Speaker 1: Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here,
Speaker 1: and we here at breaking points, are already thinking of
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Speaker 3: But enough with that, let's get to the show. All right,
Speaker 3: good morning, and welcome to Counterpoints.
Speaker 4: We have a truly spectacular show today, don't we Emily.
Speaker 5: That was as enthusiastic.
Speaker 3: That's really amazing.
Speaker 5: At a lower volume, it's amazing.
Speaker 3: It's gonna be amazing.
Speaker 4: No, Joe Biden has said that he has decided how
Speaker 4: he's going to respond to the Iraqi militia attack on
Speaker 4: US troops that were for some reason in Jordan, reservists
Speaker 4: for some reason in Jordan, which through our own blunders,
Speaker 4: ended up killing three service members. Biden is now saying
Speaker 4: he's going to respond, he has not done so.
Speaker 3: As we go to go to air yet, we're.
Speaker 4: Going to talk about the kind of the propaganda war
Speaker 4: that's going on in the US media around both the
Speaker 4: October seventh atrocities as well as the atrocities that have
Speaker 4: been carried out since then.
Speaker 3: What else we got?
Speaker 5: Yeah, because you and your colleagues have a really interesting story.
Speaker 5: Stay tuned for this about what happened inside the New
Speaker 5: York Times with an episode of The Daily related to
Speaker 5: the conflict in her own Palestine. So I'm excited to
Speaker 5: get into that. Right, the squad is having a really
Speaker 5: bad week, and as our resident expert, actually not even
Speaker 5: our resk, but resident expert the media is expert on
Speaker 5: the squad, We're going to talk to you about some
Speaker 5: you know, maybe blenders or investigations between ilhan Omar, Corey Bush,
Speaker 5: and Jamal Bowman.
Speaker 4: Scandals are hitting three of the six members of the squad.
Speaker 4: And I kind of ginned this up myself so that
Speaker 4: I could promote my book a little bit longer.
Speaker 3: It was pretty clever.
Speaker 4: I instigated a Department of Justice investigation into court.
Speaker 5: You foiled the complaint.
Speaker 4: I mistranslated ilhan Omar's speech before a group of Smalley
Speaker 4: Americans in Minnesota, and I dug up Jamal Bowman's old
Speaker 4: nine to eleven poem.
Speaker 5: Well, you actually had that already though, because you read
Speaker 5: it often.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but I held it back just so I could
Speaker 4: push the book a little bit more.
Speaker 5: If you stay tuned for anything today.
Speaker 3: None of that was true, but those are the scandals
Speaker 3: that we're going to talk about.
Speaker 5: H Yeah, we're going to go into a clip of
Speaker 5: Republican Congressman Mariel Viral Salazar, who's from Miami area, getting
Speaker 5: grilled in an interview, and this is a clip it
Speaker 5: was going pretty viral, but it also speaks to some
Speaker 5: much broader issues in Washington, d C. So stay tuned
Speaker 5: for that as well. And finally, we're going to play
Speaker 5: a clip of Ejing Carroll on Rachel Maddow's show. Again
Speaker 5: that is super viral for some really I think bad reasons. Obviously,
Speaker 5: Trump got hit with an eighty three million dollar payment,
Speaker 5: so Egan Carroll was discussing, you know, what she's planning
Speaker 5: to do with some of the money, and I think
Speaker 5: Ryan her comments might as you could see on her
Speaker 5: lawyer's face. We'll get into this, but they might bear
Speaker 5: they might have some effect on the case itself because
Speaker 5: Trump is appealing and.
Speaker 4: If we have time, we're going to get into both
Speaker 4: the new sanctions that the State Department slapped on Venezuela
Speaker 4: and how those contrast with the lack of sanctions placed
Speaker 4: on Pakistan, despite the fact that Pakistani secret courts just
Speaker 4: sentenced Imran Khan for a second time in just as
Speaker 4: many days. This time, the first sentence was ten years.
Speaker 4: Next trumped up sentence was fourteen years. State Department completely
Speaker 4: fine with that. State Department has a problem when it
Speaker 4: happens to Venezuela. If we don't have time to get
Speaker 4: to that in this two hour show, we'll do something
Speaker 4: extra and catch it later.
Speaker 5: Yeah, we have a clip of Ryan actually, yes, the
Speaker 5: State Department on that. Let's start with President Biden discussing
Speaker 5: Iran yesterday. Here's this clip from Joe Biden outside the
Speaker 5: White House.
Speaker 1: We'll respond responsible the sense of the supplying the weapons
Speaker 1: to the people.
Speaker 6: Who are giving.
Speaker 7: Well, we'll have that discussion.
Speaker 1: I don't think we to wider war and the movileast.
Speaker 5: That's not what I'm looking for you, Okay. So we
Speaker 5: also have a clip from the Pentagon responding to some
Speaker 5: similar questions. Let's roll a two here.
Speaker 8: I wouldn't say that the conflict is spreading in that
Speaker 8: we've seen over one hundred attacks on US forces. Unfortunately,
Speaker 8: over one hundred attacks on US forces in Iraq and
Speaker 8: Syria and of course now in Jordan. We don't want
Speaker 8: to see a widening of this conflict. We don't see
Speaker 8: this conflict widening as it still remains contained to Gaza.
Speaker 8: But this attack was certainly escalatory in that it killed
Speaker 8: three service members, three of our US service members, And
Speaker 8: as the President has said, we don't see conflict. We
Speaker 8: don't want to see wide a widening of a regional war.
Speaker 8: But we will respond to the time and place of
Speaker 8: our choosings.
Speaker 9: Not spreading when troops literally have died in another country.
Speaker 8: Well again, but they've also been launching these attacks since
Speaker 8: October seventeenth, and again we can't discount the fact that
Speaker 8: these attacks are incredibly dangerous put our service members at risk,
Speaker 8: but they have not, up until yesterday, inflicted lethal harm.
Speaker 8: They have been predominantly minor injuries and minor damage to infrastructure.
Speaker 4: It is interesting that we feel like we have to
Speaker 4: respond by escalating when typically this attack would have been
Speaker 4: intercepted and like she said, it would have caused minor damage.
Speaker 4: We would have knocked the drone out of the sky.
Speaker 4: Maybe it hits a fence, and they have to fix
Speaker 4: a fence post. But because we screwed up and our
Speaker 4: defenses presumed that this drone was actually a US drone
Speaker 4: that had been out flying around Jordan and who knows
Speaker 4: where else, that we let it get too close to
Speaker 4: the base. When it got too close to the base,
Speaker 4: it killed three soldiers. So it's very interesting that we
Speaker 4: feel like, yes, they did launch it, but if we
Speaker 4: had intercepted it, like we had intercepted every other other one,
Speaker 4: we would not feel like we had to attack iron.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's a great point that our own incompetence, and
Speaker 5: I think this is what's so scary about being fanned
Speaker 5: out across the Middle East in ways that actually you
Speaker 5: and Ken clippenslaying and the intercept in general has been
Speaker 5: I think dogged at tracking down and pushing these questions
Speaker 5: about who's in Yemen?
Speaker 3: What do you mean?
Speaker 5: We're in Yemen? That's I think what's so dangerous.
Speaker 3: Meming and we're in Jordan.
Speaker 4: Best seller made a good point to Daily you know,
Speaker 4: you know where American troops are not dying Afghanistan, And
Speaker 4: people have been saying for years now, leaving troops in Syria,
Speaker 4: leaving troops all spread out all over the Middle East,
Speaker 4: is just giving targets to these milicias.
Speaker 5: Say you make a mistake, like in this case, three
Speaker 5: service members die.
Speaker 3: And now we're required to go to war over it.
Speaker 5: Right, right, And so then you have the pressures. You
Speaker 5: have all of that, and just because of our own
Speaker 5: incompetence and because we were fanned out across the Middle
Speaker 5: East in different ways. Now again the fault is with
Speaker 5: the people who are sending drones to us for killing
Speaker 5: the service members. That doesn't excuse the incompetence at all,
Speaker 5: and it doesn't excuse us having this strategy that makes
Speaker 5: us so vulnerable to getting into wars, because, like you said,
Speaker 5: like these pressures can change in an instant.
Speaker 4: And meanwhile, as Cristal Osaga talked about yesterday, the negotiations
Speaker 4: over some type of resolution to the hostage crisis in
Speaker 4: the war itself can continue, each side rejecting offers and
Speaker 4: offers and counter offers. Meanwhile, we can put up this
Speaker 4: next element here, Hamas appears to be regrouping in northern Gaza,
Speaker 4: and a sign of Israel retreat, retreating, and the war
Speaker 4: effort going quite poorly on the ground for the IDF.
Speaker 4: Now if you remember, the State Department won a concession
Speaker 4: from Israel that United Nations surveyors would be able to
Speaker 4: go into northern Gaza and just check out the situation
Speaker 4: and come back.
Speaker 3: With the report on what it would take to.
Speaker 4: Get house to the standing population to be able to
Speaker 4: go back to their homes. Matt Miller at the State
Speaker 4: Department yesterday said that that that is now on hold
Speaker 4: because of so many Hamas militants resurfacing in this area.
Speaker 4: Israel is saying publicly that Hamas is even policing the area.
Speaker 4: And this comes after Israel said maybe a dozen different
Speaker 4: times that they had operational control of Northern Gaza, which
Speaker 4: was in the face of so many analysts saying it's
Speaker 4: not possible, like with just simply with the civilian population
Speaker 4: against you, with the tunnel, with the tunnels, you know,
Speaker 4: remaining operational, despite the fact that they're now flooding them again,
Speaker 4: Israel flooding them with water again, something like eighty percent
Speaker 4: of them are still functional. And the Israeli economy is
Speaker 4: buckling under the weight of all of this because not
Speaker 4: only are they have they now cut off their main
Speaker 4: source of low wage labor, which is you know what
Speaker 4: West Bank Palestinians and Gazen Palestinians that are not allowing
Speaker 4: into the country anymore, but hundreds of thousands of their
Speaker 4: other Israeli workers have been called up and are fighting
Speaker 4: the war. So you've got entire companies that are just
Speaker 4: basically empty of workers, and you can't run an economy
Speaker 4: for long under those conditions, especially when tourism, which is
Speaker 4: a major part of the economy, is also spiraling.
Speaker 5: Your point about Hamas returning to northern Gaza is such
Speaker 5: an important one. This is quote from that Guardian article
Speaker 5: that we just had up on the screen from Michael
Speaker 5: Milsteen of the Institute for National Security Studies, which is
Speaker 5: basically a think tank that's in Israel. It's based in
Speaker 5: Tel Aviv. He said, Hamas controlled these areas, so there's
Speaker 5: no chaos or vacuum because it is the workers of
Speaker 5: Gazam municipality or civil rescue defense forces who are effectively
Speaker 5: part of Hamas, who are enforcing public order. Hamas still exists,
Speaker 5: Hamas has survived. The IDF version is that in the
Speaker 5: northern part of Gaza, the base, sick military structure of
Speaker 5: Hamas was broken. That only works with a conventional army,
Speaker 5: but not for a flexible guerrilla operation like Hamas. We're
Speaker 5: already seeing individuals as snipers, setting booby traps and so on,
Speaker 5: so many casualties in northern Gaza over the last few
Speaker 5: months for that goal of eliminating Hamas. A lot of
Speaker 5: people died in the interest of eliminating Hamas. This is,
Speaker 5: I mean, beyond tragic to realize that. You know, again,
Speaker 5: we've been questioning whether that was a possibility when you have,
Speaker 5: as Michael Milstein puts it, a quote flexible guerrilla operation.
Speaker 5: And I think we're going to be seeing increasingly that
Speaker 5: the answer to that is what people suspected. It was
Speaker 5: not possible to wage that kind of war and quote
Speaker 5: eradicate Hamas.
Speaker 3: I think and Saga has made.
Speaker 4: I think early on this Worsaga was making some comparisons
Speaker 4: to Vietnam and the vietcom and I think those are
Speaker 4: apt in the sense that you could also say it
Speaker 4: in comparison to the American Revolution, like the idea that
Speaker 4: the British were going to come over here or the
Speaker 4: US were going to go over to Vietnam and we
Speaker 4: were and they would just magically pluck out, you know,
Speaker 4: Sam Adams and John Adams and go find you know,
Speaker 4: Thomas Paine and kill them. And you know, flat in Philadelphia.
