Speaker 1: Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here,
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Speaker 4: Good morning, everybody. We have an amazing show today, Crystal.
Speaker 1: Everybody, because Ryan Gram is in the house and he
Speaker 1: did us the kindness of making some big news yesterday
Speaker 1: in the State Department briefing, asking some fantastic questions and
Speaker 1: getting some absolutely horrific answers, So we will break.
Speaker 5: That down for you.
Speaker 1: Also got doctor Treta Parsi coming in to break down
Speaker 1: the escalating risks of a wider war. This is something
Speaker 1: we've been tracking from the beginning and it has never
Speaker 1: been as fraught and as dangerous as right now. Bernie
Speaker 1: Sanders finally coming out strong on ISRAELI tell you about
Speaker 1: his shift. We've got new details of Biden's political trouble
Speaker 1: and how they plan to try to get out of it,
Speaker 1: and the long awaited Epstein Docks released unt some of
Speaker 1: them court records unsealed. And I would just say there's
Speaker 1: some some powerful names. Bill Clinton comes up quite a bit,
Speaker 1: Donald Trump is there, et cetera, et cetera. Nothing like
Speaker 1: that we didn't already know, I would say, but still
Speaker 1: kind of shocking. And we also got a really interesting
Speaker 1: response from Elan Dershowitz that we'll say for you as well.
Speaker 1: Wall Street also with a new strategy to become America's landlord.
Speaker 1: We'll break that down for you, and I have a
Speaker 1: look at how Gaza is entering an outright famine and
Speaker 1: what that means for our country and certainly for the
Speaker 1: people there in Gaza. But we wanted to go ahead
Speaker 1: and start with Ryan in that State Department hearing asking
Speaker 1: Matthew Miller about the increasingly common remarks that are being
Speaker 1: made by high level Israeli officials calling for ethnic cleansing
Speaker 1: of Gazin's out of the Gaza strip.
Speaker 5: Let's say to listen to that.
Speaker 4: Pick up on your response to Smotrich and Ben Gavier yesterday,
Speaker 4: you and Lynda Thomas Greenfield both had similar statements. You
Speaker 4: both said in your statements quote there should be no
Speaker 4: mass displacement of Palestinians from Gaza. Given that you both
Speaker 4: had the same word for word savments, seems like there
Speaker 4: was thought put into that. Why use the word should
Speaker 4: there there should be no mass displacement?
Speaker 6: Would you be willing to make a more definitive comment there.
Speaker 7: Must there must not be yeah other and then.
Speaker 4: To get to Ben de Gavier's response, that's which I'm
Speaker 4: sure you saw he posted on Twitter. With all due respect,
Speaker 4: we are not another star on the American flag. United
Speaker 4: States is our best friend. But first of all, we
Speaker 4: will do what is best for the State of Israel.
Speaker 4: The emigration of hundreds of thousands from Gaza will allow
Speaker 4: the residents of the Enclave or the Envelope to return
Speaker 4: home and live in safety, protect and to protect the
Speaker 4: IDF soldiers. Any response to Ben Gavier's public response to you.
Speaker 7: So certainly, Israel is a sovereign country that does make
Speaker 7: its own decisions.
Speaker 6: There is no dispute of that.
Speaker 7: The point of our ConfL of the statement that I
Speaker 7: made yesterday was that the comments that Benevie and Minister
Speaker 7: Smotridge have made are in direct contradiction of Israeli government policy.
Speaker 7: As has been represented to us by multiple Israeli government officials,
Speaker 7: including the Prime Minister himself. So I'm not surprised that
Speaker 7: he continues to double down and make those statements. But
Speaker 7: they are not only in contradiction with the United States
Speaker 7: policy and what we think is in the best interests
Speaker 7: of the Israeli people, the Palstating people, the broader region,
Speaker 7: and ultimately stability in the world, but they are in
Speaker 7: direct contradiction of his own government's policy, and we believe
Speaker 7: those statements should stop.
Speaker 1: Direct contradiction of Israeli government policy.
Speaker 5: Ryan, would you make of that response, like the very end.
Speaker 6: Where is that we believe those statements should stop.
Speaker 4: It's like, because you're putting us in a really difficult
Speaker 4: position when you keep saying the quiet part out loud. Right,
Speaker 4: It's difficult to say that top minister in a government
Speaker 4: are contradicting the government's.
Speaker 5: Policy because they are the government.
Speaker 6: They are the government.
Speaker 4: Now, he's right that there is a higher figure in
Speaker 4: the government, and that is Prime Minister Benjamin Netnyahu, But
Speaker 4: as netnyahuo just speaking fairly recently saying we're not rejecting
Speaker 4: that possibility and the possibilities quote unquote scenario of surrender
Speaker 4: and deportation.
Speaker 6: There are claims to be made for and against it.
Speaker 4: In my article at the intercept that I posted last night,
Speaker 4: I have a quote from Netnya who from fairly recently,
Speaker 4: where he says, regarding voluntary emigration, I have no problem
Speaker 4: with that. Our problem is not allowing the exit, but
Speaker 4: a lack of countries that are ready to take Palestinians in,
Speaker 4: and we are working on it. This is the direction
Speaker 4: we are going in, which seems to be in line
Speaker 4: with what Smotrich.
Speaker 6: And Ben Gavera saying.
Speaker 1: That's right, and in line, by the way, with according
Speaker 1: to polling, what the is really public once and is
Speaker 1: open to And by the way, I don't know if
Speaker 1: you guys remember this. All the way back in the
Speaker 1: early days after October seven, Tony B. Lincoln went to Israel.
Speaker 1: This is when he went and said, I'm here as
Speaker 1: a Jewish person first and foremost. And he made comments
Speaker 1: at the time pushing back on the idea of setting
Speaker 1: up some sort of a tense city, saying I spoke
Speaker 1: with Cci and this is completely off the table.
Speaker 5: But it was a tell that the.
Speaker 1: Israeli government was already pushing in this direction of expelling
Speaker 1: Palestinians out of the Gaza Strip. We know, because you know,
Speaker 1: we've covered all of these pieces extensively.
Speaker 3: Here.
Speaker 1: There was a report that came out from a government
Speaker 1: ministry saying, hey, here's our options for the day after.
Speaker 1: The one we prefer is pushing everybody out into the
Speaker 1: Sinai Desert. We know, we have reports that Netanyahu has
Speaker 1: tasked one of his senior advisors with quote unquote coming
Speaker 1: up with plans to thin out the Gaza population. We
Speaker 1: know there's a plan that's been floated here in the
Speaker 1: US with some bipartisan support, to use AID dollars, our
Speaker 1: AID dollars to pressure regional countries to accept refugees out
Speaker 1: of the Gaza strip. So to say that it is
Speaker 1: not that it is a direct contradiction of Israeli government
Speaker 1: policy is just it's not even inaccurate. It's just a lie.
Speaker 1: And put the second element up here. I mean, you
Speaker 1: get pieces like this almost literally every day. This is
Speaker 1: the Times of Israel reporting Israeli officials are in talks
Speaker 1: with Congo and other African countries on taking in Gaza immigrants.
Speaker 1: Let me read a little bit of this their Hebrew
Speaker 1: sister site reported that Israeli officials have held clandestine talks
Speaker 1: with the African nation of Congo and several others potential
Speaker 1: acceptance of Gaza emigrants. Congo will be willing to take
Speaker 1: in migrants, and we are in talks with others, A
Speaker 1: senior source in the security cabinet told that outlet. They
Speaker 1: also quote Intelligence Minister Gila Gamlil saying at the Kanessa yesterday,
Speaker 1: at the end of the war, Hamas will collapse, there
Speaker 1: are no municipal authorities, the civilian population will be entirely
Speaker 1: dependent on humanitarian aid, there will be no work, and
Speaker 1: sixty percent of Gaza's agricultural land will become security buffer zones.
Speaker 1: And this is the other piece Ryan that has been
Speaker 1: laid out very clearly, because in that original government ministry
Speaker 1: plan that I think was sort of like strategically or
Speaker 1: tactically released as a trial balloon, they laid out how
Speaker 1: they would do it. They said, basically, will destroy Gaza
Speaker 1: and then we'll make it the ut Nor humanitarian that's right,
Speaker 1: start in the north and then we'll proceed from there
Speaker 1: and we'll make it the humanitarian option, so that we
Speaker 1: put pressure on us and other countries of like, well,
Speaker 1: they're either going to starve and get bombed to death
Speaker 1: or they can be allowed to quote unquote voluntarily migrate
Speaker 1: out of the strip.
Speaker 4: And the best argument that I've the best counter argument
Speaker 4: that I've seen is, since Sager's not here, I'll try
Speaker 4: to make a counter run. Okay, you would say that
Speaker 4: there's a war going on and you have to displace
Speaker 4: the population so that the population is not dying under
Speaker 4: the reign of these bombs. And in fact, after my question,
Speaker 4: the Associated Press reporter pressed Matt Miller and they said,
Speaker 4: you said, you're against a displacement of millions of Palestinians
Speaker 4: has already been.
Speaker 5: They've already been displayed.
Speaker 4: He said, well, that's different. They're getting out of harm's
Speaker 4: way because of the battle. Okay, let's say that that,
Speaker 4: of course, yes, you don't want civilians killed. There was
Speaker 4: another option that did not involve kicking them into the
Speaker 4: Sinai desert, and that is the negative, the desert that
Speaker 4: is just on the other side of the Gaza fence.
Speaker 4: There was nothing stopping Israel from building a tense city,
Speaker 4: a refugee camp just a few miles away from Gaza
Speaker 4: and saying, look, come into Israeli territory.
Speaker 6: Here, we've got no you can they could heavily guard it.
Speaker 4: It's not as if they're going to go from there
Speaker 4: into Jerusalem or Tel Aviv and then when the war
Speaker 4: is over they come back in. But that's the part
Speaker 4: of it that made that option never on the table
Speaker 4: for Israel, because the plan was never that they would
Speaker 4: come back in into a kind of reconstructed gaza after
Speaker 4: the war. It was go into the Sinai and then
Speaker 4: from there some of them stay and the rest are
Speaker 4: dispersed around the world.
Speaker 1: I also think this is very typical of the US
Speaker 1: approach and certainly the Biden administration approach to Israel. Is
Speaker 1: they may verbally signal some discomfort with this or that action,
Speaker 1: this or that plan, while they are speeding weapons and
Speaker 1: support and providing diplomatic cover that inevitably leads to Israel
Speaker 1: effectuating the plans that they are saying out in the
Speaker 1: public that they are interested in pursuing. So, you know,
Speaker 1: to me, it fits very much with these elaborate fantasies
Speaker 1: that the US media and US politicians over decades have
Speaker 1: really constructed about Israel. That to your point, Ryan Netan
Speaker 1: Yahoo and his government coalition partners had made it very
Speaker 1: difficult for them to sustain because they are saying the
Speaker 1: quiet part out loud, and sometimes now not just in Hebrew,
Speaker 1: sometimes they are now saying the quiet part out loud
Speaker 1: in English as well.
Speaker 5: That wasn't the only.
Speaker 1: Question that you were able to get into, Matthew Miller, though.
Speaker 1: You also asked whether they were concerned that the US
Speaker 1: may be implicated in the genocide charges that Israel's now
Speaker 1: facing due to South Africa's filing at the International Criminal
Speaker 1: Court of Justice.
Speaker 5: Let's take a listen to that question as well.
Speaker 4: To follow up on Turkey, I'm sure you see, Turkey
Speaker 4: has joined South Africa in its charging Israel a genocide
Speaker 4: before the International Court of Justice. Is there any concern
Speaker 4: within the State Department that State Department officials could be
Speaker 4: roped into this prosecution.
Speaker 7: No. I will say that as it relates to the
Speaker 7: State Department, we have been committed to addressing the humanitarian
Speaker 7: situation in Gaza and have made a priority of preventing,
Speaker 7: as I just said in your response to your question,
Speaker 7: the displacement of Palestinians. Will also say, though the genocide
Speaker 7: is of course a heinous atrocity one of the most
Speaker 7: heinous atrocties that any individual can commit. Those are allegations
Speaker 7: that should not be made lightly. And as it pertains
Speaker 7: the United States, we are not seeing any acts that
Speaker 7: constitute jess.
Speaker 4: And finally, over the break of top authorities in the
Speaker 4: Armenian Quarter expressed deep concern that the Israeli government was
Speaker 4: using the conflict in Gaza to push out a lot
Speaker 4: of Armenian Christians from the Armenian quart or any response.
Speaker 7: So no specific response to that, but as we have
Speaker 7: said on a number of occasions, we do not want
Speaker 7: to see the government of Israel take any steps that
Speaker 7: would escalate tensions.
Speaker 8: South Africa's filed this eighty four page lawsuit against Israel
Speaker 8: accusing them of genocide.
Speaker 6: Israel says that this is blood libel.
Speaker 9: Does Washington agree and where does this put Washington and
Speaker 9: Preatori in trying.
Speaker 8: This submission meritless, counterproductive and completely without any basis in
Speaker 8: fact whatsoever.
Speaker 5: So we had there.
Speaker 1: Of course, John Kirby also responding to a similar question,
Speaker 1: and I mean they're both basically giving the same answer.
Speaker 1: Kirby does a little more aggressively, But what did you
Speaker 1: make of Matt Miller's response there, in particular that we're
Speaker 1: not seeing anything that constitutes genocide or would race questions.
Speaker 4: And also I thought it was interesting that he started
Speaker 4: by saying, look, we've been very aggressive and trying to
Speaker 4: resolve the humanitarian crisis, Like if you're going to start
Speaker 4: prosecuting people, let's beak clear that we tried to make
Speaker 4: it less bad than it is now. At the same time,
Speaker 4: they're sending weapons the entire time. Where So, which is
Speaker 4: his answer sort of accepts the premise that there's a
Speaker 4: serious prosecution here, whereas Kirby consistently has been kind of
Speaker 4: off the wall in his in how aggressive he is
Speaker 4: in responding, calling them, you guys heard it meritless without
Speaker 4: any basis in fact, which, as Wali Shah had pointed
Speaker 4: out on Twitter, was the exact same response that the
Speaker 4: US had to charges that were brought before the International
Speaker 4: Quarter Justice against the apartheid South African government back in
Speaker 4: the nineteen eighties. We said the exact same thing that
Speaker 4: absolutely meritless, like this is terrible stuff.
Speaker 6: How how could you even contemplate this?
Speaker 4: It's an eighty four page document that has six full
Speaker 4: pages of just quotes from Israeli.
