Speaker 1: Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here,
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Speaker 3: Good morning, and welcome to Counterpoints. We have an amazing
Speaker 3: show today, don't we.
Speaker 4: You're talking so quickly.
Speaker 3: Amazing.
Speaker 4: It's an amazing bug.
Speaker 5: Oh wow, indeed we do. I think that's my cue card.
Speaker 5: It's like SNL, I need to look at the mugs
Speaker 5: for my line. We do, though, in fact, have a
Speaker 5: big show today, Bryan. Lots of news obviously to cover
Speaker 5: out of the Middle East. We have election results from
Speaker 5: last night. I'm very curious to get your take on
Speaker 5: some of the election results actually out of Wisconsin. Interesting
Speaker 5: stuff there. John Stewart hosted Lena Kahn on the Daily Show,
Speaker 5: and man, was it a fascinating conversation. Actually gets into
Speaker 5: some of the reasons in fact that the DOJ filed
Speaker 5: an anti trust suit against Apple just recently. We're going
Speaker 5: to be talking about an absolutely wild segment on the
Speaker 5: view that is probably the most evergreen way to put it.
Speaker 5: We could say that every single week and.
Speaker 4: Come up with some clip.
Speaker 6: They asked the question, are you better off than you
Speaker 6: were four years ago? We'll get Emily to answer that.
Speaker 6: We'll find out, Yeah, we'll.
Speaker 5: Get Annotabaro's take as well for just how the wealthy
Speaker 5: Manhattan dwellers are doing versus four years ago. Ryan, you
Speaker 5: ran a Twitter pool that we're going to talk about
Speaker 5: on the renaming of Dallas Airport, which is a Republican
Speaker 5: led effort.
Speaker 6: House Republicans want us to have instead of a Dulles
Speaker 6: and Reagan Airport here in DC and Thurgood Marshall over
Speaker 6: in Baltimore, they want us to have a Trump and
Speaker 6: a Reagan Airport. We're going to find out if that's
Speaker 6: actually better than Dulles.
Speaker 4: Right, it's important to move beyond.
Speaker 3: The Cold War, I guess so.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And you're gonna lead us on a segment about
Speaker 5: Harry Dunn, who some people may remember from the fall
Speaker 5: out after January sixth. The hearing is the investigations. He
Speaker 5: was a central figure and all of that.
Speaker 6: Yeah, he's now running for Congress in Maryland and bizarrely
Speaker 6: Apec could end up being his biggest obstacle to get
Speaker 6: into Congress.
Speaker 3: We're going to talk about that. It's bizarre story.
Speaker 4: And we have a good guest.
Speaker 6: Yes, I'm Ed Cohn who has been on the show before.
Speaker 6: He's been on my podcast, Deconstructed. Leads relief efforts around
Speaker 6: the world everywhere from Syria to Rwanda, to Ukraine to Gaza.
Speaker 6: He's in Cyprus now and he's going to talk about
Speaker 6: what it's like, you know, trying to get relief supplies
Speaker 6: into Gaza given the fact that the Israeli military appeers
Speaker 6: willing to go to extraordinary lengths to make sure that
Speaker 6: this near famine tips into a famine by attacking aid
Speaker 6: workers as we saw on Monday.
Speaker 7: And that's it.
Speaker 3: That's where we can start today.
Speaker 5: Yeah, we might as well start right there. In fact,
Speaker 5: we can put this map on the screen. Ryan, Can
Speaker 5: you walk us through what we're looking at with a one?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 6: So this is the convoy that by now infamous convoy
Speaker 6: that I'm sure if you're watching you have heard of this.
Speaker 6: This was the World Central Kitchens effort to move hundreds
Speaker 6: of tons from Cyprus into Gaza into the kitchens that
Speaker 6: were gradually kind of replacing the work that UNRA had
Speaker 6: been doing and has been hobbled from doing. Let's not
Speaker 6: even get into that situation right now, but it goes
Speaker 6: to I think intent, the whack a mole effort that
Speaker 6: the world is making to kind of get aid in
Speaker 6: continues to meet the hammer of Israeli opposition to simply
Speaker 6: feeding the Palestinian population.
Speaker 3: So the three.
Speaker 6: The three cars that you saw on that map there
Speaker 6: represent the places where each of them were struck. And
Speaker 6: we now know from reporting by Aretz, al Jazeera and
Speaker 6: others that the first car was struck and at that
Speaker 6: time the wounded in that vehicle were taken to the
Speaker 6: second vehicle, and the w ck workers had enough time
Speaker 6: to call their superiors because they had been in coordination
Speaker 6: with the IDF and so at first, and these are
Speaker 6: the biggest, most good hearted people on the planet, the
Speaker 6: fact that they're dedicating their lives to humanitarian relief efforts,
Speaker 6: so it's very hard for them, I think, to believe
Speaker 6: at first that they're being targeted by the IDF. So
Speaker 6: they're calling, they're cooperating, they are constantly cooperating with the
Speaker 6: idea of telling them what route they're in, et cetera.
Speaker 6: And so they call their superiors, tell them call it off,
Speaker 6: call it off, We're getting struck. They then strike the
Speaker 6: second vehicle. The wounded that are still able to be
Speaker 6: moved to the third vehicle are moved, and then the
Speaker 6: drone strikes the third vehicle.
Speaker 3: And so.
Speaker 6: The images that everybody has seen has shown the logo
Speaker 6: World Central Kitchen on the top. So they're there's just
Speaker 6: no credible way that anybody could say that this was
Speaker 6: anything other than deliberate. Now, how Reetz reported that the
Speaker 6: idea of initial explanation was that the drone operators believed
Speaker 6: that they saw an armed person on the convoy when
Speaker 6: it went into the warehouse, but they did not see
Speaker 6: that armed person when they left the warehouse. Now we
Speaker 6: know that three security people, I think, one from Ireland,
Speaker 6: one from Britain, one from somewhere else died in this attack.
Speaker 6: So the idea just pause on that for a second.
Speaker 6: So they think that they see a convoy that they
Speaker 6: know is a World Central Kitchen convoy.
Speaker 3: And they just left.
Speaker 5: These just left.
Speaker 6: The warehouse and on the way in they thought they
Speaker 6: saw a person with a weapon. They don't see that
Speaker 6: person with the weapon on the convoy, but let's say
Speaker 6: they did.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 6: First of all, why would a convoy not have a
Speaker 6: person with a weapon going through a dangerous.
Speaker 3: Area a war zone.
Speaker 6: So second, what that's saying is that their rules of
Speaker 6: engagement suggest that if they suspect that there's a single
Speaker 6: let's say even a terrorist, a single Hamas fighter within
Speaker 6: this convoy, that their rules of engagement allow them to
Speaker 6: light up the entire convoy and methodically chase the victims
Speaker 6: from one vehicle to another until they're all killed.
Speaker 3: That's their own explanation.
Speaker 5: Except their premise, right, if you accept their right, yes,
Speaker 5: you know exactly. And I don't think the israel government
Speaker 5: has commented on this yet, but Israeli media has reported
Speaker 5: that yes, there's a suspected militant embedded with the convoy.
Speaker 5: We don't know exactly what their explanation is, but if
Speaker 5: you take their premise at face value, it's still outrageous.
Speaker 6: Right, and it is incredible they would think that an
Speaker 6: armed person with a convoy with armored cars.
Speaker 3: And everything is a militant.
Speaker 6: Is a millet like maybe it's the Irish guy they
Speaker 6: hired to do security.
Speaker 5: And you've you've made this point before that you know
Speaker 5: when you're part of the big challenge if you are
Speaker 5: the IDF, and let's say again, in a hypothetical world,
Speaker 5: do you want to prosecute the most ethical war to
Speaker 5: the extent that's not an oxymoron, you want to prosecute
Speaker 5: the most ethical war possible. The fact that Hamas is
Speaker 5: essentially the de facto government of the Gaza strip it
Speaker 5: makes it incredibly difficult.
Speaker 4: There's no question about that.
Speaker 6: The infrastructure, anybody's doing security, it's going to be like
Speaker 6: a Hamas linked police force.
Speaker 5: Absolutely. That's like one of the things with.
Speaker 6: The unroduct that would not excuse killing a bunch of
Speaker 6: AID workers that.
Speaker 5: Were with them, exactly, And that's one of the big
Speaker 5: challenges in the unroad debate. Jose Andres sub Amaru made
Speaker 5: a really good point about this. Jose Andres was furious
Speaker 5: at the Spanish government for not being sort of supportive
Speaker 5: enough of Israel after October seventh. This is Jose Andres
Speaker 5: is nonprofit World's central Kitchen, as many people know, that's
Speaker 5: doing the aid work that was destroyed, that was killed.
Speaker 5: So I mean it's just again, it's horrible.
Speaker 6: Right, and so that's why you have we can put
Speaker 6: up this next element. Here's fran Albinizi un special Rappidoire saying,
Speaker 6: knowing how Israel operates, my assessment is that Israeli forces
Speaker 6: intentionally killed World Central kitchen workers so that donors would
Speaker 6: pull out and civilians and Gaza could continue to be starved. Quietly,
Speaker 6: Israel knows Western countries and most Arab countries won't move
Speaker 6: a finger for the Palestinians. So let's see how John
Speaker 6: Kirby responded at the White House yesterday. By the way,
Speaker 6: the State Department canceled its briefing a rare occurrence, and
Speaker 6: then they were like, let's let John Kirby just handle
Speaker 6: this one. So let's see how John Kirby handled this one.
Speaker 8: Is fighting a missile of people who have been food
Speaker 8: and killing them, not a violation of international humanitarian law.
Speaker 7: Well, and Israelis have already admitted that this was a
Speaker 7: mistake that they made. They're doing investigation, they'll get to
Speaker 7: the bottom of this. Let's not get ahead of that.
Speaker 7: Your question presumes at this very early hour that it
Speaker 7: was a deliberate strike, that they knew exactly what they
Speaker 7: were hitting, that they were hitting aid workers and did
Speaker 7: it on purpose, and there's no evidence of that. I
Speaker 7: would also remind.
Speaker 5: You, sir, that we continue to look at incidents as
Speaker 5: they occur.
Speaker 7: The State Department has a process in place, and to date,
Speaker 7: as you and I are speaking, they have not found
Speaker 7: any incidents where the Israelis have violated international humanitarian law.
Speaker 7: Unless you think we don't take it seriously, I can
Speaker 7: assure you that we do.
Speaker 5: We look at this in real time.
Speaker 8: I have never violated the international humanitarian law effort in
Speaker 8: the past five to six months.
Speaker 7: I'm telling you the State Department has looked at incidents
Speaker 7: in the past and has yet to determine that any
Speaker 7: of those incidents violate international humanitarian law.
Speaker 6: It really raises the question of what the point of
Speaker 6: international humanitarian law is. If that's true, you could kill hundreds,
Speaker 6: more than two hundred aid workers, more than one hundred journalists,
Speaker 6: hundreds of nurses and doctors, leave a population of two
Speaker 6: point three million displaced and their homes in rubble, and
Speaker 6: not violate international law. But I wanted to play unless
Speaker 6: unless you have a respond So this other one another
Speaker 6: another Kirby clip. So notice his body language there. Notice
Speaker 6: how animated he was in defense of Israel. There at
Speaker 6: the top of the press briefing. He was kind of
Speaker 6: forced to read a statement that was critical of Israel,
Speaker 6: and I want you to notice the difference in the
Speaker 6: body language when he's kind of forced to be critical
Speaker 6: and when he's voluntarily defending them. There's only one moment
Speaker 6: that he gets animated in this clip that we're about
Speaker 6: to play, and it's when he thinks he's going to
Speaker 6: be about to pivot into a defense of Israel. But
Speaker 6: then he realized he's not, realizes he's not and goes
Speaker 6: back into kind of a mumbling, kind of forced, almost
Speaker 6: like hostage like reading of criticism of Israel. Here's Kirby
Speaker 6: at the top of that briefing.
Speaker 5: We understand it.
Speaker 7: A preliminary investigation has been completed today and presented to.
Speaker 5: The Army Chief of Staff and Will.
Speaker 7: We'll obviously look to see what they what they discover
Speaker 7: in this preliminary one, but we expect they brought her
Speaker 7: investation to be conducted and to be done so in
Speaker 7: a swift and comprehensive manner. We hope that those findings
Speaker 7: will be made public and that there is appropriate accountability held.
Speaker 9: But I'm sorry.
Speaker 7: More than two hundred AID workers have been killed in
Speaker 7: this conflict, making it one of the worst for AID
Speaker 7: workers in recent history. This incident is emblematic of a
Speaker 7: larger problem and evidence of why distribution of aid in
Speaker 7: Gaza has been so challenging. But what beyond the strike,
Speaker 7: what is clear is that the IDF must do much more,
Speaker 7: much must do much more to improve deconfliction processes so
Speaker 7: that civilians and humanitarian aid workers are protected. The US
Speaker 7: will continue to press Israel to do more as well
Speaker 7: to ensure the safety of humanitarian workers, and will continue
Speaker 7: to do all we can to deliver this assistance to
Speaker 7: Palestinian civilians in Gaza.
Speaker 9: Thank you, Thanks John.
Speaker 10: Do you have any worries regarding Israel and Gaza about
Speaker 10: the floating dock and how can aid workers be protected?
Speaker 7: Worried?
Speaker 5: What do you mean by worries? Hmm?
Speaker 3: What even say to that?
Speaker 5: That was his scripted If you were listening to this,
Speaker 5: that was the scriptive remarks portion of his appearance at
Speaker 5: yesterday's White House briefing. That wasn't during Q and A.
Speaker 5: He actually moved to Q and A right after.
Speaker 3: That you may have the first question, do you have
Speaker 3: any worries? Worries or worries? Goes back into his flip routine.
Speaker 6: Let unless you think we're being unfair to Kirby, Uh,
Speaker 6: Let's let's go to Barack Revid, who is a reporter
Speaker 6: for Axios. UH former formerly served in the Israeli military.
Speaker 6: So we're not talking about somebody who is, you know,
Speaker 6: some kind of radical Hamas supporter here. So let's let's
Speaker 6: get barakra VID's analysis of this on CNN.
Speaker 11: The movement of this convoy was coordinated with the IDEF.
Speaker 11: This convoy moved on a road that is a humanitarian
Speaker 11: corridor that the IDEF knows that that cars that are
Speaker 11: driving on this road are carrying you minitarian aid. The
Speaker 11: IDF is a partner of the World Central Kitchen in
Speaker 11: its work in Gaza. It gives security to the boat
Speaker 11: that is coming from Cyprus and delivering the eight It's
Speaker 11: not some rogue group that started delivering aid in Gaza.
