Speaker 1: Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here
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Speaker 3: Good morning, everybody, Happy Monday. We have an amazing show
Speaker 3: for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal?
Speaker 4: Did we do lots to get to this morning?
Speaker 1: So Israeli has killed their own hostages as a broader
Speaker 1: war looms, huge backlash domestically in Israel over what exactly
Speaker 1: happened there, so we'll break that down for you. We
Speaker 1: also have Trump saying that immigrants are listening the blood
Speaker 1: of our nation. This coming as Nikki Haley is genuinely
Speaker 1: surging in the polls, at least in New Hampshire, So
Speaker 1: some very interesting development there. Ukraine resorting to some pretty
Speaker 1: outrageous tactics as manpower becomes a massive issue in that war.
Speaker 1: John Fetterman says he is not a progressive funny, that's
Speaker 1: not what he was saying before when he was, you know,
Speaker 1: raising money and posturing and all this sort of stuff.
Speaker 1: So a lot to get into there, and also there
Speaker 1: were things happening in a Senate hearing room. Yes, you
Speaker 1: just got to wait and find out on that one
Speaker 1: if you don't are And you know, I'm also taking
Speaker 1: a look at some new comments from bb Netanyahu admitting
Speaker 1: that the two state solution is never going to happen,
Speaker 1: at least from his perspective, if he has anything to
Speaker 1: do with it, and exposing many of the fairy tales
Speaker 1: that have been told about this resolution for a long time.
Speaker 3: Yes, that's right.
Speaker 2: And before we get to any of that, it is
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Speaker 4: As I said, it's kind of crazy. We just really
Speaker 4: realized the Iowa caucuses are less than a month.
Speaker 2: Yes, right, nuts wild It'll be a fun return the
Speaker 2: new year.
Speaker 1: So yeah, lots of things coming up in the new year.
Speaker 3: Yeah, go ahead and look forward to that.
Speaker 2: Okay, let's go ahead and start with Israel, as Crystal
Speaker 2: alluded to, so over the weekend, news broke that three
Speaker 2: Israeli hostages were actually shot and killed by IDF soldiers
Speaker 2: in a very disturbing incident. This is ignited major protests
Speaker 2: inside of Israel, both by hostage families and others who
Speaker 2: are opposed to the war effort.
Speaker 3: We can go ahead and play some of this.
Speaker 2: What you're seeing here are live crowds in Tel Aviv
Speaker 2: that are protesting against the killing of these Israeli hostages.
Speaker 2: Has built up major domestic pressure on bb NET and
Speaker 2: YAH who to change the way that the war is prosecuted.
Speaker 2: Will get to the IDF their defense of the conduct
Speaker 2: of their forces in a little bit of a second.
Speaker 2: But it is igniting a major I think controversy around
Speaker 2: the rules of engagement about IDF conduct in the war.
Speaker 3: We're going to take a listen here to a protester herself.
Speaker 5: They said they do everything.
Speaker 6: They say that the hostages is first day in the considerations,
Speaker 6: but it doesn't seem like this.
Speaker 5: It doesn't look like this.
Speaker 2: So what you could see there was that Israeli protester
Speaker 2: in English saying, it doesn't seem like the hostages are
Speaker 2: pre eminently being put you know, at the center of
Speaker 2: all this, and the circumstances of this killing are really disturbing.
Speaker 2: So let's go and put this up there on the screen.
Speaker 2: The preliminary IDEF report, and this is from Israeli media
Speaker 2: to be clear, says that the hostages were killed by
Speaker 2: soldiers waving white flags. One yelled for help in Hebrew.
Speaker 2: Quote according to the report is really soldiers spotted a
Speaker 2: building in the area two days prior to the tragedy
Speaker 2: with the inscriptions SOS and help written in Hebrew on
Speaker 2: one of its walls. IDEA forces operating in the area
Speaker 2: marked the building as a possible trap and that they
Speaker 2: were eventually mistakenly killed. Now, in the description, a soldier
Speaker 2: who was stationed on one of the upper floors of
Speaker 2: a building, noticed that these three figures were quote holding
Speaker 2: a stick with white fabric attached to it. The report
Speaker 2: states the soldier felt threatened and opened fire at these three.
