Speaker 1: Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here
Speaker 1: and we here at breaking points, are already thinking of
Speaker 1: ways we can up our game for this critical election.
Speaker 2: We rely on our premium subs to expand coverage, upgrade
Speaker 2: the studio ad staff, give you, guys, the best independent.
Speaker 3: Coverage that is possible.
Speaker 2: If you like what we're all about, it just means
Speaker 2: the absolute world to have your support.
Speaker 3: But enough with that, let's get to the show. Good morning, everybody,
Speaker 3: Happy Monday. We have an amazing show for everybody today.
Speaker 3: Extra amazing Ryan, It's a bro show the Pound. It's there.
Speaker 3: That's all people are here for.
Speaker 4: You cannot wait for this one.
Speaker 3: That's right, all right, We've got a lot of stuff
Speaker 3: to cover today. Man, I don't know how Crystal does this.
Speaker 3: All right, Ukraine, let's start with that.
Speaker 2: We're going to talk a little bit about a very
Speaker 2: strategic defeat for the Ukrainians in this war, as there's
Speaker 2: been major developments the Munich Security Conference. Then our friend
Speaker 2: Diegor Kotkin will join us live from Moscow to discuss
Speaker 2: the death of Russian dissonant Alexey Navalne, who was found
Speaker 2: dead in a prison above the Arctic Circle. And let's
Speaker 2: say mysterious circumstances, What does this mean for Uton's control
Speaker 2: of Russia?
Speaker 3: Why did he decide to kill him?
Speaker 5: Now?
Speaker 2: If that is in fact the result of his death.
Speaker 2: Fannie Willis has some stunning testimony that will have major
Speaker 2: impacts on that case against Trump in the state of Georgia,
Speaker 2: basically confirming a relationship previously with the prosecutor who she
Speaker 2: hired to go after Trump, and including some possible corruption
Speaker 2: allegations that she might have gotten herself in some very
Speaker 2: hot water on the stand. Matt Tayibi out with a
Speaker 2: new report with Michael Schellenberger about the CIA spying on
Speaker 2: the Trump campaign. We're going to break some of that down,
Speaker 2: as well as a bit of a fracas that he's
Speaker 2: found himself in with Elon musk Over at Twitter. Ryan,
Speaker 2: you're gonna be breaking down for us major developments out
Speaker 2: of the state of Israel. We're gonna be talking about
Speaker 2: benjaminettya who's declaration saying there will be no two state solutions,
Speaker 2: some a doctor who you actually personally know who's gone missing,
Speaker 2: some humanitarian developments, and then we're going to discuss Rashida Talib,
Speaker 2: who is a squad member Representative Democrat from Michigan who
Speaker 2: is urging people not to vote for Joe Biden in
Speaker 2: that primary, committed own commit and coming under major attack
Speaker 2: by the MSNBC liberals.
Speaker 3: So we've got a big, big show for everybody today.
Speaker 2: Before we get to that, though, I just want to
Speaker 2: say thank you all to everybody who signed up for
Speaker 2: the focus group to be able to help us out.
Speaker 2: We have major more and developments and plans and all
Speaker 2: these other things that are coming very very soon, so
Speaker 2: we can help us out Breakingpoints dot Com.
Speaker 3: We've got some big stuff that we're.
Speaker 2: Ready to debut for all of you, which I'm very
Speaker 2: very excited to show. All right, let's go ahead and
Speaker 2: start with Ukraine. So there's been some major, major developments
Speaker 2: out of Ukraine. I did a monologue on Thursday discussing
Speaker 2: some of the major reasons why I personally oppose AID,
Speaker 2: and in that I previewed the Battle of Advica, very
Speaker 2: strategic town that has been at the basics of the
Speaker 2: front line since twenty fourteen in a target of Russian
Speaker 2: forces come on under even more attack in the last
Speaker 2: couple of years of the war. Let's go and put
Speaker 2: this up there on the screen at Vika as of yesterday,
Speaker 2: officially confirmed by the Ukrainians, has fallen to Russian forces.
Speaker 2: They say, quote with Ukrainian forces at the risk of encirclement,
Speaker 2: the top military commanders nick named the butcher by his
Speaker 2: own troops, by the way, not by this enemy, says
Speaker 2: in startingly candid account, soldier described disarray and despair.
Speaker 3: Effectively.
Speaker 2: What they describe Ryan is that this city, as I said,
Speaker 2: which was previously home to some thirty thousand people, it's
Speaker 2: a very strategic strong point for the Ukrainian forces because
Speaker 2: they have some major bases of behind the lines, a
Speaker 2: couple thirty miles or so behind them. It's one of
Speaker 2: the reasons that they felt very strongly that they needed
Speaker 2: to defend the city. The fall of the city is
Speaker 2: kind of becoming a flashpoint for the argument for aid
Speaker 2: to Ukraine. President Zelenski and the Ukrainian advocates of aid
Speaker 2: are saying that the city fell because of lack of ammunition,
Speaker 2: specifically artillery ammunition. Opponents of aid pointing out that this
Speaker 2: is a city where even with strong reinforcements, you know,
Speaker 2: even you know, supposedly, let's say, if artillery ammunition was
Speaker 2: the sole reason that it highlights and spotlights the massive
Speaker 2: manpower and morale problems that they had in this battle
Speaker 2: where they were builded together. People were very fearful that
Speaker 2: troops were going to be running away, and some of
Speaker 2: the on the ground accounts of many of the soldiers
Speaker 2: there showing absolute despair, big morale problems in there as
Speaker 2: well as Russians with it appears have been able to
Speaker 2: replenish their ranks with volunteers, not with conscripts. And while
Speaker 2: yes they certainly took losses taking the city, that this
Speaker 2: could be the beginning of a new advance, not just
Speaker 2: there but all along the six hundred mile front line.
Speaker 1: What does it mean for the front line and what
Speaker 1: does it mean for the Russian advance that this particular
Speaker 1: strategic point.
Speaker 2: Well, again not the general but military analysts that I've
Speaker 2: seen say that the territory and the terrain behind it
Speaker 2: is actually much easier for maneuver that the Ukrainians will
Speaker 2: find it difficult to be able to pull back and
Speaker 2: to be able to hold there. If they, as they claim,
Speaker 2: artillery is the main reason there, then obviously that's a
Speaker 2: static thing and that's not going to change.
Speaker 4: This was the spot to hold, and that's why they've
Speaker 4: been holding it. It wasn't ten years.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, so it was a spot to hold for
Speaker 2: several reasons. Became a political point. It also was kind
Speaker 2: of a strategic crossroad, as I said, kind of that
Speaker 2: gateway to the place that we're talking about, the terrain
Speaker 2: and specifically some of the strategic assets that were placed
Speaker 2: behind there. Really the reason why I think the battle
Speaker 2: at this point is important is it just as this
Speaker 2: is the spotlight, and this is kind of why we
Speaker 2: decided to leave the show with. This is now the
Speaker 2: nexus on which all of the arguments around A to
Speaker 2: Ukraine are being argued. So President Biden seizing upon the
Speaker 2: failures on the Ukrainian frontier to blame Republicans, saying it's
Speaker 2: their fault that this loss happened.
Speaker 3: Here's what he had to say, The.
Speaker 6: Idea that now if you run now of ammunition, we
Speaker 6: brook away. I find a serve, I find it on ethic,
Speaker 6: I find it just country and everything we are as
Speaker 6: a country.
Speaker 3: So as you can see Ryan President Biden.
Speaker 2: Kind of the ongoing line now from Biden from many
Speaker 2: of the Democrats. Fox News reporters supposedly supposed to be
Speaker 2: neutral or like this is unconscionable.
Speaker 3: This demonstrates why the Ukrainians are losing.
Speaker 2: I really wanted to focus in on this point because
Speaker 2: really is the crux of everything, which is this has
Speaker 2: now become evidence for why more military aid needs to
Speaker 2: keep funding, you know, keep flowing to Ukraine. And you
Speaker 2: also saw this at the Munich Security Conference where US
Speaker 2: former Secretary Hillary Clinton made her case raid.
Speaker 3: Here's what she had to say.
Speaker 5: He's absolutely right.
Speaker 7: I mean, he knows the military situation, I know the
Speaker 7: political situation. If we actually voted to reflect the majority
Speaker 7: in Congress, the majority in the United States, we would
Speaker 7: be sending more help to Ukraine right now.
Speaker 8: I think in order to fill.
Speaker 7: The gap between now and when we can try to
Speaker 7: force a vote on the floor of the House, which
Speaker 7: I think is what's going to have to happen, other
Speaker 7: countries need to look at their weapon stocks. If they
Speaker 7: were thinking of sending or selling something to someone else,
Speaker 7: halt that sale.
Speaker 3: Send it to Ukraine.
Speaker 7: We've got to keep Ukraine going, and they are running
Speaker 7: out of ammunition. I was just speaking with some Ukrainian representatives,
Speaker 7: and you know, they're online soldiers who have been so
Speaker 7: brave are literally getting, you know, a couple of shells.
Speaker 3: That's all they're getting, and they need more help. This
Speaker 3: was somewhere I really wanted to spend time. Yeah, go ahead, right.
Speaker 1: It's just worth pointing out that earlier, after the counter
Speaker 1: offensive showed such success for the Ukrainians, that was used
Speaker 1: as the rationale for why you know, another hundred billions
Speaker 1: about the counter and a half year and a half ago,
Speaker 1: So that meant things are going really well, so we
Speaker 1: need to send more weapons. Now they're saying things are
Speaker 1: going really badly, so therefore we need to send more weapons.
Speaker 3: It's interesting circular logic.
Speaker 1: And you can imagine if it's stalemated, well, obviously you
Speaker 1: have to send more weapons because the stalemate will be broken.
Speaker 2: So exactly right, because we just want to send more weabs. Yeah,
Speaker 2: if they just want to send more weapons. And one
Speaker 2: of the things that really bothers me about this is
Speaker 2: that they're not dealing with reality. The presumption there appears
Speaker 2: to be that there are secret artillery stocks which are
Speaker 2: just laying, you know, unused in the West that maybe
Speaker 2: you know, we may need for ourselves should we ever
Speaker 2: get into a conflict, but in production that secretly we
Speaker 2: can just turn things on.
Speaker 3: They refuse to deal with reality.
Speaker 2: I actually went through and read a new report by
Speaker 2: the Estonian intelligence services. Now keep in mind this is
Speaker 2: complete propaganda pro Ukraine, but they accidentally did admit a
Speaker 2: very basic truth which all of us need to grapple with.
Speaker 3: Let's put this up there on the screen.
Speaker 2: I've highlighted the relevant portion, which also includes a graphic.
Speaker 2: It says, therefore, it is almost certain Western ammunition deliveries
Speaker 2: to Ukraine in twenty twenty four will not be able
Speaker 2: to keep pace with supplies available for Russian armed forces.
Speaker 2: Now that is a very mild way of saying it.
Speaker 2: And as you guys can actually see, there was a
Speaker 2: graph that was right below it, which is a very
Speaker 2: important one and demonstrates the real futility of the US
Speaker 2: and Western economies right now. So in twenty twenty one,
Speaker 2: Ryan Russia produced four hundred thousand shells. In twenty twenty two,
Speaker 2: in the midst of the war, they were able to
Speaker 2: increase that to one million twenty twenty three, in the
Speaker 2: span of just a year, they were able to produce
Speaker 2: three point five million shells. They are projected by the
Speaker 2: Estonians to be able to produce four point five million. Now, Ryan,
Speaker 2: the European Union has had seven months to promise one
Speaker 2: million shells, so one out of do the math there,
Speaker 2: what is that twenty five percent or so of the
Speaker 2: shells that the Russians are going to be able to produce?
Speaker 2: How many do you think they are actually able to
Speaker 2: produce despite having six to seven months to be able
Speaker 2: to run production?
Speaker 1: If I had a guess, yeah, does discount ones that
Speaker 1: they're like secretly buying from Pakagting No.
Speaker 2: No, no, no, this is the ones they're actually able to
Speaker 2: produce in house. If they were able to give them
Speaker 2: a couple thousand, Yeah, half a million, half a million,
Speaker 2: so half of the promised amount having seven months to
Speaker 2: be able to ramp up production and so basically it
Speaker 2: is an industrial reality.
Speaker 4: But they are the Mercedes Benz of shells.
Speaker 2: Sure, but here's the other problem, as you just alluded to. Now,
Speaker 2: they're like, well, maybe we need to buy them from
Speaker 2: somebody else. How do you know they're going to sell
Speaker 2: them to you? You don't and with the government also,
Speaker 2: why should they?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Exactly, the South Koreans they have a policy in their
Speaker 2: government they're like, we don't really want to get involved in.
Speaker 1: This, we'll put a new government in right as a
Speaker 1: new policy.
Speaker 2: As we saw previously, we actually bamboozled the South Koreans previously,
Speaker 2: you know, in some sort of backdoor deal to send
Speaker 2: weapons to Ukraine. But this is just a basic facet
Speaker 2: of industrial production. We cannot come anywhere even close to
Speaker 2: the Russian industrial production. By the way, that was not
Speaker 2: supposed to happen. If you know, if we go back
Speaker 2: and read what some of the previous sanctions were saying,
Speaker 2: it was going to collapse. It demonstrates to us very
Speaker 2: clearly that Russia and you know, I got this wrong too,
Speaker 2: because all of us underestimated the resilience of Fundamentally, what
Speaker 2: Russia and China have as an advantage over us. They
Speaker 2: have closed systems, they have vertically integrated production, and if
Speaker 2: they don't have vertically integrated production, they are still able
Speaker 2: to buy enough from the Great Powers to do not
Speaker 2: agree with us on the Ukraine consensus. It demonstrates pretty
Speaker 2: clearly that you can have the entire West try and
Speaker 2: flatten your economy with sanctions, but if you have enough production,
Speaker 2: if you have the will, you can easily get it done.
Speaker 3: Now, I don't want people to get me wrong, if
Speaker 3: we converted our economy to total war, yeah, maybe we.
Speaker 5: Could, you know, sure we do.
Speaker 3: It's like, do you want to do that?
Speaker 2: You know, you want me to rush in the coffee
Speaker 2: in my cup, you know, to make sure that the
Speaker 2: Ukrainians can maybe hold the line in Advika. And I
Speaker 2: think that's really what it gets to is that we
Speaker 2: are at a point now where the reality is is
Speaker 2: that we have exhausted our coffers basically to zero. One
Speaker 2: of the reasons why President Biden sent cluster munitions to
Speaker 2: Ukraine was not just because they wanted them. It's because
Speaker 2: we didn't have any more artillery to send them. And
Speaker 2: one of the alleged, you know, benefits of the new
Speaker 2: package is they're like, well, it's all going to flow
Speaker 2: to us, you know, factories and all that.