Speaker 9: It was all coordinated.
Speaker 11: And this is why the claim that this was quote
Speaker 11: unquote unintentional raises a.
Speaker 9: Lot of questions.
Speaker 6: Yeah, to go back to Kirby's point, his claim that
Speaker 6: there's no evidence that Israel knew that this was an
Speaker 6: AID convoy.
Speaker 3: Is a lie.
Speaker 6: Like I don't use the word lie often with these
Speaker 6: spokespeople because usually they're usually they're gas lighting, they're spinning
Speaker 6: their bsing, you know, and they're tethered somewhat to like
Speaker 6: a little piece of the truth.
Speaker 5: Their job is to be very clever and avoiding a lie.
Speaker 6: There is lots of evidence that they knew this was
Speaker 6: a convoy, like A, the fact that the convoy was
Speaker 6: communicating with the Idea like B, the fact that it
Speaker 6: said World Central Kitchen on the rooftops, see that Haretz
Speaker 6: has reported. They knew it was a convoy, but they
Speaker 6: thought there was a militant associated with it. So just
Speaker 6: a flat out disgusting lie to cover up a war crime.
Speaker 5: And so net Yahoo responded, and we can play the
Speaker 5: video of that. This is if you're watching, you see
Speaker 5: Yaho's response and the translation is here. Unfortunately, a tragic
Speaker 5: instance of our forces unintentionally harming innocent people in the
Speaker 5: Gaza strip.
Speaker 4: It happens in war.
Speaker 5: Will investigate it. We're in contact with the governments, and
Speaker 5: we will do everything so that it doesn't happen again.
Speaker 6: Just so we can be as perfectly fair as we
Speaker 6: can to Netanyahu in this clip, in the first half,
Speaker 6: he's talking about how he himself has left the hospital
Speaker 6: and has recovered from his procedure that he that he underwent.
Speaker 6: He thanks the people in that cared for him. And
Speaker 6: then the second half he transitions to talking about this
Speaker 6: tragic incident. He says, this is war, but will will
Speaker 6: investigate it. And people have slammed him for, you know,
Speaker 6: the kind of joyfulness with which he's delivering this message,
Speaker 6: and it's understandable to talk about the joy of you know,
Speaker 6: thanking those who treated you.
Speaker 3: But he's he remains.
Speaker 6: That that effort vescence kind of remains as he continues
Speaker 6: to talk about the tragedy and that this is this
Speaker 6: is war and we're going to investigate this. He doesn't quite.
Speaker 6: He doesn't. There's no there's no there's no solemnity, uh.
Speaker 6: There there's no there's no suggestion in the body language
Speaker 6: that there's any disappointment or sadness uh from the Israeli
Speaker 6: leadership that this has happened. Because the if, if the
Speaker 6: intention was to tighten the grip of starvation on the population,
Speaker 6: it's working like a charm.
Speaker 5: I think it's also worth mentioning a Jerusalem Post headline.
Speaker 5: This is from earlier this week, friendly fire idea of
Speaker 5: helicopter pilot shot at Israeli soldiers after pressing wrong button.
Speaker 5: It's not just again, this is like if.
Speaker 6: You are a stop seentic weapons. I think to these
Speaker 6: this army, this military And.
Speaker 5: John Kirby, he had a quote where you said the
Speaker 5: IDF must do much more, and that was in reference
Speaker 5: to protecting civilians and aid workers, and it's ryan. It
Speaker 5: is interesting to have the American government in a defense
Speaker 5: of Israel saying that actually the IDEF must do quote
Speaker 5: much more, not some more, not more, much more to
Speaker 5: defend civilians and aid workers, while at the same time
Speaker 5: maintaining the posture that you just mentioned that that's a
Speaker 5: really really difficult.
Speaker 6: Position, right, And if you're Israel, why would you if
Speaker 6: your goal is to ethnically cleanse the Palestinian population from
Speaker 6: Gaza and the United States is willing to arm you
Speaker 6: no matter what you do, Like why would you not
Speaker 6: kill aid workers, kill healthcare workers, like attack every hospital
Speaker 6: in Gozen, make the place unlivable and expect that the
Speaker 6: American government will continue to support you all the way.
Speaker 5: So this is what's especially like for net and Yahoo,
Speaker 5: that question of what comes next, like day after, what
Speaker 5: do you actually want to do with a Gaza strip.
Speaker 5: That's why all of this continues to be an untenable
Speaker 5: and position period because they don't know what they have
Speaker 5: no agreement consensus at all on what comes next. There
Speaker 5: are people that don't want to take any control of
Speaker 5: the Gaza Strip in Israel, that don't want that to happen.
Speaker 5: There are people who very very very much do and
Speaker 5: don't want to give up an inch of it, want
Speaker 5: every last inch of the Gaza Strip back under Israeli control,
Speaker 5: whatever it is. So that's how the war ends up
Speaker 5: being prosecuted in just an utterly bizarre and tragic way.
Speaker 6: And what predictably came next is we can roll this clip.
Speaker 6: Relative to the AID shipments, this.
Speaker 12: Is about the killing of seven AID workers in the
Speaker 12: Gaza Strip with World Central Kitchen, the charity. We're now
Speaker 12: hearing from Cyprus that the AID ships that have been
Speaker 12: traveling from Cyprus into Gaza. Of course, this was a
Speaker 12: big development for those in Gaza that the AID was
Speaker 12: able to come in that way. AIG ships are now
Speaker 12: being turned around still carrying aid. Two hundred and forty
Speaker 12: tons of undelivered AID is now heading back to Cyprus
Speaker 12: because of this attack on a car killing seven AID workers,
Speaker 12: because the charity obviously unloading the ship and distributing that
Speaker 12: aid in Gaza. World Central Kitchen, one of those charities involved,
Speaker 12: has now suspended its operations because of this apparent Israeli.
Speaker 6: S stripe, and so the UAE has also suspended AID operations,
Speaker 6: saying that it can't keep it can't guarantee that its
Speaker 6: personnel won't be killed by Israel. ANERA has paused its
Speaker 6: relief efforts, The World Center of Kitchen pause its relief efforts.
Speaker 6: ENRA has been banned by Congress and President Biden from
Speaker 6: getting any from the United States, and Israel has banned
Speaker 6: from operating in northern Gaza. The predictable and intended consequence
Speaker 6: will be a rapidly expanding number of deaths bymount nutrition
Speaker 6: and starvation and disease.
Speaker 5: And again this brings us back to the questions before
Speaker 5: we move on of you know, if this is if
Speaker 5: Israel wants to admit that it's engaged in total war,
Speaker 5: that's the if that's your tactic, If that's your strategy.
Speaker 4: They are not owning up to it, and I.
Speaker 3: Know, the most moral army in the world.
Speaker 5: It's partially because there's disagreement in their own ranks and
Speaker 5: there's disagreement with the United States, which is funding it.
Speaker 5: To the tune of like we've heard so many people
Speaker 5: in the Israel government say, we could not continue the
Speaker 5: war without the unconditional support basically of the United States.
Speaker 5: The United States is attempting to kind of condition it
Speaker 5: with gentle guidance from the White House. Hey, let's, you know,
Speaker 5: pull back on killing AID workers, and that's where you
Speaker 5: end up. So it's like, not only is it awful
Speaker 5: and tragic, it's also just glaringly dishonest and disorganized. The
Speaker 5: level of like incompetence when you have a helicopter firing
Speaker 5: on their own soldiers, I mean, it's just and.
Speaker 6: If the if the AID community believed that it was
Speaker 6: a fluke kind of tragic accident, they would not be
Speaker 6: withdrawing all of their personnel from this situation.
Speaker 3: Like their their blunt reaction to this, Yeah.
Speaker 6: That's true, shows that they believe that this is deliberate.
Speaker 5: As Barack Revied wrote in that Axios article, the Amoradi's
Speaker 5: handled much of the coordination with the Israeli government for
Speaker 5: the humanitarian mission, which has delivered tons of supplies to
Speaker 5: the enclave Viership from Cyprus over the past few weeks.
Speaker 5: So the emioradis backing out. Is it's not just you know,
Speaker 5: some random country that said no, I mean, there's a
Speaker 5: huge component.
Speaker 6: Yeah, And they're the ones that Israel's always thinking is
Speaker 6: going to bail them out in the end, like, oh, well,
Speaker 6: who's going to reconstruct this after we've destroyed it? Oh,
Speaker 6: we'll get the Amoradis in Saudis to do that. You know,
Speaker 6: you've got Sullivan meeting with the Saudis now, pushing this
Speaker 6: delusional fantasy that they're going to come to some mega
Speaker 6: deal that involves Israeli normalization without without any progress toward
Speaker 6: resolving the question of the Palestinians, beyond simply annihilating them all.
Speaker 5: Rent, here's some interesting actually reports with about the press. Actually,
Speaker 5: so this is net and Yahoo. We can go to
Speaker 5: this is eight net and Yahoo again. This is translated
Speaker 5: by Google said al Jazeera, this is a tweet harmed Israeli.
Speaker 5: Israel security actively participated in the October seventh massacre and
Speaker 5: exided against IDF students soldiers. It is time to remove
Speaker 5: the soho far of Hamas from our country. The terrorist
Speaker 5: channel Al Jazira no longer broadcast from Israel.
Speaker 4: I intend to act immediately in.
Speaker 5: Accordance with the new law to stop the channel's activity. Ryan,
Speaker 5: you know whatever I mean, It's true. Al Jazeera is
Speaker 5: absolutely an arm of the Katari government. There's no question
Speaker 5: about it.
Speaker 3: Funded by the Katari government. R.
Speaker 13: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Absolutely, And that doesn't mean I mean I actually read
Speaker 5: Al Jazeera a lot throughout this conflict.
Speaker 4: I found it fairly helpful.
Speaker 5: It's somewhat interesting that NETANYAHUU is just now cracking down
Speaker 5: on Al Jazeer because it kind of gets to what
Speaker 5: we were just talking to talking about and how Israel
Speaker 5: wants to sort of maintain the moral high ground and
Speaker 5: puts a lot of effort into even just naturally the
Speaker 5: propaganda of maintaining the moral high ground. I can't believe
Speaker 5: they allowed Aljazeera actually to operate in Israel this long
Speaker 5: to be honest.
Speaker 6: Well, Israel wants normal relations with the wealthy golf countries. Yeah,
Speaker 6: and so just banning one of the most popular news
Speaker 6: channels in the world is a step is a step
Speaker 6: against that. Israel has already basically made it impossible for
Speaker 6: Western media to operate inside Gossa. Al Jazeera is to
Speaker 6: the extent that it's it is a Western news out
Speaker 6: in the sense that people in the West are familiar
Speaker 6: with it. People in the West go on it. It
Speaker 6: has it has an office here in Washington, d C.
Speaker 6: You know, it's it's it's kind of a known quantity
Speaker 6: in the way that some other kind of Middle Eastern
Speaker 6: news news networks aren't. And so Al Jazeer was really
Speaker 6: the only well resourced news outlet with that was watched
Speaker 6: by Westerners in Gaza. And now the CONEZA has passed
Speaker 6: this law and you know who saying is going to
Speaker 6: enforce it, that's gonna aband them. It's not entirely clear
Speaker 6: how that affects their ability to operate inside Gaza.
Speaker 13: Uh.
Speaker 6: Al Jazeera reporters do coordinate with the I d F
Speaker 6: when they're going to go, you know, to different areas.
Speaker 6: Sometimes that coordination UH has led to them being killed
Speaker 6: as the intercept we've we've reported on on some of
Speaker 6: that and that, and the id F has then also
Speaker 6: you know, dragged its feet in allowing kind of rescue
Speaker 6: personnel to get to in the case of the Al
Speaker 6: Jazeera cameraman and reporter that died back after December. Back
Speaker 6: in December, does this mean that Israel will now consider
Speaker 6: it all Al Jazeera correspondence kind of like fair game
Speaker 6: in their in their kill zones in Gaza.
Speaker 3: I've reached out to Aljazeera.
Speaker 6: I don't have an answer back on what they understand
Speaker 6: the new laws effectively, But people who have not been
Speaker 6: following this clothes you might not realize that Israel, which
Speaker 6: continues to call itself, you know, the only democracy in
Speaker 6: the Middle East has some of the h has has
Speaker 6: censorship laws that are as aggressive as anywhere in the world.
Speaker 6: Like you can be arrested for reading different news outlets,
Speaker 6: but you can go to jail for reading different telegram channels,
Speaker 6: for commenting or liking or even just being subscribed to
Speaker 6: a particular channel anything. And that's what what they describe
Speaker 6: as kind of terrorist sympathizing or terrorist supporting. But they
Speaker 6: consider anything basically affiliated with Palestinians to be terrorist sympathizing.
Speaker 5: It's absolutely also true that Cutter has housed some hamas leadership.
Speaker 3: Well they do. That's where the negotiations are happening.
Speaker 5: Yeah, right, but even before I mean that you had
Speaker 5: Hummas leadership.
Speaker 6: The Taliban's there, like Cutter is like the Switzerland of
Speaker 6: the Middle East. When there's a crisis, that's everybody goes
Speaker 6: to Doha. And like the US begged actually Doha to
Speaker 6: allow the Taliban, for instance, to have its headquarters there
Speaker 6: so that we could negotiate with Taliban, like you need
Speaker 6: somewhere for that to happen, and so Kutter has been
Speaker 6: the country that's been willing to do that. It also
Speaker 6: has a base of ten thousand American troops, so it's
Speaker 6: not as if it's like a just a nest of terrorists.
Speaker 5: It's exactly what well.
Speaker 3: Actually it is a American once.
Speaker 5: Yes, so the Israeli law interestingly, and again they're making
Speaker 5: this argument that it al Jazeerra poses a significant threat
Speaker 5: to state security, and it's just I don't want to
Speaker 5: bring TikTok into this, but it does sort of echo
Speaker 5: some of the conversations about obviously they're involved in a
Speaker 5: hot war and we're sort of involved in a cold
Speaker 5: war with China. But yes, cracking down on speech when
Speaker 5: conflict boils to the surface, is.
Speaker 4: You understand from.
Speaker 5: The perspective of security, why yeah, oh sure, free speech
Speaker 5: is harmful to security. You obviously have to have red lines.
Speaker 6: And to show that this is really not about who's
Speaker 6: funding it, and it's about what they're saying. We can
Speaker 6: look at this Channel thirteen report that aired yesterday, absolutely
Speaker 6: unhinged and hysterical. So if you want to read it,
Speaker 6: you can read the translation of it here. This is
Speaker 6: a Hebrew language report about a young reporter named Eunice
Speaker 6: to Rawi, who if you are following this conflict.