Speaker 6: Officials, and we'll play a new one in a second.
Speaker 4: If they want to amend their because they haven't slowed
Speaker 4: down their genocide.
Speaker 6: I'll just pick one at random. As I was going
Speaker 6: through it this morning.
Speaker 4: Is Israeli Minister of Heritage Amakai Elai, who he said,
Speaker 4: the north of the Gaza strip more beautiful than ever.
Speaker 4: Everything is blown up and flattened, simply a pleasure for
Speaker 4: the eyes. We must talk about the day after. In
Speaker 4: my mind, we will hand over lots to all those
Speaker 4: who fought for Gaza over the years, and to those
Speaker 4: evicted from Gush Katif, which is a former Israeli settlement.
Speaker 4: So he's he's saying they will hand out land. Who
Speaker 4: Israeli's in Gaza. It's this beautiful land, a pleasure for
Speaker 4: his eyes seeing everything blown up and flattened. For Kirby
Speaker 4: to say that a document that includes so many quotes
Speaker 4: like this, which is coupled with what we're seeing on
Speaker 4: the ground, for him to say it's meritless is like
Speaker 4: beyond absurd.
Speaker 1: Well, and you had the President of the United States
Speaker 1: himself describing the bombing campaign as indiscriment, criminate, which is
Speaker 1: war so to say it's you know, without any basis. Well,
Speaker 1: that is indirect contradiction to what the president himself has
Speaker 1: indicated with his comments. And to your point, Ryan, one
Speaker 1: of you and Emily sat down with I'm forgetting a
Speaker 1: sneak No. The Holocaust scholar oh Ron Siegel, yes, who
Speaker 1: said this is a textbook case of genocide, and one
Speaker 1: of the things that he pointed to was listen. Usually
Speaker 1: in these cases is it's ongoing. The hardest part to
Speaker 1: prove is intent. So you can see the actions, you
Speaker 1: can see what's unfolding. You can make some, you know,
Speaker 1: real educated guesses about what the end goals are. But
Speaker 1: to actually suss out, okay, do they have genocidal intent
Speaker 1: can be very difficult in real time. Not so here
Speaker 1: when you have everyone from net Yahoo down openly making
Speaker 1: genocidal comments calling for the absolute destruction of Gaza. You
Speaker 1: have Golant saying you're dealing with human animals. That's why
Speaker 1: we have to impose a complete siege. I mean, this
Speaker 1: is totally out in the open. And so to have
Speaker 1: pages and pages and pages of high level government officials
Speaker 1: and high level military officials laying out exactly what they
Speaker 1: plan to do makes this incredibly unique and as you
Speaker 1: were mentioning, we have this is just the latest of
Speaker 1: many that you could pick of an Israeli lawmaker from
Speaker 1: the Lukud party, that is Netnyahu's party calling for the
Speaker 1: annihilation of all gossins. Let's put this up and I
Speaker 1: can read the subtitles as he speaks, as it's clear
Speaker 1: to everyone today that the right wing is right in
Speaker 1: the matter of politics and the matter of politicians today.
Speaker 1: It's Palestinians today.
Speaker 5: It's simple. You go everywhere and they tell them to
Speaker 5: destroy them.
Speaker 1: My friends at the attorney office, who fought with me
Speaker 1: in the political issues in the debates, it is clear
Speaker 1: that you have to destroy all the gossens. These are
Speaker 1: words that I have not heard saying. Listen, they used
Speaker 1: to not say it. Now everybody's like, yeah, you've got
Speaker 1: to destroy all of the gozsens. And you know, the
Speaker 1: Israeli public is in the grip of basically like a
Speaker 1: genocidal craze, because if you look look at the pulling.
Speaker 1: I would love to say like these are outliers and
Speaker 1: this doesn't represent these Raeli public, but the reality is
Speaker 1: the overwhelming majority at least are in favor of pushing
Speaker 1: Palestinines out of the Gaza strip there, at least in
Speaker 1: favor of ethnic cleansing. And then the farther right are
Speaker 1: out there, you know, actively saying, hey, what if we
Speaker 1: knew Gaza, how about we destroy all of it? How
Speaker 1: about all of Gazin's are annihilated, Right.
Speaker 6: We flatten it.
Speaker 4: It's beautiful, and we take lots and give it to
Speaker 4: the people that used to be settlers there. And you
Speaker 4: and I both lived through the post nine to eleven
Speaker 4: period here in the United States, so it's not that hard.
Speaker 6: For us to kind of put ourselves in that place.
Speaker 4: Yeah, if you weren't, if you weren't kind of conscious
Speaker 4: at that time, it's hard to describe just how bloodthirsty
Speaker 4: the American public was.
Speaker 6: So this is not unique to the Israeli.
Speaker 5: Public, that's right.
Speaker 4: And people right after October seventh kept describing it as
Speaker 4: fifteen nine to elevens which at the time there was
Speaker 4: some eye rolling. But if you take the feeling that
Speaker 4: people had on nine to twelve here in the United
Speaker 4: States and multiply it by fifteen, you can imagine how
Speaker 4: you would get the public sentiment that, you know what,
Speaker 4: we're just not going to live by the near next
Speaker 4: to these two million people. We're not going to end.
Speaker 4: This will get to our treat of Parsi segment later.
Speaker 4: We're not going to live anywhere near Hesbala either, but
Speaker 4: we're also not going to leave, so that the only
Speaker 4: other option is you're going to displace you know, millions
Speaker 4: of people, not just not just Hamas. Because you had
Speaker 4: John Kirby saying for years, for months, if Amas surrenders,
Speaker 4: this is over, you now have the Israeli government officials
Speaker 4: making very clear Hamas could surrender today would not accomplish
Speaker 4: their stated objective, which is to clear out the Gazan population.
Speaker 1: I think that's a really important point. And this is
Speaker 1: another one of the you know, fantasies that's been constructed
Speaker 1: and propped up by US politicians, by Western media is that,
Speaker 1: you know, this military action in Gaza, the all allount
Speaker 1: assault on Gaza, is about quote unquote hunting for Hamas.
Speaker 3: Well.
Speaker 1: That's just not true because if that was your actual goal,
Speaker 1: if your actual goal was eradicating Hamas, this is and
Speaker 1: this is what military experts will tell you, this is
Speaker 1: not the way to do it at all. And we
Speaker 1: have now reporting saying no, actually, the goal here is destruction.
Speaker 1: We see the plans that have come out saying, look,
Speaker 1: we want to push people on in the north, and
Speaker 1: then we want to make it unlivable in the south,
Speaker 1: and we want to ultimately push them out. We also
Speaker 1: know the political demands of net Yahoo, who wants to
Speaker 1: hold on to power for as long as possible, which
Speaker 1: incentivizs is him to you know, sort of like quench
Speaker 1: the thirst for revenge that is widespread throughout the Israeli population,
Speaker 1: and to extend the war as long as possible. Because
Speaker 1: he's been able to push off the questions about his
Speaker 1: own failures that led to you know, missing all of
Speaker 1: the intelligence, ignoring all of the intelligence, relocating IDF soldiers
Speaker 1: away from the area that was attacked on October seventh,
Speaker 1: he's been able to push those questions off and delay
Speaker 1: them into after the war is over. So he has
Speaker 1: every incentive to keep this thing going. But it's very
Speaker 1: clear that the way that the war has been wiged
Speaker 1: on Gaza is not aimed at quote unquote hunting for Hamas.
Speaker 1: It's much more about destroying the entirety of the Gaza
Speaker 1: strip and then putting a choice to the US primarily
Speaker 1: of basically like, okay, well people can't live here anymore.
Speaker 1: It's uninhabitable, so what are you going to do now?
Speaker 6: Right?
Speaker 4: And international legal experts who've been who have studied this
Speaker 4: case and who have participated in previous genocide cases brought
Speaker 4: before the court think that this has a real chance
Speaker 4: of prevailing, which which brings us to the comments from
Speaker 4: the French ambassador to the United Nations, who has said
Speaker 4: they will respect the decision no matter what, because the
Speaker 4: court's mandate depends on international legitimacy. As Andrew Jackson said
Speaker 4: about the Supreme Court, you know they made their ruling,
Speaker 4: now let them enforce it. So it's the question is
Speaker 4: what happens. First question is do they get a conviction?
Speaker 5: Right?
Speaker 4: But then after a conviction, who enforces it? What mandate?
Speaker 4: Does it have to have actual teeth? And for somebody
Speaker 4: like the French to come forward and say we're going
Speaker 4: to respect this decision no matter what is significant we
Speaker 4: have that as a side we do.
Speaker 5: Yeah, let's take a lot, some guys.
Speaker 10: There will be legal implications if if the international law
Speaker 10: is violated by one side, by all sides, it's pretty
Speaker 10: clear that there have been a violation of international law
Speaker 10: by different sides if you look at this file from
Speaker 10: the very beginning, and we'll see what the consequences will be.
Speaker 10: As you just said, the International Court of Justice has
Speaker 10: been seized of the matter, so I will not comment
Speaker 10: on this one. You know, France is a strong supporter
Speaker 10: of the a CG. We'll see what they decide on
Speaker 10: and we'll make sure that we'll support the outcome of
Speaker 10: the decision. But I would not the same with the
Speaker 10: ICC and the decision by SC. We are strong support
Speaker 10: of international justice, whether it's a criminal justice with the ICC,
Speaker 10: whether it's a ICG for international law, and we certainly
Speaker 10: don't want the We want certainly encroach the their their mandates.
Speaker 1: So do you think that Israel is taking this proceeding seriously?
Speaker 1: I know you and Emily covered yesterday, or at least
Speaker 1: I think you did that Israel is carently interested in
Speaker 1: Alan Dersherwitz representing them, which you know, from our perspective,
Speaker 1: maybe like maybe they're not taking this seriously, but actually
Speaker 1: the fact that they're thinking about who they would appoint
Speaker 1: to represent them indicates that they're not just brushing this
Speaker 1: aside as a nothing burger.
Speaker 4: Israel and the US have both been among the most
Speaker 4: vocal kind of detractors of any kind of international court
Speaker 4: of justice or international criminal court. They're not alone, but
Speaker 4: they're the leading kind of voices against this this sort
Speaker 4: of international approach to justice. But to see Israel kind
Speaker 4: of float Dershowitz and to see Dershwitz decline to comment
Speaker 4: on it.
Speaker 6: We're going to get to Derschwitz later in the show.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it was interesting. You couldn't tell if it's making
Speaker 4: a mockery of the whole thing, because Dershwitz is kind
Speaker 4: of mockable at this point, right, But on the other hand,
Speaker 4: in a lot of circles, he's still Alan Dershowitz, you know,
Speaker 4: the great lawyer who got Klaus van Buren off to
Speaker 4: me decades ago.
Speaker 1: It almost was a very Trumpian move, because you know,
Speaker 1: Trump loves to find these lawyers who are people.
Speaker 5: For his industry with himself, right who.
Speaker 1: It's like, you know, oh, I saw him on cable
Speaker 1: news and they were really like bombastic and held their
Speaker 1: own on cable news. So that's who I want my corner.
Speaker 1: And so to me, it was this very sort of
Speaker 1: like you know, trumpyan reach for who was the right
Speaker 1: character to vociferously defend them in this case, which obviously
Speaker 1: he would vociferously defend them whether it is whether his
Speaker 1: arguments have merit or not.
Speaker 4: But I think they have to take it seriously because
Speaker 4: before October seventh, the boycott, divestment, sanctions movement was gaining
Speaker 4: steam around the world. This is not a non violent
Speaker 4: approach to ending the occupation to try to isolate Israel
Speaker 4: politically to force change, just as happened with South Africa.
Speaker 4: The number one kind of response to that from Israel
Speaker 4: and its defenders was that this is anti Semitic.
Speaker 6: Why are you singling out Israel?
Speaker 4: So and you had states like Texas and others like
Speaker 4: straight up banning support of BDS. If the International Court
Speaker 4: of Justice finds Israel guilty of genocide. It's very difficult
Speaker 4: then to tell supporters of BDS that the only reason
Speaker 4: they're supportive of BDS is because they're anti Semites, right,
Speaker 4: because they can then points, well, what about the International
Speaker 4: Court of Justice? Right, So that then makes it easier
Speaker 4: politically for those those forces aligned with Palestinian civil society
Speaker 4: to isolate as real politically, which then pressures them to
Speaker 4: change their behavior.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and you can already.
Speaker 3: See.
Speaker 1: I mean some impact has been had by these charges,
Speaker 1: even in the fact that you know, John Kirby and
Speaker 1: Matthew Miller are having to get asked about it and
Speaker 1: having to respond and having to make some truly, you know,
Speaker 1: ridiculous statements in response to that.
Speaker 5: I want to go ahead and move on.
Speaker 1: There's been huge developments in terms of the risks of
Speaker 1: a broader war. So we're going to pause for a minute.
Speaker 1: We're going to bring in doctor Tree to Parsi and
Speaker 1: break all of that down for you. So, as we've
Speaker 1: been discussing, risks have really been proliferating throughout the Middle East.
Speaker 1: We had that terrorist attack in Iran yesterday, We've had
Speaker 1: assassinations in Lebanon. We've of course had those hoofy attacks
Speaker 1: in the Red Sea, and the US looking to escalate
Speaker 1: our response there. So joining us now to break down
Speaker 1: all of this and what it means, what it could mean,
Speaker 1: is doctor Tree to Parsi. He's of course executive vice
Speaker 1: president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible state Craft and
Speaker 1: fantastic front of the show.
Speaker 3: Great to see you, sir, Great to see you.
Speaker 6: Happy New Year.
Speaker 1: So you had an article that you just posted in
Speaker 1: the nation. Let's put this up on the screen. Talking
Speaker 1: about the risks here, you asked the question will Israel
Speaker 1: drag the US into another ruinous war, and lay on
Speaker 1: the case very clearly that you know, as the US
Speaker 1: is trying to assemble this coalition to go after Huti's
Speaker 1: and figure out how to respond in all these various
Speaker 1: ways that Biden has blocked the most clear solution to
Speaker 1: all of these problems, which is to push for a
Speaker 1: ceasefire in Gaza.