Speaker 2: Two of the hostages were hit and fell to the ground.
Speaker 2: A third actually managed to escape into a nearby building.
Speaker 2: At the same time, as soldier reported to his commanding
Speaker 2: officer he had encountered enemy militants. The commander arrived at
Speaker 2: the scene while another idea squad was following the third hostage,
Speaker 2: who managed to find a hiding place inside the building.
Speaker 2: The report says as a soldiers approached the building, they
Speaker 2: heard shouts in Hebrew asking for help. The hostage who
Speaker 2: was hiding inside the building came out and ran inside again.
Speaker 2: According to the soldiers, they then believed it was a
Speaker 2: Hamas terrorist attempting to lure them into a trap the building,
Speaker 2: where they shot the hostage dead. When retrieving the bodies,
Speaker 2: they then noticed identifying marks that raised suspicions at the
Speaker 2: three where Israeli hostages who had somehow managed to evade
Speaker 2: their captors, and according to the report, in the area
Speaker 2: they spotted the words sos and help and we actually
Speaker 2: have some images of that we can put here up
Speaker 2: on the screen for people to take a look. This
Speaker 2: is some of the blood spatter from the killing of
Speaker 2: two of those hostages.
Speaker 7: Guys.
Speaker 2: Let's go to the next one because you can actually
Speaker 2: see the signs in question pretty you know, the universal
Speaker 2: Distress signal for SOS and it written in Hebrew asking
Speaker 2: for help. Raising some very disturbing questions, Crystal about the
Speaker 2: conduct of the IDF here, the trigger trigger happy nature
Speaker 2: of some of the troops in the area.
Speaker 3: And also just a nightmare of urban combat in general.
Speaker 2: I mean, you got here we covered just on our
Speaker 2: Thursday show about these ten IDF guys who got killed
Speaker 2: and were lured into a trap in an ambush, which
Speaker 2: was a whole nightmare of a situation in and of itself.
Speaker 2: But it does show you that these guys are on
Speaker 2: a hair tree or alert and they're basically just willing
Speaker 2: to kill anything that they can deem a terrorist.
Speaker 3: Even in a trap type situation.
Speaker 2: They're willing to just spray and pray and unfortunately result
Speaker 2: in the death here. But I think it does raise
Speaker 2: disturbing questions about the rules of engagement which the IDF
Speaker 2: maintains now that while the soldiers will not be punished,
Speaker 2: that they were in violation of the ROI, which doesn't
Speaker 2: make a lot of sense to me, so curious to
Speaker 2: your reaction, I.
Speaker 1: Mean, it's pretty clear here that the only reason that
Speaker 1: there's any outcry over the killing of these three individuals
Speaker 1: is because they were Israeli.
Speaker 4: Think about this situation. You have these.
Speaker 1: Three hostages who knew that, you know, it was possible
Speaker 1: that they could be killed if they came out and
Speaker 1: presented themselves to the idyeah.
Speaker 4: So what do they do.
Speaker 1: They fashion a white flag that they can wave, They
Speaker 1: take their shirts off so that it's clear they are
Speaker 1: not suicide bombers, and none of this saves them. One
Speaker 1: of the reports talks about the reason why they even
Speaker 1: checked out to see, oh my gosh, are these actually Palestinians?