Speaker 4: Granted they didn't have drones, they did not they did
Speaker 4: not have drones. They had fire and torture, and they
Speaker 4: used it pretty ruthlessly. But because the the gorilla army
Speaker 4: of the American revolutionaries was part and parcel of the
Speaker 4: the kind of the patriotic resistance, you know, to Britain,
Speaker 4: like you're not going to just get rid of it,
Speaker 4: Like that's not going to happen in Vietnam.
Speaker 3: You're not. You're not going to.
Speaker 4: Identify a list of Vietcong, you know, capture and kill
Speaker 4: all of them.
Speaker 3: And then all of a sudden you just.
Speaker 4: Have appliant Vietnamese population that is happy to you know,
Speaker 4: live under whatever American puppet you put over there like that,
Speaker 4: and they would keep putting up, you know, back in
Speaker 4: during the Vietnam War, they kept putting up the casualty figures. Look,
Speaker 4: we just killed another ten thousand Vietnamese, and that would
Speaker 4: be and victory is about to turn a corner. There's
Speaker 4: a light at the end of the tunnel. They kept saying,
Speaker 4: just to kill a few more. But if the if
Speaker 4: the if the Gorilla army is an organic part of
Speaker 4: the population, then you're not going to be able to
Speaker 4: do that. And at the same time, critics of the
Speaker 4: Palestinians who say, well, there are no civilians, like President
Speaker 4: Herzog has said, there are no civilians, they all support Humas.
Speaker 4: If that's true, then how are you going to up
Speaker 4: group Hamas like you either believe. If you believe that,
Speaker 4: then your strategy has to be to completely clear out
Speaker 4: every Palestinian or your strategy will fail. And I think
Speaker 4: that for a lot of that was their strategy. But
Speaker 4: now they're running up against the international resistance to just
Speaker 4: clearing out all the Palestinians.
Speaker 5: And we're talking about tens of thousands of deaths based
Speaker 5: on Estmens that we have right now. And still Hamas
Speaker 5: now returning to northern Gaza and apparently operating or re
Speaker 5: establishing some of those operations that existed just a few months.
Speaker 4: Ago while they're still waging their military campaign. This isn't
Speaker 4: aname after they've kind of backed off.
Speaker 3: Right, Well, I guess, I mean to some they have
Speaker 3: backed off, but they haven't. They haven't ceased fire.
Speaker 5: Yeah, let's look at Kamala Harris being pressed by Katie
Speaker 5: Kirk on what we have been very clear is perhaps
Speaker 5: the biggest problem with the United States involvement in this
Speaker 5: conflict in terms of the philosophy, the kind of underlying
Speaker 5: philosophy that the US is bringing to the conflict. Let's
Speaker 5: roll this clip.
Speaker 6: We've been very clear humanitarian aid must flow from day one.
Speaker 6: I will tell you one of my areas of priority
Speaker 6: included let's think about the day after, because we must
Speaker 6: stay focused on an eventual to a state solution.
Speaker 10: Well, having said that, I want to tell you something
Speaker 10: which I'm sure you're well aware of that BB Netanyahu,
Speaker 10: Prime minister, who recently said he rejected US calls to
Speaker 10: scale back Israel's military action in the Gaza Strip or
Speaker 10: to support a Palestinian state after the war. He even
Speaker 10: said that Israel quote must have security control over the
Speaker 10: entire territory west of the Jordan River, which includes Gaza.
Speaker 10: So given those positions, how can you possibly come together?
Speaker 10: How can the US and Israel come together to solve this?
Speaker 10: And should aid to Israel be conditional?
Speaker 6: So I'll start with the principles that we are applying
Speaker 6: to this discussion, which we've been very clear with Israeli
Speaker 6: government about one as it relates to the day after.
Speaker 6: There should be no reoccupation of Gaza, there should be
Speaker 6: no changing of the territorial boundaries of Gaza. That the
Speaker 6: Palestinians are entitled to an equal measure with Israelis security
Speaker 6: and prosperity.
Speaker 10: Doesn't sound like vvt Ya who agrees with that.
Speaker 6: We're the United States of America. I'm telling you our position,
Speaker 6: and we take our role in this discussion very seriously.
Speaker 5: There may be disagreements.
Speaker 6: That doesn't mean we're going to change our mind.
Speaker 10: So should AID that and Vice President be conditional? If
Speaker 10: the Prime Minister of Israel is stating this, should that
Speaker 10: AID not come if there's not that kind of flexibility
Speaker 10: that you're seeking.
Speaker 6: We are right now in a position of negotiating with
Speaker 6: Congress to follow through on a commitment we made for AID,
Speaker 6: and we are taking it one day at a time
Speaker 6: in terms of what is happening in the region and
Speaker 6: how we are addressing the issue. But that's where we
Speaker 6: are right now.
Speaker 10: So I don't feel like you really answered my question. Well,
Speaker 10: but do you think it should be conditional? I know
Speaker 10: you're carrying out that's not our position, right now not
Speaker 10: right now.
Speaker 4: It's like that confession was extracted through torture. Practically, just
Speaker 4: say it.
Speaker 5: You know, Kamala Harris is mad when she's laughing.
Speaker 4: It was impressive though, the way that Katie Kirk there
Speaker 4: just doesn't move on and just insists on getting an
Speaker 4: actual answer out of her. Yeah, that was I thought
Speaker 4: that was impressively done. And you know, especially after Kamala
Speaker 4: Harris said, well, I think I've answered your question, It's like, did.
Speaker 5: You I'm not quite sure Katie kurrk committing random acts
Speaker 5: of journalism.
Speaker 4: I'm quite sure that I heard an answer there, but
Speaker 4: that but the substance of it is also so important.
Speaker 4: There could not be bigger gap between the two positions
Speaker 4: of Net Yahoos, which is, you know, Israel ought to
Speaker 4: control have security control over everything from the Jordan River
Speaker 4: to the Mediterranean Sea, and the American position that Israel
Speaker 4: should not and that there should be a path toward
Speaker 4: a two state solution. Right like that's now Net Yahoo's
Speaker 4: is actually much more grounded in the reality of the
Speaker 4: fact that there are seven hundred and fifty thousand Israeli
Speaker 4: settlers in the West Bank and that Israel is pursuing
Speaker 4: control not just of the res crossing, but also of
Speaker 4: the Rafa crossing with Egypt.
Speaker 3: They are gunning, They are trying to make that.
Speaker 4: Reality, the kind of final reality on the ground, Like
Speaker 4: their vision is much closer to happening than our vision.
Speaker 4: So in that sense, you know, you know, his posture
Speaker 4: is in the lead. But for years we've kind of
Speaker 4: had to pretend that that's not really what he thinks,
Speaker 4: and that there's actually a major constituency in Israel for
Speaker 4: a two state solution.
Speaker 3: If we just continue to say that, if there is.
Speaker 5: Yea and if you've zoom out to thirty thousand feet
Speaker 5: and tried to explain the United States support for this
Speaker 5: war to people in another time or another era, they
Speaker 5: would say, oh, so you are aiding Israel and their
Speaker 5: goals for Gaza, their goals for the territory. I mean,
Speaker 5: that's the most common sense conclusion, is the most common
Speaker 5: sense conclusion from a nation giving another nation billions of
Speaker 5: dollars to prosecute a war. But in fact we're on
Speaker 5: vastly different pages about why the war is being or
Speaker 5: we say we are, yeah, well yeah, I mean I
Speaker 5: think though that, I mean, Joe Biden's been a two
Speaker 5: State solution guy for decades. He's, you know, mister two
Speaker 5: state solution. He walks around like mister two state solution.
Speaker 5: And it's just an incredibly I think it's very frightening.
Speaker 5: We've talked about this a lot, but it's just the
Speaker 5: fact that this isn't the conversation the media is pushing
Speaker 5: every single day. And it took Katie Kirk like three
Speaker 5: months to get Kamala Harris to confront that central tension
Speaker 5: is pathetic.
Speaker 4: Right, And the key thing is, Okay, what we say
Speaker 4: doesn't mean much. What we do is what matters. There
Speaker 4: was some leaked report in NBC News that Biden is
Speaker 4: now considering you withholding some weapons in order to put
Speaker 4: pressure on Israel, which flies in the face of all
Speaker 4: these people you see saying, well, Biden can't do that.
Speaker 3: And of course Biden can do that.
Speaker 5: But to do what and why? I mean, it's just
Speaker 5: that's the question that Biden and Kamala Harris absolutely can't
Speaker 5: answer for Israel to defend itself. Okay, so again, to
Speaker 5: what ends does that mean that Israel controls the entire
Speaker 5: area or what are your conditions actually aimed at achieving?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 4: The way that people think about it here in the
Speaker 4: US is that unconditional support for Israel empowers the right
Speaker 4: wing because it allows the right wing to say, look,
Speaker 4: we don't have to compromise at all with the Palestinians.
Speaker 4: We can do the maximalist version of what we want
Speaker 4: and the US will be behind us the entire time.
Speaker 4: And that undercuts the Yesha Tid Party Benny Gantz, people
Speaker 4: who in the past have not today, but in the
Speaker 4: past have spoken favorably about a two state solution. They
Speaker 4: don't even talk about it anymore. But if the United
Speaker 4: States came around and said, look, this is the deal,
Speaker 4: like we're cutting off aid tomorrow unless you move forward
Speaker 4: on an irrevocable path on a two state solution and
Speaker 4: you cut a deal with Saudi Arabia, the UAE cutter
Speaker 4: everybody else.
Speaker 3: And you just have to do this.
Speaker 4: That then empowers the political position inside Israel that says, look,
Speaker 4: we don't have a choice, we have to do this.
Speaker 4: That moves voters, it moves and it moves politicians.
Speaker 3: That's the theory.
Speaker 4: What the theory so far has been held up by
Speaker 4: reality because our unconditional support for Israel has only moved
Speaker 4: the Israeli kind of political spectrum, you know, inexorably to
Speaker 4: the right over the last thirty years.
Speaker 5: It makes it's more logically consistent to be a one
Speaker 5: stater at this point, like NETANYAHUO, than to be whatever
Speaker 5: the hell Kama.
Speaker 4: Who's like, Look, it's not going to happen. Let's just
Speaker 4: give everyone equal rights and citizenship within the exact same
Speaker 4: area that Nanna who just outlined.
Speaker 5: It's a clear and consistent and like sort of coherent
Speaker 5: internally coherent end goal. And that is not what we're
Speaker 5: getting from this administration whatsoever. We don't have any clear
Speaker 5: benchmark of what it means to eradicate Amas, and no
Speaker 5: clear benchmark of what would happen after eradicating Amas. And
Speaker 5: yet we're pouring so much money into this conflict that
Speaker 5: is spilling so much blood. Again, just a scary place
Speaker 5: to be.
Speaker 4: We're getting an absolute pressure cooker situation in the West Bank.
Speaker 4: Let's roll video here of this arraid of a hospital
Speaker 4: by Israeli assassins in Janine.
Speaker 3: So what you're seeing here.
Speaker 4: Are is a group of Israeli commandos dressed up in
Speaker 4: medical garb, some of them dressed as women wearing a
Speaker 4: job with silencers on their assault weapons, strolling through a hospital.
Speaker 4: Now now now they're showing footage of the room where
Speaker 4: they assassinated three Palestinians. There's a blood stained pillow where
Speaker 4: it seems that somebody was executed in their bed.
Speaker 5: We were told they were sleeping when they were.
Speaker 4: And Israel has since said that one of them had
Speaker 4: a gun on them, but the hospital has said there
Speaker 4: was no exchange of fire, so that the gun, the
Speaker 4: only guns that were fired came from the Israeli commandos.
Speaker 11: There.
Speaker 4: One of the western outlets, I think it was the
Speaker 4: BBC put put assassination in quotes and said that the
Speaker 4: Palestinians you know, described this as an as a quote assassination.
