
Speaker 2: he's a radical, et cetera. People didn't listen and they
Speaker 2: didn't care because those leaders are now not only failed
Speaker 2: in the eyes of the broader public, but they're failed
Speaker 2: specifically in the eyes of the Democratic base.
Speaker 3: And into all of this chaos, a hero emerges.
Speaker 5: We utilize the letter F.
Speaker 9: We utilize the letter F for faith.
Speaker 6: Yeah, our opponents usually lettter F for profanity.
Speaker 11: Wa. We need to stay focused, no distractions and gry,
Speaker 11: no distracting and grad.
Speaker 8: And Rah we're straight ahead.
Speaker 3: Because.
Speaker 2: Do you remember when he won all the ezra klines
Speaker 2: and all the like, all the centrists who were like,
Speaker 2: this guy's going to be a national figure, and now
Speaker 2: he literally has the lowest approval rating in New York
Speaker 2: City mayoral history. That's that's what's happened with him.
Speaker 3: And yet Focus, No Distractions and Grind would push him
Speaker 3: to re election seriousness, No, but but actually it could
Speaker 3: because it depends on how freaked out they're able to
Speaker 3: make people about their own mom, Donnie, and they're going
Speaker 3: to try able to get Bill Ackman into the race.
Speaker 3: It's just like many like, if you don't like zoon mom,
Speaker 3: Donnie in the city right now, you are absolutely cooked
Speaker 3: because you have Eric Abdams out there chanting Focus, No
Speaker 3: Distractions and Grind in front of a crowd of boomers
Speaker 3: seemingly like it's.
Speaker 2: Well, and it's just wild. The mask off with the
Speaker 2: oligarchs because Ackman is literally tweeting out things like I'm
Speaker 2: in group chats where we could raise one hundred million,
Speaker 2: you know, hundreds of millions of dollars for anyone who's
Speaker 2: willing to get in this race. It's like, Wow, they
Speaker 2: truly think they can just buy any seat in the
Speaker 2: country up to and including the presidency, by the way,
Speaker 2: with Elon Musk, and they're not ashamed of it. Like
Speaker 2: he has no subvlts. Just put that out into the
Speaker 2: world of like this guy wants to make the buses
Speaker 2: free and make it, you know, your rent cheaper. God,
Speaker 2: we can't have that, God forbid. So we're willing to
Speaker 2: spend one hundreds of millions of dollars. And I'm in
Speaker 2: the group text where we're trying to control everything behind
Speaker 2: the scenes, you know. Again, like that is part of
Speaker 2: the reason why so many people voted for Zoran because
Speaker 2: he represents a repudiation of that type of politics that
Speaker 2: Ackman is just openly professing to, you know, to believe
Speaker 2: in and be a part of.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they've painted themselves into a corner, and it's a
Speaker 3: catch twenty two for them. You know, you're damned if
Speaker 3: you're doing You're damned if you don't. You're damned if
Speaker 3: you from their perspective, if you embrace Zoron, because they
Speaker 3: don't believe in a lot of the things that he believes.
Speaker 3: And so that's just even the like ideological component, not
Speaker 3: even the political component, but if you don't, then you
Speaker 3: look like you are trying to thwart like as establishment democrats,
Speaker 3: you're trying to thwart the will of the voters. And
Speaker 3: so you really don't have any good options, Like if
Speaker 3: you organize an alternative candidate, it looks completely astroturfed. It
Speaker 3: looks like what they did to Bernie and Zora not
Speaker 3: benefits from this interesting scenario that the establishment has found
Speaker 3: itself in where they know if they if they try
Speaker 3: to beat him with some other mechanism, whether that's a
Speaker 3: third party candidate pouring tons of money behind like Eric
Speaker 3: Adams or Curtis Leewa, it has the effect of proving
Speaker 3: his point.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Hot Commedy Summer, that's what their Bloomberg's headline is. Well,
Speaker 2: Street's freaking out of her Hot Commedy Summer. Incredible stuff.
Speaker 2: Incredible stuff. Well, this is a good Well, we're gonna
Speaker 2: go ahead and transition to the premium show at this point, guys,
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Speaker 2: portion that's Paywalld. We're going to talk about the Bezos wedding,
Speaker 2: and we're going to talk about Teal getting asked if
Speaker 2: he's Antichrist and the anti Christ. I'm very interested. Emily's
Speaker 2: done a deep dive on this one, so I'm super
Speaker 2: excited to get her take on that. And we got
Speaker 2: a few other clips that I wanted us to react
Speaker 2: to as well, including we didn't get to Joyreid on CNN.
Speaker 2: Sager and I are supposed to talk to it, yes,
Speaker 2: talk about it yesterday. We didn't get to that, so
Speaker 2: I want to try to get to that as well.
Speaker 2: In any case, thank you guys so much for watching,
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