Speaker 3: You have problems his work.
Speaker 6: He and others have done absolutely essential work of just
Speaker 6: following IDF soldiers, tiktoks and other social media accounts and
Speaker 6: finding the evidence of war crimes that they post themselves
Speaker 6: and then reposting that but taking it out of the
Speaker 6: context of them bragging about it to their friends. So
Speaker 6: they did this long investigative report naming this guy, essentially
Speaker 6: trying to put a target on his back. And what's
Speaker 6: amazing about the report, and you can find it on
Speaker 6: Unic's Twitter account, is that they don't identify a single
Speaker 6: fact that he got wrong. Ever, like, no, you would
Speaker 6: think that, okay, because he's done dozens and dozens of
Speaker 6: these at this point, most of the ones that you've
Speaker 6: probably seen, these tiktoks of them wearing women's underwear or
Speaker 6: blowing up a mosque, or riding around in little bicycles
Speaker 6: or grabbing a trophy, or as the one we just showed,
Speaker 6: the French National admitting to having just tortured to detain
Speaker 6: eee like.
Speaker 3: Those those are those are his?
Speaker 6: You would you would think that there'd be one case
Speaker 6: of mistaken identity or something that an entire investigative news
Speaker 6: outfit at Channel thirteen could find to kind of undermine
Speaker 6: his work.
Speaker 3: They found nothing.
Speaker 6: Instead, what they found are IDF soldiers who say that
Speaker 6: they have been bullied as a result of him posting
Speaker 6: the evidence of their either war crimes or despicable behavior,
Speaker 6: because what they quibble a lot with the definition of
Speaker 6: what a war crime is. Fine, call the like parading
Speaker 6: around in the in the panies of you know, a
Speaker 6: displaced person. Call it despicable, they call it. Call it
Speaker 6: whatever you want, and we can play this the second part. Here,
Speaker 6: here's the here's the French National complaining, says, complaining that
Speaker 6: like his his his mission of torture is now causing
Speaker 6: people like to say mean things to him online online.
Speaker 6: I'm being threatened with all sorts of lawsuits and an
Speaker 6: international court, but I know it's one big bs. They
Speaker 6: marked my nephew who lives in France and his family
Speaker 6: because it's easy to turn.
Speaker 3: The hate towards him.
Speaker 6: Now, I'd say, look, leave his nephew alone, leave his
Speaker 6: family alone. But this soldier himself to be complaining that
Speaker 6: he's now potentially facing prosecution in the international Criminal court
Speaker 6: or prosecution back in France because Unice exposed his admission
Speaker 6: of torture. And also, all units did is take a
Speaker 6: public post and share it elsewhere, like the French national
Speaker 6: with the IDF is the one who decided to commit
Speaker 6: torture and then post about it, or if he didn't
Speaker 6: torture the guy, he then lied about having just tortured
Speaker 6: somebody on his own social media.
Speaker 3: And so.
Speaker 6: I think what this shows is that yes, they don't
Speaker 6: like Al Jazeera, but it's not because of how Al
Speaker 6: Jazera is financed.
Speaker 3: Unus is not getting cutter funding.
Speaker 6: He's just He's just a guy who's good at using
Speaker 6: social media and has been dedicated in an impressive way
Speaker 6: to this craft. I've I've worked with him in the past.
Speaker 6: We've we've worked on some stories together. We haven't ended
Speaker 6: up publishing any yet. Over at the intercept that I
Speaker 6: hope we do. He's done, He's done incredible work, and
Speaker 6: as a journalist, I think we all need to stand
Speaker 6: by him and condemn these uh, these this type of
Speaker 6: Channel thirteen threat unless they've got something like they have,
Speaker 6: they have nothing if they if they said, okay, this
Speaker 6: reporting was flawed in these ways, then fine. But to
Speaker 6: say it's unfair that because of unice AS reporting, the
Speaker 6: International Criminal Court is looking into this French national Yeah,
Speaker 6: that's you know, your consequences actions meaning your consequences or whatever.
Speaker 5: Yeah, to your point about Al Jazeera, I mean, I
Speaker 5: think they may genuinely care about the source of funding,
Speaker 5: but it seems as though the priority is cracking down
Speaker 5: basically ran on dissent like it's a it's a question
Speaker 5: of and again, like like I said before, yes, from
Speaker 5: a security pure security perspective, speech and reporting and journalism
Speaker 5: is sure. It's a threat to security. Right, that's you know,
Speaker 5: what we have though, are in democracy is red lines
Speaker 5: that protect your ability to speak, even if so that
Speaker 5: it doesn't allow for fascist total control of everything, and so, yeah,
Speaker 5: huge concern. It'll be interesting when John kirbyes to answer
Speaker 5: questions about that going forward. I think the White House,
Speaker 5: I think Matt Miller actually said basically, they support freedom
Speaker 5: of the press, and basically the implication was that they
Speaker 5: don't support cracking down on al Jazierra from Israel's point.
Speaker 3: Back here in the.
Speaker 6: United States, at least voters have a way to express
Speaker 6: their anger.
Speaker 3: That's a good what's going on here?
Speaker 6: So Hillary Clinton appeared on a late night program to
Speaker 6: talk about the way that here in the US, the
Speaker 6: world cradle of democracy, we have a way to work
Speaker 6: through these very complex issues.
Speaker 3: Let's let's roll Hillary here. It's Biden versus Trump. We
Speaker 3: know that is it is.
Speaker 4: What do you say to voters who are upset that
Speaker 4: those are the two choices?
Speaker 14: Get over yourself, those are the two choices, right, and yeah,
Speaker 14: you know, it's kind of like one is old and
Speaker 14: effective and compassionate, has a heart and really cares about people,
Speaker 14: and one is old and has been charged with ninety
Speaker 14: one felonies.
Speaker 4: Yeah, okay, I.
Speaker 14: Don't I don't understand why this is even a hard choice.
Speaker 5: Really, I don't understand it.
Speaker 14: But we have to go through the election and hopefully
Speaker 14: people will realize what's at stake, because it's an existential
Speaker 14: question what kind of country we're going to have, what
Speaker 14: kind of democracy we're going to have, And people who
Speaker 14: blow that off are not paying attention because it's not
Speaker 14: like Trump has an his empowerers, his allies are not
Speaker 14: telling us what they want to do. I mean, they're
Speaker 14: pretty clear about what kind of country they want.
Speaker 5: So if you are not planning to vote because you
Speaker 5: don't like either choice, or maybe you're planning to vote
Speaker 5: for RFK Junior, according to Hillary Clinton, you're simply not
Speaker 5: paying attention. She doesn't understand why this is even a
Speaker 5: hard choice. That's a direct quote from her. I had
Speaker 5: the pleasure of watching the entire interview Ryan just for
Speaker 5: the sake of hashtag journalism. And towards the end of it,
Speaker 5: she's promoting this new.
Speaker 3: Broadway place that.
Speaker 5: She produced about the Suffragette movement, and Jimmy Fallon is
Speaker 5: lavishing her with these kind words, noting that you know,
Speaker 5: when she goes to a Broadway place, she gets a
Speaker 5: standing ovation. This is a direct quote from Fallin. He
Speaker 5: says it was a pleasure, it was an honor to
Speaker 5: sit next to you at some Broadway production and it's
Speaker 5: like total State TV, like North Korea, while she's patronizing
Speaker 5: voters who don't want to pick between Donald Trump or
Speaker 5: Joe Biden as people who are just they're simply not
Speaker 5: paying attention. They don't you get why this isn't a
Speaker 5: hard choice. It's very very easy to choose between Joe
Speaker 5: Biden and Donald Trump, don't you see? They're so very different, And.
Speaker 6: A huge portion of the Democratic electorate disagrees. And we
Speaker 6: had elections last night that showed that we had polling
Speaker 6: going into those elections that showed that it was going
Speaker 6: to be ugly for Democrats. So we can put up
Speaker 6: this piece from my colleague Prem Talker over at the Intercept.
Speaker 3: I checked.
Speaker 6: People should go check this one out, but the headline
Speaker 6: here so you can find it. One in five Wisconsin
Speaker 6: Democrats said Gaza war will impact their primary vote in
Speaker 6: that he has an amazing cross tab of a poll.
Speaker 6: I've never seen anything like it. It said voters under
Speaker 6: twenty nine supported an immediate and permanent ceasefire by what
Speaker 6: one hundred percent?
Speaker 5: I had to double check that one because I've never
Speaker 5: seen it. Not that I doubt that that's true, but
Speaker 5: I've ever seen it, Like you.
Speaker 6: Said, I've never seen anything like that, not even a one,
Speaker 6: not sure, like just one hundred, one hundred percent.
Speaker 3: And so so last night, if we can jump to although.
Speaker 5: By the way, that poll was commissioned by listening to Wisconsin.
Speaker 5: As the intercept story notes, it's a campaign to mobilized
Speaker 5: protest votes during the battleground states primary in order to
Speaker 5: push the White House to change course. The other thing
Speaker 5: the Intercept story notes is that in twenty twenty, Biden
Speaker 5: one was constant by some twenty thousand votes, which is
Speaker 5: actually a smaller margin than Trump won by in twenty sixteen.
Speaker 6: Right, And so if we can actually control them, jump
Speaker 6: to jump to B five. With a decent amount of
Speaker 6: the vote reporting, last night, it looked like that the
Speaker 6: uninstructed vote was going to at least hit thirty thousand, which,
Speaker 6: as you said, is fifty percent more than the entire
Speaker 6: margin by which Biden beat Trump in twenty twenty. Now
Speaker 6: that fuller results are in, it's much closer to fifty
Speaker 6: thousand people came out and voted uninstructed. So these are
Speaker 6: people who are paying enough attention to know that if
Speaker 6: they vote uninstructed.
Speaker 3: This is what it means. That's enough people to throw
Speaker 3: the election to Trump. People who are screaming warning.
Speaker 6: And what the organizers have said here is that despite
Speaker 6: all the heat that they're taking from Democratic Party officials
Speaker 6: for what they're doing, most of these folks might you know,
Speaker 6: we're very close to lost by what they're seeing Biden
Speaker 6: do in Gaza. What this is doing is giving them
Speaker 6: an opportunity to have their voice heard one last time.
Speaker 6: And I don't know if there's anything Biden can do
Speaker 6: at this point to act on it, but at least
Speaker 6: they're giving him a chance. They're saying, look, we're still
Speaker 6: participating in this process that is leading to genocide at
Speaker 6: the moment, but we're still participating it because we have
Speaker 6: some hope that our voice is going to lend some
Speaker 6: power to the that is fighting to end this genocide.
Speaker 3: You know, whether it.
Speaker 6: Can happen between now and the election, I don't know,
Speaker 6: but you know that it wasn't just Wisconsin either. This
Speaker 6: is in the context of new polling showing Trump with
Speaker 6: a fairly comfortable lead in six of seven swing states,
Speaker 6: So it's not as if Biden is sitting on a
Speaker 6: comfortable margin where he can say, you know what, fifty
Speaker 6: thousand people in Wisconsin can go pound sand right.
Speaker 5: And that's where to your point, you know, whether or
Speaker 5: not Hillary Clinton agrees on the sort of definitional question
Speaker 5: of genocide or Joe Biden agrees on that question, they
Speaker 5: are actually hurting their chances by again Hillary Clinton going
Speaker 5: out there and being incredibly flippant about how people don't understand,
Speaker 5: they're not paying attention. It's not a hard choice. Since
Speaker 5: twenty sixteen, that has been exactly what has screwed Democrats
Speaker 5: over and over again in some of these close competitions.
Speaker 5: That's exactly the wrong way to treat voters who do
Speaker 5: feel and for some genuine, intellectually defensible reasons, that the
Speaker 5: choice is absolutely a difficult one between Trump and Biden,
Speaker 5: between Trump Biden, RFK Junior, or between just not voting.
Speaker 5: So to treat people like their concerns aren't serious is
Speaker 5: how you alienate them further and further. And it's something
Speaker 5: that Democrats have been doing for almost a decade now.
Speaker 5: On that Trump question in particular, that Hillary Clinton once
Speaker 5: again brought up about how, yeah, he's just he's so unhinged.
Speaker 4: Well, people think that about Joe Biden too.
Speaker 5: For what it's worth, that Trump might be temperamentally transparently
Speaker 5: more of a mad man, but that Joe Biden policy
Speaker 5: wise acts just as much, if not more, like a
Speaker 5: mad man. And that's a perfectly intellectually defensible position. She
Speaker 5: could have a long, interesting conversation with someone about it,
Speaker 5: but instead, when she's in public, she's just saying.
Speaker 4: Nope, you're not paying attention.
Speaker 5: You're too dumb, You're too dumb and lazy to figure
Speaker 5: this one out. It's just idiotic as a strategy, and
Speaker 5: it's going to make things much much worse for them.
Speaker 6: And in New York, the organizers were pushing people to
Speaker 6: do a blank ballot.
Speaker 3: Probably a bunch of people watching this did that. We
Speaker 3: don't have final results on that.
Speaker 6: New York takes several years to count its votes.
Speaker 5: So the traditional year's long vote count.
Speaker 6: Yeah, we'll know by twenty twenty nine. You know how
Speaker 6: that went yesterday. But let's talk about two interesting, actual
Speaker 6: non symbolic elections. One we'll get get Let's let's get
Speaker 6: to the Zuckerberg one in a second. But first, you
Speaker 6: did you see the one in where Milwaukee and the
Speaker 6: surrounding area was asked if they wanted to spend hundreds
Speaker 6: of millions of more dollars on education. Tell us about this,
Speaker 6: right they won? Yeah, I mean it's looking like it's
Speaker 6: gonna win. Right, It's like fifty to fifty one percent
Speaker 6: right now.
Speaker 3: I don't think we can. I don't think we can
Speaker 3: call it yet.
Speaker 6: But basically it asked, you know, for the purpose of,
Speaker 6: you know, maintaining high teacher quality, arts, sciences.
Speaker 3: Et cetera.
Speaker 6: Are we do, you know, can the Milwaukee and the
Speaker 6: surrounding area kind of bust its budget and spend more
Speaker 6: on education?
Speaker 5: Fifty one to forty nine is the number as of
Speaker 5: right now.
Speaker 3: Team J four pretty solid at this point.
Speaker 5: Yeah, they'll pay two hundred and sixteen dollars more in
Speaker 5: taxes for every one hundred thousand dollars of their homes value.