Speaker 11: Absolutely, man, we have four areas of potential escalation right now,
Speaker 11: the Libanese Israeli border, Iraq and Syria, with the malicious
Speaker 11: attacking US troops the Red Sea because of what the
Speaker 11: hooties are doing, and then of course a potential direct
Speaker 11: confrontation between Iran and Israel, particularly if it emerges that
Speaker 11: the Israelis had a hand in those attacks yesterday, which
Speaker 11: of course at this point we don't know. The US's approached,
Speaker 11: Biden's approach essentially has been to escalate in order to
Speaker 11: de escalate, move more troops there, issue threats just now,
Speaker 11: very clear threats to the juties that they will be
Speaker 11: attacked if there's an additional attack against the ships, on
Speaker 11: a very immediate level, perhaps one can say that is understandable,
Speaker 11: there needs to be a degree of the turns. But
Speaker 11: at the same time, the easiest and fastest way of
Speaker 11: actually de escalating this situation is a ceasefire. And we
Speaker 11: know that for certain because during the six days that
Speaker 11: there was a ceasefire, that's the six days in which
Speaker 11: the Iraqi militious completely seized all attacks on US troops.
Speaker 11: There were six attacks the day before the ceasefire, but
Speaker 11: for those six days nothing, and then they issued warnings
Speaker 11: on the sixth day of the ceasefire and saying that
Speaker 11: they will resume attacks if Israel resumes bombing Gada. Even
Speaker 11: when it comes to the hooties, there was a significant reduction,
Speaker 11: So we know for certain that at least there's a
Speaker 11: very significant likelihood of that succeeding. But it appears to
Speaker 11: be the one option that the Bide administration is the
Speaker 11: least inclined to pursue, even though it seems to be
Speaker 11: the most effective.
Speaker 4: Well, let's talk about the terrorist attack yesterday at the
Speaker 4: event commemorating costum solemoney we actually have. We have John
Speaker 4: Kirby here responding to questions Matt Miller also made similar
Speaker 4: comments yesterday. Here's Kirby being asked about potential Israeli involvement
Speaker 4: in this attack.
Speaker 8: We don't have any more detail in terms of how
Speaker 8: it happened or who might be responsible for it. On
Speaker 8: your second question, again, I would point you to our
Speaker 8: Israeli partners to talk more about this. We're again not
Speaker 8: in a position to confirm the specific reports. I would
Speaker 8: just tell you that al Hurri was a noted designated
Speaker 8: global terrorist and if he is in fact dead, nobody
Speaker 8: should be shedding a tear over his loss. We have
Speaker 8: no indication at this time at all that Israel was
Speaker 8: involved in any way whatsoever.
Speaker 12: No indication. But just to be clear, you don't think
Speaker 12: did they support or assist in some other one?
Speaker 8: I would I'm not going to speak for another nation.
Speaker 8: I would just tell you that we have no indication
Speaker 8: that Israel was in any way.
Speaker 3: Involved in this.
Speaker 4: So his first answer was about the assassination of al Alori,
Speaker 4: and he says, well, I'll talk to the Israelis about that,
Speaker 4: And then with the second one he says, we have
Speaker 4: no indication that it was the Israelis. So there is
Speaker 4: a degree of difference in the kind of response there,
Speaker 4: So take them both. For it's broadly assumed that Israel
Speaker 4: was responsible for the killing of the Hamas leader in Beirut,
Speaker 4: and Israel has made very little effort to deny that.
Speaker 4: When it comes to the attack in Iran, Israel does
Speaker 4: seem to be signaling to allies that they were not responsible.
Speaker 4: So why would they be responsor why was suspicion on them?
Speaker 4: And if it wasn't them, who would it have been?
Speaker 6: Why?
Speaker 11: I mean the suspicion as to why it would be
Speaker 11: them is of course because of the context that we're in.
Speaker 11: We had the assassination of the Ivani in general in
Speaker 11: the Mascuts just about a week ago, and then you
Speaker 11: had the assassination of the Hamas officials and others. So
Speaker 11: within this context hesbel official yesterday as well. So given
Speaker 11: that context and on all of those others.
Speaker 3: There's clear fingered.
Speaker 11: Indication that there was israelis So it certainly raises suspicious However,
Speaker 11: there's no evidence at this point, the evidence that some
Speaker 11: are putting forward that this is not the modus operandi
Speaker 11: of the Israelis, et cetera. I think that's a fair argument,
Speaker 11: but I think we should also recognize that things have
Speaker 11: changed after Godza, after the October seventh attacks, in which
Speaker 11: you know, the Israelis themselves have said that previous red lines,
Speaker 11: previous operations, previous ways of doing things are no longer
Speaker 11: the case. So I think we need to keep that
Speaker 11: in mind. There is another possibility, of course, which is
Speaker 11: that it is the Iran and Mojad in THEK, which
Speaker 11: is a terrorist organization, was on the EUS on the
Speaker 11: US's terrorist list, got off that list during the Obama
Speaker 11: administration for political reasons because they were just buying off
Speaker 11: half of the city. The law before them, they were
Speaker 11: used by the Israelis to conduct assassinations of israel of
Speaker 11: Iranian scientists, and this was revealed by the Obama administration
Speaker 11: itself that the Israelis were working with MEK, and the
Speaker 11: Israelis have had a relationship with the MK for quite
Speaker 11: some time. Their motors OPRANDI would very much be to
Speaker 11: do an attack of this kind. So it could also
Speaker 11: be that it is THEMK potentially with some Israeli dimension.
Speaker 6: What about ISIS or elementary Yeah.
Speaker 11: So ISIS in Afghanistan, the Horazzan province. They have attacked
Speaker 11: Iran just in the last three years more than three
Speaker 11: four times. Some of those attacks quite bloody, nothing like this,
Speaker 11: of course, and there is definitely a likelihood that it
Speaker 11: could be them as well.
Speaker 5: It would raise it they take credit for those attacks.
Speaker 11: They do, and on Twitter there were accounts taking credit
Speaker 11: for it, but not by that the official sources there.
Speaker 11: But it's also a very interesting question that will be
Speaker 11: raised if this was isis There's already all kinds of
Speaker 11: conspiracy theories in the region asking the question why did
Speaker 11: iss never attack Israel during all of the period that
Speaker 11: it was active, And it would raise additional questions. During
Speaker 11: this war in Gaza, they have done nothing, They've said
Speaker 11: nothing about the war in Gaza, but then they take
Speaker 11: the opportunity to attack Iran. So it doesn't necessarily mean anything,
Speaker 11: but it will just add fuel to some of the
Speaker 11: speculation about all of this.
Speaker 1: So why would Israel potentially want war with Iran? Because
Speaker 1: I think that would be the other pushback is like,
Speaker 1: this would be obviously incredibly escalatory, this would be inviting
Speaker 1: a direct confrontation. Israel did have some hand in this
Speaker 1: terrorist attack, so what would be the potential logic behind it?
Speaker 11: So that's the question I'm perplexed by. Mindful of the
Speaker 11: fact that for twenty years, the Israelis have done everything
Speaker 11: they can to get the US to go into war
Speaker 11: with Iran. And just remember what happened a couple of
Speaker 11: years ago when Nataniaho was pressing Donald Trump to attack
Speaker 11: Iran after the US elections, when Trump had lost and
Speaker 11: Trump thought that perhaps by starting a war he would
Speaker 11: be able to overturn the elections, and he was pushed
Speaker 11: by Nataniaho to do so, and they were counter pressure
Speaker 11: for Milli, etc. The Israelis have tried to get the
Speaker 11: United States to go to war with Iran for more
Speaker 11: than twenty years. They've been pushed back by previous presidents.
Speaker 11: Even Trump pushed back prior to that specific incident, and
Speaker 11: he actually told the Israelis, if you think this is
Speaker 11: a good idea, you should go ahead and do it
Speaker 11: on your own, and did not want to have part
Speaker 11: of it. Obama pushed back against this. Now the Israelis
Speaker 11: find himself with the most deferential president that I can
Speaker 11: remember when it comes to Israeli military strategies and objectives,
Speaker 11: and they may just believe that this is the one
Speaker 11: opportunity they have waited for. Natanyau in particular, who was
Speaker 11: in charge back then when they were trying to start
Speaker 11: a war with Iran. And the way these Raelis wanted
Speaker 11: to start the war is that they would do something,
Speaker 11: but they would drag the US into it. Given how
Speaker 11: Biden has gone along with almost everything Israel has done
Speaker 11: right now, it wouldn't be inconceivable that these Raelis would
Speaker 11: think that this is the best opportunity they have Yet
Speaker 11: is it evidence that they were behind it?
Speaker 9: No?
Speaker 11: But as to the question is there a potential motive,
Speaker 11: clearly there is.
Speaker 4: But to set aside the attack inside Iran, you still
Speaker 4: have the Hesbla assassination, the running HIERGC general in Syria
Speaker 4: getting assassinated, and then also then.
Speaker 6: The Hamas official in Bebrun.
Speaker 4: So there's clear evidence that they're certainly not opposed to
Speaker 4: an escalation.
Speaker 6: Oh so, let's let's say that they get what they want,
Speaker 6: that they get.
Speaker 4: The escalation, that now there's a direct confrontation. Do you
Speaker 4: think that they're correct that the US goes along with them?
Speaker 11: Depends on how it happens. I think if you have assassinations,
Speaker 11: that then begets a strong response by Hisbolah or by
Speaker 11: Iran with another attack on Israel with a lot of
Speaker 11: civilian deaths. Then I think once again you would find
Speaker 11: and by it in a situation that he would strongly
Speaker 11: support the Israeli war effort, which originally, at least initially
Speaker 11: will be military support other types of support. The question
Speaker 11: is will it eventually drag the US into the war itself,
Speaker 11: because once that happens, I mean, already the US is
Speaker 11: very much I mean, all the weapons that are being
Speaker 11: used in Gods essentially are American weapons. But once that happens,
Speaker 11: you're going to have additional escalation risks because you already
Speaker 11: have all of these attacks on US troops and basis
Speaker 11: by Iraqi and Syria Milie. At one point one of
Speaker 11: them will be successful.
Speaker 3: In that scenario. At that point, the US will respond.
Speaker 3: I mean, the.
Speaker 6: Attack injured somebody pretty recently.
Speaker 11: Exactly just yesterday or a couple of hours ago, there
Speaker 11: was one in Iraq, and the Iraqis are pointing the
Speaker 11: finger either at the US or at Israel. Next time,
Speaker 11: when some American soldiers are dead, the US is going
Speaker 11: to respond even strong and it's just gonn't escalate further.
Speaker 11: I think we should remember one thing. We've been lucky
Speaker 11: that it hasn't happened. Yet, on October twenty sixth, there
Speaker 11: was an attack by an Iraqi militia against the air
Speaker 11: Will base in northern Iraq. It managed to get through
Speaker 11: all of the American air defenses five am in the morning.
Speaker 11: It hit the barracks on the second floor where American
Speaker 11: soldiers were sleeping. By pure luck, the explosives did not
Speaker 11: work and the drone did not explode. Had it exploded,
Speaker 11: the US most likely would have retaliated very strongly, killed
Speaker 11: a very large number of militia men, which would probably
Speaker 11: have be gotten another response by them, and we would
Speaker 11: be at And.
Speaker 1: We all know the way that the media pushes. We
Speaker 1: already see the voices, you know, hawkish voices both on
Speaker 1: the right end and the Democratic Party pushing in this direction.
Speaker 1: I also wanted to get your reaction to some news
Speaker 1: that's developing with regard to the Huthi's. Put this up
Speaker 1: on the screen from the Wall Street Journal. This is
Speaker 1: a nine guys US allies give hu They's ultimatum stop
Speaker 1: ship attacks or face consequences. This report says that US,
Speaker 1: Britain and key allies issued what officials described as a
Speaker 1: final warning to the Many rebel group Wednesday to cease
Speaker 1: its attacks on international shipping in the Red Sea or
Speaker 1: bear the consequences. They go on to say that the
Speaker 1: US military has prepared options to strike the Iran backed
Speaker 1: rebel group according to US officials. What are the risks
Speaker 1: attendant to this strategy?
Speaker 3: Massive risk?
Speaker 11: I think, first of all, I think it's important to
Speaker 11: keep in mind this is the UK and the US.
Speaker 11: Major other countries France, Italy, Spain have pulled out of
Speaker 11: this coalition precisely because of a desire not to get
Speaker 11: dragged into war. I think some of them were also
Speaker 11: fearing that they were used as bait.
Speaker 6: Looks like Bahrain is the only Middle.
Speaker 11: Mighty Bahrain, isn't it. So that tells you something. And
Speaker 11: incidentally took a pass. And this is supposed to be
Speaker 11: a neighborhood watch watching the neighborhood. And the neighborhood is
Speaker 11: the Red Sea. There's no countries from the neighborhood in
Speaker 11: the neighborhood, right yeah. So, but the escalation risk is
Speaker 11: they're very significant. The hooties have capabilities ballistic missiles, et cetera.
Speaker 11: And one of the things that they might do, which
Speaker 11: would be very dangerous, and it would also be destabilizing
Speaker 11: for the region as a whole. They may start targeting
Speaker 11: the UAE and Saudi Arabia as a way of pressuring
Speaker 11: the US. That could potentially then cause a breakdown of
Speaker 11: the Iranian Saudi normalization, which actually has helped stabilize a
Speaker 11: lot of different areas in the region right now. If
Speaker 11: that falls apart, we might be in a much much
Speaker 11: worse situation than we're right now. So this is and
Speaker 11: that's beyond the escalation risk of the US getting further
Speaker 11: dragged into the war. Of course, this is again very dangerous,
Speaker 11: and it goes back to what we talked about earlier on.
Speaker 11: There is a much safer, faster, more effective way of
Speaker 11: preventing this escalation, right and that is actually to have
Speaker 11: a cease firing GAUSA. Let me just add one point
Speaker 11: on that. It raises the question again and again what
Speaker 11: is it. What is the US interest and continued bombardment
Speaker 11: of Gaza that is of such value that Biden is
Speaker 11: willing to risk all of these escalatory cycles. And on
Speaker 11: top of that, according to the Democrats themselves, they say
Speaker 11: that the elections in this year is going to be
Speaker 11: about the survival of American democracy and the polls clearly
Speaker 11: show that Biden is destroying his winning coalition, particularly because
Speaker 11: of how he's pushing away the gen Z. So he's
Speaker 11: not only risking his reelection, he's not only risking war,
Speaker 11: according to him himself, he's also risking American democracy. For
Speaker 11: what what is the American interest in continued bombardment in
Speaker 11: Gaza that makes all of this worthwhile?
Speaker 4: That's actually what I wanted to ask, because it's also
Speaker 4: in contradiction with the reports of Biden's own strategy. Keep
Speaker 4: hearing that Blincoln and Biden and others are telling them
Speaker 4: by the new year, this has got to be done.
Speaker 4: Like you don't what did Blinken say, You don't have
Speaker 4: that much runway? Like you don't have that much credit?