Speaker 4: In their next paragraph they mentioned that the commandos used silencers.
Speaker 4: I think we can take the quotes off of assassination.
Speaker 4: If you if you sneak up on somebody, uh and
Speaker 4: and assassinate.
Speaker 5: Them when the yes, all three of the people who
Speaker 5: were killed have been claimed by terrorists has claimed.
Speaker 4: One of them was apparently a spokesman for the for
Speaker 4: A Hamas military wing and the other two were a commander.
Speaker 4: And yeah, right, these are all like these are like
Speaker 4: there doesn't seem to be any question that these are
Speaker 4: Hamas figures. Doesn't also doesn't seem to be any question
Speaker 4: that they were in a hospital.
Speaker 5: Which is an assassination. That's it's an assassination.
Speaker 4: Israel has security control of the West Bank, like they
Speaker 4: occupy the West Bank. There was nothing stopping them from
Speaker 4: going in as a police force or even as a
Speaker 4: military force in actual military gear. And you're even seeing
Speaker 4: from Israeli politicians and others saying that that would have
Speaker 4: been just from a tactical propaganda perspective, a savvier way
Speaker 4: to do it. You surround, and you surround them if
Speaker 4: if there is if they fight back, a gunfighting you
Speaker 4: know happens in boom. Unfortunately, we had to kill these
Speaker 4: three militants, but to go in dressed as kind of
Speaker 4: nurses and doctors.
Speaker 5: You can see them in this picture with Ben Givier.
Speaker 5: By the way, we have next picture is Edmar Ben
Speaker 5: Gavier posing with some of the people that were part
Speaker 5: of this operation that you just saw on the video.
Speaker 4: Yes, there and they have changed back into some type
Speaker 4: of commando garb.
Speaker 3: There no longer dressed in their kind of medical gear.
Speaker 4: But yeah, when the when Israel has been spending so
Speaker 4: much time, you know, accusing Hamas of embedding itself with
Speaker 4: civilians for them to kind of disguise themselves as civilians
Speaker 4: and go into a hospital that's under their control in
Speaker 4: the West Bank.
Speaker 3: With as I said, the.
Speaker 4: West Bank currently has a pressure cooker situation because workers
Speaker 4: are not allowed to go from the West Bank into Israel.
Speaker 4: Not only is that hurting the Israeli economy, Israel under
Speaker 4: Van Gavier's actually under Smotrich's direction, has seized all of
Speaker 4: the funds that belong to the Palestinian authority to pay
Speaker 4: unemployment benefits. So people are you know, suffering financially badly
Speaker 4: in the West Bank. You're seeing a lot of Palestinians
Speaker 4: getting killed in the West Bank. Beyond this, this type
Speaker 4: of situation, so you can only imagine, you know, where
Speaker 4: this is headed. There doesn't seem to be any effort
Speaker 4: to try to find any peaceful resolution any way out
Speaker 4: of this. It just seems to be an endless ratcheting
Speaker 4: up of tensions.
Speaker 5: From the propaganda point of view, I think, you know,
Speaker 5: Israel can make the case that here you have a
Speaker 5: very clear cut example of militants being embedded with the
Speaker 5: civilian population. Their soldiers going in and having this precision
Speaker 5: strike on three guys with no civilian casualties that we
Speaker 5: know of yet, and then you know, and no casual
Speaker 5: to their own troops. I mean, I think there's a
Speaker 5: case actually that is sort of flipping what we were
Speaker 5: just talking about and saying if.
Speaker 4: They hadn't dressed up as nurses and doctors, I think
Speaker 4: they'd be in a little stronger position.
Speaker 5: I mean, but from their point of view, they can
Speaker 5: say it was a successful mission with casualties.
Speaker 3: Only for the killed three people, yeah.
Speaker 5: Who were terrorists embedded in the hospital.
Speaker 3: The State Department was pressed on this yesterday. Let's roll
Speaker 3: some of.
Speaker 12: That something that you think is problematic or is it
Speaker 12: something that you look at with envy, like this is
Speaker 12: some kind of great mission, impossible mission that we wish
Speaker 12: that we could also do.
Speaker 13: So I'd say that we strongly urge caution whenever operations
Speaker 13: have the potential to impact civilians and civilian installations that
Speaker 13: of course includes hospitals. We do recognize the very real
Speaker 13: security challenges Israel faces and it's legitimate right to defend
Speaker 13: its people and its territory from terrorism. Israel of course
Speaker 13: has the right to carry out operations to bring terrorists
Speaker 13: to justice, but those operations need to be conducted in
Speaker 13: full compliance with international humanitarian laws.
Speaker 12: Well, do those operations include going into hospitals and murdering
Speaker 12: people in their in their beds, regardless of whether they're
Speaker 12: so you know that they are suspected or so even
Speaker 12: known pariss So okay.
Speaker 13: So there was a lot in the premise of that question.
Speaker 13: Obviously they we do know that they went into Well you.
Speaker 12: Do think, well, I went in and killed the complete
Speaker 12: people who were completely innocent. So let me say that
Speaker 12: this did think that, then you would be condemning it, right,
Speaker 12: We certainly would.
Speaker 13: But I would say that Israel has said that these
Speaker 13: were Hamas operatives. They have said that one of them
Speaker 13: was carrying a gun at the time of the operation.
Speaker 13: So I'm not able to speak to the facts of
Speaker 13: the operation. You'd have to to pass some kind of
Speaker 13: legal judgment know all of the facts of the operation.
Speaker 5: But as a.
Speaker 13: General matter, they do have the right to carry out
Speaker 13: operations to bring terrorists to justice, but they need to
Speaker 13: be conducted in the hospital. So we want them to
Speaker 13: conduct their operation in compliance of their national humanitarian law.
Speaker 13: We would generally say that we don't want them to
Speaker 13: carry out operations in hospitals, but under international humanitarian law,
Speaker 13: hospitals do lose some of their protections if they are
Speaker 13: being used for the planning of terrorist operations, for the
Speaker 13: execution of tariffs.
Speaker 12: Now, hospitals the actual hospital building does, but I mean
Speaker 12: going in disguised as you know, women and doctors and
Speaker 12: whatever is something different. And then going in and picking
Speaker 12: out people in particular rooms beds and killing them seems
Speaker 12: to be something different.
Speaker 5: There's a great line of questioning that pushes the State
Speaker 5: Department for consistency on this question of the rules based
Speaker 5: order essentially, and you know the hospital thing. Brian, can
Speaker 5: you explain or go into a little bit more about
Speaker 5: the rules based order that the United States and Israel
Speaker 5: are sort of talking about all of the time as
Speaker 5: it applies to Hamas and as it applies to operations
Speaker 5: in Palestine elsewhere where is this or what is that context?
Speaker 4: On the other end, Yeah, the AMAS is a gorilla army,
Speaker 4: and so Azol is routinely accusing it of embedding itself
Speaker 4: among a civilian population, which was the case here. Including
Speaker 4: it's an interesting question if a terrorist is going for
Speaker 4: treatment at a hospital. Does that count as kind of
Speaker 4: hiding among the civilian population or does that count as
Speaker 4: like they needed treatment?
Speaker 5: Yeah, I suppose. We don't know exactly what the case is.
Speaker 5: We don't know exactly what they were doing.
Speaker 3: We can we can tell that one of them was
Speaker 3: lying on the bed because in the hospital the blood,
Speaker 3: the blood stain and the bullet hole goes right through
Speaker 3: the pillow. So somebody was hurt enough that they're in
Speaker 3: bed getting treatment.
Speaker 4: And it has been said that they were getting treatment
Speaker 4: and that's how they knew that they were in there.
Speaker 4: So Alon Levy, who's the spokes Israeli spokesperson, was in
Speaker 4: a Twitter fight with Jannis Vera Faucus, who is the
Speaker 4: former Greek Foreign foreign Greek Finance minister, who was accusing
Speaker 4: him of breaking the breaking the rule of law. Vera
Speaker 4: Faccus said, here's the latest incident. Israeli undercover soldiers agents
Speaker 4: entered Janine hospital this morning and shot dead three injured
Speaker 4: Palestinians in their hospital beds while being treated rule of law,
Speaker 4: western style. Want to talk about terrorism, Alon Levy responded,
Speaker 4: Israel eliminated three terrorists trying to hide in the hospital
Speaker 4: and then dug up their ancestors in.
Speaker 3: A weird way. He says. I bet when this man's
Speaker 3: ancestors accused Jews of the original medieval blood libels, they
Speaker 3: also felt similarly smug and morally superior.
Speaker 4: But at least their excuse was that they were illiterate
Speaker 4: speaking of propaganda battles. I don't see who he's winning
Speaker 4: over there.
Speaker 5: Yeah, no, I don't. I don't either. And you know,
Speaker 5: this is again it reminds me of what we were
Speaker 5: just talking about with Kamala, Harris and Biden versus like
Speaker 5: net and Yahoo, where if you have a problem, as
Speaker 5: the United States, like if if you have a problem
Speaker 5: with the rule of law, the rule based international order,
Speaker 5: say that, don't pretend to be upholding the rules based
Speaker 5: order when you can't answer questions, which was the case
Speaker 5: with Matt Miller there. I mean, it just it would
Speaker 5: make so much more sense to say, well, we think
Speaker 5: that this particular rule against war crimes is wrong, that
Speaker 5: this doesn't make sense. It's impossible when you're fighting a
Speaker 5: gorilla operation, as you were saying, right, that's way more
Speaker 5: morally consistent than treating yourselves or you know, conducting yourselves
Speaker 5: in a way in one way and then having your
Speaker 5: propaganda battle be all about rules based international order. When
Speaker 5: you get into a sort of conversation like that and
Speaker 5: don't have clear answers the again, the you know, honesty
Speaker 5: and war. These are questions that you know, have have
Speaker 5: puzzled people for time and memorial but in this case,
Speaker 5: it's just very grating to hear the constant, you know,
Speaker 5: propaganda about the rules based internback international order.
Speaker 4: And to follow up on a story that we covered
Speaker 4: last week, Israel was under fire for desecration of cemeteries
Speaker 4: across across Gaza. Their initial rationale, they said, for desecorating
Speaker 4: these cemeteries, was that they were trying to dig up
Speaker 4: graves and find the remains of hostages. The new explanation
Speaker 4: that they have is that there were actually tunnels that
Speaker 4: underneath these cemeteries that they were working to destroy. There
Speaker 4: was a CNN was the one that the Western media,
Speaker 4: American media that exposed this last week, because there was
Speaker 4: a CNN embed as they were with them as they
Speaker 4: were destroying all these cemeteries. Now they're following up again
Speaker 4: and there's a a fascinating story from CNN and watch
Speaker 4: to the end of it.
Speaker 3: Here, let's roll that.
Speaker 11: We're asking the general if we can actually see the
Speaker 11: shaft to the tunnel, but the answer is no.
Speaker 3: So there's all kinds of.
Speaker 9: The machinery which I want you to.
Speaker 3: Just to take pictures of the security, Mark Forcemith.
Speaker 11: What about if we don't film it, we just look
Speaker 11: with our eyes and when you might fall in all
Speaker 11: think and collapse.
Speaker 2: Well, you have to walk to the edge.
Speaker 11: The edge is not secured, can collapse this machinery.
Speaker 5: So on, that's not something I'm going to take a
Speaker 5: risk on. Sorry.
Speaker 11: The Israeli military later provided this drone footage showing the
Speaker 11: tunnel shaft we entered and another one nearby. CNN geolocated
Speaker 11: the footage using this satellite image. This outline shows where
Speaker 11: the Cemetery one stood, and these are the two tunnel entrances,
Speaker 11: clearly outside the graveyard. As for the tunnel, they say
Speaker 11: they found here where the Cemetery one stood. The military
Speaker 11: never provided any evident.
Speaker 4: And so yeah, if you're watching it, it's if you're
Speaker 4: listening to it rather than watching it. Yeah, the images
Speaker 4: were outside of the cemetery. And you know, good for CNN.
Speaker 4: For usually CNN there would say CNN could not independently
Speaker 4: verify the Israeli officials claim. Here they said they provided
Speaker 4: no evidence, while also showing that the evidence they did
Speaker 4: provide was a lie that it was outside the cemetery.