Speaker 1: Was one of them appeared white, and so they decided
Speaker 1: to go in and do a double check over who
Speaker 1: these people actually were, and that's how it was determined
Speaker 1: that these were hostages. But it makes it pretty plain
Speaker 1: the IDF, at least operating especially in northern Gaza. Anyone
Speaker 1: that they see they are just assuming is you know, fair,
Speaker 1: fair game. A legitimate target and they're if they're asking questions,
Speaker 1: that's not coming until later. So it is an absolutely
Speaker 1: outrageous situation. And by the way, you know, this isn't
Speaker 1: far from the first time that the IDF has been
Speaker 1: accused of firing on individuals who are waving a white flag.
Speaker 1: If there's a Human Rights Watch report, we can put
Speaker 1: this up on the screen that has some language, you know,
Speaker 1: an in depth report. But some of the cases that
Speaker 1: they analyzed here seven of the cases they said at
Speaker 1: least one person was waving an improvised white flag made
Speaker 1: from cloth or clothes, which international humanitarian law recognizes as
Speaker 1: a sign of truce or SURRENDERUS civilians are immune from
Speaker 1: attack with or without a white flag. In these cases,
Speaker 1: they undoubtedly wave the flags to communicate they were not
Speaker 1: engaged in hostilities post no threat, reaffirming their civilian status.
Speaker 4: They go on.
Speaker 1: Two Israeli commanders have alleged that palistating fighters used white
Speaker 1: flags to shield themselves from attack, but without providing details
Speaker 1: to allow an investigation of the claims, such as daytime
Speaker 1: and place. One colonel told the media that his soldiers
Speaker 1: had seen Hamas fighters move between houses while holding white
Speaker 1: flags a second colonel said a soldiers had seen a
Speaker 1: Hamas fighter hide behind a woman with a white flag
Speaker 1: and a group of children. It is impossible to understand
Speaker 1: what threat they thought these hostages posed when they clearly
Speaker 1: did not have suicide vests on. They could have used
Speaker 1: that as an excuse if they had shirts on, but
Speaker 1: their shirts were off and they're waving a white flag.
Speaker 1: What in the world did you think that the risk
Speaker 1: was here? And Saga, I think you are right to
Speaker 1: point out the fact that they're saying, oh, this was
Speaker 1: against the rules of engagement, but they're not punishing these soldiers.
Speaker 1: They are not even really castigating them. I mean, all
Speaker 1: of the language that I've heard about them is oh,
Speaker 1: this is so understandable, and you know, it's very difficult situation. Again,
Speaker 1: what risk did they think? I think that these people,
Speaker 1: these hostages who had managed to escape from their captors
Speaker 1: and we're hoping that the IDF would help to rescue them.
Speaker 1: What threat did they actually think that they posed in
Speaker 1: this moment?
Speaker 3: That's the issue.
Speaker 2: I mean, look, people are trying to parse it. I
Speaker 2: think you have to look at these things on a
Speaker 2: case by case basis. So US hostages actually have been
Speaker 2: killed in previous hostage raids by Delta Force operators or
Speaker 2: Sealed Team six operators.
Speaker 3: But the circumstances of that are very different.
Speaker 2: That's when you're like raiding into a dark room where
Speaker 2: everything is off and they're usually held in captivity, and
Speaker 2: in a very different scenario. This is quite literally three
Speaker 2: of them managed to evade their captors, had signs saying
Speaker 2: SOS and help that were public and were basically lit
Speaker 2: up by these guys and don't even notice until later on,
Speaker 2: even including shouting for help in Hebrew. I mean, I
Speaker 2: guess the only slack we can cut is these guys
Speaker 2: are like probably like nineteen years old reservists.
Speaker 3: They don't have a lot of training.
Speaker 2: The fact is is that a lot of people probably
Speaker 2: do speak some Hebrew or rudiment enough. Hebrews was not
Speaker 2: necessarily something that you could cut out, but you know,
Speaker 2: the SOS flag at the very least, you should probably
Speaker 2: pause and just wait and see what's happening here, as
Speaker 2: long as you're maintaining some sort of distance.
Speaker 3: This is not me saying this is us.