Speaker 4: I mean, like because when they said they wanted to
Speaker 4: go for months, you know it has to be over
Speaker 4: by now. So even they think this needs to end,
Speaker 4: they have the power to end it. It is causing
Speaker 4: all of these risks to everything that they stand for.
Speaker 4: Yet they're carrying on simply so that starvation and bombing
Speaker 4: can continue.
Speaker 6: And to what end? Do you have an answer to
Speaker 6: that question? Or I don't.
Speaker 11: The only thing I think we can say is that
Speaker 11: earlier assessments which treated Biden as if he was not
Speaker 11: entirely on board with the Israeli strategy, but he was
Speaker 11: trying to build credibility with them with a beer hog
Speaker 11: or show support so that he at some point could
Speaker 11: be able to rein them back. I just don't think
Speaker 11: that has proven to be true, because it seems much
Speaker 11: more likely that he actually signed on to the Israeli
Speaker 11: objective of the elimination of Hamas. He wanted to see
Speaker 11: Israel do to Hamas what the United States could not
Speaker 11: do to the Taliban, knowing the lessons from that lesson.
Speaker 11: He never had the lessons from that story. He nevertheless
Speaker 11: supported this, and I think that much better explains why
Speaker 11: he's been so obstinate about preventing a ceasefire and thinking
Speaker 11: that he's actually still building up cachet and credibility so
Speaker 11: at one point later on.
Speaker 3: Push for it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, at this point you have to view that as absurd.
Speaker 1: I mean, it seems to me is almost just like
Speaker 1: purely ideological and not based on a current analysis of
Speaker 1: American interest, let alone humanitarianism.
Speaker 5: On that last point.
Speaker 1: That you both referred to, there is this argument out
Speaker 1: there of like, oh, you all act like the US
Speaker 1: could just push a button this would all be over.
Speaker 1: And really they're their own country, and you know, even
Speaker 1: if we were opposed to it, they would continue and
Speaker 1: do what they want to do.
Speaker 5: You know what is your response to that?
Speaker 1: Does the US really have significant leverage in this situation?
Speaker 11: Of course it does. It's an absurd notion to say
Speaker 11: that the US doesn't. I mean, we have that Israeli
Speaker 11: major general who just admitted it last week, last month
Speaker 11: saying that all these weapons are coming from the US.
Speaker 11: If the US cuts off the tap, we can't fight period.
Speaker 6: So it's very clear.
Speaker 11: I mean, Biden has shipped ten thousand tons of weapons
Speaker 11: and ammunition to Israel since the beginning of this war.
Speaker 11: The Israelis needed to continue, particularly mindful of the pace
Speaker 11: and quantity of bombardments that they're raining down on Garda,
Speaker 11: which far exceeds what the US did in Mosul, for instance,
Speaker 11: against ISIS.
Speaker 3: But it also raises the other question.
Speaker 11: If it is so, let's assume for a second that
Speaker 11: the United States doesn't have that leverage, Ok, then why
Speaker 11: are we sending these weapons? You can say that the
Speaker 11: US doesn't have a leverage to stop it, why are
Speaker 11: we fueling it?
Speaker 6: Answer that question?
Speaker 11: Then if it is so that we cannot stop it, fine,
Speaker 11: perhaps we can't, But why are we fueling it? Why
Speaker 11: are we sending more weapons? In that case, that's the
Speaker 11: question that is not being answered.
Speaker 4: Yeah, last question for me Hassan Nasrala's speech yesterday, leader
Speaker 4: of Hesbola, what did you take away from that?
Speaker 11: I think that speech again showed that there is no
Speaker 11: desire either in Iran or in Hezbolah to actually have
Speaker 11: open warfare. There is clearly a war going on between
Speaker 11: these different sides, but open warfare in which the Israelis
Speaker 11: would completely invade Lebanon, the Lebanese would use all of
Speaker 11: their resources and assets against Israel, potentially dragging in the
Speaker 11: US is not something that they believe is beneficial to
Speaker 11: them for a variety of reasons. It's not just because
Speaker 11: they're weak and militarily, it's also what would it do
Speaker 11: inside of Lebanon because of its dynamics. The same thing
Speaker 11: is happening on the Ranian side. Lebanon's or Hissbola's red
Speaker 11: line is that, you know, essentially an invasion is their
Speaker 11: red line. That's how they would get involved in the war.
Speaker 11: Same thing is coming on the Ranian side. They're saying
Speaker 11: that unless there is an attack on the Iranian soil,
Speaker 11: Yvon will stay out of the war. Now, whether that
Speaker 11: terrorist attack qualifies as that, you know, there's a gray
Speaker 11: area there. It depends on how it is being interpreted.
Speaker 11: But I think from the very beginning it's been clear
Speaker 11: they're not looking for that open type of a confrontation.
Speaker 11: They're looking for a more indirect, asymmetric way of conducting
Speaker 11: this war.
Speaker 1: Doctor Parsi, thank you so much for spending some time
Speaker 1: with us. This morning is truly invaluable.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much for having me. Great to see you,
Speaker 3: Good to see you.
Speaker 4: Bernie Sanders is shifting his tone a bit on the
Speaker 4: war in Gaza, coming out with a statement calling netnya
Speaker 4: whose war quote when put this up here, illegal, immoral, brutal,
Speaker 4: and grossly portionate, he says Congress must reject any effort
Speaker 4: to pass ten billion dollars of unconditional military aid for
Speaker 4: the right wing net Yahoo government. Longer statement up there,
Speaker 4: if you want to pause it and read it, Crystal,
Speaker 4: Let's unpack this a little bit. First, the obvious point
Speaker 4: he has yet to call for a ceasefire. One of
Speaker 4: the things that people have always loved about Bernie is
Speaker 4: his consistency and his stubbornness. Here his stubbornness, I'd be
Speaker 4: surprised if he he goes to his grave never calling
Speaker 4: for the words cease fire. He might say the fire
Speaker 4: should cease, but he's not going to let the left
Speaker 4: pressure him into saying a cease fire. He will call
Speaker 4: the war illegal, grossly disproportionate, immoral, and brutal. But he's
Speaker 4: just not going to go there and say say those words,
Speaker 4: which whatever we're not, we're not here to like make
Speaker 4: Bernie Sanders say magical words because they're not going to
Speaker 4: actually do anything. How significant is this, though, let's say,
Speaker 4: short of calling for a cease fire, how sick difficiant
Speaker 4: is it for him to call for blocking the ten
Speaker 4: billion dollars and to call the war illegal because yeah,
Speaker 4: that's calling for a ceasefire because nobody supports an illegal war.
Speaker 6: He just won't say the word.
Speaker 1: He just won't say the words, which is frustrating. I
Speaker 1: mean it is frustrating because just at this point, really
Speaker 1: how many we're up according to euromed mine also over
Speaker 1: thirty thousand.
Speaker 4: Point on that not me US is undermined, if it really,
Speaker 4: if your ego won't let you go.
Speaker 5: With the US, very true, That is very true, I
Speaker 5: do think.
Speaker 1: I mean, so it's complicated because on the one hand,
Speaker 1: you're like number one, what took you so freakin' long
Speaker 1: to have this level of upset over what has.
Speaker 5: Been clear from day one?
Speaker 1: I mean, Bertie Sanders is not naive about who Benjamin
Speaker 1: Netanya who is. He's not naive about what the current
Speaker 1: Israeli government is, or about really what successive Israeli governments
Speaker 1: have been moving towards for decades now. Because I also
Speaker 1: don't want to give the impression that Netana who is
Speaker 1: some outlier in Israeli society right now, he's not, I mean,
Speaker 1: if anything, in Israeli society he is kind of a moderate,
Speaker 1: which is terrifying. His government, however, is the most extreme
Speaker 1: in history. Bernie is not ignorant of any of these facts.
Speaker 1: So it was always clear from day one that the
Speaker 1: response was going to be a whore. And the statements
Speaker 1: that were made from the Israeli government, in case you
Speaker 1: weren't any doubt, you could just listen to their own comments,
Speaker 1: you know, the siege, the complete medieval siege, denying millions
Speaker 1: of people food, water, medical care, fuel, etc. That was
Speaker 1: announced as official government policy, so to not see it
Speaker 1: for what it was from day one was preposterous.
Speaker 5: Then, of course you have the specter of.
Speaker 1: You know, somewhere around the numbers vary a little bit,
Speaker 1: but around eighty percent of the deaths being innocent civilians,
Speaker 1: which also was incredibly predictable in a densely populated enclave
Speaker 1: where a majority of people are kids. So you know,
Speaker 1: that was not surprising it either, but for it to
Speaker 1: have taken this long to even put out this statement
Speaker 1: is immensely frustrating. However, you want to say, Okay, good,
Speaker 1: I'm glad you finally are seeing it at least somewhat
Speaker 1: like what the overwhelming majority of the world and certainly
Speaker 1: the overwhelming majority of your supporters the way that they
Speaker 1: see this thing. And I do think it's significant because
Speaker 1: he is the United States senator, and you know, an
Speaker 1: individual senator, as you know you know better than I do,
Speaker 1: has a significant amount of power. You now have a
Speaker 1: situation where the Biden administration is trying to.
Speaker 5: Put together these three pieces Ukraine.
Speaker 1: Aid, border funding and additional aid to Israel and the
Speaker 1: ideas in the new year, when you know when Congress
Speaker 1: comes back that this is going to be a top priority.
Speaker 1: And so if you have Bernie Sanders really trying to
Speaker 1: muck up the works on that whole thing and taking
Speaker 1: an adamant stance against it, Yeah, I do think that
Speaker 1: that actually does have some significance.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it's been.
Speaker 4: A real drag on the anti war push to have
Speaker 4: to drag the most left wing senator to this position,
Speaker 4: and me on a.
Speaker 1: Pak right that were like, look at Bernie Sanders making
Speaker 1: the case against a ceasefire, which was grotesque, Which was
Speaker 1: grotesque to see.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and your point, your point to single out his
Speaker 4: use of the word the phrase the kind of the
Speaker 4: right wing that Yahoo government as a way to kind
Speaker 4: of distance the entire project from this and to try
Speaker 4: to pin it on net and Yahoo, I think is
Speaker 4: relevant here and to show how far he had to travel.
Speaker 6: There's a there was a clip.
Speaker 4: From early November where he was on cable television and
Speaker 4: was asked about a ceasefire.
Speaker 6: Let's let's roll this and then unpack it.
Speaker 9: I want to just clarify one thing, Senator, if I might,
Speaker 9: you support a humanitarian pause and Gaza. Some of your
Speaker 9: fellow progressives say that there should be a full on ceasefire,
Speaker 9: which would require an agreement on both sides to halt
Speaker 9: the fighting. Do you support a sea fire and if not,
Speaker 9: why not?
Speaker 13: Well, I don't know how you can have a cease
Speaker 13: fire permanency spire with an organization like Hamas, which is
Speaker 13: dedicated to turmoil and chaos and destroying the state of Israel.
Speaker 13: And I think what the Arab countries in the region
Speaker 13: understand that Hamas has got.
Speaker 4: To go, right, So that's almost that's two months ago
Speaker 4: at this point. What I found so interesting about that
Speaker 4: response from him is that a kind of left wing
Speaker 4: senator analysis of that same situation would say, Okay, yes, sure, yes,
Speaker 4: Hamas is founded with genocidal attent towards Israel, but Hamas
Speaker 4: and the occupation are mutually reinforcing kind of dysfunctional elements.
Speaker 4: You could just as easily and kind of more persuasively
Speaker 4: say that how can you ever have a permanent cease
Speaker 4: fire with one party occupy militarily occupying another party?
Speaker 6: That's not that is there's there's that's that's not a ceasefire.
Speaker 4: And even if the occupation doesn't involve kind of shooting
Speaker 4: civilians for a period of several hours or several days,
Speaker 4: and occupation is still done by force. And you know
Speaker 4: there had been you know, hundreds of civilians killed just
Speaker 4: in the West Bank before October seventh.
Speaker 1: That's right, and so just get ignored though in this
Speaker 1: whole seasfire commerce, right.
Speaker 4: You keep hearing APAC in particular say one of their
Speaker 4: big talking points is there was a there was a
Speaker 4: ceasefire on October six. No, there's been an ongoing war
Speaker 4: which involves an occupation that's not a ceasefire.
Speaker 1: To make it entirely clear, the greatest threat to Hamas
Speaker 1: and the greatest threat to Israeli extremists is de escalation
Speaker 1: in peace.
Speaker 5: That is the greatest threat to Hamas.
Speaker 1: And that's not theoretical when you look at a polling
Speaker 1: of Palestinians throughout history, when there was some peaceful process
Speaker 1: to be engaged with, where there was some reasonable hope
Speaker 1: and expectation that it would result in some kind of
Speaker 1: a settlement, not even what I would call a just settlement,
Speaker 1: but some kind of a settlement. Support for groups like
Speaker 1: Hamas armed resistance groups like Hamas decreases when those pathways
Speaker 1: are all closed. Guess what support for violence increases, and
Speaker 1: we're seeing it right now. I mean this idea that, oh,
Speaker 1: by inflicting a shock on the civilian population, they're going
Speaker 1: to turn on humas and that's how we're going to
Speaker 1: get them.
Speaker 5: It's preposterous.
Speaker 1: This has literally never happened in history that bombing the
Speaker 1: hell out of a civilian population causes them to turn
Speaker 1: on whoever there is governing them. No, it causes them
Speaker 1: to be hardened in their actual support to rally around
Speaker 1: the flag. This is what we saw in the bombings
Speaker 1: in Britain during the World War Two. It's what we
Speaker 1: saw in the Allied bombings of dressed in other places
Speaker 1: in Germany in World War Two. We have seen this
Speaker 1: throughout history. So it's a preposterous idea. And you know,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't want to psychoanalyze Bernie. It
Speaker 1: seems to me that and this is not to make
Speaker 1: excuses either. It's like a product of his generation on this,
Speaker 1: because if you look at the polling, you know.
Speaker 5: The older you are, the more likely you.
Speaker 1: Are to see things through this binary of Israel's good
Speaker 1: and the Palestinians are bad and that's that, and so
Speaker 1: it just seems to me like he has been incredibly
Speaker 1: corrupted by the propaganda that he has been exposed to
Speaker 1: throughout his life and is much more similar to his
Speaker 1: own generational cohort than he is to the younger base
Speaker 1: that you know overwhelmingly supports him and most of his ideas.