Speaker 4: I would say that this is suggestive of the Western
Speaker 4: media taking a little bit of a turn. But in fact,
Speaker 4: the Western media has spent the last several days just
Speaker 4: talking about, you know, the the twelve alleged Hamas terrorists
Speaker 4: or ten of them Hamas, one is Lamichi had one
Speaker 4: apparently a civilian that ran over who worked for UNRWA,
Speaker 4: and which which has led to the pausing of funding
Speaker 4: by the US and like a dozen other countries to the.
Speaker 5: LEGI agency, the leaked messages from on.
Speaker 3: Which we'll talk about in a minute.
Speaker 5: Yeah, right. The Intercept has some excellent reporting on internal
Speaker 5: turmoil at the New York Times over an episode of
Speaker 5: their extremely popular podcast The Daily, which is a source
Speaker 5: of news for people around the country, a primary source
Speaker 5: of news actually for people around the country. Also Airson NPR. Now,
Speaker 5: Ryan tell us a little bit about what you guys
Speaker 5: found when you looked into these internal conversations at the
Speaker 5: New York Times. Yeah.
Speaker 4: I think the context here is that The New York
Speaker 4: Times has been so successful at navigating the transition to
Speaker 4: digital media, and so much of the rest of the
Speaker 4: mainstream media has been so bad at navigating that transition
Speaker 4: that The Times now has almost a dangerous concentration of
Speaker 4: power among kind of liberal audiences. A major story in
Speaker 4: the New York Times and an episode of the Daily
Speaker 4: can by itself establish a narrative. It doesn't even need
Speaker 4: what the New York Times also has, which is a
Speaker 4: megaphone capacity where they do reporting and then it's picked
Speaker 4: up on by CNN and MSNBC, ABC News the rest
Speaker 4: of it, and so it disseminates that way just on
Speaker 4: its own. It now has the capacity to kind of
Speaker 4: shape millions of people's understanding of how they ought to
Speaker 4: think about the world and what they understand has happened,
Speaker 4: and oftentimes based on the reporting that we've done about
Speaker 4: the New York Times newsroom, this massive world changing decisions
Speaker 4: are made in seconds by kind of mid level editors
Speaker 4: just plucking something off of the New York Times internal slack,
Speaker 4: turning it into a headline that then becomes a controversy.
Speaker 3: For l three days. It's like, why the re order
Speaker 3: put this in slack? I grabbed it and made it
Speaker 3: a headline why is the world kind of freaking out?
Speaker 3: And so.
Speaker 4: The piece that we have up in the intercept that
Speaker 4: I did with my colleague Daniel Boguslaw, which you can
Speaker 4: put up here, is about how The Times at the
Speaker 4: end of December did a major piece called Screams Without
Speaker 4: Words about about Hamas using secon violence as a as
Speaker 4: a weapon of war on October seventh, systematically using it.
Speaker 4: Inside the New York Times, a ton of reporters and
Speaker 4: editors kind of pushed back and said, you have to
Speaker 4: be very careful with this story because it does not
Speaker 4: seem to stand up its main claim. Was there sexual
Speaker 4: violence on October seventh? Absolutely can you can you claim
Speaker 4: that it was systematic and perpetuated by Hamas deliberately based
Speaker 4: on what is in this reporting, And a lot of
Speaker 4: reporters anders are pushing back saying, no, you can't, you
Speaker 4: can't make those And.
Speaker 5: That's really interesting that you have the reporters and the
Speaker 5: editors at the New York Times pushing back.
Speaker 4: Onwards, and the reporters are themselves saying that they're confident
Speaker 4: that there was sexual violence, yes, but they're saying this
Speaker 4: story itself does not stand up for a variety of
Speaker 4: different reasons that are out there publicly.
Speaker 5: And The Times was promoting this story. I mean, this
Speaker 5: was a big spread, This was a huge story for them,
Speaker 5: and it makes sense then they wanted to jump into
Speaker 5: The Daily, that they wanted to take it and feature
Speaker 5: it as a center for an episode of The Daily,
Speaker 5: and that's where the staff pushback became untenable. According to
Speaker 5: your reporting here right.
Speaker 4: Right, it was scheduled to air in early January, about
Speaker 4: a week and a half after after the original story
Speaker 4: came out, but under pressure, producers and fact checkers with
Speaker 4: The Daily started looking closer at the story and they
Speaker 4: put it on ice. And we're now into you know,
Speaker 4: tomorrow will be February, and it hasn't run yet, and
Speaker 4: we may still we may still see an episode of it.
Speaker 4: But what we learned was that the original script, which
Speaker 4: chewed very closely to the original New York Times story,
Speaker 4: which had a lot of certainty, and was sourced to
Speaker 4: a lot of people, you know, who have changed their
Speaker 4: stories and have said like just completely wild things that
Speaker 4: have been you know, publicly discredited.
Speaker 3: Like one person I think said that there was that they.
Speaker 4: Found a pregnant woman who'd had a like a fetus
Speaker 4: cut out of her, and Israeli government itself like defunked
Speaker 4: a lot of these claims. So the same people who
Speaker 4: the Israeli government have backed away from were like the
Speaker 4: names were a lot of name sources for The New
Speaker 4: York Times here.
Speaker 5: So and what was a problem for the story in
Speaker 5: particular is when one of the family members I spoke
Speaker 5: to The New York that was a problem.
Speaker 3: A family member came out publicly.
Speaker 5: Said that this reporter would you guys get into Joe
Speaker 5: Cohn and his background as sort of an advocate for
Speaker 5: the state of Israel politically his father as well, which
Speaker 5: is very interesting context. I think doesn't mean that his
Speaker 5: reporting can't be completely accurate and honest, but it does
Speaker 5: add some context here to what happened. But when you
Speaker 5: have a family member saying that's not what I thought
Speaker 5: I was telling the reporter, it was pretty devastating for
Speaker 5: the story itself.
Speaker 4: Yes, and and other issues that have been raised elsewhere,
Speaker 4: And so the Daily wrote a newscript which was much
Speaker 4: more kind of open ended and asking questions and was
Speaker 4: what from people that I've spoken with were familiar with
Speaker 4: a much more responsible piece of journalism and approach the
Speaker 4: approach the issue in a much more sensitive way, but
Speaker 4: that hasn't aired yet, And because The Times is in
Speaker 4: a bit of a jam because if they run the
Speaker 4: original one, the original script, then they're kind of republishing
Speaker 4: a lot of errors that have since been exposed. If
Speaker 4: they run a more circumspect, kind of dialed down, responsible version,
Speaker 4: that raises all of these questions, it's a concession about, well,
Speaker 4: why haven't you corrected the original one? Are you backing
Speaker 4: off of the original one. So for the reporters involved here,
Speaker 4: the only way out is through, and so they were
Speaker 4: assigned a news story that came out earlier earlier this week,
Speaker 4: one of the most bizarre pieces I've seen in the
Speaker 4: New York Times, because the headline was about the United
Speaker 4: Nations sending investigators over to Israel to examine atrocity allegations.
Speaker 4: But after just a couple of paragraphs, it turns into
Speaker 4: kind of a re reporting and an interrogation of the
Speaker 4: original story. Yet it was written by the same reporters.
Speaker 4: I've never seen kind of a group of reporters assigned
Speaker 4: to go kind of question their own reporting, and unsurprisingly,
Speaker 4: they checked their own work and found it to be solid,
Speaker 4: although one of their sources won't talk to them anymore.
Speaker 4: It's a fascinating piece. People can people can check it out,
Speaker 4: but it shows it just is a glimpse into the
Speaker 4: kind of war over the messaging related to this, related
Speaker 4: to this conflict, because you know, so much of the
Speaker 4: justification for the ongoing onslaught is rooted on the barbarity
Speaker 4: of October seventh, and it's it feels like the actual
Speaker 4: barbarity that was on display for everyone to see didn't
Speaker 4: seem to be enough for some propagandas that they had
Speaker 4: to like ratchet it up, and you start seeing things
Speaker 4: like forty beheaded babies and on and on.
Speaker 3: The things that are just were not true. But by
Speaker 3: the time we realize that they're not.
Speaker 4: True, tens of thousands of Palestinians have been killed based
Speaker 4: on justifying their killing based on things that we've then
Speaker 4: learned didn't happen.
Speaker 5: So this next element involves the Wall Street Journal. We'll
Speaker 5: put this up on the screen. It's a So this
Speaker 5: is the Wall Street Journal. Intelligence reveals details of you
Speaker 5: and agency staff's links to October seventh. The subhead is
Speaker 5: around ten percent of Palestinian aid agencies. Twelve thousand staff
Speaker 5: in Gaza have links to militants, according to an intelligence DOS.
Speaker 5: This next part of the element you can see is
Speaker 5: on the right side of the screen. That's the author
Speaker 5: of the story. Who is again, this is the author
Speaker 5: of the story served in the IDF. So you can
Speaker 5: understand the intelligen dossier finding its way to a former
Speaker 5: IDF member who's writing for the Wall Street Journal. Ryan
Speaker 5: Again helpful context.
Speaker 4: I think it's interesting if you try to imagine that
Speaker 4: you're a Palestinian reading the Western press.
Speaker 5: And you're like, what the hell is and it's just.
Speaker 4: You see all of these people who served in the
Speaker 4: IDF or whose children are currently serving in the in
Speaker 4: the IDF doing the reporting. It's not like you can
Speaker 4: only imagine if there were a reverse situation like you
Speaker 4: simply can actually you simply cannot imagine if there was
Speaker 4: a reverse.
Speaker 5: Well, the allegations of some especially like freelancers who got
Speaker 5: you know, early reporting footage.
Speaker 4: Yes, that's that's a very good point. And Israel said
Speaker 4: they were going to kill those people, yes, yes, right right,
Speaker 4: because they were journalists who were photographing. October seventh, there
Speaker 4: were a.
Speaker 5: Couple of allegations that did seem like the journalists, in
Speaker 5: the interest of access, it would be the most charitable
Speaker 5: version of that argument, did have links to Hamas. And again,
Speaker 5: this is the entire conversation we have about the intertwinement
Speaker 5: of the civilian population and the military population in a
Speaker 5: tiny swath of land like Gaza that creates very real
Speaker 5: challenges for Israel morally and creates like a really difficult situation.
Speaker 5: And that's no excuse. I don't say that as an
Speaker 5: excuse whatsoever. I'm just saying this situation on the ground
Speaker 5: is not like in other wars. It's not the same thing.
Speaker 5: It's a different thing. And that's something that you know,
Speaker 5: with this media coverage, it's tough because it's again I
Speaker 5: think people with biases can do perfectly good reporting. Sure
Speaker 5: what we see I guess, but what we see happening
Speaker 5: is people being really cagey about their biases. And I
Speaker 5: think that's a huge problem when you're and I'm sure
Speaker 5: we agree on that point that when you're not upfront
Speaker 5: and open about the fact that you served in the
Speaker 5: idea of you are totally prosionist, you are all of
Speaker 5: these different things. Fine, but being open about that I
Speaker 5: think would help people say, oh, this intelligence dossier you're
Speaker 5: reporting on, and I think UNRAWA does have really real problems.
Speaker 5: Put this Jeremy Skalhale tweet up on the screen as well.
Speaker 5: In the same way I was just talking about. This
Speaker 5: is Jeremy Scahill saying, incredible quote. We haven't had the
Speaker 5: ability to investigate the allegations ourselves. Secretary of State Anthony
Speaker 5: Blncoln seaid of Israel's charges against UNROWA employees. Blincoln then ads,
Speaker 5: but they're highly highly credible. That I imagine is about
Speaker 5: the dossier specifically, but in general. There was also reports
Speaker 5: from an open Israeli advocacy group, un Watch, that leaked
Speaker 5: a bunch of messages from unrwall workers after October seventh,
Speaker 5: seeming to celebrate what happened. And again, this is what
Speaker 5: we're talking about the challenges of having Western media with
Speaker 5: a lot of people who maybe fought in the IDF,
Speaker 5: whose parents fought in the IDF, and then having the
Speaker 5: task of reporting on all of this. It's just a
Speaker 5: completely different situation.