Speaker 3: But here's what they don't tell you guys. It would
Speaker 3: take eighteen months.
Speaker 2: For those shells to be able to roll off in
Speaker 2: significant enough numbers. So at the entire point, we're not
Speaker 2: dealing with reality and all of this, all of us.
Speaker 2: Even if we were to supply all of this ammunition,
Speaker 2: et cetera, it would only be able to get Ukraine
Speaker 2: to run not even parody in terms of the number
Speaker 2: of shells, And in that.
Speaker 3: Situation, you actually need more than the enemy if you
Speaker 3: want to try and do shape.
Speaker 2: This is again from military tacticians and analysts that I've followed.
Speaker 2: People were actually relatively nonpartisan her like, they would actually
Speaker 2: need an advantage to conduct shaping operations and all of that.
Speaker 3: At best, what you would be arguing for maybe.
Speaker 2: It's for them to quote hold the line, but this
Speaker 2: belies what morale problems, the fact that they're kidnapping old
Speaker 2: and disabled people off the street that are basically there
Speaker 2: to help hold the front line.
Speaker 3: The situation is hopeless for them.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's really one of the they would be
Speaker 2: lucky if they have the same amount of territory today,
Speaker 2: even if we were to ship them millions of shells,
Speaker 2: and then you know how many tens of thousands of
Speaker 2: people would be dead in the meantime of their own
Speaker 2: citizen rate.
Speaker 1: And fundamentally, what we're talking about is kind of restructuring
Speaker 1: the entire West's economy to produce munitions so that this war.
Speaker 4: Can just go on forever. Yes, Like, who does that
Speaker 4: make sense to you?
Speaker 1: This is two countries that are fighting over territory between
Speaker 1: them works something out here. This is beyond the capacity
Speaker 1: of our international rules based order to sort out.
Speaker 4: Are you kidding me?
Speaker 3: Of course not.
Speaker 2: You know, all it would take is literally a phone
Speaker 2: call from President Biden.
Speaker 3: You can ask Victor Orbh of Hungary. He said that.
Speaker 2: He goes, look, you guys are the ones who can
Speaker 2: figure it out. Yeah, he said, this will not be
Speaker 2: negotiated between Ukraine and Russia. This is going to be
Speaker 2: between Washington and Moscow. President Putin made that clear in
Speaker 2: his talker interview. If he let's find out if he's lying,
Speaker 2: We don't know, you know, we have no idea. Of course,
Speaker 2: it was out rejected, completely out of hand. The reason
Speaker 2: again I'm spending time here is you need to know
Speaker 2: the reality. It's not there's no secret artillery. There's no
Speaker 2: secret weapons that are just hanging out there. And if
Speaker 2: there were, why would we send them to you? Frank,
Speaker 2: you want to drain us to the zero to send
Speaker 2: them so they.
Speaker 1: When we attack the cartels, the cars will cartels invade
Speaker 1: us and they just conquer us.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's not a joke. It's true. It's not
Speaker 3: even just cartels. I mean, who knows there's so many
Speaker 3: different flashpoints across the.
Speaker 2: Clow would I would be remiss if I didn't say,
Speaker 2: if you're a pro Israel person, the Israelis, guess what
Speaker 2: artillery they are ammunition?
Speaker 3: They want the same ones as the Ukrainians.
Speaker 4: Because they will go to war with Lebanon.
Speaker 1: Well, it was funny to see Hillary Clinton say if
Speaker 1: you were thinking about selling your weapons to somebody else?
Speaker 4: Like, is she bds opponent? All of a sudden, She's.
Speaker 1: Like, maybe you're right, She's like kidding, And is you're
Speaker 1: watching that be like hmm.
Speaker 3: Look this reality. I mean it's sad.
Speaker 2: It is sad because if you think about it, back
Speaker 2: in the day, in nineteen ninety one, after the Cold War,
Speaker 2: we actually produced eight hundred thousand shells I believe that year,
Speaker 2: and last year I think it was something like forty
Speaker 2: maybe sixty thousand, which is pathetic, and it demonstrates the
Speaker 2: hollowing out and.
Speaker 3: All that of the economy.
Speaker 2: All this is ever, all this has really done, is
Speaker 2: demonstrated to me like how weak and unprepared we are
Speaker 2: for the fact that we can't even supply to full
Speaker 2: strength like a third world backwater military as opposed to
Speaker 2: although it.
Speaker 4: Is taking on a pretty big country.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I mean, certainly, but which we.
Speaker 1: Seem to forget. It's like the Ukraine is not fighting
Speaker 1: Poland here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, No, you're right, I mean, and that's one of
Speaker 2: those two where it's clear that we've under they've significantly
Speaker 2: underrestd made it the strength. I mean, you have, as
Speaker 2: I said, they've got four point five million shells. Even again,
Speaker 2: you can ask the Estonians, they're the ones who read
Speaker 2: the report. In their own report, they say that Russia
Speaker 2: has largely been able to fill it's all of its
Speaker 2: losses with volunteers by just paying the money in the
Speaker 2: poorest regions of Russia, and a lot of people, including
Speaker 2: the people who've been killed, the widows and all that,
Speaker 2: are like, hey, listen, you know, I missed my husband,
Speaker 2: but I'm getting paid more than I ever did before,
Speaker 2: which sounds bleak, but you've never been really already, No, I.
Speaker 3: Swear, I actually highlighted the same report. Here.
Speaker 2: They went and they did some interviews and it was
Speaker 2: in like dagastan Er, you know, some of like really
Speaker 2: backwater regions of Russia, and it was like, many widows
Speaker 2: find themselves much richer today as a result of the
Speaker 2: war because they're making far more in pensions than they
Speaker 2: ever did in their economy.
Speaker 4: Yeah, they never liked that, one of them. Maybe it
Speaker 4: didn't like him any children, probably miss the wife.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you're right exactly.
Speaker 2: Let's put this up there on the screen as well,
Speaker 2: because you're going to hear this a lot, you know,
Speaker 2: continuing from the Lenski, from all of his advocates here
Speaker 2: in Washington, they say that we are running an artificial
Speaker 2: deficit of weapons after the Ukrainian withdrawal from Advika. They're
Speaker 2: trying again to make this purely a matter of ammunition.
Speaker 2: But the truth is is that even if they had parody,
Speaker 2: the best they could do is hold. We can't even
Speaker 2: get them to parody with current Western industrial production. And
Speaker 2: that presumes that it would be worth draining our coffers
Speaker 2: to zero, spinning up all of our economies to total war,
Speaker 2: just to keep the war going and they could hold
Speaker 2: on the front line.
Speaker 3: For what nobody ever answers that question.
Speaker 1: You would think that after the second counter offensive, that
Speaker 1: where we poured as much money as we could find
Speaker 1: into it and fifty billion as many weapons as we
Speaker 1: could find into it, the Ukrainians threw thousands of men
Speaker 1: into it and it failed. Yes, you would think that
Speaker 1: after that, you're like, Okay, we tried that. That's not
Speaker 1: going to work. Now we sit down and we negotiation
Speaker 1: what the end of this looks like.
Speaker 3: But that's not the answer. Rights more, which is do more, Yeah,
Speaker 3: more and more and more.
Speaker 1: I fewer people you're running out of and older people
Speaker 1: yegor who we're going to have on next He said it,
Speaker 1: He said it really well, either they run out of
Speaker 1: money and ammunition now or they run out of men
Speaker 1: in like two years.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's actually it may even be sooner than that.
Speaker 2: Six hundred and fifty thousand conscript age Ukrainian men have
Speaker 2: fled the country, have bribed their way out. They're basically
Speaker 2: at this point, if you're like fifty or so, you're.
Speaker 3: Up for grabs, you know, to be able to go.
Speaker 2: The average age of the military is somewhere around forty
Speaker 2: five to fifty years old. That means that there's a
Speaker 2: seventy year old in there. If the average s fifty,
Speaker 2: that means there's a seventy year old in there. Like
Speaker 2: if we think about what a normal distribution looks like,
Speaker 2: so let's just consider you know where really things are going.
Speaker 2: And you know, even if you gave them like you said,
Speaker 2: then it's just going to be a country of boys
Speaker 2: and old men. And even then, you know, can they
Speaker 2: really be able to hold on? And this presumes so
Speaker 2: much more of Western support, which still belies the question
Speaker 2: of now what very difficult?
Speaker 4: In two years? What about four?
Speaker 3: Yeah, what about six ten?
Speaker 1: There's no reason that Russia's going to stop unless we
Speaker 1: come to a negotiated solution to this.
Speaker 2: Right, Well, that's what reality is like. It's not pretty,
Speaker 2: but it is what it is. And it's one of
Speaker 2: those where a lot of people in the news are
Speaker 2: just not being honest. They're displaying it purely as some
Speaker 2: sort of magic artillery problem, when there are manifold issues
Speaker 2: as to the Ukrainians, and in the meantime they are
Speaker 2: likely to only lose more territory. The Russians appear to
Speaker 2: be preparing for a major offensive sometime in March, all
Speaker 2: along the front line, and it will just continue and
Speaker 2: continue and continue. Will they have major breakthroughs like they
Speaker 2: did in the early days of the war. No, they
Speaker 2: don't care, though they are totally willing to sacrifice as
Speaker 2: many men as possible, and as we're just about to
Speaker 2: talk about with Yegor, Putin is actually stronger domestically than
Speaker 2: ever at the same time here domestically, as we've discussed
Speaker 2: a lot here, Fanny will let's actually believe it was
Speaker 2: with you, Ryan, last time we did a little bit
Speaker 2: of an update on this story. Who is the prosecutor
Speaker 2: in the state of Georgia is in major hot water
Speaker 2: there after it was revealed that she was having an
Speaker 2: affair with the top prosecutor who she had hired in
Speaker 2: the Trump case. He was paid some seven hundred thousand
Speaker 2: dollars nearly by the state. The major reason she's in
Speaker 2: hot water is not because of the affair that's come
Speaker 2: to light through his divorce proceedings, but because it appears
Speaker 2: that they took many lavish vacations together and airs no
Speaker 2: evidence Ryan that she reimbursed him as she is.
Speaker 3: Required to do by state law.
Speaker 2: So in the middle of the hearing there was a
Speaker 2: dramatic moment where Fanny Willis originally was defying or saying
Speaker 2: that she would not comply with a subpoena to come
Speaker 2: and testify, rushed to the courtroom to try and tell
Speaker 2: the truth and quickly fell apart on the stand with
Speaker 2: her story. The story that the two of them have
Speaker 2: decided to concoct is that while yes, they did attend
Speaker 2: many lavish vacations and take a lot of cool trips
Speaker 2: together hotel rooms, etc. That she did pay him back,
Speaker 2: but she did it in untraceable amounts of cash.
Speaker 3: Here's what she had to say.
Speaker 5: Let's talk about both of those.
Speaker 9: I know he initially paid for it.
Speaker 5: Did you pay him back for the cruise and for
Speaker 5: a rub? But yeah, I gave him his money before
Speaker 5: we ever went on that trip.
Speaker 9: You gave him cash before you ever went on the trip,
Speaker 9: m okay. And so when you got cash to pay
Speaker 9: him back on these trips, would you go to the
Speaker 9: ATM No.
Speaker 3: Lady, you would not go to the ATM No.
Speaker 10: And my worst days has probably only been five hundred
Speaker 10: or one thousand dollars.
Speaker 5: At my best days, I probably had fifteen thousand.
Speaker 9: Dollars in my house.
Speaker 10: A kid cash at all times, there's going to be
Speaker 10: cash in my house or whenever I'm laying my head.
Speaker 9: The money that you paid and it's her way the
Speaker 9: cash in October of twenty twenty two, you do not
Speaker 9: know where that money came from.
Speaker 11: I do know where it came from.
Speaker 12: It came from my sweat and tears.
Speaker 3: It came from her sweat and tears.
Speaker 12: Ryan.
Speaker 2: However, when she was asked if she could produce withdrawal
Speaker 2: and deposit slips from the ATM and she could prove
Speaker 2: from her bank account the withdrawal of said cash, she said, well,
Speaker 2: it's just accumulated over the years. Who knows where it
Speaker 2: came from. It's a very interesting defense. Actually spawned a
Speaker 2: discussion here in our studio. I was told I'm out
Speaker 2: of touch generationally because I don't have sympathy for people
Speaker 2: who just keep vast amounts of cash around and listen,
Speaker 2: you know, at a at a like a level of
Speaker 2: like the Great Depression and not trusting the banking system. Listen,
Speaker 2: I'm totally with you. There's just a little bit of
Speaker 2: a problem. It turns out that miss Willis pays her
Speaker 2: rent with the cash app and that whenever it's convenient
Speaker 2: for other expenses that she does use you know, credit cards,
Speaker 2: the bank, the official banking system, traceable bank system. It's
Speaker 2: only in this instance where she's being asked to provide
Speaker 2: evidence that she did, in fact not flout Georgia corruption
Speaker 2: law and did payback her lover for the lavish vacations.
Speaker 2: That she does claim that she had these vast amounts
Speaker 2: of cash that was available to her, and that in
Speaker 2: every single instance, unlike previously when she was using legitimate
Speaker 2: banking tools or traceable ones, that she was no, she
Speaker 2: did not default.
Speaker 3: To that in every instance.
Speaker 2: Very reasonable and very obviously not a cover story.
Speaker 3: Isn't it.
Speaker 1: It certainly does stink like a cover story.
Speaker 4: I always root for people to get away with cover stories.
Speaker 1: Yes, And I hate the way that the state can
Speaker 1: trace every little die.
Speaker 4: I hate your stomach.
Speaker 1: So the way that this kind of cover story usually
Speaker 1: unravels is that somebody will get text messages between the
Speaker 1: two of them where they will say, let's let's tell
Speaker 1: the prosecutors that we paid each other in cash, and
Speaker 1: then somebody thumbs up the message and then that goes
Speaker 1: in front of the jury and you're like, oh, wow, yes,
Speaker 1: I'm so I'm so busted.
Speaker 12: Here.
Speaker 1: Her real problem ethically was once she was in a
Speaker 1: romantic relationship, well his problem. Pro tip if you're getting divorced,
Speaker 1: don't take it to court.