Speaker 5: That's Milwaukee Public Schools. Milwaukee Public Schools as a Team
Speaker 5: J four story rightfully notes it's facing a two hundred
Speaker 5: million dollar budget deficit for the next school year. That
Speaker 5: school district is an abject disaster. I'm not from Milwaukee.
Speaker 5: I'm from outside of Milwaukee, but just about everybody can
Speaker 5: acknowledge the deep, deep problems in Milwaukee Public schools. Milwaukee
Speaker 5: in general is not in a great place right now,
Speaker 5: and Milwaukee Public schools are suffering enormously. Obviously, there's some
Speaker 5: real fallout from the pandemic in terms of learning.
Speaker 4: That increasingly is obvious.
Speaker 5: Ryan and I could probably debate the question of what
Speaker 5: teachers unions have done to Milwaukee Public schools. I'm sure
Speaker 5: we disagree on that, but it's another really, I mean serious,
Speaker 5: The school district isn't a world of hurt, so it's
Speaker 5: not party surprise, right.
Speaker 6: Money alone doesn't solve the problems, but taking money, taking
Speaker 6: significant amounts of money away certainly doesn't help.
Speaker 5: You'd see where I mean, it's obviously close, but you
Speaker 5: can certainly see where people were favorable to it. And
Speaker 5: interestingly enough, Wisconsin as a whole, not just Milwaukee, but
Speaker 5: the state as a whole approved Question one last night.
Speaker 3: We just we just had that one up, so we
Speaker 3: can put question one back up.
Speaker 5: So, yeah, question is amendment that stipulates quote, private donations
Speaker 5: and grants may not be applied for, accepted, expended, or
Speaker 5: used in connection with the conduct of any primary election
Speaker 5: or referendum. Question two, which also again you can see
Speaker 5: Question one, you can see. The Milwaukee area, which voted
Speaker 5: on the MPs question voted against question one, but ustion
Speaker 5: two is that it requires that quote only election officials
Speaker 5: designated by law may perform tasks in the conduct of primaries, elections,
Speaker 5: and referendums.
Speaker 4: That one also passed.
Speaker 5: And Ryan, I am really curious for your thoughts on this,
Speaker 5: because I was trying to like the election issue, even
Speaker 5: though my own publication covers it really closely. For me,
Speaker 5: it always just made my eyes kind of glaze over,
Speaker 5: And it seems like it's one of those things that
Speaker 5: is owned in many cases by like outright crazy people
Speaker 5: are talking about it all the time. You're just like
Speaker 5: calm down, like it's just everyone relaxed here. But when
Speaker 5: you dig into what happened with Mark Zuckerberg's what's the
Speaker 5: it's like CTCL the acronym the group that he at
Speaker 5: least ostensibly was founded to help people vote during the pandemic.
Speaker 5: When you look at what they did with that billion,
Speaker 5: those billions of dollars, I imagine if the Koch Brothers,
Speaker 5: at the height of their sort of limited government giving
Speaker 5: during the Tea Party era, had done what Mark's Zuckerberg did,
Speaker 5: or another like as Sheldon Adelson er, now a Miriam
Speaker 5: Adelson had did what Mark Zuckerberg did, if she did
Speaker 5: that in twenty twenty four or twenty twenty eight. For example,
Speaker 5: just in Wisconsin, Mark Zuckerberg's group gave out thirty one grants,
Speaker 5: twenty eight went to cities, Twenty of those cities voted
Speaker 5: for Biden, and only eight ultimately voted for Donald Trump.
Speaker 5: So basically, he's flooding the zone with money and with
Speaker 5: aid to counties that are almost certainly going to go
Speaker 5: for Biden, not like necessarily swing counties, but overwhelmingly counties
Speaker 5: that are going to go to Biden. And as Katie
Speaker 5: Porter said cal about her own race in the California
Speaker 5: Senate primary, looks a whole lot like rigging an election
Speaker 5: where you can just have billionaires flooding the zone with
Speaker 5: money to swing different districts. I don't like it. So
Speaker 5: I thought this was actually fantastic. I thought it was worded.
Speaker 5: Both questions were worded very tightly. Ryan, What did you
Speaker 5: make of it?
Speaker 6: I mean, I agree on the principle that the public
Speaker 6: should be funding at elections, not not private folks. I
Speaker 6: don't have a whole lot of sympathy for the tears
Speaker 6: of Republicans in Wisconsin because you know, they jerrymannered, they
Speaker 6: took over the state, they jerrymanner the heck out of it,
Speaker 6: and then they tried to basically defund the election apparatus
Speaker 6: and make it really difficult for people in Wisconsin cities
Speaker 6: to vote. And then they're like, hey, wait a minute,
Speaker 6: goes back. We're trying to make it really hard for
Speaker 6: people in cities to vote. Now you're coming in and
Speaker 6: making it easy again for them to vote.
Speaker 3: That's completely unfair.
Speaker 6: So yeah, I agree the public should finance elections, but
Speaker 6: also kind of Republicans brought it on themselves with their
Speaker 6: like really really partisan gutting of the election, of the
Speaker 6: election system, election apparatus, and kind of it like made
Speaker 6: space for somebody like a Zuckerberg to come in and
Speaker 6: try to fix it.
Speaker 3: So let's just let's just have.
Speaker 6: Functional elections, Like we're more than two hundred years into
Speaker 6: this democratic experiment here, because in the United States of America.
Speaker 3: Let's let's just like in Brazil, they know the.
Speaker 6: Results by like nine pm every night, well on an
Speaker 6: election night, and and they're like and they're they're audited
Speaker 6: they're checked like it's it's legit, like this can be done.
Speaker 5: Of course it can be done, but we're so Yeah,
Speaker 5: to your point, we're so owned by private interests that
Speaker 5: have co opted the system, whether it's from the left
Speaker 5: or the right. And you know, I actually think this
Speaker 5: is a great measure in and of itself, just because
Speaker 5: it prevents people from the left or from the right
Speaker 5: from doing this in the future. Zuckerberg replicated what happened
Speaker 5: not just in Wisconsin, but actually in some of those
Speaker 5: swing states that we were showing are really really tight
Speaker 5: races right now. So to some extent, you know, if
Speaker 5: you're declaring, you know, unlimited money and politics, and you
Speaker 5: have the way that like the CTCL operated, and you're saying,
Speaker 5: we're not going to put any limits on that, and
Speaker 5: you can just sort of.
Speaker 4: Do it, it could.
Speaker 5: Happen in different ways than just what the CTCL did.
Speaker 5: There could be different that can be exploited. I mean,
Speaker 5: they really pioneered a new method of kind of electioneering
Speaker 5: in twenty twenty. So I think to your point, yeah,
Speaker 5: it's there have to be dramatic questions about how the
Speaker 5: elections are run in this country.
Speaker 6: Second, the second one, I don't know anything about it.
Speaker 6: You can't have poll workers who are volunteers. Now, like
Speaker 6: that feels that can't be right.
Speaker 5: Well, so it was about curating ballots, and that's a
Speaker 5: kind of a different can of worms. If you're sort
Speaker 5: of funding ballot curation.
Speaker 6: Correct, is that when you go door to door and
Speaker 6: pick up ballots? Yeah, for people?
Speaker 5: Right, So if you're doing it, and you're allowing some
Speaker 5: states allow volunteers to do it. Actually, my boss Molly
Speaker 5: having Way wrote a great book about this called Rigged,
Speaker 5: which a lot of people would would look at and
Speaker 5: be like on the left, they woul look at them
Speaker 5: and be like this is crazy, like blah blah.
Speaker 4: You read the book.
Speaker 5: There's basically been no substantive pushback to it at all.
Speaker 5: It's super interesting, and you see, yeah, some of these
Speaker 5: processes like ballat curation that you heard nothing about in
Speaker 5: the media were being funded in heavy dumb districts by
Speaker 5: things like Zuckerberg and by people who are not election
Speaker 5: officials that are volunteers. And just if you're uncomfortable about
Speaker 5: the process of somebody who's vote actually making it to
Speaker 5: the counting position, or even if you're not that book
Speaker 5: the book made me personally very uncomfortable with the laws
Speaker 5: and the way that it's run in some states. But
Speaker 5: Ryan partially that's also the problem is like our system
Speaker 5: of government and federalism means that we have a patchwork
Speaker 5: collection laws based on different states decisions to run their elections.
Speaker 5: So it's just a blast.
Speaker 6: Lena Kahn appeared on John Stewart's show, The Daily Show.
Speaker 5: Finally, she appeared on John Stewart's show now that he's
Speaker 5: not at Apple, which is what we're going to get into.
Speaker 6: And so John Stewart revealed on during this interview with
Speaker 6: Lena Cohn that Apple had effectively blocked him from having
Speaker 6: her on. Let's play a little bit of this this
Speaker 6: back and forth with John Stuart Lena Khan.
Speaker 13: It's already being consolidated. Apple has bought thirty AI models.
Speaker 13: Microsoft is pride bout, Google has bought They all buy
Speaker 13: AI startups and put them behind their paywell, and they're
Speaker 13: already having an arms race to see who will be
Speaker 13: either the monopoly or this will be in oha. Godly,
Speaker 13: I got to tell you I wanted to have you
Speaker 13: on a podcast, and Apple asked us not to do it.
Speaker 3: To have you.
Speaker 13: They literally said please don't talk to her having nothing
Speaker 13: to do with what you do for a living. I
Speaker 13: think they just I didn't think they cared for you,
Speaker 13: is what happened. They wouldn't, they didn't, They wouldn't let
Speaker 13: us do even that dumb thing we just did in
Speaker 13: the first Act on AI, Like, what is that sensitivity?
Speaker 13: Why are they so afraid to even have these conversations
Speaker 13: out in the public sphere.
Speaker 1: I think it just shows one of the dangers of
Speaker 1: what happens when you concentrate so much power and so
Speaker 1: much decision making in a small number of companies. I mean,
Speaker 1: going back all the way to the founding, there was
Speaker 1: a recognition that in the same way that you need
Speaker 1: the Constitution to create checks and balances in our political sphere,
Speaker 1: you also needed the anti trust and anti monopoly laws
Speaker 1: to safeguard against concentration and economic power, because you don't
Speaker 1: want an autocrat of trade in the same way that
Speaker 1: you don't want a monarch.
Speaker 6: Apple disagrees, Yes, exactly so. First of all, Lenakhon for President.
Speaker 6: Second of all, Luther Lowe, you can put this up here,
Speaker 6: point it out that part of the DOJ's suit against
Speaker 6: Apple says, quote Apple's conduct extends beyond just monopoly profits
Speaker 6: and even affects the flow of speech. For example, Apple
Speaker 6: is rapidly expanding its role as a TV and movie
Speaker 6: producer and had exercised that role to control content. This
Speaker 6: was filedbas This was filed before they knew the lengths
Speaker 6: to which they were going to control what John Stewart
Speaker 6: was able to put on his podcast, which he's talked
Speaker 6: about a little bit since since.
Speaker 3: Then in reference to China, right, China.
Speaker 6: And yeah and just yeah, it sounds like anything that
Speaker 6: was encroaching on their interests.
Speaker 5: And I think it was Matt Stoler obviously who made
Speaker 5: the point about you know, here's here's John Stewart on
Speaker 5: Paramount on Paramount Network then saying what he couldn't do
Speaker 5: on Apple. So you know, some might say, oh, this
Speaker 5: is this is perfect competition. You see how it works.
Speaker 5: But imagine if John Stewart wasn't John Stuart would Paramount
Speaker 5: allow John's a lesser known John Stewart who wanted to
Speaker 5: interview Alena Khan to interview Alena.
Speaker 6: Con I thought Paramount is for sale. There's that I'm
Speaker 6: going to buy that Apple.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's a good question, but I think there's There's
Speaker 5: also something even more interesting, which is what happened with
Speaker 5: Parlor in the App Store after January sixth, is that
Speaker 5: in terms of Apple monitoring and controlling speech, the app
Speaker 5: Store is unquestionably to do oppoly. That was hilarious, I mean,
Speaker 5: arguably a monopoly. If you have an iPhone, you have
Speaker 5: to use the app store.
Speaker 6: January sixth was basically organized on Facebook, Facebook groups, and afterwards,
Speaker 6: right there were a couple of Parlor images that circulated
Speaker 6: to a Facebook app WhatsApp, which is just text messaging
Speaker 6: in a band, text messaging. And so yeah, then they
Speaker 6: just the Apple just kicked kicked Trump, you know, they
Speaker 6: all kicked Trump off their platforms, and then they kicked
Speaker 6: Parlor off, which was hilarious because a like I said,
Speaker 6: it was mostly organized on Facebook, not Parlor Parlor also,
Speaker 6: but it was tiny.
Speaker 3: Like it would have happened with or without Parlor.
Speaker 6: But the other ironic part of kicking Parlor out was
Speaker 6: that the entire argument about cancel culture had been that, Okay, look,
Speaker 6: you got kicked off Facebook. You don't like it, go
Speaker 6: start your own platform. Facebook's a private platform, they make
Speaker 6: their own rules.
Speaker 3: So some naive folks.
Speaker 6: You know, took them at their word, and we're like, Okay,
Speaker 6: we will go build our own platform. You don't you
Speaker 6: don't want us on yours, We'll go build our own.
Speaker 6: And they're like, oh yeah, not like that. We're nuking
Speaker 6: your entire platform. Yeah yeah, not defending the people on
Speaker 6: Parlor or anything like that.
Speaker 3: That's not the point. You don't have to Yeah, the point.
Speaker 6: The point is they were told to go create their
Speaker 6: own platform if they didn't like the rules of the
Speaker 6: other private platforms and then were new anyway, and that.
Speaker 5: Had nothing to do This is the point in the
Speaker 5: DOJ suit. This is the point that Stoler makes, and
Speaker 5: this is the point that Lena Khan is making that
Speaker 5: had nothing to do with Apple's business. Apple didn't get
Speaker 5: rid of Parlor for business reasons. They might have thought
Speaker 5: it was good PR, better pr than allowing Parlor to
Speaker 5: sit there and get questions from Ben freaking Collins over
Speaker 5: at NBC about how they're just you know, fueling disinformation
Speaker 5: because they allow a tiny app to remain on the
Speaker 5: App Store. So maybe you can make the argument I
Speaker 5: think it was.
Speaker 6: For business reasons, because I think the business reason was
Speaker 6: deflect attention to face, defect, regulatory attention away from Facebook
Speaker 6: and their own platforms over to Parlor so that we
Speaker 6: solve the problem.
Speaker 5: I mean, there there's an argument, but they're doing that ultimately.
Speaker 5: That's even that is rooted in political reasons, I guess.