Speaker 4: Yes, and the ten percent figure I think should be
Speaker 4: taken with a grain of salt there where they say
Speaker 4: that ten percent of connections to militants that's in the
Speaker 4: subhead in the actual article says connections to either the
Speaker 4: political or social wing or Hamas is you know, the
Speaker 4: de facto government of Gaza.
Speaker 3: And so I think fifteen percent of the population is
Speaker 3: like an actual member.
Speaker 5: So how I mean sounds like a vast undercount any
Speaker 5: would you.
Speaker 3: Would think it might be.
Speaker 4: And then they say that they have a close half,
Speaker 4: have a close relative or something that's involved with Hamas.
Speaker 4: Most most people have hundreds of relatives because the birth
Speaker 4: rates there are through the roof and people can't leave.
Speaker 4: So within just two generations, yes, you've got three hundred
Speaker 4: cousins living in the same neighborhood if one of them
Speaker 4: is involved with Hamas, which is the government of the area.
Speaker 4: Then boom of the thirteen thousand or so employees inside
Speaker 4: Gaza of UNRA and you hit a number like that.
Speaker 5: Which makes it really hard again to prosecute a war
Speaker 5: while talking about the rules based international order and then
Speaker 5: having this massive level of civilian and military entwinement, as
Speaker 5: these stories do straight without committing some really egregious violations.
Speaker 4: And it also shows why Israel made a mistake by
Speaker 4: propping up Hamas absolutely that Israel allows you know, insisted
Speaker 4: actually that that cutter continued to prop up Amas so
Speaker 4: that they would not have a partner for peace. They
Speaker 4: wanted to divide that NAYAHUO was very clear about this.
Speaker 4: They wanted to divide the Palestinians between the Palestinian authority
Speaker 4: in the West Bank, Hamas running Gaza forty chess because
Speaker 4: then Netnyahu would not be under any pressure to negotiate
Speaker 4: with Palestinians towards statehood, because Hamas doesn't want to negotiate
Speaker 4: towards statehood.
Speaker 3: So they both had.
Speaker 4: An incentive to keep each other in power. And one
Speaker 4: thing that frustrates me about some on the on the
Speaker 4: left and in the supporters of the resistance who say,
Speaker 4: who are supportive of not necessarily Hamas, but like you'll
Speaker 4: find them defensive about Jimas, like why are you defending
Speaker 4: an organization that net Yahoo wants in power? Come on,
Speaker 4: why are you being being a sucker for net Yahu here? Yeah,
Speaker 4: it's also take ya who had his word, like they
Speaker 4: are an obstacle to a to uh dignity and and
Speaker 4: to like a resolution of this conflict and.
Speaker 5: Take Palestinians at their word, because a whole lot of
Speaker 5: Palaestinians hold that exact same perspective and say, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 5: who's right. Hamas is an obstacle uh to.
Speaker 4: And but if you back Palestinians into a corner and
Speaker 4: don't give them any other options, then they're like, well,
Speaker 4: this this is what we've got. We've tried thirty years
Speaker 4: the peace process, and every single year can editions materially
Speaker 4: and civilly got worse.
Speaker 5: The underlying tension we talked about earlier in the show,
Speaker 5: where you have the United States and Israel on vastly
Speaker 5: different pages about a one state solution or two state
Speaker 5: solution while spending from the US perspective billions every year
Speaker 5: in this region and now so much more on the line.
Speaker 5: It is just a quagmire. There's no other way to
Speaker 5: put it. And there's basically no light at the end
Speaker 5: of that tunnel. Let's move on to the squad, Ryan,
Speaker 5: because this is in some ways a more interesting, not
Speaker 5: more interesting, a more a lighter story because we have
Speaker 5: poetry from Jamal Bowman involved, we have mistranslations involved, and
Speaker 5: we have I guess security turned husbands involved in the likelihood. Ryan,
Speaker 5: what is the name of your book.
Speaker 4: By the way, the book is called The Squad, and
Speaker 4: it's going to need the paperback version is going to
Speaker 4: need another chapter for everything we're seeing just this week.
Speaker 14: Yeah.
Speaker 3: The context, of course.
Speaker 4: Is that you know, Apak is putting together an unprecedented
Speaker 4: level of spending to try to wipe out the Squad
Speaker 4: in Congress. Meanwhile, they're facing a cascading number of their
Speaker 4: own scandals that we will talk about Corey Bush, Jamal Bowman,
Speaker 4: and Ilhan Omar in this segment.
Speaker 3: Let's start with Corey Bush.
Speaker 4: It was reported yesterday that she's under DJ investigation over
Speaker 4: her campaign spending on security. After the news was broken
Speaker 4: by a punch bowl, she came out and acknowledged that
Speaker 4: the investigation is happening and said that she will be
Speaker 4: found to have done nothing wrong.
Speaker 3: Let's roll a little bit of Corey Bush here.
Speaker 15: I hold myself, my campaign, and my position to the
Speaker 15: highest levels of integrity. I also believe in transparency, which
Speaker 15: is why I can confirm that the Department of Justice
Speaker 15: is reviewing my can spending.
Speaker 5: On security services.
Speaker 15: We are fully cooperating with this investigation, and I would
Speaker 15: like to take this opportunity to outline the facts and
Speaker 15: the truth. Since before I was sworn into office, I
Speaker 15: have endured relentless threats to my physical safety and life.
Speaker 15: As a rank and file member of Congress, I am
Speaker 15: not entitled to personal protection by the House, and instead
Speaker 15: have used campaign funds as permissible to retain security services.
Speaker 5: I have not used any federal.
Speaker 15: Tax dollars for personal security services. Any reporting that I
Speaker 15: have used funds for personal security personal security is simply false.
Speaker 15: In recent months, right wing organizations have lodged baseless complaints
Speaker 15: against me, peddling notions that I have misused campaign funds
Speaker 15: to pay for personal security services.
Speaker 5: That simply is not true.
Speaker 4: So, Emily, what's the best case that you've seen in
Speaker 4: in the right wing press kind of against her at.
Speaker 5: This point, Well, it does look like there was. So
Speaker 5: this can go in a couple of different ways. So
Speaker 5: from her perspective, she can say I need to spend
Speaker 5: a lot of money on security. She had a security
Speaker 5: guard who turned into her husband, who she says was
Speaker 5: making fair market rate, and you know, it looks.
Speaker 4: Like, sureity's expensive, so it's probably gonna be eye popping number.
Speaker 5: But go ahead, Yeah, so's she spends more than other
Speaker 5: people do on security. And okay, but she can make
Speaker 5: the point that she's a member of the squad. The
Speaker 5: squad is very high profile, and that necessarily means she's
Speaker 5: probably going to be spending more money on security than
Speaker 5: other You're sort of running the mill member of Congress
Speaker 5: for being a member of the squad who has, you know,
Speaker 5: sort of an ideological and ideologically high profile departure from
Speaker 5: the political establishment in Washington, d C. So you can
Speaker 5: see how that argument and of itself, you know, isn't
Speaker 5: can go both ways. You know, she's she's spending a
Speaker 5: lot of money on security. Maybe it's because she was
Speaker 5: involved with her husband and paying him more than fair
Speaker 5: market rate. We'll see. I mean, that's what they're investigating.
Speaker 5: I think it's a perfectly legitimate investigation. I'm glad that
Speaker 5: she's cooperating with it. We will see.
Speaker 3: How she was previously investigated by the Office of Congressional Ethics.
Speaker 5: It is currently they're both investigating.
Speaker 4: I thought that I thought that that one concluded. Well,
Speaker 4: she said that they concluded that she had followed the rules.
Speaker 5: She says that the House Committee and Ethics are currently
Speaker 5: reviewing the matter. As yesterday.
Speaker 4: She said that Okay, so Previously she'd been reviewed and
Speaker 4: they had found that she was okay.
Speaker 3: Maybe now with the new news, they're taking a.
Speaker 4: Closer look into it because the DJ would have access
Speaker 4: to more information than OSEE would.
Speaker 5: And you know that the House Ethics Committee is so
Speaker 5: you never really know when they're their timelines. They're very secretive,
Speaker 5: they're totally closed off. So maybe there was something else
Speaker 5: that they were investigating at Coreybush was aware of. That
Speaker 5: is what she's referring to there. So again, I mean,
Speaker 5: we'll see. I don't think we have conclusive evidence in
Speaker 5: any direction. I'm glad they're investigating it, but this is
Speaker 5: just so minor. It's just it is the allegations.
Speaker 4: We're talking about Warren Peace, and then we're going to
Speaker 4: have a race determined, like.
Speaker 5: For members of Congress. I'm saying this as a conservative,
Speaker 5: like this is not disqualifying whatsoever for members of Congress. Now,
Speaker 5: the right has made a lot of her being a
Speaker 5: sort of defund the police person and a lot of
Speaker 5: the squad being defund the police people and then paying hired.
Speaker 5: That's a clean hit. I think that's a I was
Speaker 5: just gonna say that's a much cleaner hit. So we'll
Speaker 5: see where this goes. But again, she does have a
Speaker 5: primary challenge, right that's being funded by a pack.
Speaker 4: There's there's a lot he yes, what's his name, Wesley
Speaker 4: Bell was running for senate jump jumped out of the
Speaker 4: Senate race and into the House race.
Speaker 3: After October seventh.
Speaker 4: One, it appeared that, you know, Bush could be vulnerable
Speaker 4: to a well financed challenger. He announced he had raised
Speaker 4: six hundred thousand dollars. There's a PAC has already been spending.
Speaker 4: APAC was spending against her before she had an opponent
Speaker 4: through its super pac so that yes, they're absolutely coming
Speaker 4: for her. So this will wind up I think in
Speaker 4: all of the super pac ads that because Marie Newman,
Speaker 4: who APAC took out in twenty twenty two because she
Speaker 4: represented a huge kind of palestinating population in Illinois, had
Speaker 4: a congressional ethics review underway, and they made that like
Speaker 4: the focus of their massive spending against her. So if
Speaker 4: you have thirty seconds and you know, if to do
Speaker 4: an ad and you got a million dollars to spread it,
Speaker 4: you can make someone look really really bad. We'll see
Speaker 4: whether or not people believe it. And also you know,
Speaker 4: maybe maybe they actually will see. Yeah, everyone's innocent of
Speaker 4: proven guilty. Maybe maybe they did make some stakes and
Speaker 4: how they and how they did.
Speaker 5: This mistakes are intentional, uh, you know, funneling of money.
Speaker 5: But again, this is so members of Congress commit so
Speaker 5: many egregious ethical violations. I say this not I completely
Speaker 5: think that they should be looking into it. If there's
Speaker 5: good journalism in the space, I welcome it, and I
Speaker 5: welcome the ethics investigation. I'm glad she's fully cooperating. Again, like,
Speaker 5: this is just not on the same level as other congressions.
Speaker 4: And there's a there's an interesting class issue here in
Speaker 4: the sense that you know, Bush was in poverty up
Speaker 4: until she got her first paycheck basically as a as
Speaker 4: a member of Congress, and wealthy members of Congress uh yeah, right,
Speaker 4: she was in and out of homelessness. Wealthy members of Congress,
Speaker 4: you know, find ways to get fantastically rich through their
Speaker 4: quote unquote public service, and their consultants find ways to
Speaker 4: buy boats with all sorts with yea, with campaign money.
Speaker 4: And they just happened to know the precise legal ways
Speaker 4: that they're able to get insanely rich. I'm sure much
Speaker 4: richer and many more boats these than the people who
Speaker 4: are alleged to have taken a little extra security money
Speaker 4: for allegedly not doing enough security work.
Speaker 5: And as Sam Goadoldig outlined here just a couple of
Speaker 5: weeks ago, and his firm outlined here just a couple
Speaker 5: of weeks ago, the Squad and the Freedom Caucus represents
Speaker 5: some of the lowest income districts in the country, whereas
Speaker 5: the more Centrists represent the higher income districts in the country.
Speaker 5: And so yes, you see the class issues I think
Speaker 5: play out in different questions like these, which is a
Speaker 5: good prism to look at them through. We should move
Speaker 5: on to ilhan.