Speaker 3: Because ask Bill Gates, mister.
Speaker 1: Past Bill Gates, we would know about all his Epstein's stuff.
Speaker 1: If he had just paid whatever she was asking, whatever
Speaker 1: she was asking, you pay that, you're going to be fine.
Speaker 1: But her problem was once they were in a real
Speaker 1: romantic relationship, was hiring him to begin with? That's right,
Speaker 1: once they're dating, Why am I supposed to care who
Speaker 1: pays for dinner?
Speaker 4: We don't care about cruise, right, But it.
Speaker 1: Was because she hired him. Now she's responsible for him
Speaker 1: making that money, and now the state has an interest
Speaker 1: in who's paying for this cruise and who's paying for
Speaker 1: the dinner.
Speaker 3: And we're not talking about five K, two K or something.
Speaker 2: We're talking about six seven hundred thousand dollars which he
Speaker 2: needs to account for, and by all accounts was an
Speaker 2: inexperienced prosecutor. If you go back and you read before
Speaker 2: the affair came to light, there were a lot of
Speaker 2: questions in Georgia. They're like, hey, why did she hire
Speaker 2: this guy? Like, you know, he kind of came out
Speaker 2: of nowhere. There are a lot of other people that
Speaker 2: she could have turned to. It's a very odd choice,
Speaker 2: but it appears that she has trust in him. She
Speaker 2: certainly did. I guess trusting with that amount of cash.
Speaker 2: Mister Wade, by the way, going with the story at court,
Speaker 2: here's what he had to say.
Speaker 9: You said in the affidavit that you roughly shared.
Speaker 3: Travel though, correct, Yes, ma'an okay.
Speaker 9: So this roughly sharing travel, you're saying she reimbursed you.
Speaker 9: She did, And where did you deposit the money she
Speaker 9: reimbursed you?
Speaker 5: It was cash? She didn't She didn't give me any chicks.
Speaker 8: So she paid you cash for her share of.
Speaker 5: All these bats.
Speaker 12: Mister Shaffer, you'll step out if you do.
Speaker 3: That again, yes, ma'am, okay.
Speaker 9: And so all of the vacations that she took she paid.
Speaker 12: You cash for, yes, ma'am.
Speaker 9: And you purchased all of these vacations.
Speaker 3: On your business credit card, correct, yes, ma'am.
Speaker 9: And you included those in deductions on your taxes correct?
Speaker 5: No, man, no, you did not.
Speaker 2: So you purchased all this So how why is it
Speaker 2: mss Willis is only using cash, but he's getting these
Speaker 2: point maxing whenever he's lying stuff on his business He
Speaker 2: won those points credit card, right, but why doesn't she
Speaker 2: want any points? That's what I understand what's happening here.
Speaker 4: That's true? Give that's those points?
Speaker 3: Megan Kelly did a great summary really of this.
Speaker 2: Let me put this stuff there on the screen, just
Speaker 2: because there's so much that came out of this hearing.
Speaker 3: Number one, this actually preceded both of their testimony.
Speaker 2: Fanning Willis's close friend testified to the court under oath
Speaker 2: that their romantic relationship began way before Fanning Willis hired him,
Speaker 2: meaning that they both lied to the court. Number two,
Speaker 2: Wade claimed that she reimbursed him for all of these
Speaker 2: very expensive trips, including wine tasting to Napa bitch. She
Speaker 2: made clear just so you know, Ryan, She's like, I
Speaker 2: don't even like wine. I prefer Ga Gray Goose. So
Speaker 2: thank you for that, Miss Willis. She says, of course
Speaker 2: it was on cash. And then three, he definitely caught
Speaker 2: lying on his earlier court submissions in divorce court, attempting
Speaker 2: to say that the reason he swore that he had
Speaker 2: no receipts was because he only had credit card statements
Speaker 2: reflecting the charges.
Speaker 3: I have secondhand embarrassment.
Speaker 2: I mean, it really is one where there is also
Speaker 2: other instances, for example, Ryan, where she claimed that she
Speaker 2: had large amounts of cash on hand because she had
Speaker 2: just come off.
Speaker 3: Of her campaign. And you're like, wait what, Hold on
Speaker 3: a second, It's like record scratch, what are you saying?
Speaker 3: Did you mean he'sh.
Speaker 4: Where's Georgia Bureau of in exactly?
Speaker 2: Can we get the Georgia Election Bureau who you are allegedly, you.
Speaker 3: Know, prosecuting Trump on behalf.
Speaker 4: Of Oh yeah, a whole bunch of cash from your campaign.
Speaker 2: Well you said this last time, and maybe you can
Speaker 2: explain it again. The problem here is the corruption law.
Speaker 2: Her Tawdrey affair and all that other stuff is a
Speaker 2: secondary concern. The law is clear, like you have to
Speaker 2: reimburse people, you know, especially when you're in a personal relationship,
Speaker 2: and you have to be able to account for that.
Speaker 2: I mean, I was explaining to our crew previously, like
Speaker 2: if I spend ten dollars on our account or whatever,
Speaker 2: and it's not immediately clear. My accountants are up my
Speaker 2: ass this same day they're like, hey, what is this
Speaker 2: charge for? You need to clearly explain and all this
Speaker 2: just so I can be compliant in the event that
Speaker 2: irs or whatever.
Speaker 3: She's the Georgia prosecutor. I mean, you know, it's like
Speaker 3: she clearly has a.
Speaker 2: Present interest, far more present than I do, of you know,
Speaker 2: dotting my eyes crossing my t's and all that stuff,
Speaker 2: just to prove in any event that someone would ever
Speaker 2: look at our books that all are our finances are
Speaker 2: one hundred percent legit.
Speaker 1: What makes this difficult for her She can either get
Speaker 1: caught in the affair or she can follow the law,
Speaker 1: because if you're having an affair, you're not going to
Speaker 1: be then like, you know, five hundred dollars from Fanny
Speaker 1: willis in the bank account, So you can imagine why,
Speaker 1: let's say it was cash, or that she's not paying
Speaker 1: it back, why that would happen. But fundamentally for people
Speaker 1: to understand, it's an anti kickback law. If you are
Speaker 1: a public figure who has your fingers on the purse
Speaker 1: strings of the public money, and you have the power
Speaker 1: to give let's say one hundred thousand dollars contract to
Speaker 1: somebody everywhere throughout world history, what happens is that somebody
Speaker 1: who wants that contract says, give me the one hundred k,
Speaker 1: and I'll kick you back ten K. Yes, And so
Speaker 1: as a public official, so many of them are like, great,
Speaker 1: what do I care who does who gets this project
Speaker 1: or who we hire. I'm going to walk away with
Speaker 1: ten thousand dollars so it's an anti kickback law. You
Speaker 1: can't take more than x, you know, a very nominal
Speaker 1: amount of money from somebody who got a contract. And
Speaker 1: so he got six seven hundred thousand dollars contract to
Speaker 1: be the lawyer on this thing. She can't take money back.
Speaker 1: What makes it ethically and weirdly different is that it
Speaker 1: wasn't really a kickback, like we know what was going
Speaker 1: on here, but it is a violation. But it is,
Speaker 1: But you've stumbled into a violation.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, listen, I have friends who work in
Speaker 3: because I hired him.
Speaker 4: If I got enough dinner.
Speaker 2: With them, as you know, it's a pain in the
Speaker 2: ass sometimes like well, I can't accept it, you know,
Speaker 2: because I'll be like I'll take the check because I
Speaker 2: want the points right, and I'm like, no, I can
Speaker 2: only accept up to twenty dollars or what. And these
Speaker 2: are these people are the low level staffers as compared
Speaker 2: to this lady.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're going up against the former president of the
Speaker 1: United States as a state level prosecutor.
Speaker 4: You have to have your ducks in a row.
Speaker 1: You would think, I forget what the recent case was
Speaker 1: where somebody got got caught up. They were well, I forget.
Speaker 1: I forget it was in the two It was just
Speaker 1: a month ago or whatever. They went down for something
Speaker 1: that they were completely guilty of, but it had nothing
Speaker 1: to do with like the initial things like but if
Speaker 1: but if you're if you're taking on a power center,
Speaker 1: like they're gonna come for you, right, and then they're
Speaker 1: gonna find whatever you did wrong.
Speaker 4: Oh, I was thinking of Claudie and Gray and Glasure
Speaker 4: as that's what it was.
Speaker 12: That's right.
Speaker 1: It's like, look, if you're going to be president of Harvard,
Speaker 1: you got to have your daughter.
Speaker 3: It's actually not complicent.
Speaker 1: Even though they were not coming after you for that.
Speaker 1: It was about Israel.
Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly what are you doing?
Speaker 12: Right?
Speaker 2: Why do you think I'm where do you think we're
Speaker 2: so neurotical? I know that we talk a lot of
Speaker 2: shit about a lot of people in power, and it's
Speaker 2: like you want to come go ahead, all right? You know,
Speaker 2: probably a little bit too cautious over here at breaking points.
Speaker 2: The final thing here is MSNBC had to come up
Speaker 2: with the best defense of miss willis that they could.
Speaker 3: Here's what they had to say.
Speaker 13: The testimony on the whole was calmer then I expected
Speaker 13: it to be.
Speaker 8: When she first walked in, you were worried, but also
Speaker 8: incredibly detailed it.
Speaker 5: I thought her portrayal of why it.
Speaker 13: Is that she pays for things in cash and has
Speaker 13: lots of cash on hand was very compelling. Basically, it
Speaker 13: was a life lesson she learned from her father and
Speaker 13: then sort of joked about the way that she was
Speaker 13: raised by that old white man as she referred to
Speaker 13: Yeah and KETHERR Kristian.
Speaker 5: And the defense oversold this.
Speaker 7: There was no evidence other than the woman who is
Speaker 7: a former friend and.
Speaker 5: A former employee.
Speaker 7: That's their evidence, and anyone who has an elderly black
Speaker 7: parent or elderly black people in life.
Speaker 5: No, it's about.
Speaker 7: Keeping cash because you never know where you're going to
Speaker 7: need it.
Speaker 5: So she's been very credible.
Speaker 2: It's very credible because there is an antiquated racial explanation
Speaker 2: that is based.
Speaker 4: In white people too.
Speaker 1: My grandfather, who lived through the depression, keeps cash, and
Speaker 1: so I'm actually not doubting whether she keeps a lot
Speaker 1: of cash with her. What I am kind of doubting
Speaker 1: is whether she unrolled a whole bunch of it handed.
Speaker 2: It's like, really, you reimburse him for every trip, every
Speaker 2: single trip, because if you didn't. You violated the law.
Speaker 2: And it's like, well, you can't prove it. And it's
Speaker 2: like the Epstein things saying, I'm not comparing the two.
Speaker 2: I'm just saying whenever I would read through the financial
Speaker 2: services reports around Epstein from New York and all those others,
Speaker 2: he would take out, you know, nine and ninety nine
Speaker 2: dollars for tips, and every single time he would write
Speaker 2: it out like this is for tips, and it's like, really,
Speaker 2: it's like that's obviously supposed to trigger alerts inside of
Speaker 2: the system. Hunter too, if anybody wants to know, if
Speaker 2: you go and you read his you know, extravaganza back
Speaker 2: and all expenses, he was spending six seven hundred thousand dollars,
Speaker 2: often in cash. In general, when people do shady things,
Speaker 2: they're spending large amounts of cash, specifically to try and
Speaker 2: stay out of the legitimate banking system, and specifically because
Speaker 2: she was able and often did use the legitimate banking
Speaker 2: system for other expenses. It makes her explanation even more
Speaker 2: doubtable as to how this was not untoward and to
Speaker 2: why we shouldn't really.
Speaker 3: Believe a lot of what she said.
Speaker 4: So what's going to happen there?
Speaker 2: I mean there's they're previously a judge had said that
Speaker 2: this possibly could be grounds for dismissal. I mean, it's
Speaker 2: one of those where at the very least, I mean,
Speaker 2: I think you could put a decent amount of reasonable
Speaker 2: doubt in jury's head.
Speaker 3: Prosecution.
Speaker 4: Do you find a new prosecutor? What do you do?
Speaker 2: Maybe I'm look, I'm not there guy to ask. I
Speaker 2: don't know about Georgia double jeopardy or any of that.
Speaker 2: From what I know the people in the Trump people Georgia.
Speaker 2: I've said that before. He's touched by God. And I
Speaker 2: don't even believe in God but neither, but he's touched
Speaker 2: by it. He has been you know, he's had his
Speaker 2: hands laid. There's an angel who was looking out.
Speaker 4: It was from that White House when they all laid
Speaker 4: their hands.
Speaker 3: Maybe you're right, Maybe it worked, it worked. Maybe I
Speaker 3: should have listened to the evangelicals when I was growing up.
Speaker 3: Maybe they were right. All right, let's move on to
Speaker 3: the next part here.
Speaker 2: Matt Tayibe out with a new report, taking a couple
Speaker 2: of time days to digest this one, and I wanted
Speaker 2: to Actually, you're a great person to talk about it with.
Speaker 4: Ryan.
Speaker 2: It traces back to some of the original days of
Speaker 2: Russia Gate with some pretty interesting reporting.
Speaker 3: Let's put this up there on the screen.
Speaker 2: This is coby lined Matt Tayibi, Michael Schellenberger over at
Speaker 2: Public and Alex gutten Tog, three excellent reporters.
Speaker 3: They say, quote it was all a lie. The Trump Russia.
Speaker 2: Scandal made its formal launch on January sixteenth, twenty seventeen,
Speaker 2: when the Office of the d and I published what
Speaker 2: was known then as the Intelligence Community Assessment. However, the
Speaker 2: report declared that Russia and Putin interfered in the twenty
Speaker 2: sixteen presidential election to denigrate Hillary Clinton to arm her
Speaker 2: electability thanks to her preference for President Donald Trump.
Speaker 3: It was powerful stuff and it was dead wrong.
Speaker 2: So according to them, there was an inside effort by
Speaker 2: the CIA within the DNI as well to try and
Speaker 2: to demonstrate that they cooked the intelligence to say that
Speaker 2: quote Russia had favored Hillary Clinton and not Trump in
Speaker 2: twenty sixteen, according to several sources that they had spoken to.