Speaker 6: But once you're a monopoly, politics and business are the
Speaker 6: same thing, exactly.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And that's exactly the point that John Stewart and
Speaker 5: Lina Kahn are making.
Speaker 4: And Lena Khan.
Speaker 5: Really, I'm sure we have some listeners and viewers who
Speaker 5: are in businesses where Lena Khan is like treated as
Speaker 5: public enemy number one. If you talk to people who
Speaker 5: work in those sectors, it is the specter of Lena Khan.
Speaker 5: Khan looms so large. There's fury at Lena Khan and
Speaker 5: people who work in like M and A businesses.
Speaker 6: There exactly people who do the mergers, the people who
Speaker 6: do the mergers, and the executives who benefit benefit from
Speaker 6: the mergers hate her.
Speaker 3: But everybody else, even at.
Speaker 6: Those companies, is better off because what are those mergers
Speaker 6: lead to enormous amounts of layoffs and then and then
Speaker 6: consolidation of the company, which means workers get treated worse
Speaker 6: and customers get treated worse, and suppliers get treated worse.
Speaker 3: And Lena Kon lays.
Speaker 6: All this out in a really aerad way in that
Speaker 6: interview with with John Stewart, and it also hurts. It
Speaker 6: turns out shareholders like shareholders, are noticing that when these
Speaker 6: mergers are blocked by either by Lenacon or by the
Speaker 6: specter of Lena Khan, that both companies' share prices go
Speaker 6: up and there and there are so many cases of
Speaker 6: this that that people are able to point to now
Speaker 6: that it is becoming clear that, oh, it turns out
Speaker 6: it is a collusion of executives who are defrauding workers, customers,
Speaker 6: suppliers and shareholders and just hoarding wealth for themselves.
Speaker 5: There was an amazing sort of green light for M
Speaker 5: and A during the Obama administration the Trump administration, especially
Speaker 5: in taking media, and man, is it amazing how sensitive
Speaker 5: people in those positions have been about It's not amazing.
Speaker 6: I mean, two of my job was to do mergers.
Speaker 6: I would probably not like Lena Khan. On the other hand,
Speaker 6: she's making a lot of defense business for you.
Speaker 5: And people might wonder, people might wonder, you know, what, hey,
Speaker 5: why is it? Why is Lena Khan's interview on John
Speaker 5: Stewart like Newsworthy, Well, Lena Kahn's tenure at the FTC
Speaker 5: has had pretty sweeping consequences on the economy, and that's
Speaker 5: why they're so sensitive about it, obviously, but the pendulum
Speaker 5: swinging back and sort of having a chilling effect on
Speaker 5: M and A. There are people who hate big tech
Speaker 5: on the right whose offices on Capitol Hill are super
Speaker 5: opposed to Lena Kahn. This is one of the things
Speaker 5: we didn't have enough time to get to with Ted
Speaker 5: Cruz back in the holiday season, because he wrote a
Speaker 5: book basically about about tech, why big Tech. There were
Speaker 5: a lot of parts in the book about why big
Speaker 5: tech is bad and overly consolidated. Ted Cruise is a
Speaker 5: huge opponent of Lena Khan because from a limited government perspective,
Speaker 5: the FTC. I mean, I think a lot of like
Speaker 5: hardcore conservatis would just.
Speaker 4: Get rid of the FTC.
Speaker 5: But the FTC is, you know, very very much a
Speaker 5: sort of encroaching regulator. And you can quibble around the
Speaker 5: edges with what Lena Khan has done, but ultimately, if
Speaker 5: you're worried about consolidation and big tech in baby formula
Speaker 5: and meat packing and all of these different price problems
Speaker 5: that consumers are having. I find it very difficult to
Speaker 5: make the argument that in the big picture, Lena Khan
Speaker 5: is a net negative. I think that's basically insane. I
Speaker 5: think the effect that she has had is clearly in
Speaker 5: that positive, even if from a conservative perspective you can
Speaker 5: quibble with some of the regulatory approaches.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and Cruz has flirted with supporting her in different
Speaker 6: ways in the past, and if he has recovered from
Speaker 6: his last interview here, he's welcome to come back on
Speaker 6: the program.
Speaker 5: I think I don't think you had a problem with
Speaker 5: that interview.
Speaker 3: It was their shilling books and podcast.
Speaker 5: Who who would ever show books aggressively? Not you, Ryan,
Speaker 5: not me.
Speaker 6: The ladies of the view have some thoughts on whether
Speaker 6: or not they're better off than they were four years ago,
Speaker 6: whether you were better off four years ago. A viewer
Speaker 6: of this program flagged this for us and it was like,
Speaker 6: I think you guys will enjoy this one. So let's
Speaker 6: roll a little bit of this clip. Want to get
Speaker 6: Emily's reaction to this.
Speaker 15: I think the Democrats need to do more in getting
Speaker 15: the message out that yes, we actually are better off
Speaker 15: right now because of all of the things that Biden
Speaker 15: has done.
Speaker 5: But I will say this.
Speaker 4: You know, while Trump.
Speaker 15: May have you know, came up with this operation warp Speed,
Speaker 15: which I don't know why he came up with that term.
Speaker 15: I do believe that he is responsible for mishandling the
Speaker 15: pandemic so much that million, over a million Americans died, including.
Speaker 5: My in laws.
Speaker 15: And it is in large part because he had his
Speaker 15: son in law, who shouldn't have been in the White
Speaker 15: House in the first place, handling the response someone with
Speaker 15: absolutely no medical experience, and the one person, doctor Fauci,
Speaker 15: who you think very highly of and he thinks very
Speaker 15: highly of you, was basically silenced by the White House.
Speaker 16: I know we all vividly do every picture in a mask,
Speaker 16: from work to school to not being able to see family.
Speaker 16: My parents don't live nearby. I can't fly. I mean,
Speaker 16: you couldn't go on trips, and not trips like for fun,
Speaker 16: I just mean literally to get to people you love.
Speaker 16: It was isolating, depressing. So I laughed that someone didn't
Speaker 16: catch that part when they said we're going to go
Speaker 16: out and ask people how were you four years ago?
Speaker 16: That is the time my brain is trying to completely
Speaker 16: block out, like I'm.
Speaker 5: Going to have better reproductive health rights.
Speaker 17: Yes, listen, as black people, we were not in this
Speaker 17: insanity of trying to figure out why our history is
Speaker 17: no longer welcome in the educational system.
Speaker 5: For the record, four years ago, bro hadn't been overturned yet,
Speaker 5: although the judges put in place would be and abortions
Speaker 5: actually have gone up.
Speaker 6: We did make two good points, uh that you know,
Speaker 6: four years ago a Roby Wade was still a long
Speaker 6: land and we didn't have this this this bizarre backlash
Speaker 6: with the books and the like in Florida, Like you've
Speaker 6: got these permission slips, where is it okay for your
Speaker 6: children to be read a book by a black author?
Speaker 3: Stuff like that.
Speaker 5: And there's also like clear pornography in some of those
Speaker 5: libraries that.
Speaker 3: Was there four years ago.
Speaker 5: That's true.
Speaker 3: That true.
Speaker 5: What did Donald Trump do about the porno seem probably.
Speaker 3: Not just fine? So I thought she made some some
Speaker 3: good points on on that one.
Speaker 6: But I think I think the the Democrats effort to
Speaker 6: to do this four years ago thing ah and point
Speaker 6: to the pandemic as a gotcha isn't quite gonna work
Speaker 6: because of, like I think significantly because of people's amnesia,
Speaker 6: like will Full amnesia, like they want to forget what
Speaker 6: that was like April twenty twenty, Yes, horrible, like and
Speaker 6: they as they talk about that program, people couldn't find paper, towels,
Speaker 6: toilet paper, like basic they were there, people like the
Speaker 6: people were dying, people were scared for their lives. Everybody
Speaker 6: was getting hammered by like two in the afternoon. Which
Speaker 6: is fun for like a few days, but then after
Speaker 6: a while, it's like like if you look at if
Speaker 6: you look at alcohol consumption, like it's still up rights
Speaker 6: the data, right, I didn't know that it was.
Speaker 3: It was still up yeah, related the massive spike.
Speaker 4: Yeah, over the last five years, it's still up really high.
Speaker 3: Makes sense. It's a bitual, habit forming type of thing.
Speaker 5: Well, and you're talking about a different amnesia than I
Speaker 5: think the Biden campaign is talking about. So that's this
Speaker 5: whole segment was in response to s both the Trump
Speaker 5: and Biden campaigns sparring on this reaganary question of ask
Speaker 5: yourself where you better off four years ago? Because and
Speaker 5: there's polling data, we can put D two up on
Speaker 5: the screen here. This is a Fox News poll from
Speaker 5: just economic conditions you personally, sixty four percent of people
Speaker 5: said negative. Only thirty six percent said their economic conditions
Speaker 5: personally were positive. And that's even higher when you ask
Speaker 5: about the country as a whole. We can move to
Speaker 5: the next element here. Yeah, December, have you been helped
Speaker 5: by President Biden's economic policies? Once again? In December, only
Speaker 5: seventeen percent said they've been helped thirty eight Oh, this
Speaker 5: is December twenty twenty one. Now, last December, forty six
Speaker 5: percent of people said they've been hurt by President Biden's
Speaker 5: economic policies.
Speaker 4: Only fourteen percent said they've been hurt.
Speaker 5: Now a Fox News poll actually from just a couple
Speaker 5: weeks ago, so March twenty second to twenty second to
Speaker 5: twenty fifth, over half of voters they asked directly, are
Speaker 5: you worse off than you were in twenty twenty? Are
Speaker 5: you better or worse off financially? Was the exact question
Speaker 5: people were asked. This is a registered voters, and only
Speaker 5: about one in five voters Foxting's reported today answered yes.
Speaker 5: According to their latest survey, just twenty two percent said
Speaker 5: that they're better off than four years go. Well more
Speaker 5: than twice that many. Fifty two percent say they are
Speaker 5: worse off. So when you put that question to actual voters,
Speaker 5: not the multimillionaire hosts of the view. The results are
Speaker 5: totally different, and the view was sort of conflating the
Speaker 5: pandemic and all of the other kind of cultural issues.
Speaker 5: The Biden administration, I think, is sort of doing the same.
Speaker 5: I think COVID amnesia, I agree with, is totally real.
Speaker 5: On the other hand, while the rate of inflation may
Speaker 5: be slowing, inflation on some of those prices in and
Speaker 5: of itself is still higher than it was four years ago.
Speaker 5: So I know the Biden administration and I think they're
Speaker 5: not wrong about people having some amnesia about the early
Speaker 5: days of the pandemic. Trump's mismanagement of the pandemic most
Speaker 5: COVID does, I believe, actually occurred during the Biden administration,
Speaker 5: although they would argue that that was set up by
Speaker 5: mismanagement during the Trump administration. I think most voters, though, aren't.
Speaker 5: They don't have COVID in mind. They don't want to
Speaker 5: think about COVID. To your point, they're voting on their
Speaker 5: financial situation, right.
Speaker 6: And to the extent they're looking around the world too.
Speaker 6: Trump was creating kind of an international incident every other
Speaker 6: day and size and yeah, and leaving people, you know,
Speaker 6: nervous that he's going to like accidentally get into nuclear
Speaker 6: war with North Korea, which currently which apparently gain pretty
Speaker 6: close to happening, but Biden is in you know, too
Speaker 6: hot actual wars in Gahza and in Ukraine. But yes,
Speaker 6: the economic question is is is what people.
Speaker 3: Are thinking of? And I think it just goes back
Speaker 3: to housing and rent.
Speaker 6: Housing and rent is unaffordable and basically food prices went
Speaker 6: up significantly in twenty twenty one and two have that
Speaker 6: has moderated and now wages are generally outpacing the growth
Speaker 6: of inflation. Where it's it's although it's getting close again now,
Speaker 6: but it hasn't. It hasn't gone on long enough so
Speaker 6: that you're better off, so that basically you're further behind
Speaker 6: today than you were four years ago. To me, the
Speaker 6: tragedy of that from a political perspective is that the
Speaker 6: US did better than any other country around the world
Speaker 6: and getting out of the COVID recession and getting out
Speaker 6: of that all with the American Rescue Plan and the
Speaker 6: ira you know, we went from a potential depression to
Speaker 6: the economy surging. The cost was driven primarily by you know,
Speaker 6: supply chain, you know, interruptions from COVID and from the
Speaker 6: from corporations recognizing that they had an opportunity to raise prices.
Speaker 6: And we were pointing that out at the time and
Speaker 6: called conspiracy theorists, but it happened. But the downstream effect
Speaker 6: on people is the same, Like, prices are up and
Speaker 6: Biden's president, and so they're going to link those to
Speaker 6: My fear is that the next time that we face
Speaker 6: a recession or depression like situation, that you're gonna have
Speaker 6: politicians like, wow, we didn't get any credit for that,
Speaker 6: and there was some inflation associated with our response.
Speaker 3: So just let it burn and see what happens.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, that's certainly possible. And the thing I
Speaker 5: want to add there a couple of different quotes on
Speaker 5: a Navarro at one point during that segment said, you know,
Speaker 5: now she's back to playing words with friends, but during
Speaker 5: the Trump administration she was getting death threats.
Speaker 4: So she just again this was in the.
Speaker 3: Context you can do both today, you can do.
Speaker 5: Both, amazing, but she was this is in the context
Speaker 5: of her talking about voters like your average voter and
Speaker 5: like that there's any resonance between on a Navarro's.
Speaker 4: Experience during the Trump administration.
Speaker 5: Where she just didn't have what like the psychological comfort
Speaker 5: to play words with friends, but now she feels comfortable
Speaker 5: playing words with friends. The idea that she thinks that's
Speaker 5: resonant with other people in the country, I think.
Speaker 6: It's I think there's tens of millions of people are
Speaker 6: well a, they were terrified during the pandemic generally, but
Speaker 6: are terrified of Trump.
Speaker 5: No, I think people are genuinely terrified of Trump. I
Speaker 5: don't disagree with that. And you know, there's obviously something
Speaker 5: to the argument that the chaos in the Trump administration
Speaker 5: that was in some ways fieled by the media, but
Speaker 5: in many ways feel directly by Donald Trump made people uneasy.
Speaker 5: But Ann Navarro saying that she's back to playing words
Speaker 5: with friends because Biden as president kind of for the
Speaker 5: reasons that we talked about in the Hillary Clinton block.