Speaker 3: Omar, number two in the barrel.
Speaker 5: Yes, we're continuing our tour through the scandals of the
Speaker 5: Squad and this last week of January twenty twenty four
Speaker 5: with this video of ilhan Omar. This is a vo
Speaker 5: so we can start running it because she's she's speaking
Speaker 5: a different language. She says my answer to Somalians was,
Speaker 5: and she's speaking to Somalians that the US government will
Speaker 5: only do they will not do what we want and
Speaker 5: nothing else. They must follow. We Samalians must have that
Speaker 5: confidence in ourselves that we call for. We live in
Speaker 5: the US pay tax in the US and have a
Speaker 5: real voice. The US is a country where one of
Speaker 5: your daughters is in Congress to represent your interest for
Speaker 5: as long as I'm there. Basically, Somalia will never be
Speaker 5: in dangers. It's waters will not be stolen by Ethiopia
Speaker 5: or others. The US would not dare to support anyone
Speaker 5: against Amalia to steal our land sleeping comfort, knowing I'm
Speaker 5: here to protect the interests of Somalia from inside the
Speaker 5: US system. So that's translation that was on the bottom
Speaker 5: of the video. She's speaking to her constituents in Minnesota
Speaker 5: that are of Somalian heritage and.
Speaker 3: Right, and so there's a fight over exactly what she
Speaker 3: said because she was.
Speaker 5: The words I just read. Actually, there's whether or not
Speaker 5: those are accurate. Translation of what she just said is
Speaker 5: at the heart of this.
Speaker 4: And so she was speaking in Somalia and so so
Speaker 4: a couple of Somali analysts have posted their own translations
Speaker 4: of what they say that she said, and Omar reposted
Speaker 4: one of those. So I think that's a fair one
Speaker 4: to go by. And in the Spectator article they quote
Speaker 4: and it's also on Twitter. You know, she said quote
Speaker 4: while I am in Congress no one will take Somalia's. See,
Speaker 4: Somalia belongs to all Somali's. Somalia is one. We are
Speaker 4: brothers and sisters, and our land will not be balkanized.
Speaker 4: Our lands were taken from us before, and God willing,
Speaker 4: we may one day seek them.
Speaker 3: So what that is a reference to.
Speaker 4: Is on January first, the Ethiopia basically cut a deal
Speaker 4: with the breakaway republic unrecognized breakaway republic of Somali Land
Speaker 4: where Ethiopia would recognize Somali Land which broke away from
Speaker 4: Somalia and in exchange, Ethiopia would get access to roughly
Speaker 4: twenty kilometers of of c because Ethiopia has been landlocked,
Speaker 4: you know, forever and or for decades, and it is
Speaker 4: a it is a source of kind of domestic you know,
Speaker 4: and national shame that they don't have. And they also
Speaker 4: have claimed quite reasonably that it holds back economic growth
Speaker 4: and not have not be able to build a port city.
Speaker 3: So they cut a deal.
Speaker 13: UH.
Speaker 4: This is an MoU between Ethiopia and Somaliland Somalia. UH
Speaker 4: does not recognize Somaliland does and believes that it will
Speaker 4: you know, retake Somalia Somaliland at some point, and so
Speaker 4: it is deeply hostile even you know, potent, you know,
Speaker 4: we could see a hot war at some point, deeply
Speaker 4: hostile to this MoU this agreement between Somaliland and Ethiopia.
Speaker 4: And so here Omar is taking sides in that question, saying, no,
Speaker 4: we're you know, the US is not going to recognize
Speaker 4: this mo ou uh. They're not going to recognize mollyland,
Speaker 4: and we as a Somali American population are going to
Speaker 4: exert our lobbying influence here in the US to make
Speaker 4: sure that they that they don't do that. We could
Speaker 4: now she's she's getting criticized, and we can put up
Speaker 4: this next element. She's getting criticized for engaging in kind
Speaker 4: of what what people call kind of greater Somalia ideology,
Speaker 4: which and if you look at this, this kind of
Speaker 4: map that we have up and if you're only listening
Speaker 4: on the podcast, the blue is kind of creeping into
Speaker 4: Kenya and creeping into Ethiopia, creeping you know, uh, and
Speaker 4: obviously taking back Somaliland up up close to Djibouti.
Speaker 5: There.
Speaker 4: That's the kind of the this like grand vision that
Speaker 4: some people think she was making a reference to when
Speaker 4: they say when when she said that our lands were
Speaker 4: taken for from us and one day we will we
Speaker 4: will get them back. And so you know, you've got
Speaker 4: Kenyon's Ethiopians and Somaliland.
Speaker 3: People are like, I don't know, how about not about
Speaker 3: we don't do that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I don't know about that.
Speaker 3: So that's that's the context of this of this current controversy.
Speaker 5: So a lot of people on the right reacted to
Speaker 5: a translation which now does appear to look like it's
Speaker 5: a mistranslation. I'm obviously not a language there.
Speaker 4: Was less irredentist and less kind of aggressive than the
Speaker 4: original translation, but it does still embrace the idea that
Speaker 4: nobody's going to take Somali, you see. So it is
Speaker 4: strict opposition to recognition of this MoU.
Speaker 5: And one of the things the right actually latched onto
Speaker 5: even more than that in the original translation was Omar
Speaker 5: referring to herself first as Somali, then as Muslim, and
Speaker 5: then as American.
Speaker 3: And that's what that was a mistranslated.
Speaker 5: Wa it appears that was a mistranslation. Again, I'm not
Speaker 5: an expert in the language here, but Elan Omar herself
Speaker 5: shared the translation that you just discussed, so she seems
Speaker 5: to say that's what she was referring to. But that's
Speaker 5: what really had people on the right saying to port
Speaker 5: her she should be expelled from Congress. She sees herself,
Speaker 5: I will say, that's a real hypocrisy problem when she's
Speaker 5: talking about in this even in the good translation or
Speaker 5: the better translation, for her talking about our country, our country,
Speaker 5: our country, when she's referring to Somalia, and then talking
Speaker 5: about quote this country when she's talking about the United States.
Speaker 5: I just it does seem as though and I think
Speaker 5: this is perfectly natural for someone who fled their war
Speaker 5: torn homeland and loves their native country, I understand it.
Speaker 5: I think it's a problem for somebody who criticizes the
Speaker 5: dual loyalty is real point, and I think it's just
Speaker 5: speaking of clean hits. I think that's kind of a
Speaker 5: clean hit.
Speaker 4: And I'm all for Somali Americans lobbying their government well
Speaker 4: for whatever interest they want to lobby for. One extra
Speaker 4: piece of context that has people concerned about this is
Speaker 4: that the greater Somalia ideologies is so stated most with
Speaker 4: former Somali presidents Site Barry, who Omar's father was served
Speaker 4: under as a colonel, and the and Barry launched a
Speaker 4: horrific genocide of hundreds of thousands of people.
Speaker 3: Awful, awful person.
Speaker 13: And so.
Speaker 4: Any association with that, any any kind of hearkening back
Speaker 4: to that era, which which she's not necessarily doing, but
Speaker 4: because it's in the context of this greater smile, it
Speaker 4: has people been Wait a minute, that's.
Speaker 5: A little militant in that big context. Yeah, now we
Speaker 5: move on to Jamal Bowman.
Speaker 3: Jamal Bowman a more fun one.
Speaker 5: Yeah, this one is the more fun one. Let's put
Speaker 5: Jamal Bowman's poetry.
Speaker 3: Was a Jewish insider that broke this? I think it was,
Speaker 3: It may have been.
Speaker 5: Yeah, So here's Jamal Bowman's poetry. If you're listening, we'll
Speaker 5: read it for you. Two thousand and one, and he's
Speaker 5: using the he's made the stylist.
Speaker 3: Used that but ten fifteen years ago or something, right.
Speaker 5: It's twenty eleven, so long time. So he's using slashes.
Speaker 5: Two thousand and one. Planes used as missiles target the
Speaker 5: twin towers. Later in the day, Building seven also collapsed. HM.
Speaker 5: Multiple explosions heard before and during the collapse, and we
Speaker 5: can go out. You used to have a blog or something,
Speaker 5: so you think he keeps doing allegedly two other planes,
Speaker 5: the Pentagon Pennsylvania hijacked by terrorists, minimal damage done, minimal
Speaker 5: debris found. It's pretty i mean, typical nine to eleven
Speaker 5: truth theorism. But the poetry, the vehicle of poetry, and
Speaker 5: i'd say very contemporary stylistic poetry is particularly interesting in
Speaker 5: the case of a sitting Congressman, Jamal Bowman. But you
Speaker 5: made a really good point before we started that he's
Speaker 5: a normal guy in ways other members of Congress aren't,
Speaker 5: which has actually always been my hot take on Marjorie
Speaker 5: Taylor Green, which is that as wrong as she has
Speaker 5: done so many different things, the Beltway is just visceral
Speaker 5: hatred of her and their visceral hatred of nine to
Speaker 5: eleven Trutherism, for example, which I think has been debunked.
Speaker 5: I'm sure I'll get comments on that. But for the record,
Speaker 5: you know that is so it is so much more
Speaker 5: in touch with Americans around the country have no trust
Speaker 5: and no faith left in any institutions or any government.
Speaker 5: That a lot of people really do believe this because
Speaker 5: you have given them no reason to trust your side
Speaker 5: of the story. You know, it's it's just a it's
Speaker 5: kind of a normy thing.
Speaker 4: Yeah, The late great Michael Brooks made a great point
Speaker 4: once where he said that basically Joe Rogan and that
Speaker 4: type of person actually represents the real center of America,
Speaker 4: Like that's the that's the centrist viewpoint, which is contradictory, confused,
Speaker 4: distrustful of government, whereas we kind of think of like
Speaker 4: the New York Times and CNN as the centrist institutions,
Speaker 4: but they're actually not, like they represent a different segment
Speaker 4: of the population that it's the Rogan types that are
Speaker 4: right there in the middle.
Speaker 5: There's wine Mom centrism and Rogan Centrism, and they have
Speaker 5: some Venn Diagram overlap, but not a lot.
Speaker 4: And right, Jamal Bowman is a normal person, like it
Speaker 4: was an independent before before running for Congress. He thinks
Speaker 4: for himself, and that type of regular person in America
Speaker 4: is going to fall prey to some of these conspiracy theories.
Speaker 3: Like that's going to happen.
Speaker 4: And so when I saw that, it's like didn't necessarily.
Speaker 3: Like shock me checks out. Yeah sure, yeah, And I think.
Speaker 5: You like in the poem maybe commended Loose Change, which
Speaker 5: is Alex Jones documentary.
Speaker 4: Because Alex Jones sort of started on the left, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 4: with it, and that's how he got that, that's how
Speaker 4: he first got famous.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 5: It was really popular on the sort of like fringe
Speaker 5: left during the Iraq War because he was questioning like
Speaker 5: the military industrial complex, so he definitely had a lot of.
Speaker 4: Reach and Loose Change was this YouTube documentary that just
Speaker 4: had was just an absolute phenom, Like millions and millions
Speaker 4: of people.
Speaker 3: Watched it, and it has this like.
Speaker 4: You know, if you can capture somebody's attention for an
Speaker 4: hour and you can cherry pick, you know things, I'm
Speaker 4: sure people get mad at me too well, but like
Speaker 4: the building seven people are going to be in our comments,
Speaker 4: oh for sure.
Speaker 5: But again that is like one of the big problems
Speaker 5: here is that our government is not transparent when they
Speaker 5: always say that they're being transparent and we really can't
Speaker 5: trust what they say. So like that's part of the
Speaker 5: issue is that even when you know through good journalism
Speaker 5: and other you know, sources of primary information, primary slist
Speaker 5: information and footage and like you can put the store
Speaker 5: were together. But again, when the government, who you should
Speaker 5: not trust is telling you trust us.
Speaker 4: So Bowman is also facing an APAC backed challenger George Latimer,
Speaker 4: Westchester County executive. His race could hinge on redistricting, and
Speaker 4: so this type of thing would be more damaging in
Speaker 4: some parts of New York than other parts of New York.