Speaker 2: Matt's been obviously working on reporting and news like this
Speaker 2: now for quite some time. I think the effective allegation
Speaker 2: within it, and it's very detailed that you guys can
Speaker 2: go and read is that they selectively made intelligence important
Speaker 2: that claimed that Russia would like for Donald Trump to
Speaker 2: win in twenty sixteen, to then make it a declarative
Speaker 2: conclusion that they could put in the so called declassified
Speaker 2: intelligence assessment. And I mean, Ryan, you and I were
Speaker 2: reporting at that time that intelligence assessment right before Trump
Speaker 2: takes office. Is tremendously influential for overall of Russiagate because
Speaker 2: front page of the New York Times, you know, intel
Speaker 2: Russia wanted Trump to win right as he's taking office.
Speaker 2: This is while you know the Muller investigation and all that,
Speaker 2: the very early days of that began to come forward.
Speaker 2: You have big discussions around James Comey and is firing.
Speaker 2: This is years now, you know, in retrospect. But the
Speaker 2: reason why I think it is important is that once
Speaker 2: something Matt has really not ever let go, and what
Speaker 2: he is truly correct about is the seiasic implications of
Speaker 2: Russia Gate, because it's a lot like the Iraq War
Speaker 2: and their fortieth order consequences. It was a media scandal, certainly,
Speaker 2: you know Iraq WMD level failure, but it also constrained
Speaker 2: a lot of legitimate options for the President of the
Speaker 2: United States, Trump in many cases tried to prove he
Speaker 2: was tougher on Russia then Obama shipping weapons to Ukraine.
Speaker 2: Anyone want to tell me how that worked out in
Speaker 2: terms of the war. It certainly realigned the entire Democratic
Speaker 2: Party to become much more anti Russia. If you go
Speaker 2: back and you read President Obama's twenty fifteen interview with
Speaker 2: Jeffrey Goldberg, he sounds like me. You know, He'll be like,
Speaker 2: He'll be like, listen, you know, Ukraine is not a
Speaker 2: major strategic interest for America. If you really want to
Speaker 2: make the argument that Americans should die for Ukraine, go ahead.
Speaker 3: I don't agree with you. What happened to that Democratic Party?
Speaker 3: It's gone.
Speaker 1: That's a year after the kind of Dawnbus war break, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1: And twenty twelve, liberals including me, cheered during the presidential
Speaker 1: debate with Obama and Romney where Romney.
Speaker 3: Bayonets moment, Yeah that's great, and he's.
Speaker 1: Like, he's talking about Russia being the our biggest geostrategic adversary,
Speaker 1: and yeah, Obama's like, what are you talking about?
Speaker 4: This is not nineteen twelve.
Speaker 1: Yeah, banets and the battleships and like cavalry and like horses,
Speaker 1: like come on, get into the modern era.
Speaker 4: This is not and actually and.
Speaker 3: That is and he was right.
Speaker 4: Obama was right.
Speaker 1: He was right about that, and Putin actually wanted him
Speaker 1: to be right about that. And this is something that
Speaker 1: Jegor has actually talked about that the main thing that
Speaker 1: we misunderstand both about the collapse of the Soviet Union
Speaker 1: and also Putin's psychology is that when the Soviet Union collapse,
Speaker 1: that the elites who took it over and turned themselves
Speaker 1: into oligarchs thought they were going to get a martial
Speaker 1: plan from the United States, thought that they if they
Speaker 1: basically surrendered the Cold War, that the West would then
Speaker 1: welcome them in to this world of nations where you
Speaker 1: get to have this nice inequality at the very top.
Speaker 1: Because they misunderstood the conflict between the Soviet Union and
Speaker 1: the West as around communism and around kind of capitalism
Speaker 1: versus communism, when actually it was about you know, the
Speaker 1: West versus another power center like it, it was purely
Speaker 1: about power. So Russia replacing the Silvi Union didn't actually
Speaker 1: change that from our calculus, but from Putin's perspective, and
Speaker 1: you can see this bleeding all through the Tucker interview.
Speaker 1: He just wants the West to like him and like
Speaker 1: accept him as Yeah.
Speaker 3: He's like, we wanted to be a part of NATO.
Speaker 3: We want They.
Speaker 1: Literally asked to be part of NATO, and we're like, no,
Speaker 1: NATO exists to go to war with you, so why
Speaker 1: would we let you in it? And from their perspective,
Speaker 1: they're like, well, so there's no war. We're like, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the whole point. We need a conflict to constantly
Speaker 1: kind of keep our thing going. And they could never
Speaker 1: and they could never understand that. And then this gave
Speaker 1: this Russia Gate situation gave the West the opportunity to
Speaker 1: kind of put Russia back in the place that it
Speaker 1: that it likes, which is.
Speaker 3: I would say too all cerial empowered.
Speaker 5: This one.
Speaker 3: People don't understand.
Speaker 2: Putin has always been the same, all right, as you said, Yes,
Speaker 2: he definitely does want the West like him and all that,
Speaker 2: but he sees the follows of a union as a tragedy.
Speaker 2: But the best question they talk or asked him in
Speaker 2: the interview is like, look, if all this bullshit is true,
Speaker 2: why didn't you just invade Ukraine on the day that
Speaker 2: you took office? And the truth is is that he
Speaker 2: didn't have enough control, and not enough of the oligarchic
Speaker 2: elite agreed with him.
Speaker 3: They wanted to be friendly with West. They like it here.
Speaker 3: That's why it sucks for them that they can't.
Speaker 4: Leave Manhattan, Mia.
Speaker 2: That's why they hate that they can't access their cool
Speaker 2: properties in Brooklyn in New York. And you know that
Speaker 2: what is that stupid ass building in the middle of
Speaker 2: New York. It's probably empty right now, the result of well,
Speaker 2: I forget time, warnersenter or something like that, they should
Speaker 2: tear that thing down.
Speaker 3: That's a whole other conversation.
Speaker 2: The point just being that the Russian oligarchic elite, you know,
Speaker 2: it took them years to be able to put in
Speaker 2: a place where Putin could finagle all of society such
Speaker 2: that he could take an oppositional stance towards Russia. Russia
Speaker 2: Gate was a gift to him to be able to
Speaker 2: purge the elite of any Western friendly people. Combined then
Speaker 2: with the Ukraine invasion and the subsequent sanctions, part of
Speaker 2: why he is much stronger today in that society than
Speaker 2: he ever was ten years ago. And prior Russia Gate
Speaker 2: was hugely influential to that. I also find it interesting
Speaker 2: that everybody seems to ignore the more recent Putin interview
Speaker 2: not with Tucker after Tucker, where he said I would
Speaker 2: prefer Biden. I actually would like Biden to win the election.
Speaker 2: Here's what he had to say. I'm going to go
Speaker 2: ahead and read this. You have a Kremlin interviewer. They say,
Speaker 2: who's better for US, Biden or Trump? Putin says Biden.
Speaker 2: He's more experienced, he's more predictable. He is an old
Speaker 2: school politician, he says, But we will work with any
Speaker 2: US leader who the American people have confidence in. And
Speaker 2: I just find that astounding. He says it outright. Trump
Speaker 2: is he trolling a little bit, but he trolls all
Speaker 2: the time. How do you know when we take it
Speaker 2: seriously or not.
Speaker 1: What he's saying is that predictability matters. Yes, And it's
Speaker 1: not crazy to look at Trump and be like, not
Speaker 1: exactly sure what he's going to do, Like Trump is
Speaker 1: not predictable.
Speaker 4: Hillary Clinton. He despised Hillary Clinton.
Speaker 1: He blamed Hillary Clinton for basically election interference in his
Speaker 1: you know, he blamed aimed her at when she was
Speaker 1: Secretary of State for sparking protests against him with Navolney
Speaker 1: et cetera. He believes, you know, he sees the hand
Speaker 1: of the CIA everywhere as frankly, you know, any foreign
Speaker 1: government ought to He's.
Speaker 3: It's not all our fault, but it's not like we
Speaker 3: weren't involved either. Let's all be real.
Speaker 1: So it's clear that he does not like Hillary Clinton,
Speaker 1: did not like want her to be president, but he
Speaker 1: doesn't want anybody to.
Speaker 4: Be president of the United States.
Speaker 1: If the president, if there's going to be a president
Speaker 1: of United States, you can imagine why he'd say, you
Speaker 1: know what, let's have one that's more predictable than less predictable.
Speaker 1: And if it's going to be Trump, let's try to
Speaker 1: like influence him one way or another. Like so you
Speaker 1: can you can see all of the things being true,
Speaker 1: like the influence campaign. You could be seen as like,
Speaker 1: we don't know how Trump is going to be as
Speaker 1: president if he is president, but if he is, let's
Speaker 1: try to have him, you know, buddies with us.
Speaker 2: An interesting question too, would be let's say Trump does
Speaker 2: come in office, he does fulfill his promise of ending
Speaker 2: the Ukraine War on day one, Let's say that we
Speaker 2: did freeze things. I'm not so convinced things would be
Speaker 2: all kumbai AA in Russia. I mean, the Russian economy
Speaker 2: is running on war right now. What would they do
Speaker 2: if they just stopped. I mean, they would have huge inflation,
Speaker 2: we find another war, yeah, they would. They would seriously
Speaker 2: be in trouble. You know, Putin is using wartime powers
Speaker 2: and others to kill Nabalne maybe you know, or to
Speaker 2: eliminate political opponents, to purge.
Speaker 1: The He could say, you could start sending the shells
Speaker 1: to Irun, which which then sends them too.
Speaker 2: But I'm just saying, I mean, if you look at
Speaker 2: any economy in the world that's ever transitioned from a
Speaker 2: war economy out of it, it's not so simple from
Speaker 2: nineteen forty six in our case, post post Vietnam, and
Speaker 2: we had a lot of problems coming out of those
Speaker 2: that Russia would not certainly not be immune from any
Speaker 2: of that. And that just demonstrates to all of us that,
Speaker 2: you know, not everything is so you know, black and white,
Speaker 2: especially here with the CIA report. So I just want
Speaker 2: to again commend Matt. I think it's a very interesting report.
Speaker 2: The crux of it just comes back to that they
Speaker 2: believe the si He. According to the sources that he
Speaker 2: spoke to years now later, they say multiple that they
Speaker 2: had cooked the intelligence such that they had upgraded sources
Speaker 2: from untrustworthy or not that trustworthy to trustworthy to justify
Speaker 2: underlying claims that had a massive impact.
Speaker 3: On our overall politics.
Speaker 2: I one hundred percent believe that it's consistent with everything
Speaker 2: that's come out from the Carter Page, Faiza and all
Speaker 2: the other Russia Gate scandals, and it was a very
Speaker 2: good reporting. So we'll have a link down in the
Speaker 2: description if you guys want to throw either of them
Speaker 2: a subscription and support their work.
Speaker 3: They're independent journalists and they do awesome jobs.
Speaker 1: Meanwhile, on our puddy Matt Tayabe he's beefing with Elon
Speaker 1: Musk Socker.
Speaker 4: You've been following this.
Speaker 2: I've been following it just because Elon really is one
Speaker 2: of the most unpredictable people who is out there. So Matt,
Speaker 2: as we'll all recall, you know, is this incredible journalist.
Speaker 2: He does the Twitter files. He's the person who Elon
Speaker 2: goes to. He was accused of being an Elon Tody,
Speaker 2: of doing pr, doing pr for the richest man in
Speaker 2: the world by reporting, you know, legitimate story working with sources.
Speaker 2: What Matt always told us. He's like, look, I didn't
Speaker 2: agree to any preconditions.
Speaker 3: He brought it to me.
Speaker 4: The only precondition was that it had to be published.
Speaker 2: Published first on and is reasonable. That's yeah, you do
Speaker 2: this stuff all the time.
Speaker 3: People. People will always come to you with preconditions and
Speaker 3: all the stuff.
Speaker 1: Well, they would say, yeah, actually sometimes we like, I've
Speaker 1: got a scoop, but will you will you do it
Speaker 1: in your newsletter? Will you do it an intercept? Would
Speaker 1: it be counterpoints? And like some people for different purposes
Speaker 1: want different platforms first with that, and if they're like
Speaker 1: if they want a thing and I don't feel like
Speaker 1: doing that, I'm like, well, no, I'm not gonna I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna do that, And that's fine, and they go shopping.
Speaker 3: Right, we have power, you know, there's a power in
Speaker 3: this relationship. It's give and take. But you're certainly not
Speaker 3: doing PR.
Speaker 2: But then all of the people who accused him of
Speaker 2: doing PR conveniently are ignoring the fact that Tayibi has
Speaker 2: by all accounts, really been punished by Elon actually for
Speaker 2: speaking out on behalf of a platform that Tayebi is
Speaker 2: very loyal to. Substack let's put this up there on
Speaker 2: the screen. Matt has released a bunch of text messages
Speaker 2: that he had with Elon Muss from earlier last year,
Speaker 2: in April of twenty twenty three. I'll read them verbatim,
Speaker 2: he says, Elon, am I being shadow band. Elon replies,
Speaker 2: we went on lockdown after discovering Substack has stole at
Speaker 2: a mass amount of our data to prepopulate their Twitter ripoff.
Speaker 3: It looks like there's still a blanket search band. It
Speaker 3: should be fixed tomorrow.
Speaker 2: Going forward, tweets with Substack will not appear in the
Speaker 2: for you page unless it is paid advertising, just like
Speaker 2: Facebook and Instagram, they will appear in following this reply
Speaker 2: included from Matt. He says, Elon, I have repeatedly declined
Speaker 2: to criticize you. I have nothing to do with your
Speaker 2: beef with Substack. Is there a reason why I'm being
Speaker 2: put in the middle of things? This seems really crazy. Elon,
Speaker 2: you are dead to me. Please get off Twitter and
Speaker 2: stay on substack. Matt, this is about the substack thing. Seriously,
Speaker 2: that was it that appears to be you know, the
Speaker 2: texts that were released and Matt the reason that he
Speaker 2: replied this is because he had been tweeting previously. Quote,
Speaker 2: Elon is unc comfortable around people who are not afraid
Speaker 2: of him, and wants to prove he can hurt my
Speaker 2: business instead of just talking to me, even if it
Speaker 2: means suppressing access to news that he thinks is important.
Speaker 2: Somebody replied, are you actually suggesting that Elon is deliberately
Speaker 2: burying your visibility? Do you have any proof of this,
Speaker 2: to which he then posts literal proof showing that he
Speaker 2: actually was banned. And you know, for anybody who also
Speaker 2: wants to accuse me or whatever of support, I mean,
Speaker 2: this is craziness because substack is the venue, the platform
Speaker 2: through which so much independent journalism is flourishing.
Speaker 3: Number one.