Speaker 2: According to some people I've spoken to who have experienced
Speaker 2: in hostage rescue, and they were specifically castigating them based
Speaker 2: on these circumstances. They're like, it's not unheard of to
Speaker 2: have hostages killed in a hostage rescue mission, but this
Speaker 2: demonstrates just really a lack of discipline within the IDF itself.
Speaker 1: Yes, one of the things that I want to mention
Speaker 1: here with regard to the protests and the domestic backlash.
Speaker 1: You know, BB has come out since this incident and said, quote,
Speaker 1: military pressure is essential both for returning the hostages and
Speaker 1: achieving victory over our enemies. That is the polar opposite
Speaker 1: of what many hostage families have been saying, which is
Speaker 1: common sense. You're bombing Gaza, You're shooting everything that moves there.
Speaker 1: Our family members are there, you are putting.
Speaker 4: Them at risk. Now we know in this instance.
Speaker 1: That it was Israeli fire that killed these three hostages.
Speaker 1: There are other hostages who have been confirmed dead at
Speaker 1: this point. Hamas is saying many of them died in
Speaker 1: Israeli bombings. We don't know the veracity of that, but
Speaker 1: it's certainly not preposterous to imagine, given what northern Gaza
Speaker 1: looks like at this point, that that's exactly what's happening.
Speaker 1: And so that's what these protests are about to say,
Speaker 1: this is ridiculous. This idea that the longer you bomb
Speaker 1: the hell out of Gaza, that's safer our family members are,
Speaker 1: that's absurd. And so previously you had just to show
Speaker 1: you the way that this domestic pressure is being applied.
Speaker 1: Previously you had the net Yahoo administration refusing to go
Speaker 1: back to Qatar to work on another hostage yeald. Now
Speaker 1: these family members, many of them, I don't know if
Speaker 1: it speaks for every single one of them, but many
Speaker 1: of them are saying, we want a deal that would
Speaker 1: exchange all of the palatating prisoners that we are keeping
Speaker 1: in exchange for all of the hostages. That's the deal
Speaker 1: that they have actually been pushing for for a long time.
Speaker 1: So enough pressure is now being applied after this horrific,
Speaker 1: outrageous incident that the head of Masad has gone back
Speaker 1: to cut now to try to three start negotiations on
Speaker 1: some sort of a hostage release deal and potential additional ceasefire.
Speaker 1: So you can already see the way that this public
Speaker 1: pressure is changing the calculations of the net Yahoo government
Speaker 1: in real time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so that's the overall what we're saying.
Speaker 2: I wanted to highlight to a couple of other instances
Speaker 2: which I think really underscore the discipline issue within the IDF.
Speaker 2: One was actually an incident where the IDF themselves ended
Speaker 2: up having to apologize for their conduct. Let's go ahead
Speaker 2: and play some of this. What you are seeing here
Speaker 2: is actually a mosque in the city of Janine in Gaza,
Speaker 2: where you have IDEF soldiers on inside of a mosque,
Speaker 2: one of them taking the imam's position and using the
Speaker 2: microphone to broadcast Hanukkah songs. The idea of that themselves
Speaker 2: specifically rebuked these soldiers. What you're watching here is actually
Speaker 2: was broadcast live on CNN Turk and an involved a
Speaker 2: journalist who had his hands up and was immediately basically beaten,
Speaker 2: thrown to the ground, put his knee placed on him
Speaker 2: by IDF soldiers who started, I mean, you know, even
Speaker 2: hitting him with the butt of their rifle. Has also
Speaker 2: been just general tiktoks and other things that are emerging
Speaker 2: of a lot of Israeli soldiers broadcasting social media. I
Speaker 2: just saw another one this morning. We don't actually have
Speaker 2: a cut, which shows an Israeli soldier smoking hookah or
Speaker 2: shisha right next to a bunch of blindfolded hostages. The
Speaker 2: level of social media like discipline and all this is just,
Speaker 2: I mean, honestly outrageous compared to the way that US
Speaker 2: soldiers were often held to a very different standard and
Speaker 2: absolutely would have been punished in all of these incidents
Speaker 2: that I mentioned. But what I think it highlights to me, Crystal,
Speaker 2: is exactly what we were trying to portray in our
Speaker 2: Thursday show, which unfortunately was really prescient, was that the
Speaker 2: discipline and near amateur nature now of a lot of
Speaker 2: the guys within the IDF and their conduct is doing
Speaker 2: them no favor and is very much igniting. I mean,
Speaker 2: they've had Abu grab level incidents, you know, almost every
Speaker 2: day now since that was broadcast.