Speaker 4: We'll see how those lines get drawn. Who comes out
Speaker 4: ahead there. Let's move on to Maria Salazar down in Miami.
Speaker 5: Let's take a trip down the coast.
Speaker 3: Give us a credit to this local reporter here from
Speaker 3: New York.
Speaker 5: City to Miami, where Republican Congresswoman Maria Alvius Salazar was
Speaker 5: grilled by a local CBS reporter about something that is
Speaker 5: actually very common here in Washington, DC. Watched this clip
Speaker 5: last month.
Speaker 9: You were at FIU and you present a check for
Speaker 9: six hundred and fifty thousand dollars to help small businesses
Speaker 9: at FIU. But you voted against the bill that gave
Speaker 9: the money that you then signed a check for and
Speaker 9: handed and had a photo op, the Consolidated Appropriations Act
Speaker 9: of twenty twenty three. Right, you voted against that bill.
Speaker 1: Right now, you have to give me more details. But
Speaker 1: I do know that every time I have an opportunity
Speaker 1: to bring money to my constituents.
Speaker 2: I do so.
Speaker 1: I I just said four hundred thousand dollars.
Speaker 5: But look you what you voted against.
Speaker 9: You voted against the Chips and Science Act.
Speaker 1: Right, listen, right now, I need to I need to
Speaker 1: ask my staff forty million dollars that I have brought
Speaker 1: to this community, are you proud of me?
Speaker 5: Are you proud of the forty million dollars?
Speaker 7: How much?
Speaker 5: But how are you proud that I wrote the Dignity Act?
Speaker 5: Haven't I let's talk about.
Speaker 1: The America's Wait wait, wait, let me one second.
Speaker 9: Tell me the money that you talk about, the forty
Speaker 9: million dollars that you bring back to the district. Sometimes
Speaker 9: that money comes from bills that you voted against. You
Speaker 9: voted against the Chips Act, and yet you praise the
Speaker 9: fact that the South Florida Climate Resistiam's Tech cub is
Speaker 9: going to be started in Miami. Right you voted against
Speaker 9: the infrastructure bill, and you talk about all the money
Speaker 9: that comes back to the airport. So at the same
Speaker 9: time that you're taking credit for the money that you
Speaker 9: bring back to the district in Washington, you're voting against
Speaker 9: these projects on party line votes.
Speaker 5: Listen, I that was I think last cycle.
Speaker 1: I cannot really remember right now, but just look, just
Speaker 1: look at the America's Act, which is what I'm going
Speaker 1: to vote. You don't want to explain why, I mean
Speaker 1: right now, And I'm not trying to be a politician.
Speaker 1: There's so many bills that I've introduced that I know
Speaker 1: that bills that you voted against.
Speaker 5: That understand. But it's okay, so I voted. Sometimes I don't,
Speaker 5: but let's look at the positive. I'm not trying to
Speaker 5: be a politician. I also like, I need to touch.
Speaker 3: Her body language.
Speaker 4: She's just leaned back. She's chill the whole time. She's
Speaker 4: like whatever, Yeah, sometimes I vote for it, sometimes I don't.
Speaker 3: Who cares? The money is here?
Speaker 5: Well, okay, so.
Speaker 3: There's a lot to bugging me about it.
Speaker 5: Again, like if you weren't watching this the clip itself,
Speaker 5: this was this was a pretty ill clip. But her
Speaker 5: body language right, and you're right, she just doesn't care.
Speaker 5: Because actually, what a lot of people don't remember about
Speaker 5: Mariel VARs Salazar is she had a really successful career
Speaker 5: as a journalist that she parleyed into her run for Congress.
Speaker 3: And she's foll some of her and Fidel.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so we have this vo she's she was one
Speaker 5: of the few reporters ever to do an on camera
Speaker 5: interview with Fidel Castro, one of the few American yeah
Speaker 5: to do and she did, yes so very and you
Speaker 5: can see if you're watching, you can see a very
Speaker 5: young Mariel VARs Salazar. Uh so, Miami eighties there, yeah,
Speaker 5: Miami eighties grilling Fidel Castro. And she's very proud of
Speaker 5: that interview. I've heard talk about it before.
Speaker 3: Adelle.
Speaker 4: You're taking credit for all of this infrastructure spending when
Speaker 4: you voted against against.
Speaker 5: That's very funny. So ring you've been covering this longer
Speaker 5: than I have. This is the oldest trick in the book,
Speaker 5: voting against the spending. Uh well then and then later
Speaker 5: touting it in your district.
Speaker 4: The Republicans did it a ton during obama stimulus too,
Speaker 4: universally opposed his stimulus. But then of course when there's
Speaker 4: a ribbon cutting, you know, you can't keep a politician
Speaker 4: away from that because everybody likes when new stuff gets built.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, or there's like the and again like actually,
Speaker 5: some politicians have in different cases legitimate arguments here. Not
Speaker 5: that I grew with the arguments, but what they'll say
Speaker 5: is with the child tax credit, that was passing the
Speaker 5: Trump tax bill in twenty seventeen. Democrats negotiated on that
Speaker 5: in the Senate side, and so they might say, you know,
Speaker 5: I helped get the child tax credit even though they
Speaker 5: voted against the bill, because they were involved in the
Speaker 5: back room negotiations, you know, pushing for the child tax credit.
Speaker 5: And it's possible that Mariel Viro Salazar was pushing this
Speaker 5: pork to get into a bill she knew she would
Speaker 5: ultimately vote against, just trying to make it. And this
Speaker 5: was the excuse a lot during the Obama years, trying
Speaker 5: to make an inevitable, bad bill as good as it
Speaker 5: possibly can be for your constituents. I think if that
Speaker 5: was what happened, though, we probably would have heard her
Speaker 5: use that argument.
Speaker 3: I love that she's like, I don't know how I
Speaker 3: voted on that? Is that was last cycle? That was less,
Speaker 3: get out of here less. I don't you want to
Speaker 3: hear about the bill I've introduced that's going nowhere? Can't
Speaker 3: we just talk about that? Can we just talk about that? Instead?
Speaker 5: She flipped it around. Aren't you proud of this bill?
Speaker 4: It's called the America's Bill? You against the America's Bill? Yes,
Speaker 4: I mean come on, what's wrong with you? She'll probably
Speaker 4: win in a rop, right.
Speaker 10: You know that.
Speaker 5: I think her original win was pretty close, but she
Speaker 5: I mean, once you're in, it's easier to stay in.
Speaker 3: The Other thing is the area is trending pretty red.
Speaker 5: She's also very friendly with leadership, so she's she was
Speaker 5: kind of elected in a cycle where there were a
Speaker 5: lot of like upstart, trumpy maga people, and I think
Speaker 5: she weirdly got lumped in with that because she was
Speaker 5: anti socialist running in a heavily Cuban district, and so
Speaker 5: she talked a lot about the kind of red meat
Speaker 5: socialism issue. But she's pretty friendly with leadership and not
Speaker 5: exactly as red meat as a lot of people would
Speaker 5: have her would peg her. And that friendly with leadership
Speaker 5: part matters a lot in the re election part because
Speaker 5: that determines where some of the money goes.
Speaker 3: Yeah, she's going to get that four hundred thousand, I
Speaker 3: FIU is going to get that big check.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, is going to get We should we should
Speaker 5: see if she'll come on the show and talk to
Speaker 5: us about that, actually, because she would be an interesting guest.
Speaker 5: She as a former journalist, is she knows what she's
Speaker 5: doing on TV. I'll say that, yeah, And you know
Speaker 5: Ryan Graham Castro, what's the difference, right, It's a fine
Speaker 5: line between Ryan grim and Fidel Castro.
Speaker 3: There you go, as I always say, good writer, right Fidel.
Speaker 5: Sure, we'll give him that baseball fan.
Speaker 3: So Egen Carroll got to see you Love Carroll.
Speaker 5: So this clip of Egen Carroll on MSNBC is worth
Speaker 5: watching because Donald Trump has eighty three million dollars on
Speaker 5: the line he was awarded. She was she was worried
Speaker 5: eighty three million dollars in damages.
Speaker 3: And a definitely top of the last defamation.
Speaker 5: Yes, on top of the last defamation. But she she's
Speaker 5: not the best spokesperson for her own cause, and that
Speaker 5: has been the case basically since she made these allegations
Speaker 5: against Donald Trump. She kind of went back and forth
Speaker 5: on whether on whether the allegations constituted rape or not.
Speaker 5: People will remember that clip she said, you know, I
Speaker 5: won't call it rape because there are women down at
Speaker 5: the border, and I don't want to do a disservice
Speaker 5: to what other women are experiencing. She just seems to
Speaker 5: be eccentric. We'll put it at that. So let's take
Speaker 5: a look at that eccentrism that was on display in
Speaker 5: this interview with MSNBC.
Speaker 14: You've talked about using some of Trump's money that you're
Speaker 14: about to get to help shore up women's rights.
Speaker 3: Do you know what that might be, what that might
Speaker 3: look like?
Speaker 14: Yes, tell me, I had such such great ideas for
Speaker 14: all the good I'm going to do with this money.
Speaker 14: First thing, Rachel, you and I go shopping to get
Speaker 14: completely new wardrobes, new shoes, motorcycle for crawling, new fishing
Speaker 14: rod for Rachel.
Speaker 5: What do you want? Penhouse? Rachel, penhouse? And France? You
Speaker 5: want France? You want to go fishing in France.
Speaker 14: No, that's a joke.
Speaker 3: That's her lawyer over there saying that's a joke.
Speaker 5: You heard her lawyer laughing nervously and then tacking on
Speaker 5: to the end of that answer quote, that's a joke.
Speaker 5: Her lawyer was on air with her, which was probably
Speaker 5: for the best.
Speaker 4: Do you think she'll actually ever see Trump's money or
Speaker 4: is he going to figure out ways to not pay?
Speaker 5: I mean, the more she goes on media, the less
Speaker 5: opportunity she probably has to get that money. Because Donald
Speaker 5: Trump is appealing and Donald Trump is appealing the case
Speaker 5: and this doesn't help at all.
Speaker 4: But I mean, if the judgment is affirmed, she could
Speaker 4: set the money on fire. I mean, actually, I get
Speaker 4: it's technically against federal a lot of burn money, but
Speaker 4: she could take Rachel Matt out fishing in France, like right,
Speaker 4: who It's not is the appeals Court's supposed to care
Speaker 4: what she does with the money?
Speaker 5: No, I mean I think in theory no, But I
Speaker 5: think does it help people with the credibility question when
Speaker 5: she says that. I mean, I guess it depends on
Speaker 5: how much of the media people see. And they deemed
Speaker 5: her original allegation credible. So and that, by the way,
Speaker 5: it did too. Yeah, the jury deemed her original allegation
Speaker 5: to be credible. And that's how the defamation suit obviously
Speaker 5: was premised, is that she had a credible allegation. So
Speaker 5: what Donald Trump said about the allegation constituted defamition and
Speaker 5: defamation to the tune of eighty three something million dollars. Now,
Speaker 5: there are also one of the things that is included
Speaker 5: in Trump's appeal is that they have the conflict with
Speaker 5: the judge. Did you see this? So I'm reading from
Speaker 5: NBC News here. This is Trump's Laura Alena Haba on
Speaker 5: Monday file a letter with the court in New York
Speaker 5: citing the New York Post story that said US District
Speaker 5: Judge Lewis Kaplan and Carol attorney ROBERTA. Kaplan, who are
Speaker 5: not related, had worked at the major law firm Paul Weiss, Riffkin,
Speaker 5: Morton and Garrison in the nineteen nineties. An unidentified former
Speaker 5: partner at the firm, which employees around one thousand lawyers,
Speaker 5: told the Post that Lewis Kaplan had been quote like
Speaker 5: her mentor, and then Hobba told the New York Post
Speaker 5: that the situation was quote insane and so incestuous. Quote
Speaker 5: this is news to us, she told the paper on Saturday.
Speaker 5: If you're an attorney and you're saying that's news to
Speaker 5: you this far into a case, probably not great.
Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 3: Trump doesn't get good attorneys because he doesn't pay them. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and so yeah, you get what you pay for.