Speaker 2: Number two, we just read everybody a report, you know,
Speaker 2: from public. I find it horrible that people like Schallenberger
Speaker 2: and Taibi, who have thriving platforms over there very often
Speaker 2: Ryan when they want to distribute their work, cannot tweet
Speaker 2: out links to substack like they could to any other
Speaker 2: now in terms of substacks stealing Twitter and all that,
Speaker 2: I don't know personally, it sounds like bullshit to me.
Speaker 3: If you if you ask me, you know.
Speaker 4: Stuff is to available. It's the API and they just
Speaker 4: scraped it.
Speaker 2: Right, And it's like, in reality, like what were they
Speaker 2: really afraid of that people were going to leave the platform?
Speaker 3: It's like, are they really going to leave the platform
Speaker 3: in critical numbers? Like, let's be honest here.
Speaker 2: You know, he's always he's always tweeting about how x's
Speaker 2: x's traffic, monthly users or whatever, and all that went up.
Speaker 2: It was just a capricious move, clearly done from a
Speaker 2: position of weakness. And anyway, I thought it was funny
Speaker 2: because it just highlights to me that all of the
Speaker 2: people who really trashed him for doing journalism that was
Speaker 2: allegedly you know, pro Elon and you know, writing pr
Speaker 2: for all of them, are completely ignoring that his business
Speaker 2: has been very materially harmed. He arguably he was better
Speaker 2: off under the old Twitter regime because at least I
Speaker 2: think was going viral, right.
Speaker 3: You know, now you don't see him as much. It's
Speaker 3: very clear that his his platform is being or his right. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: it's so many followers he was able to pick up.
Speaker 1: I had my inbox, but if I don't, but if
Speaker 1: I wasn't like getting his emails, I probably wouldn't see him.
Speaker 3: Exactly. I think that's really bad.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's just Look, it's not just Matt We'll
Speaker 2: forget who was a Barry Weis.
Speaker 3: I remember she was also involved.
Speaker 2: In the Twitter files and she criticized this is the
Speaker 2: early Elon Moore. Whenever Elon banned and then unbanned that
Speaker 2: account that followed as private Jet and a couple of
Speaker 2: other journalists Barry wise, I believe it's spoken out against it.
Speaker 2: And he replied to her being like, you're virtue signaling.
Speaker 2: She's like, I'm not virtue signaling. I just I believe
Speaker 2: a certain set of things. I don't really care who
Speaker 2: it is. Also that it is the person that's doing it.
Speaker 1: Also, if like you think something is a virtue and
Speaker 1: you want to signal that to people, it's actually that's
Speaker 1: that's okay, that's actually okay, free country.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's like.
Speaker 1: If you think that is wrong to ban this account
Speaker 1: and you say that publicly, that's called free speech, yes,
Speaker 1: virtue like yeah, And it shows that he must his
Speaker 1: defenders who say he's ideologically committed to an independent media
Speaker 1: are lying. He's what he's committed to as a media
Speaker 1: which he controls. Now, if you believe that he's a
Speaker 1: benign media dictator, then go ahead, you put your face
Speaker 1: in him to control everything. If you think that it's better,
Speaker 1: if if voices are dispersed and people have access to
Speaker 1: different platforms, then you don't want a controlling billionaire dictator
Speaker 1: to run everything.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, look, somebody please tell me why substack
Speaker 2: is being throttled. But the New York Times can trend
Speaker 2: like that doesn't make any sense truly, especially if you're
Speaker 2: committed to free speech.
Speaker 5: Er.
Speaker 1: The problem for Tayibe there is and you know this,
Speaker 1: from premium subscribers here to breaking points, there's just a
Speaker 1: natural churn. Sure every month, either there's a billing problem,
Speaker 1: or we'll forget their credit card or lose their jobs
Speaker 1: or I say something that annoys them and.
Speaker 4: They're out of here. And that's fine.
Speaker 1: Churn is part of a subscription basis, but you need
Speaker 1: to then be able to get new people to replace them.
Speaker 1: And if Tayobi can't market his his work, then his
Speaker 1: churn is just going one direction.
Speaker 3: And even though he's doing fantastic, far the one easier.
Speaker 2: But I wanted to support I wanted to play some
Speaker 2: of this and to actually give you know, credit not
Speaker 2: only is a very important story. But just to again
Speaker 2: to highlight this, like he's being genuinely screwed over by
Speaker 2: Ela for reasons totally out of his control.
Speaker 3: For sighting, he backed him like.
Speaker 4: At the time.
Speaker 1: At the time, Elon told him, why don't you just
Speaker 1: publish everything on Twitter because we're taking the the like
Speaker 1: limit away. Yeah, And Matt didn't really even take that seriously.
Speaker 1: He's like, that's an interesting thought, but of course I'm
Speaker 1: not going to do that. I have tens of thousands,
Speaker 1: hundreds of thousands of subscribers over here on substect.
Speaker 4: This is a platform that's treated me very well, and.
Speaker 1: It's also better at like distributing long form content people's inboxes.
Speaker 4: I'm not going to do it on Twitter.
Speaker 1: But it was his refusal, it was his refusal to
Speaker 1: adopt a platform that doesn't work for his purposes that
Speaker 1: led to him banning him shadow banning him.
Speaker 2: It's not right away speaking up from that here in
Speaker 2: all of this, it's certainly not. And for all of
Speaker 2: those who ask for proof that he was being shadow banned,
Speaker 2: unlike ninety five percent, no, unlike ninety nine point nine
Speaker 2: percent of people who are claiming that he actually has
Speaker 2: the receipts from the guy. Go whit support the guy
Speaker 2: if you can. We'll have a link in the description
Speaker 2: to his newsletter.
Speaker 1: So Israeli Prime Minister of Benjamin Netyah, who responded to
Speaker 1: international pressure over the creation of a Palestinian state alongside
Speaker 1: in Israeli one.
Speaker 4: We can put this up here here. He is speaking
Speaker 4: to the Kanesse.
Speaker 1: Yesterday with an official declaration saying that Israel absolutely rejects
Speaker 1: any type of dictat from the international community that they
Speaker 1: agree to a Palestinian state. Now, this is you know,
Speaker 1: saga is sort of like that tweet format where somebody
Speaker 1: says nobody, absolutely nobody, Benjamin net and Yahoo. It's like, yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: there's been an international pressure. But also he didn't have
Speaker 1: to come out with his declaration like we get it.
Speaker 1: Like he's been against he's been against a Palestinian state
Speaker 1: since like the nineteen nineties. It's only in the last
Speaker 1: may be several months that that has really been absorbed
Speaker 1: by the media because you know, people like you and
Speaker 1: I have been following this for a long time have
Speaker 1: always been able to understand that Netnyahu is against a
Speaker 1: Palestinian state. You know, he's he would occasionally say it
Speaker 1: openly that he opposed a Palestinian state.
Speaker 4: We even remember when.
Speaker 1: He said the reason that he helped to facilitate Hamas
Speaker 1: remaining in power was so that you could divide the
Speaker 1: Palestinian leadership between the West Bank and Gaza, because a
Speaker 1: united Palestinian leadership would bring pressure to bear for a
Speaker 1: Palestinian state, and so by splitting the Palestinians you prevent
Speaker 1: the formation of a Palestinian state. He has made his
Speaker 1: entire argument for why he his entire legacy has been
Speaker 1: prevention of a Palestinian state.
Speaker 4: In his argument for continuing in.
Speaker 1: Office is that he is the only one that can
Speaker 1: manipulate the United States effectively to make sure that there
Speaker 1: is no Palestinian state like that hit.
Speaker 4: That is his entire rash now now here.
Speaker 1: But this reflects increasing I think global pressure to say,
Speaker 1: all right, come on, it's been a long time.
Speaker 4: Let's let's let's let's resolve this.
Speaker 2: I saw on an analysis that this was Bbe in
Speaker 2: October sixth mode, as in, this is political BB. There's
Speaker 2: a reason saying this in Hebrew, except he's reflecting the
Speaker 2: conditions of the war. He's trying to get this coalition together.
Speaker 2: He's trying to get the right wingers to support him.
Speaker 2: As you said, a major part of something he often
Speaker 2: admits in Hebrew is I am the reason there.
Speaker 3: Is a Palestinian state. Right he forgets, so we can
Speaker 3: hit translate.
Speaker 1: But it's actually pretty easy to have that translate.
Speaker 2: Just so something like that. But he says it very
Speaker 2: not even quietly, openly behind the scenes. My question to
Speaker 2: you is, in the context of US foreign policy and
Speaker 2: Western foreign policy, will this actually matter? Are the palest
Speaker 2: Indians correct that this is just lip for service from
Speaker 2: the US because we keep saying there has to be
Speaker 2: a resumption of a Palestinian state, a recognition of that
Speaker 2: at the end of this process period, end of story.
Speaker 2: And if he is not going to be a legitimate
Speaker 2: negotiating partner, we continue to provide them aid and to
Speaker 2: tacitly support their actions. Is this not then the default
Speaker 2: position of the United States government at this point?
Speaker 1: It is, as long as we keep shipping arms and
Speaker 1: money and giving that tacit and explicit support. Doesn't matter
Speaker 1: what we say. What matters is what we do. And
Speaker 1: it also in some ways doesn't matter what net Nyahu
Speaker 1: says there It matters what Netnah Who does, and that
Speaker 1: brings us to our next veo. Here, what Netnah Who
Speaker 1: is currently doing is building what's called Highway seven forty nine.
Speaker 1: And so if you're listening to the podcast but We're rolling,
Speaker 1: here is a documentary from Israel's Channel fourteen that played
Speaker 1: on Saturday.
Speaker 4: This is a highway that is cutting across.
Speaker 1: The middle of the Gaza Strip basically from the neg
Speaker 1: of over almost all the way to the sea.
Speaker 4: It looking like it's going to be come some type.
Speaker 1: Of Berlin Wall situation that bifurcates the two you know,
Speaker 1: the Gaza Strip into two. In other words, if it
Speaker 1: was the largest open air prison on October sixth, that
Speaker 1: now it would be the two largest open air prisons
Speaker 1: just split in two. And according to this documentary that
Speaker 1: aired on Israeli TV, you wouldn't even be able to
Speaker 1: travel from one side to the other if you're if
Speaker 1: you're a Gazen, you know. Since the Oslo Accords came
Speaker 1: into effect in the nineteen nineties, traff travel has been
Speaker 1: increasingly restricted for Palestinians, which is one reason travel, civil liberties, economic,
Speaker 1: the economy, et cetera. Has been increasingly curtailed. One of
Speaker 1: the reasons that Hamas has kind of gained in influence
Speaker 1: among Palestinians because a lot of Palestinians say, look, the
Speaker 1: parties that advocated for this Oslo accord have only led
Speaker 1: to things getting materially worse for us. Not that it's
Speaker 1: status quo and things haven't gotten better for us, but
Speaker 1: things are actually better in the eighties and nineties than
Speaker 1: they are now. If you live, if you live in
Speaker 1: Godz on October sixth, you basically couldn't leave. I mean
Speaker 1: you could leave if you could get some type of
Speaker 1: permit that could take months or years. You'd have people
Speaker 1: with health complications who would die before they got the
Speaker 1: permits to leave. And so now you're saying that that's
Speaker 1: going to be cut even even tighter. And so and
Speaker 1: we're going to talk a little bit later about the
Speaker 1: West West Bank in this in this block. But the
Speaker 1: problem in the West Bank is all of these different
Speaker 1: bantustans and all these different settlements.
Speaker 3: That what do you mean people who are familiar, Oh
Speaker 3: so in South.
Speaker 1: A, why you have these like little tiny areas that
Speaker 1: are cordoned off that you basically couldn't couldn't leave during
Speaker 1: apartheid during apartheid and so and you just make them
Speaker 1: smaller and smaller and smaller. And that's the main thing
Speaker 1: making it so hard for Palatinianes to have any sovereignty
Speaker 1: in the West Bank because there's something like one hundred
Speaker 1: thousand settlers dividing the West bankup.
Speaker 4: Now if you divide Gaza up too, it goes.
Speaker 1: It really fits into what Netanyahu is arguing here that
Speaker 1: he's going to be the guy that is going to
Speaker 1: change the reality on the ground to make it so
Speaker 1: there cannot be a Palestinian state just can't happen.
Speaker 2: So with that establishment of the highway, do you see
Speaker 2: that as establishment is really control over that territory, set policy,
Speaker 2: Like what is it.
Speaker 1: The goal there would be that, Yeah, you'd have you'd
Speaker 1: have watch towers, and you'd have a sophisticated security apparatus
Speaker 1: with walls.
Speaker 4: You know, they they've they've got the wall up by just.
Speaker 2: Like October six, though it basically seems like they're doubling
Speaker 2: down on the same strategy.
Speaker 1: Yes, it's it's it's quote unquote managing the conflict, just
Speaker 1: managing it harder, right, Yeah.
Speaker 3: And so this combines with some movement out of Egypt.
Speaker 2: I actually really am curious what you think about this,
Speaker 2: because there's a variety of ways. Let's put this up
Speaker 2: there please on the screen, guys. We have video here
Speaker 2: of Egypt that is building a massive fence around the
Speaker 2: Rafa border. They're calling it a logistics zone. More likely Ryan,
Speaker 2: it seems to be in response to be an anticipated
Speaker 2: Rafa offensive by the IDF that would somehow pen in
Speaker 2: Palestinians I'm assuming who if they were able to breach
Speaker 2: the Rafa crossing would then be included in this zone.
Speaker 2: But I mean seems strategically important because it would mean
Speaker 2: that these Palestinian civilians would be in some odd no
Speaker 2: man's land where they're technically inside of Egypt, but the
Speaker 2: Egyptians are keeping them out and not allowing them to
Speaker 2: resettle or whatever into the Sinai.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Since December, the fear has been that the Rafa crossing
Speaker 1: would be breached by a mob of people who just
Speaker 1: overwhelmed security there because there'd be so much pressure brought
Speaker 1: to bear on it by the suffering of the people
Speaker 1: on the other side of it. Egypt, for just as long,
Speaker 1: has been reinforcing it, putting tanks there, put sending out
Speaker 1: declarations saying that you know this, this absolutely cannot happen.
Speaker 1: You know, from from Egypt's perspective, uh they they see
Speaker 1: a million refugees you know, pouring into the Seani desert
Speaker 1: as massively destabilizing was basically a dictatorship that they have
Speaker 1: over there. So this is you know, unless uh CC
Speaker 1: wants to you know, head to Florida and retire this like,
Speaker 1: this is an existential question for the Egyptian government and
Speaker 1: they're being extremely clear that that they're that they're not
Speaker 1: going to allow what seems to be the only thing
Speaker 1: that makes any sense from Israel, like what like, what
Speaker 1: are what are.