Speaker 4: And your point that peace is the real risk to
Speaker 4: these extremists both is in the Israeli government in Hamas
Speaker 4: is so important and needs to be underscored. There have
Speaker 4: been idiots within kind of Hamas who thought that violent
Speaker 4: attacks against Israeli civilians would cause Israeli public to turn
Speaker 4: against the occupation like that was.
Speaker 6: There were there were people.
Speaker 4: Who made that argument absurd, immoral, unethical, disgusting like gross,
Speaker 4: and also tactically incorrect, like it unifies the country. We've
Speaker 4: seen it before though, when the ANC was launching kind
Speaker 4: of terror attacks against the apartheid South African government. The
Speaker 4: white africaners said, if we give in to the ANC,
Speaker 4: if we give in to these terror attacks, then all
Speaker 4: the black people are going to organize through ANC and
Speaker 4: kill all the white people in South Africa. But instead,
Speaker 4: after apartheid was torn down, the violent militant wing of
Speaker 4: the a n C had no reason to exist anymore and.
Speaker 6: Just faded and just faded away. The IRA.
Speaker 4: Was told the same thing that if we give in
Speaker 4: to the IRA, that they're going to just they're going
Speaker 4: to take out violent retribution against the British because because
Speaker 4: of what the British have been doing for thousands of
Speaker 4: years to the Irish. You know, the depth of the
Speaker 4: hatred between you know, both religious and ethnic is so
Speaker 4: deep that it's going to lead to endless violence if
Speaker 4: unless we so we just have to keep our boot
Speaker 4: on the neck of the Ira. As soon as the
Speaker 4: war ends and there's dignity and peace, Yeah, the reason
Speaker 4: to be in the militant wing of jin Fein like
Speaker 4: just evaporates.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and you have some.
Speaker 4: Splinter groups that just are defined by their need to
Speaker 4: be violent, but that they're just tiny little elements that
Speaker 4: fade away and within a couple generations that they're completely gone.
Speaker 4: And also people age out, Like that's the other thing
Speaker 4: people don't understand, Like participating in that sort of violence
Speaker 4: is a thing you do in your teens and twenties
Speaker 4: for the most part, and that you know, if you
Speaker 4: can get to a place where you can just live
Speaker 4: a normal life. That's what most people want, and that's
Speaker 4: why you don't have bombings in Dublin anymore or in
Speaker 4: South Africa.
Speaker 1: And to ignore that analysis is to make the case,
Speaker 1: which unfortunately many do, that Arabs, Palestinians, Muslims are somehow.
Speaker 6: Different, just inherently violent. They're just inherently it's.
Speaker 1: You know, yes, it's in their DNA, which is obviously
Speaker 1: a wrong and blatantly racist view, which again, unfortunately is
Speaker 1: all too common and pervades so much of the thinking
Speaker 1: on this conflict, and is how you know, the news
Speaker 1: media is typically able to get away with these completely
Speaker 1: dehumanizing statements about Palestinians. A coverage of Palestinian atrocities, how
Speaker 1: you know, we just had one of the deadliest attacks,
Speaker 1: which is really saying something in all of this war.
Speaker 1: I think there were roughly two hundred Palestinians killed in
Speaker 1: this one attack in Gaza.
Speaker 5: You may not have even heard about it. It was
Speaker 5: a footnote.
Speaker 1: Imagine if that was Israeli's Imagine if it was any
Speaker 1: you know, Europeans. Imagine if it was here, God forbid,
Speaker 1: this would be front page news for months and months
Speaker 1: and months and justify apparently all sorts of atrocities being committed.
Speaker 1: But since it's Palestinians, it's barely live on the radar, right, And.
Speaker 4: There are two million Arab Israeli civilians and they're not
Speaker 4: blowing things up all over the place like there's nothing
Speaker 4: inherent in being Arab.
Speaker 5: It's a great point that the same people it's.
Speaker 4: The oppression, right, Yeah, it's just just have they live
Speaker 4: on different sides of defense.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that is such a great point. The political fallout
Speaker 1: certainly continues for Joe Biden over his response here, Ryan,
Speaker 1: why don't you break down some of the latest polling
Speaker 1: for us not looking good?
Speaker 4: It put up this first one, so you several months
Speaker 4: ago you started seeing polls showing Biden losing vote share
Speaker 4: among young people and among Hispanics, and originally it would
Speaker 4: kick off days of kind of discourse online about how
Speaker 4: the polling must be com completely wrong. We've seen so
Speaker 4: much of it now people just have to start taking
Speaker 4: it seriously. So this poll from the Independent has Trump
Speaker 4: leading Biden among Hispanic voters and absolutely incredible collapse for buy.
Speaker 4: This has Trump up thirty nine thirty four. Even if
Speaker 4: you consider this to be something of an outlier. It's
Speaker 4: directionally in the same direction as other poles. You've seen
Speaker 4: anything Biden want some close to two thirds of the
Speaker 4: Hispanic popular voters in twenty twenty three. We've also seen
Speaker 4: Donald Trump leading Joe Biden among young people in this
Speaker 4: independent poll in this poll thirty seven to thirty three.
Speaker 4: Even if you say, look, this is wrong. How wrong
Speaker 4: is it? Say, let's say it's off by ten points
Speaker 4: in each direction. Yeah, that still puts Biden only at
Speaker 4: forty three.
Speaker 5: It still a catastrophe.
Speaker 6: Twenty seven or something like.
Speaker 4: Biden has to win like he did in twenty twenty
Speaker 4: overwhelmingly among young people. He has to run up numbers
Speaker 4: with Hispanic voters, he has to maintain his margins with
Speaker 4: Black voters, and he's not doing any of that. The
Speaker 4: coalition is coming apart at the seems.
Speaker 1: It's collapsed, and I mean it sort of exposes the lie.
Speaker 1: There's this idea in modern politics that everyone is just
Speaker 1: like totally partisan and no one changes their mind based
Speaker 1: on events on the ground, and not so, guys. People
Speaker 1: are changing their mind in real time in a major way.
Speaker 1: And in the same poll, which was a USA Today's
Speaker 1: Suffolk University poll. They also found that only sixty three
Speaker 1: percent of black voters support Joe Biden. Now this is interesting.
Speaker 1: It's not that black voters are saying, oh, actually we
Speaker 1: love Donald Trump. No, Donald Trump is still getting the
Speaker 1: same twelve percent of Black voters that support him last
Speaker 1: time around. However, you have one in five black respondents
Speaker 1: saying they're going to back a third party candidate in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four. And it's you know, a similar story
Speaker 1: with young people. It's not like they are flocking to
Speaker 1: Donald Trump. It's that they're looking around and saying, you
Speaker 1: know what, I just I can't do this anymore. And
Speaker 1: it turns out that participating in mass atrocities and you know,
Speaker 1: spending our taxpayer do to kill babies in the gaza
Speaker 1: strip turns out that has not only horrific humanitarian consequences
Speaker 1: and consequences for US interests, it also has some pretty
Speaker 1: negative consequences for you politically.
Speaker 4: And you might be asking yourself, do Democrats just want
Speaker 4: to lose? Well, maybe, but let's just assume for the
Speaker 4: sake of this conversation that they actually want to win.
Speaker 4: And then the question is why on earth would they
Speaker 4: stand behind a candidate who is getting crushed so badly
Speaker 4: in the polls when you still have almost a year
Speaker 4: ago before the election. And the answer that I get
Speaker 4: from Democratic partisans and operatives in Washington.
Speaker 6: Is that they're wing in a prayer.
Speaker 4: Is that those people who are telling polsters now that
Speaker 4: they're not supporting Biden, but they're not supporting Trump when forced,
Speaker 4: when push comes to shove, because they are being pushed
Speaker 4: and shoved into the ballot box, that they will come
Speaker 4: back to Biden and reluctantly cast a ballot for him.
Speaker 4: What I think that they're not understanding is not only
Speaker 4: do you have maybe Cornell is on the ballot, maybe Cornell.
Speaker 6: West is not. RFK Junior is going to be on
Speaker 6: the ballot in a lot of places.
Speaker 4: He's getting a lot of publicity within independent media and podcasts,
Speaker 4: which are are places that a lot of working class
Speaker 4: people get their news from because they're listening to them
Speaker 4: during quote unquote window time. Probably most of people listening
Speaker 4: to us right now are engaged in some kind of
Speaker 4: window time. That means, you know, they're they're they're driving
Speaker 4: a truck, they're driving and driving an uber, they're just
Speaker 4: driving themselves on a long commute or they're working construction,
Speaker 4: they're working in a kitchen. Uh, they're they're working in
Speaker 4: a hotel, and they and they and they want something
Speaker 4: to kind of keep their mind off the boredom of
Speaker 4: of the work.
Speaker 6: So they're listening to these long long form podcasts. Are
Speaker 6: FK Juniors on those.
Speaker 4: So if he's on the ballot and you're trying to
Speaker 4: push these voters who who have told you that they
Speaker 4: hate Biden into voting for Biden, they might take this
Speaker 4: this other choice. And so that that that they're making
Speaker 4: is the whole reason that they that and Trump's unpopularity
Speaker 4: is the whole reason that They're unwilling to consider any
Speaker 4: kind of alternatives to Biden. It's a just a wild bet.
Speaker 4: And I don't want to hear anything about, you know,
Speaker 4: from those kinds of Democrats about who cares about the
Speaker 4: you know, electoral politics, right, if this is the gamble
Speaker 4: that they're willing to take with the future of the country.
Speaker 1: So true, and listen, Let's be clear. Trump was also
Speaker 1: incredibly sycophantic with Israel, or if K Junior may be
Speaker 1: the most takish, maybe the most pro Israel of all
Speaker 1: of them, judging by my recent conversation with them in
Speaker 1: many of other comments that he's said as well, necessarily rational.
Speaker 5: True, that's right. He is an alternative. He is a
Speaker 5: protest vote.
Speaker 1: And you know, also, by the way, I do think
Speaker 1: that there is something genuinely different between Okay, he's making
Speaker 1: all of these statements that are incredibly pro Israel versus
Speaker 1: he's shipping the weapons right, he's blocking the UN resolutions,
Speaker 1: he's actively participating in these atrocities and running cover right now,
Speaker 1: like we see it before our eyes. That just hits
Speaker 1: a little different than theoretical statements that are being made.
Speaker 1: And to underscore I think what a break there is,
Speaker 1: especially among young people on this issue.
Speaker 5: This to me is extraordinary. I don't know, Ryan, you
Speaker 5: can tell me, because.
Speaker 1: You've got a better memory than me, whether you've ever
Speaker 1: seen anything like this in presidential politics.
Speaker 5: Put this up on the screen. Biden's own campaign.
Speaker 1: Staffers, seventeen of them, seventeen Biden for President twenty twenty
Speaker 1: four campaign staffers just published this anonymous medium post calling
Speaker 1: him out for his unconditional supporties. They say, dear President,
Speaker 1: we need Dear President Biden, we need a cease fire.
Speaker 5: Now.
Speaker 1: We write to you as the current staff of your
Speaker 1: reelection campaign. As we work to mobilize voters to cast
Speaker 1: their ballots for you, we must take a moment to
Speaker 1: acknowledge our tremendous grief and the grief shared by countless
Speaker 1: other Americans toward the fine occurring in Gaza. We join
Speaker 1: this campaign because the values that you and we share
Speaker 1: are once worth fighting for. Justice, empathy, and our belief
Speaker 1: in the dignity of human life is the backbone of
Speaker 1: the Democratic Party, they claim, but of the country. However,
Speaker 1: your administration's response to Israel's indiscriminate bombing a carefully chosen
Speaker 1: word because that's what Bind himself said in Gaza, has
Speaker 1: been fundamentally antithetical to those values, and we believe it
Speaker 1: could cost you the twenty twenty four election. They go
Speaker 1: on to list a series of actions that they would
Speaker 1: like to see him take. But I don't know that
Speaker 1: I've ever seen a campaign staff presidential campaign staff come
Speaker 1: out in this organized fashion and say you have to
Speaker 1: stop this, you have to change now.
Speaker 4: They didn't put their names on it, which has been
Speaker 4: a habit and a pattern in a lot of these
Speaker 4: staff letters that have circulated. But it was published by
Speaker 4: Politico's kind of West Wing playbook, which is, as the
Speaker 4: name suggests, read very closely in the West wing. And
Speaker 4: so they very deliberately targeted it to to make sure
Speaker 4: that everybody inside the White House read it, and those reporters,
Speaker 4: because we've reported on some of these anonymous letters.
Speaker 6: You make sure that you're not getting.
Speaker 4: Punked by like just some random It's not some random
Speaker 4: person dms you on Twitter.
Speaker 6: It's like, hey, I'm mccammet.
Speaker 4: You're like, all right, prove that you have seventeen people
Speaker 4: who are the people are Okay, well, now we'll let
Speaker 4: this ride. But yes, I've never seen anything like this.
Speaker 4: Partly this is it's new that staff are willing to
Speaker 4: stand up in this way that you know, that's kind
Speaker 4: of a post twenty fifteen, twenty twenty thing. But you've
Speaker 4: certainly never seen a staff of a presidential campaign, and
Speaker 4: certainly not of an incumbent president, come out with this
Speaker 4: firm of a rejection of their own candidate.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So the Biden team does have a plan to
Speaker 1: try to combat the collapsing pull numbers that they see.
Speaker 5: Let's put this up on the screen. They're going to.
Speaker 1: Lean into Trump and lean in to January sixth, and
Speaker 1: I mean, listen, I might sneer at this, but let's
Speaker 1: also be clear. I mean that's kind of worked for
Speaker 1: them in the midtims of likee what they've got. Listen,
Speaker 1: we're not really promising much, but we're not them. And
Speaker 1: Trump is a maniac and all the people he supports
Speaker 1: is a maniac. In January sixth was horrendous, and you know,
Speaker 1: let's throw in the overturning of Roe versus Wade again.
Speaker 1: We're not going to do anything to reclaim those rights,
Speaker 1: but we're not going to further erode them. And in
Speaker 1: the midterms and in every basically special election we've had
Speaker 1: since then, it's been a pretty potent political message. So
Speaker 1: I can't completely turn up my nose at or sneer
Speaker 1: at it.
Speaker 4: And what's so incredible is that when it comes to
Speaker 4: codifying Roe v. Wade, they actually could They actually could
Speaker 4: run on that, like you could say, because they're getting
Speaker 4: an enormous amount of support in special elections and just
Speaker 4: around the country from the rejection of the kind of
Speaker 4: Republican agenda and the successful Republican agenda overturning Roe v.
Speaker 6: Wade.