Speaker 5: It's a pretty good way to put it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he gets complete hacks who were just willing to
Speaker 4: work for him on the prayer that he'll somehow pay
Speaker 4: and on the hope that the exposure will actually help him.
Speaker 4: You remember, for his second impeachment he had that slip
Speaker 4: and fall attorney from Philadelphia who just went winged it
Speaker 4: on the Senate floor.
Speaker 5: Mm hmm. No, yeah, he doesn't get the they're not
Speaker 5: sending their best to borrow a phrase. And again that
Speaker 5: could be why actually if you go through the Egene Carrol.
Speaker 5: So we've talked about this a little bit. We don't
Speaker 5: need to litigate it. She did go back and forth
Speaker 5: on whether what happened constitute or rape. She has the
Speaker 5: story about it happening in a busy department store in
Speaker 5: the middle of the day.
Speaker 3: Years ago, but in a dressing room.
Speaker 5: And yeah, although part of it I think was like
Speaker 5: pinned outside the dressing room and then into the dressing room.
Speaker 5: It's a either way. She has gone back and forth
Speaker 5: on whether it was rape.
Speaker 4: Trump most hilariously undermined himself when he likes to go
Speaker 4: around saying as if it's a defense against rape, that
Speaker 4: she's not my type, which bizarrely like concedes the fact
Speaker 4: that he would happily rape somebody if it was if
Speaker 4: they were his type. But then they showed him a
Speaker 4: picture of Eugene Carroll and he misidentified her as his wife.
Speaker 3: Right, So even his.
Speaker 4: Bizarre claim that you know, he didn't rape her because
Speaker 4: she wasn't my type. Fell apart when it's like he
Speaker 4: was caught like thinking that it was his wife.
Speaker 3: It's his wife's not as type.
Speaker 5: Yeah. I mean again, it's like, does anyone question that
Speaker 5: Donald Trump not Millennia, but was Evana? It was like
Speaker 5: aggressive with women at the at the very least. No,
Speaker 5: And that's like, again, it's just these accusations Trump himself, Yes, yeah, exactly,
Speaker 5: he will tell you that with with some pride. But
Speaker 5: the accusations themselves are different than that question. But again,
Speaker 5: Jerry said they found them credible. So maybe that New
Speaker 5: York based Jerry is just really really favorable to each
Speaker 5: and Carol and Trump has bad lawyers, and maybe that's
Speaker 5: how she does end up seeing those eighty three million dollars.
Speaker 5: I don't know Ryan, that this is the thing that
Speaker 5: Trump even three dollars, this is what he sees for like.
Speaker 3: His campaign money.
Speaker 5: I eighty three points million dollars is a lot of money.
Speaker 5: And they're just competing reports about Donald Trump's finances obviously,
Speaker 5: so right.
Speaker 4: And Trump remember said he was going to work for
Speaker 4: free as president and then and then or then said
Speaker 4: he was going to donate his money and ended up
Speaker 4: just pocketing it.
Speaker 3: It's like the four hundred thousand dollars salary.
Speaker 4: So raised his questions about how actually liquid he he
Speaker 4: actually is, if he needs to kind of if he
Speaker 4: actually needed that presidential salary that he claimed he wasn't
Speaker 4: going to take. Yes, it looks like we do have
Speaker 4: time to get to the news out of both Pakistan
Speaker 4: and Venezuela. So yesterday Matt Miller at the State Department
Speaker 4: announced that we were snapping back sanctions on on Venezuela.
Speaker 4: We had we had relieved sanctions on Venezuela in in
Speaker 4: a negotiation in order to get back some American uh
Speaker 4: you know, prisoners that were held there.
Speaker 3: We wanted them to extradite somebody here.
Speaker 4: They extradited that that person, and they wanted some other
Speaker 4: kind of commitments around uh election, transparency, democracy, other other reforms.
Speaker 4: Uh Maduro then claimed that there was a coup attempt
Speaker 4: against him, arrested a bunch of people and banned the
Speaker 4: opposition party, you know, heading into an upcoming election. That
Speaker 4: ban of the opposition party was ratified by the Venezuelan courts,
Speaker 4: which will become relevant in this In this segment, later. Meanwhile,
Speaker 4: over in Pakistan, which has an election on February eighth,
Speaker 4: grassroots members of the PTI, which is kind of the
Speaker 4: biggest kind of party opposition party in Pakistan, are just
Speaker 4: being arrested and massed when they sign up just to
Speaker 4: run for like lower level offices, and the opposition party leader,
Speaker 4: former Prime Minister im Ron Khan, earlier this week was
Speaker 4: sentenced to ten years in a totally bogus case around
Speaker 4: the mystic alleged mishandling of a classified document that we
Speaker 4: actually published over the intercept. He was not our source,
Speaker 4: he had nothing to do, he had nothing to do
Speaker 4: with it. They never proved the data is complete kangaroo nonsense.
Speaker 4: And then today they sentenced him to an additional fourteen
Speaker 4: years for another completely ridiculous case.
Speaker 3: This one is called is like a state gifts case.
Speaker 4: So for background, Imran Khan was a famous cricketer, extraordinarily wealthy.
Speaker 4: His next phase in his career after cricket was as
Speaker 4: a philanthropist. That's how he became doubly popular in Pakistan,
Speaker 4: you know, building hospitals, universities.
Speaker 3: Et cetera.
Speaker 4: And so then they charged him with taking gifts from
Speaker 4: like foreign like say Pakistan goes on a Pakistan primary
Speaker 4: goes to like Bangladesh and they give him like some gift,
Speaker 4: like a watch or something. They are accusing him of
Speaker 4: like keeping this stuff illegally.
Speaker 3: He says he did all the paperwork.
Speaker 4: The idea that a guy who is like massively rich
Speaker 4: and a philanthropist is trying to like pill for a
Speaker 4: watch is as absurd as you can imagine. He's tried
Speaker 4: in secret, like nothing about the case made any sense,
Speaker 4: and they're banning him from running for office for ten
Speaker 4: years and essentially banning the PTI from the ballot. It's
Speaker 4: complicated the way the court did it. The State Department meanwhile,
Speaker 4: no sanctions whatsoever. So yesterday at the State Department briefing,
Speaker 4: there are a lot of questions that were thrown at
Speaker 4: Matt Miller about this. And here's how I framed it
Speaker 4: to him, and here's his response.
Speaker 7: As you said earlier, that that's a matter for the
Speaker 7: Pakistani courts. When it came to Venezuela, that's a political matter.
Speaker 3: It seems the.
Speaker 7: Venezuelan courts of course approved you know, Maduro's banning of
Speaker 7: the party. Now you could say that court is under
Speaker 7: Maduro's thumb, it's a kangaroo court. But in Pakistan the
Speaker 7: prosecution was held in secret. Just recently, his attorney in
Speaker 7: Ronkon's attorneys were kept out of the courtroom and they
Speaker 7: took attorneys from the prosecution team and made him and
Speaker 7: put them on the defense team. Like, nothing about that
Speaker 7: prosecution seems less than kangaroo So why would Venezuelas be
Speaker 7: a political case? But when it comes to Pakistan, that's
Speaker 7: a matter for the Pakistani courts.
Speaker 13: So there are different situations and we have not yet
Speaker 13: made that conclusion with respect to the Pakistani legal process.
Speaker 13: When you look at Venezuela, we are looking at the
Speaker 13: entire history of the Maduro regime in cracking down on
Speaker 13: democracy and most importantly in this case, failing to carry
Speaker 13: out the commitments that they made to allow candidates to run.
Speaker 13: It's a commitment that they made that the country has
Speaker 13: renigged on, and that's why we're able to make the assessment.
Speaker 3: In that case. There might still be a determination on
Speaker 3: the Pakistan question.
Speaker 13: I just I don't have anything to preview, but it's
Speaker 13: not one that we've made at this time.
Speaker 3: So Matt Lee, Yeah, So Matt Lee, the AP.
Speaker 4: Reporter followed up immediately after this and said, wait a minute,
Speaker 4: So Venezuela does not have independent courts, but are you
Speaker 4: saying that Pakistan does. He's like and he said, my
Speaker 4: phone's dying here. But if I looked up the State
Speaker 4: departments Human Rights report on Pakistan, would I find that
Speaker 4: the State Department feels like the Pakistani courts are completely
Speaker 4: independent and trustworthy.
Speaker 5: What would we do as a country without him?
Speaker 3: In those briefings, I know, it's it's it's fun to
Speaker 3: watch him.
Speaker 5: I'm glad you're in there now too. You started going
Speaker 5: a lot more.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's it's it's great, it's great to be in there.
Speaker 3: They're very they're no there.
Speaker 4: They don't necessarily answer the questions, but you know you can,
Speaker 4: you can. You can put things to them in here
Speaker 4: and hear how they respond. So the if people are
Speaker 4: actually wondering what the difference is, Yes, you know, Venezuela
Speaker 4: is a is an adversary. You know, Maduro is an
Speaker 4: adversary of the United States, and the military backed government
Speaker 4: in Pakistan is an ally of the United States. And
Speaker 4: Imran Khan was seen to be either adversarial or too.
Speaker 5: Neutral, and we wanted to cooperate on weapons production because
Speaker 5: we were in a hot war with Russia.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he famously.
Speaker 4: Gave this speech to a large rally in response to
Speaker 4: the EU demanding and the US privately demanding that Pakistan
Speaker 4: support Ukraine and not and not take what the US
Speaker 4: called aggressive neutrality when it came to Ukraine and Russia.
Speaker 4: He gave a speech where he said, we are not
Speaker 4: your slaves. And that kind of rhetoric chafes the West,
Speaker 4: like what are you talking about? You do you do
Speaker 4: what you're told? And now he's in prison.
Speaker 5: How has October seventh given Imran Khan's Khan's relationship with
Speaker 5: the broader sort of Muslim world and his sort of followers,
Speaker 5: his base, How has that shifted how the State Department
Speaker 5: treats i Ran Khan's base. I mean in.
Speaker 4: Pakistan perhaps second to Airdawan, but not but actually maybe not,
Speaker 4: Like Imran Khan was probably the most popular Muslim elected
Speaker 4: official in the world because you know, Airdiwan was not
Speaker 4: also a famous cricketer. On top of everything that else
Speaker 4: that that Khan did, ideas and so and so so Khan.
Speaker 4: If Imron Khan you know, were in power now, he
Speaker 4: would be kind of a loud voice when it when
Speaker 4: it came to the Israel Gaza question.
Speaker 3: Instead, he's you know, completely muzzled, just one.
Speaker 5: Of the least discussed but most important sort of subplots.
Speaker 5: So the hot war is happening right now in Geo Apology, and.
Speaker 4: We interviewed the uh Pakistani ambassador over the intercepted for
Speaker 4: podcast Intercepted and Deconstructed.
Speaker 3: The Pakistani Ambassador.
Speaker 4: To the United Nations you you and permanent representative, and
Speaker 4: we asked him about Israel Gaza. He actually had served
Speaker 4: under Khan and serves under the current government and he
Speaker 4: and he was like, look, the Palestinian cause is extremely
Speaker 4: popular in Pakistan because and I asked him, you know
Speaker 4: what why Pakistan had joined the coalition, you know, battling
Speaker 4: the Hoothies.
Speaker 3: He's like that, He's like, that would be just completely.
Speaker 4: Untenable for us to do, like that, what the Hoothies
Speaker 4: are doing is popular in Pakistan. Yeah, but the Pakistani
Speaker 4: government isn't isn't being vocal about any of that.
Speaker 5: Less aggressive neutrality.
Speaker 4: Yes, like yes, exactly, passive neutrality.
Speaker 5: Well, I'm really glad we had time to get to
Speaker 5: the story. And again, so glad they're going to those
Speaker 5: briefings and we get to watch them respond, even when
Speaker 5: it's a non answer. A lot of non answers are
Speaker 5: super helpful.
Speaker 3: Should be one later today.
Speaker 5: I'll be there, all right. We'll be watching for that,
Speaker 5: and maybe we'll have something to talk about next week, Ryan,
Speaker 5: when we're back with Counterpoints in a week from now.
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