Speaker 4: They doing here?
Speaker 1: And the only thing that makes sense is that they're
Speaker 1: driving into Rafa with such ferocity with the hope that
Speaker 1: they will then force them into the sign of others.
Speaker 1: So if you build these this met barriers, that relieves
Speaker 1: some pressure on the border because a lot of the
Speaker 1: people see, okay, let's say we could overwhelm the border
Speaker 1: and bust through there. The we all we've done is
Speaker 1: get into this desert area and are staring at these
Speaker 1: cement walls, right.
Speaker 2: And that's where the big question is, are the Egyptians
Speaker 2: going to revoke the Camp David peace accords. Are yeah,
Speaker 2: they threatened to do that. This would appear to indicate that.
Speaker 2: And this is the other big question. Are they are
Speaker 2: they coordinating with the Israelis? Are they like, hey, you
Speaker 2: got to wait up for us to put up some
Speaker 2: barriers and all that, because we can't be having a
Speaker 2: mass expulsion. But at the same time, that appears to
Speaker 2: be what some of the goals of the Israeli government
Speaker 2: are in this case. And if they do go into
Speaker 2: this so called no man's land, I mean, what are
Speaker 2: the odds that they ever actually.
Speaker 3: Are able to leave?
Speaker 2: Probably low, you know, in terms of in terms of
Speaker 2: what the actions currently anticipate for them.
Speaker 4: That's exactly right.
Speaker 1: You know, if there was some trust, like let's say
Speaker 1: that the population turned on Hamas and actually wanted Israel
Speaker 1: to like kind of round up and root out all
Speaker 1: of the Hamas fighters, and there was some faith from
Speaker 1: the Palestinian people that Israel would of course just allow
Speaker 1: them to return and help help with the reconstruction of
Speaker 1: their homes, then sure, you set up a refugee camp
Speaker 1: in the Sinai and the battle unfolds and then people
Speaker 1: come back.
Speaker 4: That is none.
Speaker 1: None of that is the case, though not like, not
Speaker 1: a single piece of that is true. The Palestinians do
Speaker 1: not trust Israel to allow them back into Gaza if
Speaker 1: they ever left, even though currently, like on an individual level,
Speaker 1: most Palestinians, it seems like if they could get out
Speaker 1: of this horrifying hell on Earth situation that they're in
Speaker 1: temporarily would.
Speaker 4: Get out right.
Speaker 1: But there's now if Israel was actually serious about this.
Speaker 1: They have and lots of people have actually suggested this,
Speaker 1: but they have not taken them up on it, which
Speaker 1: shows what their plan is. Open up the Israeli neck
Speaker 1: of desert to create a You wouldn't need a whole
Speaker 1: lot of territory to create a refugee camp, and you
Speaker 1: could say, you know, men over sixty I think they've
Speaker 1: said boys under.
Speaker 3: Fifty children and women and.
Speaker 1: Children, and that put a million people there, but that
Speaker 1: that is Israeli territory, and so that would kind of
Speaker 1: guarantee the right of return to Gaza, and that seems
Speaker 1: to be the problem with that plan.
Speaker 2: That's an interesting point. I hadn't considered that really at all.
Speaker 2: Why don't we move to the next part there, right, And.
Speaker 1: So on Thursday, the Algerians are going to bring to
Speaker 1: or we're talking about bringing to the United Nations another
Speaker 1: ceasefire resolution. We can put up this element from from
Speaker 1: Joe Biden. The administration came out and announced that they
Speaker 1: would veto They said it will not be adopted. They
Speaker 1: will veto a ceasefire resolution. So, on the one hand,
Speaker 1: and Biden is privately and semi publicly urging net Yahoo
Speaker 1: not to launch an invasion of Rafa. Separately, he is
Speaker 1: a facilitating the transfer of more weapons which would assist
Speaker 1: with this invasion of Rafa, and on top of that
Speaker 1: is promising to veto any international accountability for this invasion.
Speaker 1: So in order to try to find some gap between
Speaker 1: what the United States is doing and what and what
Speaker 1: you Israel is doing, you have to squint insanely hard,
Speaker 1: like we are one hundred percent complicit in what we
Speaker 1: have described as a disaster, Like the State Department and
Speaker 1: Kirby from the White House have both said used the
Speaker 1: word disaster to describe what would happen if there was
Speaker 1: an invasion of Rafa, right.
Speaker 3: And yet which so here's to me, like, that's that's
Speaker 3: what's happening.
Speaker 1: And we're gonna and we're gonna veto an effort to
Speaker 1: stop it, and we're going to arm it. It is
Speaker 1: I understand why it is making people so crazy watching
Speaker 1: it unfold, Like wait a minute, we think this is
Speaker 1: a disaster. We don't want this to happen, but we're
Speaker 1: going to use our capital internationally to block the UN
Speaker 1: and we're going to arm it.
Speaker 3: This makes it.
Speaker 2: This makes Biden actually more prisoner at pro Israel even
Speaker 2: than Obama. Absolutely, yeah, because he would you know, I
Speaker 2: don't know if you remember in twenty sixteen they allowed
Speaker 2: a couple of resolutions and all that to go through
Speaker 2: the UN. Yeah, specifically to try and depress Oh yeah,
Speaker 2: that was a blood feud for the Ages, which.
Speaker 1: I helped Amir Tabone, this great Israeli reporter who he
Speaker 1: became kind of a journalistic celebrity October seventh and eighth
Speaker 1: because he wrote this incredible piece about being stuck in
Speaker 1: a safe room in one of the kibbutzim and being
Speaker 1: saved by his grandfather who came all the way from
Speaker 1: Tel Aviv to rescue his family. He's working on a
Speaker 1: book now about relationship about the last like fifty years
Speaker 1: or so, but I helped him with a profile of
Speaker 1: the relationship between net Yahu and an Obama back in
Speaker 1: like twenty fiftween twenty sixteen. People should go back and
Speaker 1: read that these two teams did not like each other,
Speaker 1: as John Madden like to say, speaking people that don't
Speaker 1: like each other. So let's move to the international response
Speaker 1: to this coming Rafa invasion. We can put up Lula
Speaker 1: da Silva here, President of Brazil. He's saying, what is
Speaker 1: happening in the Gaza strip hasn't happened in history before.
Speaker 1: It does not exist at any other historical context. And
Speaker 1: then Lula adds, in fact, it existed when Hitler decided
Speaker 1: to kill the Jews. So the president of Brazil analogizing
Speaker 1: what Israel is doing to the Palestinians what happened during
Speaker 1: the Holocaust. Moving back to Europe, the criticism is serious,
Speaker 1: but not quite on the level of Lula rhetoric. But
Speaker 1: let's put up here EU Foreign Minister Joseph Borol at
Speaker 1: the Munich conference, because this is a really fascinating point.
Speaker 1: He made a couple of other points before this. This one, though,
Speaker 1: I think, is really worth considering. So let's roll and
Speaker 1: the global salad. The third one. They have its own dynamic.
Speaker 1: But no doubt, the war in Ukraine and.
Speaker 11: In Gaza has increased tremendously the political space of the
Speaker 11: global South visa vi to us, and we have to avoid.
Speaker 5: The Rest against the West.
Speaker 11: For Russia, this new geopolitical liscenario has increased dramatically, it
Speaker 11: stands since the beginning of the war in Gaza, and
Speaker 11: they are really taking good advantage of our mistakes.
Speaker 12: The blame about bubble.
Speaker 11: Standards is something that we need to address, and not
Speaker 11: only with nice words. It's clear that the wind is
Speaker 11: blowing against the West, is blowing against us, and we
Speaker 11: have to win the battle of narrative.
Speaker 1: And so right before this he had said, look, when
Speaker 1: it comes to Ukraine, with exception of maybe one country,
Speaker 1: I assume he means Hungary, we've been united on this situation,
Speaker 1: he said, But when it comes to Gaza and when
Speaker 1: it comes to Israel, all the member states want to.
Speaker 4: Play games, play their own little game.
Speaker 12: He said.
Speaker 1: The result of that is that it is becoming the
Speaker 1: West against the Rest. And he's trying to let this
Speaker 1: the European elite there, the European leadership into the fact
Speaker 1: that this has been a godsend for everyone outside of
Speaker 1: the West, that the double standard is so apparent across
Speaker 1: the global global South that when you hear somebody like
Speaker 1: Lula make such make make a comparison as extreme is
Speaker 1: that what he's saying is that that's resonating with billions
Speaker 1: of people around the world, and you need to understand
Speaker 1: where that's going. So, how are you surprised that the
Speaker 1: kind of the geopolitical chaos that's that the West seems
Speaker 1: to be willing to accept for this war.
Speaker 3: Well, I was surprised on Ukraine.
Speaker 2: I mean I watched us realign our relationships with Brazil
Speaker 2: and India, which are I'm gonna say one hundred times
Speaker 2: more important to us than freaking Ukraine.
Speaker 3: Like, basically, think about this.
Speaker 2: We think that the territory of the eastern Dunbass region,
Speaker 2: the territorial integrity of that is so important that we
Speaker 2: should sacrifice that Nika right Moblas that nobody in this
Speaker 2: country could name, including the people who want to ship
Speaker 2: them weapons. We think that is more important that that
Speaker 2: integrity than our relationship with the Indian government, or with
Speaker 2: the Brazilian government, or with the South African government.
Speaker 3: And then you combine this situation with.
Speaker 2: Israel, where all of the rhetoric that we were using
Speaker 2: to the Indian, to the Brazilians and to others as
Speaker 2: to why we just support them around civilians and about
Speaker 2: rules based order and all of that.
Speaker 3: They're like, are you a joke. They're like, no, we
Speaker 3: don't believe you.
Speaker 2: They already thought that we were empty, hollow people working
Speaker 2: great power politics and shrouding it in rhetoric. Now this
Speaker 2: just confirms it to them in an exact one to
Speaker 2: one situation. So yeah, I mean it doesn't shock me
Speaker 2: at all of what has happened with our geopolitical situation.
Speaker 2: I do think it's been a disaster for us because
Speaker 2: it both undermines any rhetoric that we have on human rights.
Speaker 2: And look, I'm on record, I don't really believe foreign
Speaker 2: policy should be conducted that way, but if you're going
Speaker 2: to at least be consistent, and we're not doing anything
Speaker 2: that is in our direct strategic interest, So we're in
Speaker 2: this odd, you know, third bubble where we selectively apply
Speaker 2: both which makes us weak on all fronts.
Speaker 4: And to the point about human rights.
Speaker 1: And we can go back to that Channel fourteen documentary
Speaker 1: that we talked about at the very top we roll
Speaker 1: this one little clip from there, which is just an
Speaker 1: absolutely shocking thing that was that was published, that was
Speaker 1: aired on Israeli TV. This is an an Israeli interrogators
Speaker 1: said human animals, most of them, of course, at the beginning,
Speaker 1: deny any connection to the events of October seventh, and
Speaker 1: through certain tools and means, we managed to get the
Speaker 1: first confessions out of them. So essentially, this is an
Speaker 1: Israeli interrogator on Israeli TV saying that they use certain
Speaker 1: tools and means to move Palestinian detainees from denying involvement
Speaker 1: in October seventh to confessing quote unquote confessing to involvement
Speaker 1: in October seventh. Saga, how long would it take you
Speaker 1: under certain tools and means until you told your captors whatever?
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 4: I don't even know if they would have to do it.
Speaker 1: I think if they pulled the drill out, I'd be like,
Speaker 1: all right, just what do you want me to sign?
Speaker 3: I've read enough. I'm not going through the Pow books.
Speaker 2: By the way, highly I could go on a whole
Speaker 2: tangent because I went down a real rabbit hole on Vietnam.
Speaker 2: POW's to know that number one, everybody breaks, and number
Speaker 2: two that there's virtually like nothing that you can tell
Speaker 2: yourself that will prepare you for being in a situation
Speaker 2: that is even remotely like this, and that you very likely,
Speaker 2: you know, like you said, will likely be able to
Speaker 2: tell your captors whatever you want, whatever they want to hear,
Speaker 2: or at least, you know, try and placate them and
Speaker 2: certain instant just to be able to stop that.
Speaker 3: And that was obviously in a very extreme case.
Speaker 2: I don't know necessarily what these gentlemen went through, but
Speaker 2: this was often you don't have to ask me. You
Speaker 2: can ask former PW John McCain. You won't ever hear
Speaker 2: me cite him, you know, favorably often. But he made
Speaker 2: this case a lot during the Bush administration when he
Speaker 2: was very against enhanced interrogation against al Qaida, certain tools
Speaker 2: and means, specifically because he was like, look, he's like,
Speaker 2: I don't have a moral care for these people. He's like,
Speaker 2: it just doesn't work. And you know, propagandistically, when you
Speaker 2: put stuff out there, people know they're not dumb that
Speaker 2: are like, okay, well it seems like you were questioned
Speaker 2: under duress. Then they're not gonna do you know they're
Speaker 2: going to discount a lot of what you were saying.
Speaker 3: So no, I'm not surprised.
Speaker 1: And in this documentary they're picking up detainee after detaining
Speaker 1: every every male that seems to be anywhere between teenage
Speaker 1: and not elderly, They've they've got the cameras there and
Speaker 1: making a little documentary where were you on October seventh
Speaker 1: when I was in my factory, I was in a bakery,
Speaker 1: And they're like, we don't.
Speaker 4: Believe you over here.
Speaker 1: Yes, there are two there were at the start of
Speaker 1: this two point three million people in Gaza, or several
Speaker 1: thousand that participated in the attack on October seventh, and
Speaker 1: then several hundred civilians that also broke through the fence.
Speaker 1: Like if you pick up every single male that you
Speaker 1: see in Gaza, you know nine hundred ninety nine out
Speaker 1: of a thousand of those are going to be innocent,
Speaker 1: and you're going to use this torture on them to
Speaker 1: extract a confession that doesn't it doesn't make what they
Speaker 1: tell you true.
Speaker 2: Ran, you have a case of a doctor. Do you
Speaker 2: want a highlight that to people because you have a
Speaker 2: personal connection to this.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, so we can put up doctor Kalette Elsir
Speaker 1: here from Nasser Hospital on so on. On Friday, a
Speaker 1: colleague of his was was sending me what's that message?
Speaker 4: What's up?