Speaker 4: Biden could go to voters and say if you elect
Speaker 4: me and hold the Senate and give me one or
Speaker 4: two more people in the House of Representatives, flip the House. Yeah,
Speaker 4: we will codify Roe v. Wade into law. You could actually,
Speaker 4: I know, it's a novel idea.
Speaker 5: You can actually run on something to like make a.
Speaker 4: Promise a pledge of something that you will do, get
Speaker 4: votes for that thing, and then do that thing like
Speaker 4: you could.
Speaker 6: You could do that, but that seems to.
Speaker 4: Be just so far beyond the imaginations of our politicians
Speaker 4: that they just much rather just say, remember how bad
Speaker 4: January sixth was, and also how you know what a
Speaker 4: maniac Trump is.
Speaker 6: You don't want that, so vote, so vote for us.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I do think that listen, time will tell
Speaker 1: they're betting.
Speaker 5: Basically you might win.
Speaker 6: That's that's what's so crazy.
Speaker 4: Biden could win, absolutely, But it is not take from
Speaker 4: this that it's locked in.
Speaker 5: Absolutely.
Speaker 1: That is certainly the case, because people do hate Donald
Speaker 1: Trump and aren't excited about the chaos that he would
Speaker 1: bring with another four years of him in the White House.
Speaker 1: But I do think that there is something that has
Speaker 1: fundamentally broken with regard to the Biden response in Israel
Speaker 1: with you know, unconditional support for Israel that they don't
Speaker 1: seem to have really processed.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 1: I think they really feel like, oh, they'll just get
Speaker 1: over it, like they'll move on and.
Speaker 6: If we don't give them a choice, they'll come back.
Speaker 5: They'll come back around.
Speaker 1: And I just I wouldn't bet on that because I
Speaker 1: do think that this is a kind of like a
Speaker 1: rock war type breaking point for young people who cannot
Speaker 1: wrap their heads around the fact that we are so
Speaker 1: directly complicit in these horrors that they are seeing every
Speaker 1: day on TikTok and other places where it's like, okay,
Speaker 1: it's this is not just some horror happening in some
Speaker 1: far off land like we are funding this. We are
Speaker 1: directly complicit in this. This is happening on our watch
Speaker 1: with this guy that many of us voted for. And
Speaker 1: so I do think that it is, you know, a
Speaker 1: different type of This isn't just like, oh, they'll move
Speaker 1: on to the next issue of the day. I think
Speaker 1: this has fundamentally reshaped an entire generations relationship towards the
Speaker 1: Democratic Party.
Speaker 4: And I know it will never happen, but I wanted
Speaker 4: to get your take on in these Times piece that
Speaker 4: was out yesterday.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I saw your accents.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So they floated Andy Levin for president. Now it's
Speaker 4: partly absurd because I have to explain to everybody probably
Speaker 4: who Andy Levin is. He's a former member of Congress
Speaker 4: who was basically driven out of office by Apak in
Speaker 4: twenty twenty two. He's the scion of the Leven family
Speaker 4: in Michigan. It's Carl Levin, the son of Sandy Levin.
Speaker 4: It was the ways it means chairman. He'd win Michigan
Speaker 4: like he'd waltz through Michigan. He's also a former Synagogue president, okay,
Speaker 4: but he has been very critical of Israel. He calls
Speaker 4: himself a Zionist, but he's been very critical of Israel
Speaker 4: for years and was very supportive of elan Omhar and
Speaker 4: Rashida Tleive every time that they were attacked. And Apak
Speaker 4: said that the reason they went after or him was
Speaker 4: that he, as a former Synagogue president, was giving cover
Speaker 4: to critics of Israel.
Speaker 1: He was sort of a uniquely powerful and influential voice.
Speaker 4: He's also he was the most powerful and most eloquent
Speaker 4: kind of pro labor and pro union voice in the House.
Speaker 4: So I mean, I think if you actually did nominate him.
Speaker 4: He went Apak absolutely loses its mind. He wins Wisconsin, Michigan,
Speaker 4: Pennsylvania with his with his connections there and with his
Speaker 4: pro labor, pro union record, and he and he easily
Speaker 4: beats Donald Trump by ten points. And I don't see
Speaker 4: that as even a controversial thing to say, right yet
Speaker 4: it's basically impossible to envision it happening, which then raises
Speaker 4: the question, what is the point of a political party
Speaker 4: that can't do that, that can't even conceptualize of doing that, right?
Speaker 5: I mean, listen, I'm all for it. I am one
Speaker 5: on board.
Speaker 1: But it's not like there have a been alternatives and
Speaker 1: the Democratic primary and then you've got Mary and Williamson,
Speaker 1: you've got Dean Phillips. So you know, if your whole
Speaker 1: thing is like, oh, she's never been elected office, well
Speaker 1: this is a credentialed fellow who you know, he's not
Speaker 1: where I am on Israel, but he's been much better
Speaker 1: than Joe Biden and has an actual knowledge of the region.
Speaker 1: He's on the what is he the chair of the
Speaker 1: subcommittee on the Middle East, so he has you know,
Speaker 1: he's been to the region, he has some understanding of
Speaker 1: it and so there are alternatives, but the Democratic Party
Speaker 1: has gone out of their way to make sure that
Speaker 1: there are no.
Speaker 5: Not only no, they're not even having primaries. That's right.
Speaker 5: I mean, this news just broke of another state.
Speaker 1: I believe he's in North Carolina that just kicked everybody
Speaker 1: off the ballot except Joe Biden.
Speaker 5: And it's preposterous.
Speaker 6: It's like a Sodam Hussein stuff.
Speaker 5: It truly, truly is.
Speaker 1: So you now are up to I believe it's four
Speaker 1: or five states that have just said we're just not
Speaker 1: even having a primary.
Speaker 5: We're just Joe Biden.
Speaker 3: You're the guy that's it percent to zero.
Speaker 1: Congratulations, right, and all in the interest of preserving democracy,
Speaker 1: of course.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So you know, you just can't take seriously that they
Speaker 1: actually believe that democracy is at risk, that Trump is
Speaker 1: a unique threat, because if he was, yeah, you talk
Speaker 1: about you know, Levin the fact that he's not that
Speaker 1: known and he's just sort of like a generic person
Speaker 1: is a massive asset. Every poll shows that if you
Speaker 1: just have generic Democrat on the ballot, they beat Trump
Speaker 1: hands down.
Speaker 5: It's not even close.
Speaker 6: Well, I've got a generic Democrat.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you add to it.
Speaker 1: That he's got you know, good like populous labor, and
Speaker 1: he's good on the issue of you know, not just
Speaker 1: enabling dunocide because it's Israel. And yeah, I think you've
Speaker 1: got a pretty compelling case there in my opinion.
Speaker 5: But the Biden team doesn't have one thing going for
Speaker 5: the Ryan. This was just recently on Fox Duse.
Speaker 1: I just had to find an excuse to put this
Speaker 1: in the show because it's sort of hilarious. For some reason,
Speaker 1: I don't know why, they brought on a tarot card
Speaker 1: reader to try to tell us about the future of
Speaker 1: what's going to happen in politics, and they asked her
Speaker 1: specifically about.
Speaker 5: The coming year for Donald Trump. Let's take a look
Speaker 5: at what happens.
Speaker 6: Oh what is that?
Speaker 1: I mean, I do recognize that I'm a Fox TV.
Speaker 5: A sense of lot.
Speaker 1: The death card she pulls there, and she tries to
Speaker 1: come and be like, it just means a loss, means
Speaker 1: a loss.
Speaker 6: Yes, dark year for Donald Trump.
Speaker 1: Listen, I guess the lesson there is literally anything could
Speaker 1: happen over the course of this year. I think any
Speaker 1: outcome is on the table certainly.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I mean, if I were Trump right now, I wouldn't
Speaker 4: be feeling great either.
Speaker 6: I wouldn't be feeling.
Speaker 4: Great if I hear either of these people no yet
Speaker 4: yet one of them probably is going to.
Speaker 1: Win, And I would not be feeling great if I
Speaker 1: was an American citizen, which I am, and I am
Speaker 1: not feeling great about what twenty and twenty four is
Speaker 1: going to bring because, like I said, I just I
Speaker 1: can't you know, normally, like we're political nerds, I get
Speaker 1: excited for presidential years. The Iowa coccuses are what less
Speaker 1: than two weeks away now, which is crazy to me.
Speaker 1: And it's just like I cannot envision a positive scenario
Speaker 1: unfolding that I would be happy about, or that the
Speaker 1: American people should be happy about this year.
Speaker 5: And you know, I don't think I'm an outlier and
Speaker 5: feeling that way.
Speaker 6: It's pretty bad.
Speaker 1: At the same time, we had some big reveals yesterday.
Speaker 1: This was much anticipated unsealing of court documents revealing some
Speaker 1: of the depositions with regards to Jeffrey Epstein. We can
Speaker 1: go ahead and break this down. Let's put this up
Speaker 1: on tho screens from CBS News. Their news article writes,
Speaker 1: Jeffrey Epstein contact names released by court. Here are key
Speaker 1: takeaways from those unsealed documents, and let me just give
Speaker 1: you a little bit of their synopsis and then we
Speaker 1: can show you some of the specifics. So they say,
Speaker 1: documents that include the names of more than one hundred
Speaker 1: people connected to Jeffrey Epstein, including business associates and accusers,
Speaker 1: among others, were made public on Wednesday, following a federal
Speaker 1: judges December ruling that that information must be unsealed. More
Speaker 1: than nine hundred pages of mostly unredacted documents were released.
Speaker 1: They indicate, and I think this is accurate. Much of
Speaker 1: the information has been previously reported. However, to see the
Speaker 1: actual specific is still quite noteworthy. And they mention, this
Speaker 1: is Virginia Guffrey. This is part of her now settled
Speaker 1: defamation lawsuit. That's the context of all of this information.
Speaker 1: In these depositions. She had accused British socialite Gallne Maxwell
Speaker 1: enabling her abuse by Epstein, and Maxwell, of course, was
Speaker 1: found guilty back in twenty twenty one. Gosh, it's been
Speaker 1: that long now of enabling that abuse. And so some
Speaker 1: of the names here, you're not going to be surprised.
Speaker 1: We've got Britain's Prince Andrew, We've got Bill Clinton, Bubba.
Speaker 5: We've got Donald Trump.
Speaker 1: We've got Alan Dershowitz, and we can show some of
Speaker 1: those details. Let's go ahead and put this first one
Speaker 1: up on the screen. So this probably was the biggest
Speaker 1: piece that people were sharing. Let me just read this.
Speaker 1: This is again of part of a deposition. They say,
Speaker 1: let me back up. Do you know Bill Clinton was
Speaker 1: a friend of Jeffrey Epstein? This person says, I knew
Speaker 1: he had dealings with Bill Clinton. I did not know
Speaker 1: they were friends until I read the Vanity Fair article
Speaker 1: about them going to Africa together. Question did Jeffrey ever
Speaker 1: talk to you about Bill Clinton?
Speaker 5: Answer? He said one time that Clinton likes them young,
Speaker 5: referring to girls.
Speaker 6: Ryan gross gross gross gross gross.
Speaker 4: Yes, this is the reporting, says, this is Johanna Schoeberg,
Speaker 4: one of the Epstein accusers.
Speaker 6: Just I mean, not shocking, but just gross. See it
Speaker 6: in print.
Speaker 1: Bill comes up a number of times like this wasn't
Speaker 1: the only mention of him in these documents either, but
Speaker 1: this was the sort of most I guess, damning commentary
Speaker 1: with regard to him that came up here.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and you also had people were noticing, for instance,
Speaker 4: that like al Gore's name came up in there. But
Speaker 4: then you get to the part of the document while
Speaker 4: al Gore's name is and you said, did anybody ever
Speaker 4: mention al Gore? And the person says no, they mentioned
Speaker 4: Tipper Gore.
Speaker 9: No.
Speaker 4: So for some people who names are in there, are
Speaker 4: in there because the lawyer just asked about them, right,
Speaker 4: And in.
Speaker 1: Some ways there's sort of like exonerated by the commentary.
Speaker 1: But then does the fact that you came up in
Speaker 1: Epstein Docks as I'm sure not again.
Speaker 4: Cors got his own situation with that massage thing if
Speaker 4: you remember from.
Speaker 5: Many v vaguely remember that one.
Speaker 1: What we have next, I believe is Prince Andrew. Jane
Speaker 1: Doe number three was forced allegedly to have sexual relationships
Speaker 1: with this prince when she was a minor in three
Speaker 1: separate geographical locations, London, at Glene Maxwell's apartment, New York,
Speaker 1: and on Epstein's private island in the US Virgin Islands.
Speaker 1: In an orgy with numerous other underage girls. Evestein instructed
Speaker 1: Jane Doe number three that she was to give the
Speaker 1: Prince whatever he demanded and required Jane Doe number three
Speaker 1: to report back to him on the details of that
Speaker 1: sexual abuse.
Speaker 5: Maxwell facilitated.
Speaker 1: They say, Prince Andrew's acts of sexual abuse by acting
Speaker 1: as Madam for Epstein, thereby assisting in internationally trafficking Jane
Speaker 1: Doe number three and numerous other girls. These are the allegations.
Speaker 1: Another person that come up here. I don't know if
Speaker 1: you guys remember this disgusting character Jean Luke Brunell, who
Speaker 1: was like the modeling what was a French modeling agent
Speaker 1: that was implicated in a lot of this as well.
Speaker 4: And years ago I did reporting on Prince Andrew through
Speaker 4: through the financial lens because he got himself involved in
Speaker 4: all sorts of kind of shady financial dealings.
Speaker 6: What he would do is he would basically lend the.
Speaker 4: Credibility of the Crown to like corrupt banking operations, all
Speaker 4: sorts of other things.
Speaker 5: I didn't know that piece, So he was a shady
Speaker 5: character in all fronts.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And while I was doing that reporting, people would
Speaker 4: just refer to him by his known nickname at the time,
Speaker 4: which was a Randy Andy.
Speaker 6: So when this news broke.
Speaker 4: And we've obviously known about this for years at this point, like, oh,
Speaker 4: Randy Andy, okay, not exactly the most shocking revelation to
Speaker 4: people who have known him for so long and the.
Speaker 6: French like acting the French guy modeling, Yeah, just.
Speaker 4: Like like a comic book villain.
Speaker 6: When it comes to sexual abuse.