Speaker 5: I mean, maybe there's some wine moms around the country
Speaker 5: with whom that resonates, but I think a lot of
Speaker 5: people are like actually just as scared now under Biden,
Speaker 5: maybe because of the hot wars, maybe because they feel
Speaker 5: what's happening in Israel amounts to ethnic or what's happening
Speaker 5: in Gaza amounts to ethnic cleansing. Maybe because they're terrified
Speaker 5: about the war in Ukraine, dragging American troops ultimately into it,
Speaker 5: or maybe because.
Speaker 6: Respond to the Israel striking its consulate Damascus.
Speaker 5: Or maybe because these pocketbook issues, and you know, also
Speaker 5: could possibly be because of abortion access, abortion lights, which.
Speaker 3: Biden is going to drive so many peoples.
Speaker 5: Yeah, agree, agree. And the other one I wanted to
Speaker 5: highlight was Sarah Haynes saying basically that a recovery. She said,
Speaker 5: at one point, you're not going to feel the recovery
Speaker 5: after the Great Depression. It took eleven years. Not super
Speaker 5: comforting to voters in the moment, of course, although.
Speaker 6: That was thanks to Obama like tightening the belt and
Speaker 6: the Tea Party insisting, you know, taking over in twenty ten.
Speaker 5: Oh. She said, great Depression, not recession.
Speaker 3: Oh, great depressions.
Speaker 5: Okay, Yeah, And then will By Goilberg said, if you
Speaker 5: were coming from another country, you were not welcome during
Speaker 5: the Trump administration. I don't think that's how most people
Speaker 5: are voting when it comes to the border this time around.
Speaker 3: Yeah, certain, Yeah, a new NPR poll, then we'll move on,
Speaker 3: a new MPR poll.
Speaker 6: Marist poll came out this morning and found that yes,
Speaker 6: the top top far and away issue for Republican voters
Speaker 6: was immigration and surging within the po although and that poll,
Speaker 6: by the way, had Biden up two and when you
Speaker 6: put this nationally and then when you included RFK Junior
Speaker 6: and Cornell West and others, he maintained his two point lead.
Speaker 3: So despite the fact that you've got this.
Speaker 6: Wall Street Journal polls showing him Trump up in six
Speaker 6: of seven swing states, you also have this NPR Marris
Speaker 6: poll showing Biden up by two.
Speaker 3: Nobody likes either of these people.
Speaker 6: The NPR poll found that people disliked Trump more than
Speaker 6: they disliked Biden. But also polls are consistently showing that
Speaker 6: people don't think Biden is up to it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, well there's that too.
Speaker 3: We didn't even get to that by thirty points or so.
Speaker 6: Another reason people perry Trump how pathetic is that your
Speaker 6: your opponent is Trump, and the question is he was
Speaker 6: more fit to be president and you're losing it by
Speaker 6: double digits.
Speaker 5: And that's another reason to the words with Friends, the
Speaker 5: silly words with friends point. I actually think that's another
Speaker 5: reason that people are super uneasy when there's all of
Speaker 5: these clips of the leader of the free world, an
Speaker 5: office that you maybe they felt until Trump came with
Speaker 5: at least some dignity. And we can go back and argue,
Speaker 5: you know, who initially soiled the dignity of.
Speaker 4: The presidential office.
Speaker 5: But you know, at least until Trump, people felt like,
Speaker 5: you know, this was a sort of sacred space. But
Speaker 5: now Joe Biden's in, they're like slurring his words and
Speaker 5: mixing up everyone every other day. That makes people really
Speaker 5: uneasy too, in the same way that Trump tweeting about
Speaker 5: the size of his nuclear button made people uneasy. So yeah, yeah,
Speaker 5: I mean, I think they're they're so ardently in Biden's corner,
Speaker 5: partisan lee in Biden's corner that it's a bubble. Not
Speaker 5: that it's surprising to anyone that the view is a bubble,
Speaker 5: but and.
Speaker 6: The answer that question would have to be James Madison, right,
Speaker 6: you think James Madison. I mean, the guy like basically
Speaker 6: eliminated the government. Hell yeah, put together a little tiny
Speaker 6: militia uh so far that then got whooped by the
Speaker 6: British and had the Oval office burned.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's true, that's true.
Speaker 3: That's sullying. Sully the Oval Office.
Speaker 5: Under Trump, the capital sort of was sacked.
Speaker 6: I don't I don't understand how this small government like
Speaker 6: limited Ryan ever, limited government ideology like survived the burning
Speaker 6: of the White House.
Speaker 3: You couldn't eat.
Speaker 5: That's how you limit the government.
Speaker 6: The British Ate literally ate his dinner. His dinner was
Speaker 6: hot on a plate in the White House. They ate it.
Speaker 5: Speaking of the sacred dignity of our offices. Dallas Airport,
Speaker 5: facing the legacy of John Foster Dallas is now coming
Speaker 5: under target for bro Trump Republicans who have introduced legislation
Speaker 5: Ryan to rename Dallas Airport named for John Foster Dallas
Speaker 5: under to Donald Trump. And as you point out, this
Speaker 5: would be meaning that the two major Washington area airports
Speaker 5: would be Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport and then Donald
Speaker 5: Trump Donald J. Trump Donald J. Trump Airport DJT J. Yeah,
Speaker 5: you're going from JFK to DJT. So clearly Ryan's already
Speaker 5: in favor of this. You ran a Twitter pool.
Speaker 3: Yes, let's see, how are the how are the results looking?
Speaker 6: We can put this up so, uh, you have to
Speaker 6: get rid of that thirty percent.
Speaker 3: So we've got to do a little math here.
Speaker 6: Basically, five to one or six to one. My followers said, uh,
Speaker 6: that Trump that the Dullest Brothers have done more harm
Speaker 6: to the world than Trump. Now, in Trump's defense, the
Speaker 6: Dulls Brothers had a little more time to do to
Speaker 6: do all of this harm. Emily was telling us before
Speaker 6: the show started. Your mom just read the finished reading
Speaker 6: the Brothers book.
Speaker 3: Everybody read The Brothers.
Speaker 6: If you haven't read, if you haven't read The Brothers
Speaker 6: like great book.
Speaker 3: It's it's it's incredible.
Speaker 6: You can, you know, add on to that Jakarta method,
Speaker 6: which I think pairs really well with it, which which
Speaker 6: brings in Indonesia. But yeah, I mean, should we do
Speaker 6: some of the should we do some of the Dullest
Speaker 6: Brother's greatest hits?
Speaker 3: I mean it's hard to find don't have time.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it's hard to find somewhere that they that they
Speaker 6: didn't send the world spiraling in a more chaotic direction.
Speaker 6: But everywhere from overthrowing you know, so overthrowing our benz
Speaker 6: in in Guatemala and overthrowing the Shawn in Iran. Uh,
Speaker 6: which in a pretty direct link led.
Speaker 3: To nine to eleven.
Speaker 6: I've I've got a piece of at the Huffington Post
Speaker 6: that I have read that will explain how you can
Speaker 6: you can draw a really direct line from from that
Speaker 6: to there. Then uh uh, then you've got La Mumba
Speaker 6: in Congo.
Speaker 4: We did a whole long interview on that.
Speaker 3: Carno and uh Indonesia.
Speaker 6: But but then also just setting the stage for this
Speaker 6: interventionist kind of coup regime attempt. Now, one thing I
Speaker 6: would add is that what what Trump doesn't get enough
Speaker 6: credit or discredit for, depending on how you feel, is
Speaker 6: his his interventionist policy in Central and South America during
Speaker 6: his his tenure. And we should we should, I don't.
Speaker 6: I don't know if anybody's you know, fully put this
Speaker 6: all together. But you know, Trump talks a big game
Speaker 6: of isolationism, but was surrounding himself with kind of the
Speaker 6: most interventionist John Bolton types that that kind of haunted
Speaker 6: the Reagan White you know, Reagan era Republicans and still
Speaker 6: haunted Republican Party today even like the so you know,
Speaker 6: they tried to overthrow uh Medora and Venezuela. They they
Speaker 6: did overthrow Morales for a while in Bolivia before he
Speaker 6: came back into power. Uh they basically overthrew Correa in
Speaker 6: in Ecuador, but all, all of these are much more
Speaker 6: complicated for the most part, uh than the kind of
Speaker 6: military backed coups that the Dulles.
Speaker 3: Brothers would do. What what the US.
Speaker 6: Really learned is that this this kinetic kind of overt
Speaker 6: you know, killing a prime minister or a president and
Speaker 6: putting in a new one just clashed you know, too
Speaker 6: squarely and fundamentally and hypocritically with American values that they
Speaker 6: had to find a less kinetic way to do it.
Speaker 6: And so the Bolivia example is a good one, where
Speaker 6: they they basically rigged the election and then put people
Speaker 6: into the streets and then take power by kind of
Speaker 6: kind of streetforce used, you know, using kind of propaganda
Speaker 6: everats in Ecuador, you know, a similar way, they kind
Speaker 6: of flipped the guy that followed Korea and then they
Speaker 6: create this alliance of narco traffickers and right wingers in Brazil,
Speaker 6: similar situation, Well.
Speaker 5: It's basically happening right now in Haiti, I mean, the
Speaker 5: Biden administration.
Speaker 4: Like we've covered this for.
Speaker 5: A couple of years, the way that they manipulated the
Speaker 5: Haitian government while publicly pushing it to be democratic, et cetera,
Speaker 5: et cetera. But basically backed the government on re because
Speaker 5: they wanted them to accept migrant flights.
Speaker 3: And port of Prince Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 6: And then of course Trump and Cuba, which Biden administration
Speaker 6: has completely continued Trump's Trump's Cuba policy. So I think
Speaker 6: it's interesting that the Dulles brothers, if they came back
Speaker 6: to life and were brought to Langley and we're told
Speaker 6: the God to see your briefing, as they would be
Speaker 6: entitled to about you know what the Trump administration did
Speaker 6: to make sure that it's favored governments either got into
Speaker 6: power or remained in power throughout Central and South America.
Speaker 3: I think they would be very impressed and.
Speaker 6: Say, Okay, I'm glad to see that you guys are
Speaker 6: carrying on the tradition and in a more sophisticated way,
Speaker 6: so sophisticated.
Speaker 3: Trump probably doesn't even know about half of it. I
Speaker 3: think that's true and care about it. The point, but
Speaker 3: you be fine with it.
Speaker 5: The point that was with me is it's completely bipartisan.
Speaker 5: This is is a tradition that was carried on by
Speaker 5: certainly the Obama administration, the Clinton administration. There's some you
Speaker 5: can have arguments about the Carter administration, but John Foster Dulles.
Speaker 5: The airport is named after the Secretary of State throughout
Speaker 5: the in the Eisenhower administration basically, and he passed away
Speaker 5: in nineteen fifty nine. This dedication was in nineteen sixty two,
Speaker 5: right after I think Alan Dallas had been pushed out
Speaker 5: in nineteen sixty one, after Kennedy was furious with the
Speaker 5: Bay of Pigs, which had been engineered before he took
Speaker 5: office by the Dallas brothers and by that sort of
Speaker 5: early CIA establishment that continues to the mentality, the ideology
Speaker 5: continues to have major influence over our foreign policy today.
Speaker 5: Tucker Carlson made such an interesting point recently that he's
Speaker 5: basically the more he's learned about recent decades and Cold
Speaker 5: War history, and to be fair to Cold warriors, not
Speaker 5: ones that were in the government, but you know, Cold
Speaker 5: War activists and voters. Over the last half a century,
Speaker 5: we are learning a lot of new reporting about what
Speaker 5: was happening just in the last ten twenty years. I
Speaker 5: mean Devil's Chess Board by David Talbot. A lot of
Speaker 5: that is like new reporting. That book came out what
Speaker 5: in twenty nineteen, A Marria a couple.
Speaker 3: Of years ago. Yeah, there's a couple of years more
Speaker 3: than that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, So, I mean, obviously people knew what was happening
Speaker 5: with the Contrast because Congress ban funding of it at
Speaker 5: the time. But still some of this information about different coups,
Speaker 5: we're just getting it now, like we're only now getting
Speaker 5: declassified stuff. We're only now getting people to admit, you know,
Speaker 5: basically what happened. So as more new information comes up,
Speaker 5: perhaps these remarks from John F. Kennedy at the dedication
Speaker 5: where he even mentions Alan Dalles I think he was there,
Speaker 5: He says, I want to say how appropriate it is
Speaker 5: that this should be named after Secretary Dallas. He was
Speaker 5: a member of an extraordinary family's brother Alan Dallas, who
Speaker 5: served in a great many administrations, stretching back, I believe
Speaker 5: to President Hoover all the way to this one. Kennedy
Speaker 5: had basically just pushed Alan Dallas out of office. John
Speaker 5: Foster Dallas, who had the age of nineteen, was rather
Speaker 5: strangely the secretary to the Chinese delegation to the Hague,
Speaker 5: and who served nearly every presidential administration from that time
Speaker 5: forward to his death in nineteen fifty nine. Also served,
Speaker 5: of course, the clients of Sullivan and Cromwell where he
Speaker 5: was in and out of So it's just your point
Speaker 5: is a really apt one that a lot of this
Speaker 5: is still continuing today, the ideology, the mentality is still
Speaker 5: continuing to this day, and I think hearteningly a lot
Speaker 5: of people on the right who used to dismiss this
Speaker 5: as a hippie nonsense have come around to it actually
Speaker 5: really being the excesses of our shadow government.
Speaker 3: Maybe the Eric Trump compromised Eric Trump Airport.
Speaker 5: The Eric Trump Airport. Well, so some of the chief
Speaker 5: Deputy Whip, he's a Republican from Pennsylvania, sort of the
Speaker 5: southwestern corner of Pennsylvania's one who introduced this. Co sponsors
Speaker 5: are Michael Wallas, Andy Ogos guy I don't know how
Speaker 5: to say his last name Russian Thalar okay, but so
Speaker 5: also Paul Goser, Troy nell Is, Chuck Fleischmann, red state
Speaker 5: Republicans for the most part. So I don't well, I
Speaker 5: don't think the Trump name is going to catch on
Speaker 5: at Dallas.
Speaker 4: May pick another one.
Speaker 5: Everyone's ready to get rid of it.
Speaker 6: I would hope that Democrats would be ready to get
Speaker 6: rid of the Dallas name. So they just need to
Speaker 6: find somebody other than Trump and Democrats probably go for.
Speaker 5: It, are they though, because literally Biden is doing like
Speaker 5: Dallas type conduct in Haiti.
Speaker 3: That's true, but yeah, but it would it would.
Speaker 6: It goes to kind of show how sophisticated the new
Speaker 6: conduct is if we can kind of publicly claim that
Speaker 6: it's different, like we denounce our past crimes against humanity
Speaker 6: as a way of signaling that we don't we don't
Speaker 6: commit those crimes anymore.