Speaker 1: Video and audio messages and photos from not NASA hospital
Speaker 1: hoping that uh and here's a that's right, there is
Speaker 1: something that doctor Elser posted on Instagram himself. What's so
Speaker 1: poignant about this on Friday for me was this, there
Speaker 1: was this intense belief from doctor el Sir and and
Speaker 1: his friends and those who are reaching out to me
Speaker 1: and others in the press that if only we could
Speaker 1: get this to the White House, and I did. I said,
Speaker 1: I will, I will send this to the White House
Speaker 1: and I sent it. I can I get comment on
Speaker 1: what's going on at Alnster Hospital. Want to let you
Speaker 1: know that doctor Collet Elser is saying saying this. He
Speaker 1: was one of the ones who worked in the ICU.
Speaker 1: He sent videos of the ICU going dark, literally pulling
Speaker 1: the plug on it, which ended up killing patients. Because
Speaker 1: if you need oxygen and you pull the plug, you
Speaker 1: are at risk of dying, and multiple people in that
Speaker 1: ICU did die. So I reached out the White House
Speaker 1: said people are dying in Alnoss I see you. This
Speaker 1: is what the doctor is telling us. Do you have
Speaker 1: any response, because I don't want to get myself in
Speaker 1: a position where I'm advocating for the US to do
Speaker 1: anything in particular, but I'm going to let them know,
Speaker 1: Like right now as we're speaking, people's lives are at risk,
Speaker 1: and if you decide to do something to save their lives,
Speaker 1: then you decide to do that.
Speaker 4: I'm making you aware.
Speaker 1: But what was so interesting to me, and this has
Speaker 1: been happening throughout the entire conflict, so many Palestinians will
Speaker 1: reach out hoping that I can get word to the
Speaker 1: White House to stop x Y or ze atrocity that
Speaker 1: is underway but not even finished yet, Like there's still
Speaker 1: a chance to save people, whether it's hint like the
Speaker 1: Hindrad job situation is a great example. And like I said,
Speaker 1: I'll reach out for comment. But the whole time, I'm thinking,
Speaker 1: your faith in the United States is touching and poignant,
Speaker 1: but misplaced. They know what Israel is doing, They are
Speaker 1: arming Israel to do that thing. They are using their
Speaker 1: international capital to block the world from intervening to stop
Speaker 1: this from happening. But I feel it deeply, this belief
Speaker 1: that there has to be somebody you can call to
Speaker 1: stop this. They just it looks and feels so wrong,
Speaker 1: and with with the right kind of phone call, it
Speaker 1: could be stopped there.
Speaker 4: But they're not. They're not going to do it.
Speaker 1: You can call nine one one, but that nine one
Speaker 1: one is arming the people who are burglarizing your house
Speaker 1: at the moment.
Speaker 2: Well, the case that you're making is very poignant, and
Speaker 2: it's exactly one that Rashida to leave his thinking.
Speaker 1: So but by the way, just to finish on doctor
Speaker 1: al Sir, they raided the hospital and as far as
Speaker 1: anybody can tell, he was picked up along with all
Speaker 1: the other doctors and is held in communicado in Israeli captivity.
Speaker 1: Right now, Israel just racking up more and more hostages.
Speaker 1: And so his colleagues and his friends put out a
Speaker 1: statement like begging basically Israel to release this doctor and
Speaker 1: the other doctors that.
Speaker 4: They picked up so far, to no avail.
Speaker 1: That was Friday night, Friday night, US times, Saturday morning
Speaker 1: their time.
Speaker 4: Now here we are Monday morning.
Speaker 1: Still no word on his fate, if he's even alive,
Speaker 1: or whether he's getting the certain tools and means to
Speaker 1: try to force him to confess that he wasn't actually
Speaker 1: a doctor despite all of the evidence that he is,
Speaker 1: and instead he's actually Pausedian Islamic Jahad operative or whatever.
Speaker 1: But yes, so this brings us to Rashida Talib. There
Speaker 1: is a movement in the Michigan which is having its
Speaker 1: primary next week and actually early voting is happening now,
Speaker 1: So people, if you're in Michigan, you can go out
Speaker 1: and early vote right now, rather than getting behind Mary
Speaker 1: and Williamson or Dean Phillips or writing in jenk Yuger
Speaker 1: who wasn't able to get on the ballot because of
Speaker 1: the issues around around natural born citizens versus non natural
Speaker 1: born citizens. What a group in Michigan is urging people
Speaker 1: to do is vote uncommitted. They got an extremely powerful
Speaker 1: supporter now in Representative Rashida Talib.
Speaker 4: We can play her clip here.
Speaker 8: It as important as you all know, to not only
Speaker 8: march against the genocide, not only make sure that we're
Speaker 8: calling our members of Congress and local elected and predit
Speaker 8: passe city resolutions all throughout our country. It is also
Speaker 8: important to create a voting block, something that is a
Speaker 8: horn to say enough is enough. We don't want a
Speaker 8: country that supports warmed wars and bombs and destruction. We
Speaker 8: want to support life. We want to stand up for
Speaker 8: every single life killed in RUSSA. Don't make us even
Speaker 8: more invisible. Right now we feel completely neglis, neglected and
Speaker 8: just unseen by our government. If you want us to
Speaker 8: be louder, then come here and vote uncommitted.
Speaker 1: So the dow Go, the democratic media ecosystem has decided
Speaker 1: in their infinite wisdom that they're going to strive and
Speaker 1: affect this okay that they're gonna have. They're going to
Speaker 1: have a temper tantrum of such epic proportions that her
Speaker 1: social media video will reach exponentially more people because they
Speaker 1: can't handle even the tiniest of challenges, not even voting
Speaker 1: against him. NBC it was like Rashila Telip says vote
Speaker 1: against Biden.
Speaker 4: No, she didn't say that.
Speaker 1: She said vote uncommitted, which is like, we'll still support
Speaker 1: you in the general election if you just do the
Speaker 1: things that we're asking you to do. So let's go
Speaker 1: to MSNBC real quickly for some sober analysis.
Speaker 10: Let's talk about how the realities of politics works in Washington, DC.
Speaker 10: I got a lot of friends and family in Detroit.
Speaker 10: I care a lot about that proud Black community. But
Speaker 10: up though, to all the folks in Detroit, when Jalen
Speaker 10: Rose Leadership Academy and Wayne State and Castech don't get
Speaker 10: the proper appropriations from the Democratic administration, the Democratic president,
Speaker 10: remember it's because you're a Democratic congresswoman told them to
Speaker 10: not for the Democratic president in the primary, and she
Speaker 10: won't have the excuse that well, I was saying primary,
Speaker 10: not general. Uh, you don't slap the president in the
Speaker 10: face and then expect to be treated as a member
Speaker 10: of the caucus in good standing. And so Rashida Talib
Speaker 10: is not there to represent the squads. She's not there
Speaker 10: to represent Palestine while there's merit and all those things.
Speaker 10: You're there to represent your hometown constituency in the city
Speaker 10: of Detroit. And I will tell all my friends and
Speaker 10: family Detroit as your congresswoman has failed you and frankly
Speaker 10: embarrassed you.
Speaker 3: And there could potentially be ramifications.
Speaker 14: I don't like to be a surplus, but if you
Speaker 14: want to see Donald Trump beat Throw Biden, then you
Speaker 14: have voices of Charlemagne and Rashida tale questioning Joe Biden's leadership,
Speaker 14: suggesting he's not fit for reelection. That's how you do it,
Speaker 14: Democrats beating themselves. I mean, right now, Democrats have been
Speaker 14: given a historic opportunity with an alliance of independence and
Speaker 14: disaffected republicans that showed up with the Democratic Coalition in
Speaker 14: eighteen and twenty and twenty two. And you're telling me
Speaker 14: going into twenty twenty four that a sitting Democratic congresswoman
Speaker 14: and a leading voice on the left are going to say, Nah,
Speaker 14: we don't know about our guy, maybe we shouldn't support him.
Speaker 14: It's a bunch of hot garbage, Alex. And if those
Speaker 14: voices don't.
Speaker 4: Fall in line, fall in land.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's Don calloway we used to have in rising days.
Speaker 2: For people who haven't forgotten, he's certainly still dropping suspicy takes.
Speaker 1: I mean, just on, let's put up, Yeah, let's put up.
Speaker 1: Don's LinkedIn here, by the way, what he's up to nowadays?
Speaker 1: Do we have the next that next element here?
Speaker 3: I don't want to insult. If you want to, you can't.
Speaker 3: All right, what does he got impact?
Speaker 1: Investor, venture capital, private equity management, consultant, corporate affairs?
Speaker 3: I always liked him for the right, I like.
Speaker 1: Don sure sure, but he's threatening Basically, he's saying that
Speaker 1: Detroit is going to be is not going to get
Speaker 1: federal money because Rashiad Talib is standing up for this,
Speaker 1: not one second of debate on MSNBC about the issue
Speaker 1: itself that she what she is standing up for, right,
Speaker 1: and instead she needs to just get in line, Like
Speaker 1: wasn't that his Yeah.
Speaker 2: You can't slap the president in the face. It's a
Speaker 2: primary night in general. I'm like, I don't know, I mean,
Speaker 2: it seems pretty relevant to me, it's not. Actually I
Speaker 2: was telling you so, I was at a Hassan Minaj show,
Speaker 2: which you know, pretty liberal and also predominantly.
Speaker 3: A big Muslim audience.
Speaker 2: This happened on Saturday, and I like to just pay
Speaker 2: attention and be like, okay, what's the you know, what's
Speaker 2: the tune.
Speaker 3: Out there, and just previews. I'm not going to spoil
Speaker 3: the set.
Speaker 2: But he did a good job, and actually it was
Speaker 2: even interested for the amount of jokes at Biden's expense.
Speaker 3: And it was hitting. It was hitting with a liberal audience.
Speaker 2: And there were a couple moments where, in particular, I
Speaker 2: saw some of the attendees, you know, if many of
Speaker 2: whom had his job or something like that on clearly
Speaker 2: were Muslim Americans who were definitely cheering at Biden's expense,
Speaker 2: and I was just like, huh, that's interesting.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 2: It's one of those where you know, you very rarely
Speaker 2: know whether something you read on a poll or something
Speaker 2: that you know you see on social media isn't real
Speaker 2: can it manifest itself in real life. But there were
Speaker 2: a lot of people there, from what I can tell again,
Speaker 2: people who I would definitely code as uber libs, people
Speaker 2: who were definitely Biden voters or likely to be in
Speaker 2: that category in twenty twenty who were not happy I
Speaker 2: think with the present now, will they vote for him
Speaker 2: in the end in twenty twenty.
Speaker 3: Four maybe, but you know a lot of them, a
Speaker 3: lot of them may sit it out too.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, from the people that I talked to in
Speaker 1: the Illinois and Michigan and the Muslim American community. Unless
Speaker 1: all of the people there are lying or overstating it,
Speaker 1: it seems like the revulsion at Biden for what he's
Speaker 1: doing is almost universal, like beyond what anybody has seen before.
Speaker 1: And you hear it from so many people who will
Speaker 1: tell you I have always been somebody who argued against
Speaker 1: Third parties who said, yes, you're never because these are
Speaker 1: Muslims in America. First of all, they're never getting everything
Speaker 1: that they think they ought to from the American two
Speaker 1: party system. So they are they more than anybody else understand,
Speaker 1: you know, compromising in order to get the lesser of
Speaker 1: two evils. So these are people who have been making
Speaker 1: the lesser. These are state representatives, you know, these are
Speaker 1: Michigan Party leaders majority leader.
Speaker 4: Well, do you remember mayor of Dearborn?
Speaker 2: I was going to say, do you remember the guy
Speaker 2: that we interviewed in New Hampshire, the guys for people
Speaker 2: wh don't you.
Speaker 3: Should actually go watch it there because it's hilarious.
Speaker 2: This is the most like ultra Biden bro voter that
Speaker 2: they're at the end of the interview.
Speaker 3: I don't know if you remember.
Speaker 2: He's like, by the way, I just want to say
Speaker 2: thank you to our capital police.
Speaker 3: And I literally see what they laughing, like.
Speaker 4: For whats for January sixth? It's like this.
Speaker 2: I burst out laughing because it would not even occur
Speaker 2: to me that somebody who is like the most ultra
Speaker 2: noormy live MSNBC voter, like you said, who is abhorred
Speaker 2: to to third party Cornell West or any of that.
Speaker 3: Even he is like, don't vote Biden.
Speaker 1: And he was the one, Yeah, he was the one
Speaker 1: who organized right in ceasefire in New Hampshire which ended
Speaker 1: up getting they were expecting two or three hundred votes
Speaker 1: and ended up getting about sixteen hundred.
Speaker 3: Wow, which I mean a lot.
Speaker 1: But it's not many people in I'm sure either, but
Speaker 1: it's probably.
Speaker 3: Going to be a lot more potent in Michigan.
Speaker 1: They if uncommitted beats Joe Biden in Michigan, it's still necessarily.
Speaker 4: Doesn't change anything, but at.
Speaker 1: Least people will feel like they had a chance to
Speaker 1: say on a national stage how enraged they are. And
Speaker 1: people keep thinking, well, this is the Muslim Americans. Yes
Speaker 1: it is, but it's also young people. It's like, that's right,
Speaker 1: people under it's not just thirty thirty five, which which was.
Speaker 1: And Joaquin Castro, to his great credit, has been pretty
Speaker 1: outspoken on this. CNN had him on to talk and
Speaker 1: they tried to do a horse horse race thing with him,
Speaker 1: and he brought it back to the actual policy, right
Speaker 1: saying like, what what Biden is doing is damaging to
Speaker 1: the US, damaging to Israel, and it is turning off
Speaker 1: young people and Muslim Americans.
Speaker 2: The question is, though, why is it just Rashida to leave?
Speaker 2: I haven't seen AOC say. I think she said Biden
Speaker 2: was the best president of every like that. Why is
Speaker 2: it not you know, all these other squad members.
Speaker 4: It's it's a good question. It's a good question.
Speaker 1: Because if you had the entire squad, say, rallying in
Speaker 1: Michigan for uncommitted, then I think that has a that
Speaker 1: has a bigger impact. Sure, yes, you've seen you have
Speaker 1: seen a split there. You know, the rest of the
Speaker 1: squad has supported Rashida Tleib.
Speaker 4: They voted, you know, against censuring her.
Speaker 1: They've said supportive things about her, but they are letting
Speaker 1: her kind of take these.