Speaker 1: Well, in the modeling connections with Epstein was reportedly how
Speaker 1: he was able to, you know, convince these young girls
Speaker 1: to be associated, Oh, I can make you a star
Speaker 1: basically type of crap, and held himself out that way
Speaker 1: with a Victoria's Secret in ways that the company, Lex
Speaker 1: Wexner was the owner and he was an apparently big
Speaker 1: benefactor of Epstein and helped to facilitate his you know.
Speaker 5: Lavish lifestyle.
Speaker 1: And other underlings at victoria Secret were complaining about Epstein
Speaker 1: holding himself out as this modeling agent and trying to
Speaker 1: persuade young girls.
Speaker 4: The difference between what happened to these young girls and
Speaker 4: what happens to so many young girls trying to get
Speaker 4: into modeling is minuscule. Like so when he and he
Speaker 4: actually had the imperimitor of Victoria's Secret and a private
Speaker 4: plane and access to the people like Bill Clinton and
Speaker 4: Prince Andrew.
Speaker 6: So like, you know, I think every.
Speaker 4: Young girl who gets into modeling is nervous about because
Speaker 4: they've all heard the stories about what's going to happen. Yeah,
Speaker 4: then you see a private plane and you see former
Speaker 4: presidents and prime ministers involved at the time, Now that
Speaker 4: might be a red flag at the time.
Speaker 6: That puts you a little bit at ease.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well these prominent people, certainly people in the world.
Speaker 4: Yeah, now because of the Epstein releases and revelations, you
Speaker 4: might have be like, oh, the most powerful people in
Speaker 4: the world involved with this.
Speaker 6: Maybe maybe it's actually pretty dangerous.
Speaker 5: Yes. So Trump did come up a couple of times.
Speaker 5: We have both of those.
Speaker 1: He was a sort of like side character in some
Speaker 1: of these interactions. Was put this next week one up
Speaker 1: on the screen. So, oh, this is Alan Dershowitz. Actually sorry,
Speaker 1: we'll get to Trump in just a minute. So Dershowitz
Speaker 1: has long been accused of various horrific things with regard
Speaker 1: to Epstein.
Speaker 5: They say here that he.
Speaker 1: Forced Jane Doe number three to have sexual relations with
Speaker 1: Alan Dershowitz, close friend of Epstein's well known criminal defense attorney.
Speaker 1: By the way, Dershowitz helped Epstein get that a sweetheart
Speaker 1: deal that enabled him to get off basically scott free
Speaker 1: previous sex crimes conviction. Epstein required Jane Doe number three
Speaker 1: to have sexual relations with Dershowitz on numerous occasions while
Speaker 1: she was a minor, not only in Florida, but also
Speaker 1: on private planes in New York, New Mexico and the
Speaker 1: US Virgin Islands. And Ryan, we actually have a perfect
Speaker 1: response from Alan Dershowitz in the wake of these new revelations. Guys,
Speaker 1: if we can play the response from Dershowitz so people
Speaker 1: can hear his side of the story.
Speaker 12: The one point I do want to make is that
Speaker 12: I understand all the feminist groups and the radicals who
Speaker 12: think this is the worst thing in the world that
Speaker 12: anybody ever had any contact with Jeffrey Epstein. Where are
Speaker 12: all those radical feminists when it comes to the Hamask
Speaker 12: rapes of young Jewish girls, sexual abuse and headings? They
Speaker 12: are quiet, They are silent, the incredible hypocrisy of the
Speaker 12: me too movement Me too, except if you're a Jew.
Speaker 12: And I want to have a list of all the
Speaker 12: radical feminists who are pushing hard and I understand that
Speaker 12: to get all these names revealed, and I want to
Speaker 12: know how many of them have ever actually condemned Hamas
Speaker 12: for the rapes that we now know occurred and the
Speaker 12: murders that occurred, how many have been silent, and how many,
Speaker 12: like the National Lawyer's Guild, have actually approved of what Hamas.
Speaker 1: Did, so making it somehow about Israel, which is kind
Speaker 1: of perfect and also ryan the idea that it was
Speaker 1: just quote unquote radical feminists who were interested in, you know,
Speaker 1: exposing the truth of who has been a so.
Speaker 5: No jeff Sex ring, but so preposterous.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is in a lot of ways, it
Speaker 1: codes almost like right wing interest in Epstein, even though
Speaker 1: you know, obviously there's just like a general public disgust
Speaker 1: and horror at what was unfolding among so many of
Speaker 1: our nations and our global elites. But to try to
Speaker 1: pin this like this was some secret feminist cabal that
Speaker 1: was pushing for the exposure here, and that the same
Speaker 1: feminist cabal who won't condemn Hamas is I don't know.
Speaker 1: It's just absurdities on absurdities.
Speaker 4: And how little respect and how much contempt do you
Speaker 4: have to have for the victims of October seventh to
Speaker 4: drag them into your Jeffrey Epstein scandal?
Speaker 6: So true? Like what could be more.
Speaker 4: Denigrating to their memory than that stand on your own
Speaker 4: two feet and defend your relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. Do
Speaker 4: not bring in the memories of the people who were
Speaker 4: killed on that day to try to distract from this it.
Speaker 4: It's one of the most offensive things I think I've
Speaker 4: ever seen.
Speaker 1: Well, and we would be remiss if we didn't remark
Speaker 1: that many people believe that Epstein why he so aggressively
Speaker 1: cultivated all these relationships with rich and powerful people was
Speaker 1: because he was a foreign agent, and specifically, the theory,
Speaker 1: unconfirmed is that he may have had Masad connections.
Speaker 6: There's a lot of reporting to that effect.
Speaker 1: There's purely conjecture, right, And so you know the fact
Speaker 1: that you've got Alan Dershowitz, who is one of the
Speaker 1: most vociferous defenders of Israel, who's being floated as representing
Speaker 1: them at the ICJ, who also has this Epstein link.
Speaker 5: Many people are taking note of these things.
Speaker 4: Ryan and Giuffrey and Dershowitz reached a settlement in which
Speaker 4: she dropped her at allegation, this allegation where she said
Speaker 4: that it was a case of mistake and identity, and
Speaker 4: he also dropped his counter defamation claim against her, so
Speaker 4: that that appears to be the root of what.
Speaker 6: Rose here. But yeah, I yes, I think you're right.
Speaker 1: Yes, all right, let's I think we next have Trump
Speaker 1: with the long teased Trump piece of this. So there
Speaker 1: was apparently a trip that went sort of AWRYE. They asked,
Speaker 1: did you see her in the plane on the trip
Speaker 1: to New York engage in any kind of affection or
Speaker 1: sexual contact with Jeffrey?
Speaker 5: No, with Glene.
Speaker 13: No.
Speaker 1: Howd it come to be that you were in a
Speaker 1: casino in Atlantic City?
Speaker 5: Well, we were flying.
Speaker 1: Jeffrey said, why don't you go sit in the cockpit
Speaker 1: to check out the landing. So we were sitting there
Speaker 1: and the pilots told me to go back and tell
Speaker 1: him we can't land in New York and that we're
Speaker 1: going to have to land in Atlantic City. Jeffrey said, great,
Speaker 1: we'll call up Trump and we'll go to I don't
Speaker 1: recall the name of the casino, but we'll go to
Speaker 1: the casino. And then they go on to talk about
Speaker 1: some sort.
Speaker 5: Of id issue.
Speaker 1: But that's basically like the Trump's name coming up here
Speaker 1: of Jeffrey saying, like, my good friend Trump will go
Speaker 1: to his casino. And in another instance, they asked, did
Speaker 1: you ever see Donald Trump at Jeffrey's home? And this
Speaker 1: person says, not that I can remember on his island. No,
Speaker 1: not that I can remember in New Mexico. No, not
Speaker 1: that I can remember in New York. Not that I
Speaker 1: can remember all right, And so you know, in this instance,
Speaker 1: Donald Trump is sort of not connected at all in
Speaker 1: this person's recollection.
Speaker 4: And the ID issue is an indication of how young
Speaker 4: this girl was. The idea question was, well, she's not
Speaker 4: old enough to be in a casino, what are we
Speaker 4: going to do?
Speaker 6: And they eventually accorded that deposition.
Speaker 4: She were not able to gamble, but they still brought
Speaker 4: her along on this on this trip.
Speaker 6: Now.
Speaker 4: Trump back in two thousand and two gave a statement
Speaker 4: in New York magazine for a profile that they were
Speaker 4: doing of Epstein, which was supposed to be an expose
Speaker 4: but didn't fully come together as an expose of what
Speaker 4: he was doing. He wrote, and you can hear Trump
Speaker 4: kind of dictating this statement to it. He said, I've
Speaker 4: known Jeff for fifteen years. Terrific guy. He's a lot
Speaker 4: of fun to be with. It is even said that
Speaker 4: he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and
Speaker 4: many of them are on the younger side.
Speaker 6: No doubt about it. Jeffrey enjoys his social life.
Speaker 4: Now there's also reporting to give Trump some credit here,
Speaker 4: maybe more than he deserves, because reasons we'll go into
Speaker 4: in a second. That after Epstein during the Bush administration,
Speaker 4: was convicted of I forget the exact charge, but it
Speaker 4: was some type of like sexual assault ish. It was
Speaker 4: knocked down to a very you know, low degree, but
Speaker 4: it was still a sex crime. He was banned from
Speaker 4: mar Lago and according to reporting that has come out,
Speaker 4: like he was he did not associate with Trump kind
Speaker 4: of after that, because that's an interesting break in the
Speaker 4: Epstein saga. Right after he is a sex criminal, like
Speaker 4: a public sex criminal. Tons of this stuff happened after
Speaker 4: that with these famous people. That's right where everybody kind
Speaker 4: of would have known that this had happened. Now, the
Speaker 4: reason I say we're giving to Trump too much credit, uh,
Speaker 4: it was it was a Bush administrator. It was a
Speaker 4: cost of a Bush administration assistant attorney US attorney who
Speaker 4: cut the sweetheart deal with Jeffrey Epstein back back then.
Speaker 4: He then became Trump's labor secretary, right and then also
Speaker 4: Epstein died in prison under Trump's watch.
Speaker 6: Well, let's not forget that either.
Speaker 5: Worth noting as well, go and died.
Speaker 1: Glainne Maxwell, responding to some of the latest information coming out.
Speaker 3: This is just too perfect.
Speaker 5: Put this up on the screen. She's breaking her silence.
Speaker 1: Smayan an attorney saying playing the woman card here, saying
Speaker 1: it's all about men abusing women for a long period
Speaker 1: of time, and it's only one person in jail, a woman.
Speaker 5: Of course, you know Epstein was in jail, but he died.
Speaker 1: Died, suddenly, died, suddenly vexed question mark. But to play
Speaker 1: the woman card here is utterly preposterous, like the fact
Speaker 1: that there has no been full accountability for all the
Speaker 1: people that clearly there should be full accountability. Is not
Speaker 1: to say like you should also get out for you know,
Speaker 1: you should also face the same lack of accountability, or
Speaker 1: to pretend like you weren't integral to these schemes and
Speaker 1: there's not a very good reason that you were serving
Speaker 1: prison time.
Speaker 4: I think she's I think she's right in the sense
Speaker 4: that there should be lots of men who are also
Speaker 4: in jail, correct, although she could have done more to
Speaker 4: facilitate that by testifying against a lot of these men.
Speaker 6: And that is true going public. Look, Glaine that's great.
Speaker 4: You want more more of these men in jail, like,
Speaker 4: start talking, start talking, send us, send us a letter,
Speaker 4: We'll read it here.
Speaker 6: We'll get these get these prosecutions going.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but you know, she saw what happened to Jeffrey
Speaker 4: Epstein and he died suddenly, and so you can imagine why,
Speaker 4: you know, she might be reluctant to take that path.
Speaker 1: Indeed, all right, let's move on to one story. And
Speaker 1: I want to lose sight of because it's been a
Speaker 1: lot of importance to many of you out there, which
Speaker 1: is the state of the housing market.
Speaker 5: And Wall Street apparently.
Speaker 1: Has a new scheme to further their plans to become
Speaker 1: America's landlord. Put this up on the screen, reporting from
Speaker 1: the Wall Street Journal.
Speaker 5: Welcome to the neighborhood. Wall Street designed it big.
Speaker 1: Residential property investors are finding it harder to buy in
Speaker 1: good neighborhoods, so they are building new ones.
Speaker 5: They open this piece. I think is very interesting.
Speaker 1: Your new suburban rental has credit kitchen countertops built to
Speaker 1: withstand even the most hardwaring tenant. The neighbors next door
Speaker 1: have the exact same laundry machine. Welcome to the community,
Speaker 1: where every detail has been designed to keep costs down
Speaker 1: for the Wall Street landlord.
Speaker 5: They indicate big investors.
Speaker 1: Are bullish about America's family homes, so bullish they are
Speaker 1: willing to buy and build entire new neighborhoods. They were
Speaker 1: also willing to buy them, but they've found that harder
Speaker 1: to do, so now they're just building them out. As
Speaker 1: it becomes more difficult to purchase houses for the usual channels,
Speaker 1: interest rates are at multi year highs, fewer homes are
Speaker 1: for sale. Homes are also iwateringly expensive in October, prices
Speaker 1: hit a fresh record in October. Increasingly, Wall Street solution
Speaker 1: is to build new neighborhoods of family homes wherever nobody rents.
Speaker 5: The model is not completely new.
Speaker 1: Clustered housing for students and senior citizens has been around,
Speaker 1: but they say the number of build to rent communities
Speaker 1: is still small, with nine hundred neighborhoods nationwide, each with
Speaker 1: an average of one hundred and thirty five to one
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty homes according to report by the Urban Institute,
Speaker 1: but the concept is growing fast. The National Association of
Speaker 1: Homebuilders estimates that roughly ten percent of new housing construction
Speaker 1: is destined for build to rent. So on the one hand,
Speaker 1: ran I suppose it's good that they're moving their gaze
Speaker 1: from buying up existing neighborhoods and snatching up the very
Speaker 1: limited inventory of single family homes that are even available
Speaker 1: right now. On the other hand, of course, it's very
Speaker 1: unsettling to imagine these you know, gigantic companies and permanent
Speaker 1: capital as your perma landlord. And you know, it's just
Speaker 1: another indication of the sort of fraying and decaying of
Speaker 1: the American dream of owning your own house, which is
Speaker 1: the way that most Americans are able to achieve some
Speaker 1: level of stability and.
Speaker 5: Basic, basic level of wealth so that they.
Speaker 1: Can, you know, have a traditional, idealized American middle class life.