Speaker 3: That mosque one.
Speaker 2: I mean, I don't think I can really characterize how
Speaker 2: incendiary it is for a IDA force to walk into
Speaker 2: a mosque, got their shoes on, taking me a mom's position,
Speaker 2: broadcasting from the call to prayer microphone honka songs.
Speaker 3: That is that is not gonna.
Speaker 2: I think engender any good will, probably, I could say.
Speaker 2: And the best way for you to understand how incindiar
Speaker 2: it was is not to listen to me is why
Speaker 2: the IDF themselves immediately after the incident, where like, these
Speaker 2: three guys have been taken off duty. This is we
Speaker 2: unequivocally condemned this, and they were even criticized by religious
Speaker 2: rabbis inside of Israel.
Speaker 3: They're like, you cannot be doing this.
Speaker 2: I mean, it adds an even more religious dimension to
Speaker 2: the conflict, which it seems opposite of what you want.
Speaker 1: It seems like those dudes who are in the mosque
Speaker 1: got more punishment and approbrium directed than the one who
Speaker 1: murdered the hostages.
Speaker 3: Good point.
Speaker 1: And you know, listen, the IDF has told everyone to
Speaker 1: evacuate from northern Gaza, and you now have one point
Speaker 1: million Palestinians who have been forcibly displaced from Northern Gaza.
Speaker 1: And basically what they've said to people is if you stay,
Speaker 1: you will be a target. We are going to assume
Speaker 1: that you were a target. So was it really against
Speaker 1: the rules of engagement when they just fired without asking
Speaker 1: questions on these three people that they saw, even though
Speaker 1: they're waving a white flag, even though they have their
Speaker 1: shirts off to prove that they have no suicide busts
Speaker 1: and that they're no threat to anyone. And certainly they
Speaker 1: were one hundred percent unarmed, so really against the rules
Speaker 1: of engagement. Would there have been any concern whatsoever if
Speaker 1: these had been three Palestinian civilians to add to the
Speaker 1: body count now of over twenty thousand, somewhere around twenty
Speaker 1: five thousand who have been killed in Gaza at this
Speaker 1: point of course not, of course not. They're not even
Speaker 1: going to punish these guys for killing their own people.
Speaker 1: There is no interest in, you know, sparing the civilians
Speaker 1: who were caught up in all of them. So I
Speaker 1: think it's a very I mean, it's humiliating. Puts a
Speaker 1: lot of pressure on Netanyahu to take a different approach.
Speaker 4: To the hostages.
Speaker 1: The hostages continue to be a very emotional issue in Israel,
Speaker 1: and we shouldn't hit ourselves like with regards to these
Speaker 1: protests that are happening right now. We saw the poll,
Speaker 1: sixty percent of the Israeli public things the IDF isn't
Speaker 1: going far enough. Only two percent, less than two percent
Speaker 1: actually said they've gone too far in terms of the
Speaker 1: damage that they have brought.
Speaker 4: But this hostage situation.
Speaker 1: Is the one thing that could apply domestic pressure to
Speaker 1: BB to take somewhat of a different course. And put
Speaker 1: at least the hostages lives first and foremost. So we'll
Speaker 1: see how this all plays ound.
Speaker 3: We certainly will.