Speaker 3: But we do.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so at least publicly, right exactly, All right, Ryan,
Speaker 5: you have some interesting reporting on the race in it's
Speaker 5: from a Maryland seat involving Harry Dunn, a prominent figure
Speaker 5: Capitol Police officer who's now running.
Speaker 6: Yes, yes, indeed so apax super pac has launched a
Speaker 6: major air campaign to block a congressional candidate, Harry Dunn,
Speaker 6: from winning a Democratic primary in Maryland. And you've probably
Speaker 6: heard of Harry Dunn. He's known for his work as
Speaker 6: a Capitol Police officer. On January sixth, two thousand and one,
Speaker 6: and he's become a hero within Democratic Party circles for
Speaker 6: his testimony before Congress and his regular media appearances slamming
Speaker 6: Donald Trump and warning of the threat to democracy. He
Speaker 6: won a Congressional gold medal, and even published a book
Speaker 6: called Standing My Ground, A Capitol Police Officer's Fight for
Speaker 6: Accountability and Good Trouble. After January sixth, Here he is
Speaker 6: on Jake Tapper's program announcing his run for office.
Speaker 10: At this moment, right now, I don't think any of
Speaker 10: us have the luxury of sitting back and waiting for
Speaker 10: somebody else to do something else. You do until there's
Speaker 10: nothing that can be done. There's always something that can
Speaker 10: be done. And I feel like my role as a
Speaker 10: Capitol Police officer, I did all I could do to
Speaker 10: meet this moment that we're in now, to fight, to
Speaker 10: try to seek justice, accountability, defend democracy. But now I'm
Speaker 10: stepping into a new role, and I think that I'm
Speaker 10: up for the challenge to represent the people of the
Speaker 10: third District of Maryland in.
Speaker 3: A deep blue district.
Speaker 6: For your typical Democratic voter, he's an absolute dream of
Speaker 6: a candidate for APAK. Apparently he's a nightmare because they're
Speaker 6: on track to drop three to four million dollars backing
Speaker 6: his opponent, a standard issue Democratic state senator named Sarah Elfreth.
Speaker 6: She's one of more than a dozen local candidates running
Speaker 6: for the seat vacated by Paul Sarbanes and done until
Speaker 6: the past few days, was considered the clear front runner.
Speaker 6: Dunn has raised three point seven million dollars so far,
Speaker 6: according to a campaign source. Of that, two point seven
Speaker 6: million dollars has been reported. Elfreth, meanwhile, had raised roughly
Speaker 6: four hundred thousand dollars, largely from high dollar donors, including
Speaker 6: corporate packs. How much he raised in the first quarter
Speaker 6: of twenty twenty four, though, has yet to be announced.
Speaker 6: The irony for anybody who knows Paul Sarbine's career is
Speaker 6: that he dedicated his life to getting.
Speaker 3: Big money out of politics.
Speaker 6: Now, as he leaves Congress, a Democrat hopes to take
Speaker 6: his seat with super pac money largely coming from Republican
Speaker 6: supporters of Israel. Elfreth appears to have known, or at
Speaker 6: least hoped, the super Pac support was coming. Her campaign
Speaker 6: put on its website what's known as a red box
Speaker 6: on March twenty first. Now, redbox is a method of
Speaker 6: coordinating without legally coordinating with a superpack. Campaigns are barred
Speaker 6: from directly coordinating with super packs, but they get around
Speaker 6: the prohibition by posting information publicly on a campaign website.
Speaker 6: Typically inside a red box that a super pack can
Speaker 6: then use. If you need a primer on that, go
Speaker 6: back and check out my twenty twenty one story on
Speaker 6: the red box put out by Nina Turner's opponent Chantel Brown,
Speaker 6: aimed at attracting pro Israel money.
Speaker 3: Hers worked too.
Speaker 6: Eightpa's new ad on behalf of Elfred does indeed rely
Speaker 6: heavily on information and footage posted in her red box.
Speaker 6: It focuses on her record supporting abortion rights, quote the environment,
Speaker 6: and quote our democracy, not once mentioning Israel or any
Speaker 6: policy related to the Middle East.
Speaker 3: Here's their first ad surat.
Speaker 5: Alfred gets things done.
Speaker 18: In just five years, She's passed eighty four bills like
Speaker 18: affordable childcare, expanding prenatal care, and enshrining abortion rights in
Speaker 18: the Maryland Constitution.
Speaker 3: Now Elpha is running to bring.
Speaker 18: That same get things done approach to Congress. With so
Speaker 18: much at stake, abortion rights, the environment, our democracy, we
Speaker 18: need a congresswoman who will deliver. That's Democrats. Sarah alfrith
Speaker 18: UDP is responsible for the content of this ad.
Speaker 6: So Apax superpack is called United Democracy Project, which refers
Speaker 6: to an alliance between Israel which its backers routinely refer
Speaker 6: to inaccurately as the only democracy in the Middle East
Speaker 6: and the United States. Harry Dunn, of course, has organized
Speaker 6: his campaign to attract support from Democrats nervous that former
Speaker 6: President Donald Trump is a threat to democracy.
Speaker 3: Democrats have heavily criticized Apak.
Speaker 6: For endorsing more than one hundred Republicans who opposed certification
Speaker 6: of the twenty twenty election, taking on a high profile
Speaker 6: January sixth officer suggests Apak has not been bothered by
Speaker 6: that criticism. UDP's ad campaign costs nearly six hundred thousand
Speaker 6: dollars last week. The primary is scheduled for May fourteenth,
Speaker 6: with six weeks until the election. The pace of spending
Speaker 6: suggests Apak is willing to drop some four million dollars
Speaker 6: to lift Elfreth and block Done from getting to Congress.
Speaker 3: But why, Here's the crazy thing nobody knows.
Speaker 6: In mid February, the news outlet Jewish Insider, which covers
Speaker 6: congressional primaries closely with an eye toward policy toward Israel,
Speaker 6: flagg Done as a quote wild card in the race.
Speaker 6: Dunn provided a comment to Jewish Insider, saying he supports
Speaker 6: the legislation to fund Israel's war effort. Quote, Israel has
Speaker 6: a right to defend itself, and I support the goals
Speaker 6: of returning all the hostages home and eliminating Hamas. I
Speaker 6: am glad President Biden has advocated for an approach that
Speaker 6: reduces unnecessary civilian casualties, and I support that approach. Dunn said,
Speaker 6: the crowded congressional primary will decide who replaces outgoing representative Sarbines,
Speaker 6: and the district is solidly democratic. There is no serious
Speaker 6: Republican challenger, so, Emily, if you ask people in this race,
Speaker 6: like what.
Speaker 3: Did Harry Dunn do?
Speaker 6: Joining us now to discuss the fallout of the World
Speaker 6: Central Kitchen massacre is international humanitarian relief Organizermed Khan Ahmed,
Speaker 6: thanks so much for joining us.
Speaker 9: Hi Ryan, Hi Emily. Nice to be with you, Unfortunately
Speaker 9: under these circumstances.
Speaker 6: And I just wanted to set it up by reading
Speaker 6: a piece that you published March twenty third. In the
Speaker 6: intercept to give people context for the work you've done.
Speaker 6: You wrote, I have organized airlifts of women, legislators, judges
Speaker 6: and journalists out of Afghanistan. As kabl Fell delivered ongoing
Speaker 6: aid to Ukrainian frontline villages during Russia's invasion, worked on
Speaker 6: efforts to build runways, roads and highways to deliver aid
Speaker 6: to Rwanda refugees after the genocide, and delivered aid shipments
Speaker 6: to enclaves besieged and under attack by the Syrian army.
Speaker 6: None of it prepared me for the challenges of trying
Speaker 6: to bring a few trucks of food and medicine per
Speaker 6: week into the Gaza strip. But this was late March
Speaker 6: before for this massacre. Can you talk about you know,
Speaker 6: what has happened to these relief efforts in the wake
Speaker 6: of it.
Speaker 9: Well, it's immediately after, of course, so we'll have to
Speaker 9: wait and see what happens. But at the moment, many
Speaker 9: international organizations have paused their activities, mainly because of the
Speaker 9: local staff does not feel safe. I mean they haven't
Speaker 9: been safe for any moment, as we've discussed before, for
Speaker 9: the last six months, but now they're being killed in
Speaker 9: such numbers that they do not feel comfortable doing distributions
Speaker 9: and going to meet the people where they are to
Speaker 9: distribute them. So we're in a bit of a stand still.
Speaker 9: I'm actually in Greece and I have a plane full
Speaker 9: of virgent medicines that are sort of urgently required in Gaza,
Speaker 9: and I'm waiting for clearance to bring them there. And
Speaker 9: it's a very slow process. It was a slow process
Speaker 9: before and now it's basically grind to a standstill. And
Speaker 9: essentially it's indicative of a situation where no one in power,
Speaker 9: none of the decision makers really actually care about the
Speaker 9: humanitarian situation. There's been plenty of lip service, but the
Speaker 9: reality on the ground is it is very slow, and
Speaker 9: there are a number of factors, but it's slow, but
Speaker 9: essentially nobody in power actually cares at about the issue.
Speaker 5: Can you you mentioned it's like still the immediate aftermath
Speaker 5: of what happened with the World Central Kitchen workers. But
Speaker 5: can you walk us through a little bit of what
Speaker 5: so far additional layers of red tape look like to
Speaker 5: get aid into Gaza. What are some of the big
Speaker 5: barriers that you're encountering already or that you expect to
Speaker 5: encounter just to again get aid medicine into Gaza to
Speaker 5: the people of Gaza.
Speaker 9: Well, essentially, the major blocking point is the checkpoint system
Speaker 9: and the checking of actual physical trucks that come in
Speaker 9: to Gaza through Egypt, and that's been since day one,
Speaker 9: since I was first in Rafa on October ninth, and
Speaker 9: trucks were already backed up then, and it's gotten worse
Speaker 9: and worse. They're miles and miles and miles of trucks
Speaker 9: backed up at every checkpoint. So whether it's Rafa on
Speaker 9: the border or a Larish about forty five minutes from Rafa,
Speaker 9: or Ismayula another couple hours away, and the trucks are
Speaker 9: backed up essentially because they don't go through in the
Speaker 9: numbers they need to go through. And that is I mean,
Speaker 9: I've had any number of things happen. I've had incubators
Speaker 9: taken off trucks because I was told they needed to
Speaker 9: be on ambulances. I've had blood pressure monitors taken off
Speaker 9: trucks because they needed to come in ambulances. I've been
Speaker 9: told that the crates were in pact correct, there were
Speaker 9: too many creates in the truck, so any number of
Speaker 9: excuses to not getting stuff in. And essentially, you know,
Speaker 9: the United States government is fully aware of this. They've
Speaker 9: been fully aware of this since day one. Senators Merkley
Speaker 9: and von Holland came to Rafa. They saw exactly, they
Speaker 9: spoke to truck drivers. They've been very vocal since about
Speaker 9: the situation. So it's a there's no there's nothing new here.
Speaker 9: It's it's been like this since the beginning. Essentially, the
Speaker 9: powers that be don't want to aid and significant numbers
Speaker 9: or the numbers needed to enter.
Speaker 6: And let's say that they find something on the truck
Speaker 6: like the blood pressure medicine or too many crates or
Speaker 6: you know whatever else and they say, oh, this is
Speaker 6: this is flagged. Do they let the rest of the
Speaker 6: truck through or do they send what happens to that entire.
Speaker 9: Shipment, depending on where you are. If you were at
Speaker 9: one of the Israeli chick points, they'll send the truck back.
Speaker 9: The whole truck comes back, and it couldn't come back
Speaker 9: to a certain check point where if you have another
Speaker 9: truck available, you can take some of it off, replacement
Speaker 9: with this with the stuff that they'll allow in, and
Speaker 9: then send it back. But essentially you get back in
Speaker 9: the back of the line. So there's no telling how
Speaker 9: long it would they take. You know, for example, there
Speaker 9: are trucks that have been sitting in Rocker for three months,
Speaker 9: literally three months, and and you can go through the
Speaker 9: list and this is you know, stuff that I wish,
Speaker 9: you know, I could make public more widely. I mean,
Speaker 9: the you go through everything is literally before it enters,
Speaker 9: everything is you know, you send, you submit invoices, you
Speaker 9: submit the packing list, you submit the weight, the quantity,
Speaker 9: the origin of where it came from, and you just
Speaker 9: wait and you wait and you wait and you wait,
Speaker 9: and so it's, uh, it's truly soul shattering what you
Speaker 9: have to go through to get to get stuff in
Speaker 9: that you know is desperately needed and literally is helping
Speaker 9: keep you people alive, and you know it's it's it's
Speaker 9: part of this strategy that I think, you know, the
Speaker 9: Israeli strategy since October seventh or October eighth has been
Speaker 9: very clear that their goal is to ethnically cleanse Gaza.
Speaker 9: And that doesn't mean they want to kill everybody. It
Speaker 9: means they want to get everybody out. I think internally
Speaker 9: probably there's discussion on whether that means they want to
Speaker 9: clear out the north part of Gaza or all of Gaza.
Speaker 9: And that means they want you know, people out, and
Speaker 9: there we have hundreds of data points that prove that
Speaker 9: and to make that a reasonable deduction. So I don't
Speaker 9: think that's kind of and they've been open and honest
Speaker 9: about it. I mean, many members of the Prime Minister's
Speaker 9: Cabinet and Kinnescant members have said the same. And so
Speaker 9: if you look at any of the things that have happened,
Speaker 9: it looks like a pretty you know, sort of strategy,
Speaker 9: a pretty obvious strategy of meeting the end goal of
Speaker 9: ethnically pleansing Gaza, including the attack on the World Central
Speaker 9: Kitchen staff.
Speaker 5: So this is exactly what I was to ask you
Speaker 5: about next. Basically, having gone through all of these protocols,
Speaker 5: which as you just described, I mean, are incredibly detailed.
Speaker 5: From the perspective of Israel, the IDF, and from your perspective,
Speaker 5: having been involved so closely in all of this, it
Speaker 5: seems pretty clear that they should have confidence in their
Speaker 5: own processes to clear all of the aid that's attempting
Speaker 5: to come in that basically they're doing everything possible, if
Speaker 5: not more than necessary, to ensure there's nothing involved in
Speaker 5: the aid deliveries that's going to be used against them
Speaker 5: or that's going to you know, have any sort of
Speaker 5: capabilities capacity for Hamas to kill IDF soldiers or Israelis.