Speaker 4: Bullets for them. So they're not really operating as a
Speaker 4: squad in this.
Speaker 3: All right, well we will, We'll see how it works out.
Speaker 3: I'm very curious.
Speaker 2: Ceasefire, as you said, didn't exactly get a lot of votes,
Speaker 2: but I could see it actually become something. And especially
Speaker 2: here here's the thing in this particularly, you have an
Speaker 2: actual elected representative. Crystal's been telling me that Rashida's lead
Speaker 2: has been breaking in money, you know.
Speaker 3: With millions stands millions of dollars, so clearly.
Speaker 1: She's not people Magestry actually spends like four uncommitted right
Speaker 1: and also in New Hampshire was it was a two
Speaker 1: week organic campaign. This has financing behind it, and like
Speaker 1: you said, Rashida has actual money if she decides to
Speaker 1: pull the trigger.
Speaker 4: And she didn't even go up on air all right.
Speaker 1: Here in the United States, when it comes to foreign figures,
Speaker 1: we deal in cartoons, only in caricatures, and so that
Speaker 1: was the case when it comes to Alexia Volney. He,
Speaker 1: on the one hand, was the hero of the Russian
Speaker 1: resistance and the leading light of that nation. If you
Speaker 1: hear from other people, he was a racist in islamophobe,
Speaker 1: cia stooge who deserved what he got. So to try
Speaker 1: to actually move it from cartoon charriacture into kind of
Speaker 1: real life, we're going to be joined by socialist commentator
Speaker 1: Yegor Kotkin joining us from Moscow. Yegor, you've talked a
Speaker 1: little bit about Navalney online recently. If we can put
Speaker 1: up this element from Jegor here, this is one of
Speaker 1: the things you said, the living Navalney was important not
Speaker 1: because of his politics, but as a political trailblazer. Dead
Speaker 1: Navalney is important as a symbol of resistance to the
Speaker 1: oligarchic regime, and the same people who killed him as
Speaker 1: a human now are trying to kill him as a symbol.
Speaker 4: Don't be a part of it.
Speaker 1: And Yegor, what I found interesting about your analysis, which
Speaker 1: people can find on your Twitter accountant is much deeper
Speaker 1: than that, is that if you were here in the
Speaker 1: United States, you'd probably be in the camp of people
Speaker 1: who were saying, actually, this guy's as cia st and uh,
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 4: Deserve deserves what he deserves, what he got. But there's
Speaker 4: so much more to then Walney story.
Speaker 1: So let me let me start with this question, what's
Speaker 1: been your kind of relationship to Navawnyism over your own
Speaker 1: political evolution?
Speaker 15: Well, I have to say I knew as a figure
Speaker 15: political figure and the following all of his career for
Speaker 15: almost fifteen years, and most of this time I was
Speaker 15: a novely skeptic because of I mean, it's not a
Speaker 15: secret that she started basically as a fastist. I mean
Speaker 15: his video about from two thousand and seven when he
Speaker 15: referred to the immigrants as cockroaches being reserved again with
Speaker 15: his name back in the news, and there was a lot.
Speaker 12: Then he moved to the left.
Speaker 15: He constantly, in my view him constantly moved to the
Speaker 15: left over this fifteen year public career, reaching first liberal center,
Speaker 15: then moving even slightly to the left, almost borderline social
Speaker 15: democratic policies, but still staying firmly in the liberal center.
Speaker 15: And I think the history of Navali resonated with the
Speaker 15: audience specifically because this is a history of a populist
Speaker 15: who was follow his whole life path was finding a
Speaker 15: way to communicate with the most Russian people as possible,
Speaker 15: and as many populists going for the most people. He
Speaker 15: started from the lowest possible nominators, So he started from
Speaker 15: the ride and started from from xenophobia.
Speaker 1: But so can I can did he ever recant the xenophobia?
Speaker 4: Did he recant that?
Speaker 3: Or what he?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 4: What was his evolution like?
Speaker 12: Uh, well, he entered very soon. He moved moved on
Speaker 12: to anti.
Speaker 15: Corruption uh investigations, and he entered the liberal center, liberal media,
Speaker 15: who became his main base of support and the network
Speaker 15: of support. And he moved on from the Russian marches
Speaker 15: and Russian nationalism to being basically liberal centrist like closer
Speaker 15: to twenty thirteen, twenty fifteen, but he still was looking
Speaker 15: for he still was staying in the populist lane. It's
Speaker 15: just his When he found that being populist right put
Speaker 15: you in such as in certain fringe area, very limited
Speaker 15: area of a fringe right, he moved.
Speaker 12: On to the center.
Speaker 15: But he started experiment with the leftist populist policies, and
Speaker 15: in some of them he actually went to the left
Speaker 15: of his main base of support and network of support
Speaker 15: liberal people. One for example, in twenty eighteen, becoming a
Speaker 15: presidential election.
Speaker 12: In Russia, where he tried to.
Speaker 15: Compete with Puttin, he suggested increase in a minimum wage
Speaker 15: two and a half times, five times from ten from
Speaker 15: ten thousand troubles to twenty five thousand troubles. It is
Speaker 15: a very substantial increase. It is very necessary increase for Russia.
Speaker 15: It's even harder situation than in American in terms of
Speaker 15: a living wage. Here and he was heavily criticized by
Speaker 15: his own base and network of support by the liberal center,
Speaker 15: to the extent that even now six years later, when
Speaker 15: he already did this topic of debate about this minimumage increase,
Speaker 15: he's suggested again was reiterated in the day of his
Speaker 15: death by his supporters, So this debate never never died.
Speaker 2: Just one of the things that I'm trying to get to.
Speaker 2: I think for our audience, they're hearing about him a
Speaker 2: lot in our news. What I hear from you is
Speaker 2: he was a complicated figure. You know, we understand him
Speaker 2: only as a Putent critic. You know, from what I
Speaker 2: can tell, he was a Russian nationalist, but he was
Speaker 2: an anti corruption activist. But he wasn't necessarily you know,
Speaker 2: the dream of European politicians like how how did he
Speaker 2: How did people inside of Russia think of Navalny and
Speaker 2: why did Putin consider him a threat enough to throw
Speaker 2: him in prison?
Speaker 15: I think, uh, I think you can you you can't
Speaker 15: tell how people that also think about Novality because it's
Speaker 15: heavily skewed by the propaganda from Putting media on the
Speaker 15: one hand, and the liberal propaganda from Individia independent media
Speaker 15: on the other hand. So his view in any Russian
Speaker 15: group will be heavily skewed by ideological bias. And uh,
Speaker 15: I think Putting the recognized him as the biggest threat
Speaker 15: to his rule because Navali always starketed him his as
Speaker 15: his main enemy, and his populist search search for whatever
Speaker 15: give him the most base of support. He also experimented
Speaker 15: the support of unions at some point, being one of
Speaker 15: the first politicians who tried to restore restore unions as
Speaker 15: a political force in Russia. Since he us as our fault,
Speaker 15: so again it was kind of left to show of
Speaker 15: him to try to do this. He always tried to
Speaker 15: maximize his base of support to to bit Puchin, So
Speaker 15: his target always was Puchin, and that made him uh.
Speaker 15: He obviously had some ideology, but his main goal in
Speaker 15: life was to defit Putchin, and he was able. He
Speaker 15: was ready to utilize any means necessary to do that.
Speaker 12: In terms of political he never he never crossed the
Speaker 12: line of.
Speaker 15: Political violence actually, but in terms of political engagement, he
Speaker 15: was looking everywhere for every way Pusson. That's that's why
Speaker 15: he was uh the dangerous for pushing. That's why Putting
Speaker 15: kindesing out him as his enemy. And that's why I
Speaker 15: when I said the road the street on his death.
Speaker 15: He was mainly a trail Brazer. My politics is not
Speaker 15: navality politics. I evolved myself from like liberal center to
Speaker 15: basically a socialist right now, so I always was to
Speaker 15: the left of him.
Speaker 12: We never saw so I why but I saw.
Speaker 15: In his what he's doing, UH the best possibility for
Speaker 15: opening for leftist electoral politics in Russia, which right now
Speaker 15: doesn't exist, so I thought, and his experiments with the
Speaker 15: left initiatives like rising medium wage UH, re animating unions
Speaker 15: UH and the helicopter money during the COVID lockdowns and
Speaker 15: UH social democratic initiatives led that.
Speaker 9: Uh.
Speaker 12: They were very very useful.
Speaker 15: And is his electoral initiatives like smart voting actually helped
Speaker 15: to elect some leftist deputies in Moscow City Duma from
Speaker 15: the young leftist ILK, not all the Red Guard who
Speaker 15: basically go with put you in one hundred percent of times,
Speaker 15: but from the young oppositions, opposition leftists. They for the
Speaker 15: first time got in some high places of power in Russia,
Speaker 15: being elected.
Speaker 12: Right now they all.
Speaker 15: Already removed from there, but for the first time since
Speaker 15: ninety ninety one, new leftist ILK got in places in
Speaker 15: power of power in part the help of novality.
Speaker 1: Of One of the things you'll hear here in the
Speaker 1: United States about him is that actually kind of American
Speaker 1: leads overblow how how much power he had, how much
Speaker 1: support he had among Russian people. What's your sense of
Speaker 1: what kind of base of social support he had there.
Speaker 12: I think I think it's true.
Speaker 15: I think they projected a lot of their own expectations
Speaker 15: on Navali and his real base of support. If I
Speaker 15: don't think it ever would in like perfect perfectly free
Speaker 15: elections with the strong leftist party is a strong social
Speaker 15: democratic presence, not only put in versus Novale.
Speaker 12: I don't think the liberal center.
Speaker 15: That Novality represent would ever broke fifteen percent threshold as
Speaker 15: it was in the nineties, because when there was a
Speaker 15: kind of freeish election in the nineties and Russia, the
Speaker 15: liberal center always was kind of marginal.
Speaker 12: That's why the loss.
Speaker 1: So if you say fifteen or fifty fifteen, now, I
Speaker 1: don't think it would be much much much more than
Speaker 1: that because so tiny.
Speaker 15: Yeah, actually yes, well significant noticeable, but not like the
Speaker 15: Legion Party because either nationalists right propus and right or
Speaker 15: old school proslags left still has much bigger place of
Speaker 15: supporting Russia for natural reasons.
Speaker 2: But yegor even within that, from you know, your realistic assessment,
Speaker 2: he still was thrown in prison, sent above the Arctic Circle,
Speaker 2: and we can put this up there on the screen.
Speaker 2: Apparently they're telling his family that he suffered from some
Speaker 2: like quote sudden death syndrome, which we have here. I mean,
Speaker 2: it's just laughable for many of us to look at.
Speaker 2: I know you've told him many times that people in
Speaker 2: Russia they probably don't even hear stuff like this, or
Speaker 2: if they do, they believe it. But you know, it
Speaker 2: seems to us a position of weakness to kill somebody,
Speaker 2: you know, in this manner whenever as you describe, it's
Speaker 2: not even a realistic threat.
Speaker 3: What can would that tell us about Putin himself? You know,
Speaker 3: at this moment in time.
Speaker 15: The reason of this being this is actually find to
Speaker 15: find it? Yes, you know, well what can I say?
Speaker 15: It all comes back to his main goal being able
Speaker 15: to to defeit Putchin and his ability to utilize I mean, overall,
Speaker 15: in a normal electoral stration, calm and democratic, I don't
Speaker 15: think his brand of liberalism would have more than fifteen
Speaker 15: percent of support, But he was in terms of political
Speaker 15: repression that Putting created, he was able to mobilize this
Speaker 15: fifteen percent just proportionally.
Speaker 12: It was young.
Speaker 15: People, people living in big cities, people living in Moscow.
Speaker 15: His highest rating most Scow elections was almost thirty percent
Speaker 15: ten years ago. It was a very high result for
Speaker 15: liberal politician. So he was able to utilize this young,
Speaker 15: passionate part of the Russian people who would go on
Speaker 15: streets on the protests. On the biggest street protests were
Speaker 15: either with the Navali presence ten years ago when Putting
Speaker 15: announced that he's going back as a president for the
Speaker 15: third term, or ten years later when Aval was returned
Speaker 15: to Russia three years ago and was imprisoned again. The
Speaker 15: biggest protest in the last ten years broke up on
Speaker 15: the streets again internection with Navali names.
Speaker 12: So his ability to be.
Speaker 15: Visible and you mabilized youth and mabilized street politics in
Speaker 15: the way that any other political force in Russia can
Speaker 15: or wouldn't do. I think that's what put him on
Speaker 15: the map, and that's why pushing was in some fashions,
Speaker 15: maybe if Putting was more democratic irrationally afraid, because I
Speaker 15: don't think that, Like, we can see how politics can
Speaker 15: change leaders' names, parties and still remain the same on
Speaker 15: the example of America. So there is a lot of
Speaker 15: There is a lot of ways to continue the status school,
Speaker 15: especially if your status school is the power of like
Speaker 15: one hundred or one thousand riches people in the country
Speaker 15: without without political repression or in without.
Speaker 12: Political killing.
Speaker 15: So result like breaking the elections, you can do it
Speaker 15: through different things like America does.
Speaker 2: Makes sense, Riego, We always appreciate your analysis live from Moscow.
Speaker 2: As a reminder, this man is literally, you know, risking
Speaker 2: a lot, you know, to be able to just come
Speaker 2: to us live. You can follow him on Twitter. We'll
Speaker 2: have a link to that in the description. And we
Speaker 2: always appreciate your time, sir. Thank you, thank you very much,
Speaker 2: see you later.
Speaker 3: Thank you for hosting with me.
Speaker 2: My friend, you are always a bare no no, you're
Speaker 2: not doing counterpoints.
Speaker 3: Cristal will be filling in for you on counterpoints.
Speaker 4: Going to Mexico.
Speaker 3: Going to Mexico, nice, watch.
Speaker 4: Some fish concerts. I'll be thinking of you down there.
Speaker 4: I'm going to get you down there. I'm gonna get
Speaker 4: you down there one year. You're gonna work it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but I won't be at a fish concert and
Speaker 2: tell you that I'll be somewhere somewhere, very very far
Speaker 2: away from civilization, eating tacos or something like that from
Speaker 2: a guy on the street. Anyway, Thank you guys so
Speaker 2: much for watching. We really appreciate you. Sign up at
Speaker 2: breakingpoints dot com. If you're able to support our work. Otherwise,
Speaker 2: Chris will be back and I will see you all tomorrow.
Speaker 1: The speak spe