Speaker 2: US policy makers have reignited their push to try and
Speaker 2: get the Israelis to change their course of action, although
Speaker 2: the Israelis certainly kind of threw it back in their face.
Speaker 2: Here you have the Defense Minister basically openly rebutting National
Speaker 2: Security Advisor Jake Sullivan on camera after a meeting in
Speaker 2: which Sullivan told them, you need to wrap up this
Speaker 2: war effort by the end or the major operation by
Speaker 2: the end.
Speaker 3: Of the year.
Speaker 2: Goalan openly in English in front of him. You can
Speaker 2: kind of see his soul leave his body, saying Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's not going to happen.
Speaker 3: Take a listen.
Speaker 6: So thank you for being side by side with us
Speaker 6: in this effort. The Hamas is a toe organization that
Speaker 6: built itself for a decade to fight is One, and
Speaker 6: they build infrastructure under the ground and on the ground,
Speaker 6: and it is not easy to destroy them. It will
Speaker 6: take and require a long period of time, it will
Speaker 6: last more than several months, but we will win and
Speaker 6: we will destroy them. So thank you once again for
Speaker 6: coming to Israel, for helping us and for supporting US.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, he said several months.
Speaker 2: Like I said, you can literally see the life leave
Speaker 2: Jake Sullivan's body as he said that it also comes
Speaker 2: on the heels of Defense Minister Lloyd Austin. He arrived
Speaker 2: in Tel Aviv actually this morning. Let's go and put
Speaker 2: that up on the screen and have a little bit
Speaker 2: more that I can add to this. Austin quote returns
Speaker 2: to Israel with a tougher message and lessons learned. The
Speaker 2: Defense secretary is stressing the Biden administration's support for Israel,
Speaker 2: but concerns about the rising Palestinian death toll. After he
Speaker 2: stepped off the plane, his message was blunt. Mister Austin
Speaker 2: reiterated the strategic defeat that would leave the country less
Speaker 2: secure if it does not do more to protect civilians,
Speaker 2: and he is emphasizing early US efforts to target the
Speaker 2: Taliban and insurgents in Afghanistan in four and basically the
Speaker 2: cautionary tale that if you take your eye off the ball,
Speaker 2: you go to I mean, you can go to a
Speaker 2: variety of different ways that he will end up in
Speaker 2: a situation in the same way the US did with
Speaker 2: having to do a surge in Iraq. In Afghanistan and
Speaker 2: eventually actually failing in both of those categories. So that's
Speaker 2: where the US officials are. They're kind of stuck between
Speaker 2: a rock and a hard place. They really don't know
Speaker 2: how to reconcile President Biden's rhetoric and some of the
Speaker 2: rhetoric here in Washington, obviously the very strong Israel lobby,
Speaker 2: with the reality that all of America is now entering
Speaker 2: a phase where the Israel tax we're all about to
Speaker 2: pay in inflation is going to be near or equal
Speaker 2: to the Ukraine tax, and we're about to talk about
Speaker 2: that with global shipping.
Speaker 3: But any last thoughts on this crystal from the US, Yeah, officials.
Speaker 1: I mean the Floyd Austin It's a sick joke at
Speaker 1: this point. I really want to go back. Adam Johnson
Speaker 1: has actually been doing some of this and look at
Speaker 1: all of the times that they've Oh we're worried about civilians.
Speaker 1: Oh you need to wrap it up. Oh we need
Speaker 1: to know more about the day after. We're having hard
Speaker 1: discussions behind the scenes, et cetera, et cetera. What a joke,
Speaker 1: Like they have literally not listened to you a single time,
Speaker 1: not once, and now you have even Joe Biden saying
Speaker 1: describing their bombing as indiscriminate, which, let's be clear, if
Speaker 1: the bombing is indiscriminate, which I think is pretty freaking
Speaker 1: undeniable at this point, that's a war crime. So you're
Speaker 1: admitting that your ally, who you're pushing as hard as
Speaker 1: you possibly can to ship to bypass Congress to ship munitions,
Speaker 1: to pass fourteen billion dollars to give them whatever they want,
Speaker 1: are committing war crimes. And all you can do is
Speaker 1: like legal a little of the press about how worried
Speaker 1: you are and how they need to wrap it up
Speaker 1: while they humiliate your officials in public and know that
Speaker 1: you are not going to say a word about it,
Speaker 1: and you are not going to do a thing about it.