Speaker 4: And we've got to do something about Wall Street buying
Speaker 4: up all these homes like you can this the fabric
Speaker 4: of this society is stitched together by the threat of
Speaker 4: the American dream. And you're and you and the American
Speaker 4: dream is often as much a dream as it is
Speaker 4: a reality.
Speaker 6: But the dream has to be there.
Speaker 4: And what Wall Street is doing, even if they're even
Speaker 4: if it's exaggerated somewhat, the extent to which they have
Speaker 4: bought up the properties at this point, it undermines people's
Speaker 4: faith in the future. And so it's a political issue
Speaker 4: just waiting to be grabbed by somebody, and you've I
Speaker 4: think you just have to get them out of this
Speaker 4: buying up residential homes business, like you just have to
Speaker 4: ban it, or if you don't ban it, just make
Speaker 4: it extremely difficult for them. So if they do it,
Speaker 4: if you own more than two or one residential homes,
Speaker 4: then these are the tax implications for that to make it,
Speaker 4: to make them compete against homeowners in a way that
Speaker 4: is that where actual human beings can out compete them,
Speaker 4: because right now it's the opposite. Like right now, because
Speaker 4: they run it as a business, they can write off
Speaker 4: all sorts of things, and they have better access to
Speaker 4: capital than a human being, and so the human being
Speaker 4: is not just poorer, but also is tax disadvantage in
Speaker 4: the competition for buying for buying homes.
Speaker 6: You've got to flip that.
Speaker 4: You've got to make human beings tax advantaged against these
Speaker 4: corporations and Wall Street that are trying to buy it up. Now,
Speaker 4: more housing is a good thing, So maybe the deal
Speaker 4: that you offer them is all right, we're kicking you
Speaker 4: out of this scheme where you try to buy up
Speaker 4: all of this housing if you want to go out
Speaker 4: and build a bunch of homes and rent them, Okay, fine,
Speaker 4: like that, Like if if the deal is then you're
Speaker 4: then you're kicked out of destroying the American dream.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 4: It was like, like, is it ideal that Wall Street
Speaker 4: is your your landlord because they've built some tracked homes somewhere. No,
Speaker 4: it's not ideal, right, but it's not the worst either,
Speaker 4: because at least they're building. At least homes are being built,
Speaker 4: and that is a huge problem that we just don't
Speaker 4: have enough.
Speaker 1: House massive problem. One thing that we've seen is we
Speaker 1: covered this a while back. You know, when you have
Speaker 1: these large scale landlords where it's not like mom and
Speaker 1: pop landlords are the.
Speaker 5: Most sympathetic of characters either.
Speaker 1: Let's be clear, the landlord is just in general not
Speaker 1: the most sympathetic of figures. But when you have these big, national,
Speaker 1: massive companies buying up and renting out huge proportions and
Speaker 1: taking over the rental market in various locations, they use
Speaker 1: oftentimes algorithms that they have developed to absolute maximize their profit,
Speaker 1: which of course they're going to do.
Speaker 5: That's what they're in the game to do.
Speaker 1: But oftentimes what they've discovered is it actually makes them
Speaker 1: more money to price people out of the market and
Speaker 1: charge the absolute max, even if it means some of
Speaker 1: your stock is sitting empty. It actually works out for
Speaker 1: them in the long term to charge those really higher
Speaker 1: prices than the market will actually bear. The other thing
Speaker 1: that you find is, oh, it turns out they're not
Speaker 1: great landlords because they cut costs in every way that
Speaker 1: they possibly can. So there's all these documented instances of
Speaker 1: tenants having serious issue we're talking like black mold and
Speaker 1: pipes exploding, whatever, and they do everything they possibly can
Speaker 1: to avoid having to pay for those repairs, to avoid
Speaker 1: having to do those repairs whatsoever. And this is the
Speaker 1: story of a modern economy in a lot of senses.
Speaker 1: Like the more that things become nationalized and go away
Speaker 1: from the local person that you have to look at
Speaker 1: at your kids back to school night, or the grocery
Speaker 1: store or run into in downtown or whatever, the easier
Speaker 1: it is to make those sort of decisions and feel
Speaker 1: absolutely nothing about it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and the risk is that will go to long
Speaker 4: let them buy up too much market share that then
Speaker 4: they're too big to fail and when politicians finally are
Speaker 4: pressured by people to do something about it, now it's
Speaker 4: so built, it's so locked in.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, to the Democratic Party's credit, they have
Speaker 1: several proposals of actual legislation that is meant to curb
Speaker 1: the practices of Wall Street coming in and buying up
Speaker 1: single family homes.
Speaker 5: Some of this, you know, is quite significant.
Speaker 1: I'm blinking on all of this relevant details right at
Speaker 1: the moment, but it was, you know, it was pretty
Speaker 1: significant in terms of curbing the practice. So again to
Speaker 1: the earlier discussion, like if Joe Biden wanted to actually
Speaker 1: run on.
Speaker 5: Something, this would be a good issue.
Speaker 1: Then it would put a lot of pressure on Republicans
Speaker 1: because they talk a big game about, you know, your
Speaker 1: homeowners in the housing market in you know, being more populous.
Speaker 1: But when I came down to it, like they're very
Speaker 1: much in bed with the developers.
Speaker 5: Donald Trump is a developer.
Speaker 1: So for him to you know, side against like these
Speaker 1: big Wall Street firms that he is buddies with, it
Speaker 1: would be I think it would be very difficult and
Speaker 1: put him in a tough space. And it's obviously an
Speaker 1: issue that people care a lot about.
Speaker 6: Well, What are you looking at today, Crystal.
Speaker 5: This is the reality of life today in Gaza.
Speaker 14: Such as the desperation in Gaza. We captured the moment
Speaker 14: an AID truck of mattresses was mobbed not far from
Speaker 14: the crossing where it entered fire from Hamas runs security
Speaker 14: guards frightened the crowd and not for the first time.
Speaker 14: There is little law and order. Some people have been
Speaker 14: injured and killed just trying to get the basics.
Speaker 4: We'll take you today, just for a short tour here.
Speaker 14: There's barely anything in the markets, virtually no commercial goods
Speaker 14: getting into the strip. About five hundred trucks a day
Speaker 14: used to enter to meet the needs of its people,
Speaker 14: their needs and now barely met with only around one
Speaker 14: hundred trucks a day. Rah, we are dying of hunger,
Speaker 14: poverty and everything.
Speaker 6: There's no shampoo to wash their hair.
Speaker 5: Look at what's happening to them.
Speaker 3: They have infections because of dirt and filth.
Speaker 1: Scenes of horror as humans are reduced to absolute desperation
Speaker 1: and children go hungry. Yet to Kanesset member and Likud
Speaker 1: party member Tally Gottlieb, this is right, this is good,
Speaker 1: It's exactly as it should be. In an impassioned speech,
Speaker 1: she explained per Google Translate. Without hunger and thirst among
Speaker 1: the gas and population, we will not be able to
Speaker 1: recruit collaborators, We will not be able to recruit intelligence.
Speaker 1: We will not be able to bribe people with food, drink,
Speaker 1: medicine in order to obtain intelligence. And we know that
Speaker 1: finding the abductees is a supreme and super important goal
Speaker 1: alongside the goals of fighting. Now, to be clear, this
Speaker 1: is a member of the ruling party actively celebrating and
Speaker 1: demanding starvation, dehydration and medical collapse, demanding it continue indefinitely. Obviously,
Speaker 1: this is heinously immoral. Starving millions of civilians, half of
Speaker 1: whom our children, as a war tactic is a horror
Speaker 1: and a very clear warcrime. It is unspeakably awful to
Speaker 1: imagine what these kids and parents are going through right now.
Speaker 1: I personally can't imagine the pain of a single day
Speaker 1: where I could not feed my kids. And this has
Speaker 1: been the daily help for the two point two million
Speaker 1: residents of Gaza for months now.
Speaker 5: But it isn't.
Speaker 1: Only immoral, it also fails as a war tactic. Even
Speaker 1: if you don't care about wasted kids, babies, two week
Speaker 1: to nurse mom's to malnourished to produce milk. There's a reason,
Speaker 1: after all, that Israel has failed to rescue a single hostage.
Speaker 1: Even if they were actually serious about cultivating collaborators in
Speaker 1: their hunt for Hamas, they would surge aid to the
Speaker 1: civilian population, create a rift which we Hamas and those civilians,
Speaker 1: by offering a path to peace outside of armed resistance,
Speaker 1: give them something to.
Speaker 5: Gain by cooperating.
Speaker 1: Just as in German bombings of Britain and Allied bombings
Speaker 1: of Germany, it turns out terrorizing a civilian population does
Speaker 1: not win support for those who are inflicting that catastrophic pain.
Speaker 1: Of course, hunting Hamas is not actually the primary goal
Speaker 1: of Israel's assault on Gaza. Bibie and his ILK have
Speaker 1: always found Hamas to be a useful foil and supported
Speaker 1: them for exactly this reason. October seventh did not change
Speaker 1: this fundamental dynamic. The real goal is retribution, to slack
Speaker 1: the appetite for destruction, for bib to try to cling
Speaker 1: to power, and ultimately to destroy Gaza so that Israel
Speaker 1: might succeed in convincing its US benefactors that completing their
Speaker 1: ethnic cleansing by pushing Palestinians into the Sinai desert or elsewhere,
Speaker 1: is actually a humanitarian option, since their homes, schools, mosques, hospitals,
Speaker 1: and markets have all been destroyed. In this light, imposing
Speaker 1: mass starvation on the population makes plenty of sense. Hold
Speaker 1: them hostage, denying them the basics of life's life unless
Speaker 1: they agree to quote voluntary migration. Of course, no migration
Speaker 1: is actually voluntary when you were forced to it by
Speaker 1: having your house bond and your children starved. Now, at
Speaker 1: the beginning of their assault on Gaza, Israel announced they
Speaker 1: would be imposing a medieval style siege on the whole area.
Speaker 1: Defense Minister Yoav Galant famously now infamously, I should say,
Speaker 1: announced I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip.
Speaker 1: There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel. Everything
Speaker 1: is closed. Adding we are fighting human animals and we
Speaker 1: are acting accordingly, just in case the genocidal intent was
Speaker 1: not clear from the actions. Israel, with help from Egypt,
Speaker 1: has long controlled what goes in and what comes out
Speaker 1: of the Gaza Strip and used caloric rationing in other words,
Speaker 1: hunger as a method of control. But what is unfolded
Speaker 1: over the past several months has been something else entirely.
Speaker 1: A new YUN report spells out the incredibly dire situation.
Speaker 1: Half of Gaza's population is now starfing. Ninety percent report
Speaker 1: they regularly go without eating a single meal in a day.
Speaker 1: They write that quote, Gaza risk falling into famine unless
Speaker 1: access to adequate food, clean water, health, and sanitation services
Speaker 1: is urgently restored. The entire population, about two point two
Speaker 1: million people, is suffering crisis or worse levels of food insecurity.
Speaker 1: Food is not readily available. Any food that can be
Speaker 1: found for sale is outrageously priced and completely unaffordable for
Speaker 1: nearly all. Going out to search for food means risking
Speaker 1: your life. Only one out of twenty five World Food
Speaker 1: Program contract a Baker's remains in operation. Israel has raised
Speaker 1: farmland and destroyed orchards, meaning that even without the threat
Speaker 1: of bombings, the strip has no ability to generate its
Speaker 1: own food. Aid workers have been targeted in Israeli attacks.
Speaker 1: More had been killed in this war than in any
Speaker 1: other war in the history of the UN. Isaac Chotner
Speaker 1: actually just interviewed r. Of Hussein, he's chief economist of
Speaker 1: the UN's World Food Program, and he put the crisis
Speaker 1: in blunt terms. Quote, I have been doing this for
Speaker 1: the past two decades. I've been to all kinds of conflicts,
Speaker 1: all kinds of crises, and for me, this is unprecedented
Speaker 1: because of one, the magnitude the scale the entire population
Speaker 1: of a particular place, second the severity, and third the
Speaker 1: speed at which this is happening. At which this has
Speaker 1: unfolded is unprecedented in my life. I've never seen anything
Speaker 1: like this in terms of severity, in terms of scale,
Speaker 1: and then in terms of speed. He went on to
Speaker 1: attempt to put in context how the starvation in Gaza
Speaker 1: compares to the starvation that is occurring in the rest
Speaker 1: of the world. He says, if you look globally worldwide
Speaker 1: right now, they are about one hundred and twenty nine
Speaker 1: thousand people who are in IPC Phase five, meaning a
Speaker 1: catastrophic type of hunger one hundred and twenty nine thousand.
Speaker 1: In Gaza, there are five hundred and seventy seven thousand.
Speaker 1: That means eighty percent of the people four on and
Speaker 1: five people in famine or a catastrophic type of hunger
Speaker 1: are in Gaza right now. This is also what makes
Speaker 1: it unprecedented.
Speaker 5: Now.
Speaker 1: According to Tally Gottlieb, who we heard from earlier. This
Speaker 1: is to be celebrated, to be encouraged, the terror, the
Speaker 1: hunger pains, the disease that feast on wasted bodies and
Speaker 1: compromise immune systems. But make no mistake, although Biden may
Speaker 1: not come out and say such brazenly horrifying things, he
Speaker 1: is actually a much bigger monster than Tally Gottlieb. By
Speaker 1: blocking a ceasefire, shipping the weapons that blows up those bakeries,
Speaker 1: providing bebe diplomatic cover to continue this assault, Joe Biden
Speaker 1: is directly architecting this famine, keeping food from the mouths
Speaker 1: of babies by the hundreds of thousands. I guess at
Speaker 1: least Tally is being honest in her depraved in humanity.
Speaker 1: And Ryan, this is something you have pointed out from
Speaker 1: the beginning. Thank you guys much for watching a Ryan.
Speaker 1: It was really nice to host the show with you.
Speaker 1: I really enjoy This was a first. I think we're
Speaker 1: trying to remember, even going back to Rising days, whether
Speaker 1: we'd ever hosted before because Ryan usually fills in for me,
Speaker 1: but we decided to do a little mix and match
Speaker 1: this weekend. I'm glad that we did a good time
Speaker 1: to do this again. Indeed, all right, guys, have a
Speaker 1: great weekend. We'll have some content posting for you over
Speaker 1: the weekend as well, and we will be back with.
Speaker 5: A normal show schedule.
Speaker 1: And you know, plans are to have Soccer back in
Speaker 1: his chair next week as well, so we'll see you then.
Speaker 6: Actually, not really a good time, but glad we did
Speaker 6: it anyway.
Speaker 5: Indeed, indeed, see you guys soon.