Speaker 5: And it seems like you've seen that up close that
Speaker 5: their own processes are very sound. They should have all
Speaker 5: confidence that what's coming into the country or attempting to
Speaker 5: come into the country, for the most part, is safe.
Speaker 9: Yeah. They they have a very good system. They've had
Speaker 9: a system for years and years of clearing stuff, and
Speaker 9: they know what they're doing, and they could clear many,
Speaker 9: many more times tons of food and medicine a day
Speaker 9: than they're doing. They have the capacity to do it,
Speaker 9: and certainly the United States government has the expertise and
Speaker 9: capacity to do it, and certainly the UN agencies do
Speaker 9: as well. They could assist, but it's just not happening
Speaker 9: because it's never been made a priority. They talk about it,
Speaker 9: They talked about it over and over and over again,
Speaker 9: about caring about civilians and humanitarian assistance. But they don't.
Speaker 9: They literally, they just don't.
Speaker 6: I want to read one more passage from your recent
Speaker 6: piece in the intercept. Write it's easy to point the
Speaker 6: finger at Israel, the country that is implementing the blockade
Speaker 6: of God's two point three million residents, half of whom
Speaker 6: are children, yet trying to work the issue from every
Speaker 6: angle on a daily base to get urgent medical and food.
Speaker 6: Eight in I've come to the conclusion that President Joe Biden,
Speaker 6: for whom I hosted fundraisers and worked to elect in
Speaker 6: twenty twenty, has signed on to Israel's end goal of
Speaker 6: the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in Gaza. So what I'm
Speaker 6: curious about is when you came to that conclusion. You
Speaker 6: and I have been in conversation since since the beginning
Speaker 6: of this war, and I'm curious when you moved from
Speaker 6: this is heartless incompetence to this is an actively malicious
Speaker 6: effort on the part of both the Biden administration and
Speaker 6: the Israeli government to ethnically cleanse Gaza. Was it accumulation
Speaker 6: of the days of it, or was there a specific
Speaker 6: moment where you were like, no, this is this is deliberate.
Speaker 9: I don't know that I had an aha moment. It
Speaker 9: was some time in October. I was in and out
Speaker 9: of Sinai two or three times in October at the border,
Speaker 9: and it was very clear that AID was being slow rolled.
Speaker 9: It was very clear that they were targeting certain sectors,
Speaker 9: and you know, sort of some time in October I
Speaker 9: came to the conclusion, which I think is a reasonable deduction,
Speaker 9: that there were no mistakes and there are no mistakes.
Speaker 9: And you know these really, the IDEF tells us all
Speaker 9: the time. You know how precise they are. So the
Speaker 9: hundreds of doctors that have been murdered, the hundreds of
Speaker 9: teachers that have been murdered, the hundreds of AID workers
Speaker 9: that have been murdered, I don't think their mistakes. The
Speaker 9: hundreds of children, the thousands of children, but actually I
Speaker 9: know of literally tens of babies that were simply guilty
Speaker 9: of being in their grips. And so these are things
Speaker 9: that are well known to the US government for many,
Speaker 9: many years as a military term called command and control
Speaker 9: sort of any US government official that's been stationed in
Speaker 9: the region know the IDF has a problem with command
Speaker 9: and control. If you wanted to, you could go out
Speaker 9: and dig up any number of US government officials who've
Speaker 9: been fired on by the IDF over the last you know,
Speaker 9: thirty years or so. So what happened yesterday, for example,
Speaker 9: it will come out at some point that it was
Speaker 9: an issue of command and control and local commanders decided
Speaker 9: to pull the trigger once twice and a third time
Speaker 9: on three different vehicles. But this is not anything new.
Speaker 9: And again, when to come back to your point about
Speaker 9: the White House, this is nothing that the United States
Speaker 9: government doesn't know about IDF activities over the course of
Speaker 9: thirty years literally and probably more than that. The thirty
Speaker 9: years I referred to as those are the years that
Speaker 9: I've been, you know, sort of affiliated with the US
Speaker 9: government or working alongside these issues.
Speaker 5: So my last question is just going to be something
Speaker 5: you told Politico back in December. You were basically dropping
Speaker 5: out of the Biden twenty twenty National Finance Committee, like
Speaker 5: the Biden Victory Funds or twenty twenty four. Yeah, I
Speaker 5: think is what's Oh actually, yes, but you said this
Speaker 5: is bullshit. You make moral compromises being involved in politics
Speaker 5: and ethical shortcuts, but this is a bridge too far,
Speaker 5: and Politico wrote, Although Kan has raised hundreds of thousands
Speaker 5: of dollars for Democrats and previous election cycles, he admits
Speaker 5: that he doesn't have a limitless wealth as top to
Speaker 5: Biden donors, but he hopes it serves as a wake
Speaker 5: up call to the White White House. Since December, do
Speaker 5: you think your decision there has served as a wake
Speaker 5: up call? Do you think that maybe now after the
Speaker 5: World Central kitchen situation, that will be a wake up
Speaker 5: call are you hearing from other donors, people involved in
Speaker 5: democratic circles that they're also fed up with us? It's
Speaker 5: a red line for them with Biden. Basically, what have
Speaker 5: you you heard since then?
Speaker 9: Actually, I'm so far disconnected from the you know, sort
Speaker 9: of Washington political scene that I have no idea because
Speaker 9: I'm literally twenty four hours a day just trying to
Speaker 9: get humanitarian aid into Gaza and help get injured citizens
Speaker 9: in Gaza out to get medical aid where they can.
Speaker 9: So I really don't know. I don't know if anyone
Speaker 9: cares that, you know, I dropped out. I doubt it.
Speaker 9: You know, it's it's just a matter of literally doing
Speaker 9: what you think is right and hoping other people will
Speaker 9: come to similar conclusions when when faced with the facts.
Speaker 9: You know, it's the reality of the world we live
Speaker 9: in is and and it's very very sad. And I
Speaker 9: worked alongside many colleagues of the seven who were murdered.
Speaker 9: Zoby Frankom, you know, a tremendous person, Damian Sobil, an
Speaker 9: incredible person with years of experience. But the reality is
Speaker 9: Palestinians have being murdered in the same way for six months.
Speaker 9: They've been targeted, they've been identified, and they've been murdered.
Speaker 9: They've been hit by snipers, they've been hit by fifteen's,
Speaker 9: they've hit by Apache helicopters, and they've been hit by drones.
Speaker 9: As it wasn't the case the tragic case of the
Speaker 9: w c K staff. So I don't know, you know,
Speaker 9: I don't know what it is. What what will wake
Speaker 9: people up to the reality of what's happening and what's
Speaker 9: been happening in Gaza. But you know, you you hear
Speaker 9: what I hear our excuses sometimes, uh, you know, this
Speaker 9: is war and the fog of war, you know, Ryan,
Speaker 9: like you said, I've been to I've delivered humanitarian aid
Speaker 9: and every single war zone the last twenty five years.
Speaker 9: And this has nothing to do with war. This is
Speaker 9: the targeting and the murder of innocent civilians. And those
Speaker 9: aid workers are innocent civilians. They happened to be expats.
Speaker 9: But essentially the Palestinians, the Palestinians, as I said, the doctors,
Speaker 9: the teachers, the midwives, they've all been they've been all
Speaker 9: executed in the same way and targeted.
Speaker 6: The Guardian published an investigation yesterday, uh speaking of Palestinian
Speaker 6: civilians that uh, that concluded that it appeared that Palestinian
Speaker 6: children were being targeted by Israeli snipers and that for that,
Speaker 6: for that type of investigation to get into the into
Speaker 6: the Guardian, you know, shows the level of the evidentiary
Speaker 6: standard that had to be meet to get get it
Speaker 6: past those editors there. Yet here in Washington wanted read
Speaker 6: you one last thing. There's still this this belief that
Speaker 6: this is these are just unfortunate moments. Here's David Ignatius
Speaker 6: writing in the Washington Post. He writes, Monday illustrated the
Speaker 6: spectrum of outcomes we have seen from the i DF
Speaker 6: astonishing precision in targeting some of Iran's most toxic commanders
Speaker 6: at a secret meeting in Damascus in a consulate by
Speaker 6: the way, and then he says an appalling sloppiness in
Speaker 6: an apparently accidental strike on a humanitarian team in Gaza.
Speaker 6: When you when you see something like that in the
Speaker 6: Washington Post, what what what do you think?
Speaker 9: Well, I mean, you know it's David Ignatius, So he's
Speaker 9: a member of the establishment. To longtime member of the establishment.
Speaker 9: Probably spend too many, too much time and you know,
Speaker 9: dreadful Washington d C Hotel bars At this point, so
Speaker 9: you know, you sort of roll your eyes. You know,
Speaker 9: if you're looking at the situation through a prism of
Speaker 9: the Hamptons, it's different than if you're looking at it
Speaker 9: from out here in the world. And you know, to
Speaker 9: call it an accident is you know, it's just embarrassing.
Speaker 16: You know.
Speaker 9: An accident is when you sort of trip over a cable.
Speaker 9: An accident is not when local commanders give authorization to
Speaker 9: fire three separate times over a geographical distance over a
Speaker 9: series of minutes. That's not an accident. And uh, you know,
Speaker 9: with regard to the Guardian story, yeah, that's I'm unfortunately
Speaker 9: very aware of this reality. I've been in touch with
Speaker 9: many families live trying to get them out, and they've
Speaker 9: been killed in that process, and it's hard to imagine
Speaker 9: that they weren't targeted. And children as well. There was
Speaker 9: a three month old baby I was trying to get
Speaker 9: out of Her parents had already been killed, and we
Speaker 9: had managed to get the birth certificate and then she
Speaker 9: was killed, you know, so in her just sleeping in
Speaker 9: her in her in her crib, in her in her
Speaker 9: in HER's apartment, you know, and it's it's just very
Speaker 9: there's no there's nothing imprecise about it. I've said it
Speaker 9: and I believe it, that every one of these murders
Speaker 9: has been targeted. And you know the answer would be, oh,
Speaker 9: if we wanted to kill everyone, we could kill, you know,
Speaker 9: five hundred thousand, and I just think they they've killed
Speaker 9: the number they think they can get away with, you know.
Speaker 9: So whatever that number is, whether it's thirty five thousand
Speaker 9: or forty thousand, or fifty thousand and seventy five thousand
Speaker 9: who are severely injured, it's the number they want it
Speaker 9: to be. And that number is significant. That means that
Speaker 9: literally every single Palestinian, every single Palestinian in Gaza, as
Speaker 9: a member of their immediate circle, whether it's friends or family,
Speaker 9: who have either been killed or severely injured or injured,
Speaker 9: will never recover from And this is aside from the
Speaker 9: two point two million people who have gone through trauma.
Speaker 9: No one else in the world has experienced them. And
Speaker 9: again I've been to every one of these situations now, Sudan, Congo,
Speaker 9: nobody on earth can even comprehend of what's going on
Speaker 9: side of Gaza. Relentless bombardment from land, sea and air.
Speaker 9: So literally it's two point two million people and the
Speaker 9: few of us who actually been inside of Gaza since
Speaker 9: October seventh, And that's that's about it. Because it's actually
Speaker 9: beyond the scope of human comprehension to be under constant bombardment,
Speaker 9: to have to move your family four or five, six times,
Speaker 9: to lose members of your family in that process, you know.
Speaker 9: So I think you're like the people in DC are
Speaker 9: obviously just you know, they're so disconnected from reality, so
Speaker 9: out of touch that you know, that's that's probably what
Speaker 9: you would expect.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that's right.
Speaker 6: So last night there was an earthquake in Taiwan, which
Speaker 6: which produced tsunami warnings in Okinawa, where my mother in
Speaker 6: law happens to be on in like an old old
Speaker 6: person's like bus trip, and so I was texting her
Speaker 6: and she was sending me video of her right next
Speaker 6: to the ocean as the tsunami is is predicted to
Speaker 6: be coming, and like there there was this moment of
Speaker 6: a half an hour to an hour where it was
Speaker 6: unclear if she was going to be able to get
Speaker 6: to high enough ground in time. And it was a
Speaker 6: terrifying moment, and it made me think that everyone in
Speaker 6: Gaza has been living through that moment, you know, every
Speaker 6: minute of the day, you know, for the last five months,
Speaker 6: without any hope that the tsunami wave is going to
Speaker 6: creston and foll Because now the wave has passed Okinawa
Speaker 6: and my mother in law is safe. The wave has
Speaker 6: not crested through gaz In fact, it seems like it's
Speaker 6: only crashing harder as a result of this World Central
Speaker 6: Kitchen masacre, which, as you said, has to be the
Speaker 6: intended result. We started the show with John Kirby claiming
Speaker 6: there's absolutely no evidence that any of this was deliberate,
Speaker 6: so we'll leave it to viewers to decide. Ahmed, thank
Speaker 6: you so much as always for the work that you
Speaker 6: do and also for joining us on this program.
Speaker 9: Thanks very much, Brian, Thanks Emily, I appreciate it. Thank you.
Speaker 9: You're very right that that moment that you went through
Speaker 9: is exactly what they have gone through every minute of
Speaker 9: every day and every night for the last six months.
Speaker 6: You can't imagine what that leaves your psyche like after that,
Speaker 6: if there ever isn't after it.
Speaker 5: And your mother in law is now safe, right, So I.
Speaker 3: Don't know about the boat. We'll find out about that,
Speaker 3: that's right.
Speaker 6: The boat was Yeah, because she was a boat trip
Speaker 6: that goes around Japan, bunch of Miami seventy somethings. Sounds
Speaker 6: nice taking Japan in and then all of a sudden
Speaker 6: there's a tsunami.
Speaker 5: Sounds less nice. Yes, that sounds much less nice. Ryan,
Speaker 5: that was a fascinating interview with Ahmed. Thank you for
Speaker 5: setting that up.
Speaker 3: I think Griffin took that one up. Thank you, Thank
Speaker 3: you Griffin.
Speaker 5: Pretty sure, Griffin. We'll be back here next Wednesday with
Speaker 5: more Counterpoints. Remember to subscribe at breaking Points dot com.
Speaker 5: You get the full episode of Counterpoints uninterrupted right in
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Speaker 5: That's right, don't use that. It doesn't work.
Speaker 3: No, an apostoph will break the link.
Speaker 5: It's also not a t pey. It's not you can well,
Speaker 5: we'll have someone do the Jimmy fallon someday and grab
Speaker 5: your head. But not today. Today's not today.
Speaker 13: For that.
Speaker 4: But anyway, we'll see you guys next week.
Speaker 5: Yeah, maybe next week. We'll see you guys next week,
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