Speaker 4: That's the situation.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's putting aside the immorality of it, the
Speaker 1: humiliation of the US, the entire country, and certainly the
Speaker 1: President that his wishes are apparently asserted with the Israeli's
Speaker 1: time after time, and they do not care. They spit
Speaker 1: in their face, literally have Jake Sullivan up there and
Speaker 1: just publicly humiliate him and force everyone to watch his
Speaker 1: soul leave his body. As you said, So when I
Speaker 1: see these articles now. I mean, it's just preposterous to me.
Speaker 1: It is truly like sick comedy to watch these pieces
Speaker 1: come out again and again about how worried they are,
Speaker 1: et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 3: Well, let's se act to the next part here.
Speaker 2: As I mentioned the Israel tax that I think we're
Speaker 2: all going to start paying, let's go and put this
Speaker 2: up there on the screen. The US is now considering
Speaker 2: striking the Yemeni group the Houthis, after repeated attacks on
Speaker 2: commercial shipping in the Red Sea. The Biden administration quotes
Speaker 2: them four. They are increasingly concerned that the Houthis and
Speaker 2: their sponsors in Tehran are trying to undermine global maritime trade,
Speaker 2: both to under kept trade to Israel and to raise
Speaker 2: the cost of the US and his allies for supporting
Speaker 2: the israel States now eleven week war in Gaza against
Speaker 2: the Palestinian group Hamas. Already some global shipping lines are
Speaker 2: diverting their cargo traffic away from the Red Sea and
Speaker 2: the Suez Canal to routes circling the Horn of Africa.
Speaker 3: The Suez crisis a two.
Speaker 2: Point zero I guess that we are now in is
Speaker 2: genuinely extraordinary, so I wanted to highlight the statistic in particular,
Speaker 2: let's go and put this up there on the screen.
Speaker 2: Four out of the fives largest container shipping companies CMACGM, Hotpod,
Speaker 2: Lloyd Mart, MRSK and MSc have now paused or suspended
Speaker 2: their services in the Red Sea. Together, those four companies
Speaker 2: account for fifty three percent of the global container trade.
Speaker 2: So the amount of container shipping traffic currently going through
Speaker 2: the Red Sea has gone down dramatically in the days
Speaker 2: since the war, and actually currently just this morning I
Speaker 2: saw the update forty six separate container ships are now
Speaker 2: diverting around the Cape of Good Hope rather than transiting
Speaker 2: the Red Sea, which is an extraordinary cost in the amount,
Speaker 2: in the amount of fuel that you have to pay,
Speaker 2: and obviously all of that is going to get transited
Speaker 2: to American consumers and to really global consumers. This is
Speaker 2: significantly going to have an impact on the price of
Speaker 2: oil as well, so British Petroleum announcing this morning they
Speaker 2: will no longer transit through the US Canal and through
Speaker 2: the Red Sea. I mean that's almost ten percent of
Speaker 2: global supply. So all of this is going to have
Speaker 2: significant upward pressure on prices. Just as we're already dealing
Speaker 2: with the quote unquote Ukraine tax from whatever is happening
Speaker 2: with our Western sanctions, and also out of the Black
Speaker 2: Sea Fleet, etc. This also comes on the heels and
Speaker 2: is a major challenge right now to the supremacy of
Speaker 2: the US Navy. So let's go and put this up
Speaker 2: there right now. The US and the British Navy now
Speaker 2: say that they have shot down fifteen attack drones just
Speaker 2: yesterday over the Red Sea. These suspected attack drones were
Speaker 2: going after commercial shipping. It's important for us to note
Speaker 2: here the commercial shipping vessels that are being targeted are
Speaker 2: not just israelly, They are US flagged, British flagged, and
Speaker 2: all kinds of different nations. As I'd mentioned previously, the
Speaker 2: increase in these attack drones or quote unquote unmanned aerial
Speaker 2: systems that are being shot down, I think just really
Speaker 2: highlights to me and crystal the cost of asymmetric warfare.
Speaker 2: Every missile that we are the BRIT's launch against these
Speaker 2: drones costs a million dollars, maybe a little bit more.
Speaker 2: And if you factor in oil, the price of the
Speaker 2: you know, the guys on the ship and all this
Speaker 2: other stuff. It's probably even more than that. Each one
Speaker 2: of these drones cost twenty five thousand dollars, So every
Speaker 2: single drone is costing Americans a million dollars in weaponry
Speaker 2: that we are used to shoot these things down, not
Speaker 2: to mention the immassive tax and.
Speaker 3: Global shipping that is now happening.
Speaker 2: And if this is going to be the status quo
Speaker 2: for the next several months, I don't think we can
Speaker 2: emphasize enough, Like Joe Biden, you can kiss your presidency
Speaker 2: goodbye in terms of not just a handling of the
Speaker 2: Israel crisis. Inflation will come roaring back, you know, to
Speaker 2: this extent that it has declined very small, you know,
Speaker 2: in the last several months. So this is probably the
Speaker 2: single largest existential threat to global security and to the
Speaker 2: global economy that we've seen since Ukraine, largely because of
Speaker 2: the massive impact it's going to have on global inflation.
Speaker 2: I don't think we can talk about it really enough.
Speaker 2: And then I've said this to you before. You know,
Speaker 2: one of these just one of these missiles goes off target,
Speaker 2: one of these DROs D kills an American sailor or
Speaker 2: an American you know, an American flagged a crew member
Speaker 2: to some type of Captain Phillips situation, takes hostage. I mean,
Speaker 2: you've we've all seen that movie before. It can literally
Speaker 2: pause the entire globe, it can change.
Speaker 3: The entire picture.
Speaker 1: Well, I was really struck by a quote that they
Speaker 1: had in that semaphore piece from Lieutenant General Michael Nagatuho,
Speaker 1: oversaw US Special Operations Forces in the Middle East during
Speaker 1: the Obama administration. He said, there's something close to an
Speaker 1: undeclared war between Iran and the US when it comes
Speaker 1: to the attacks and the reprisals that are going on
Speaker 1: outside of Israel. That's a very important aspect of this.
Speaker 1: And just to back up for a second to give
Speaker 1: a little bit like top top layer of history with
Speaker 1: regard to the Huthis. I mean, the Huthi's more or
Speaker 1: less control half of Yemen than including the capital city.
Speaker 1: They're backed by Iran. So there's been like this proxy
Speaker 1: civil war going on in Yemen for years now, the
Speaker 1: Sunni backed government, backed by Saudi Arabia and by the way,
Speaker 1: backed by US, and they've kind of come to this
Speaker 1: uneasy stalemate right now or truce. There's talks of a
Speaker 1: potential partition plan. So the Huthis are in charge of
Speaker 1: a good bit of Yemen. You know, in the US perspective,
Speaker 1: we sort of pretend like they are these still rebel group,
Speaker 1: but they do control the capital city and they do
Speaker 1: have significant weapons that has been provided by a RUN.
Speaker 1: Now from their perspective, and why they have eagerly engaged
Speaker 1: in these attacks is because you know, now that there's
Speaker 1: a bit of a shaky truce. Their domestic political situation
Speaker 1: in Yemen is a little bit shaky, and the one
Speaker 1: thing that rallies everybody together is support for the Palestinian costs.
Speaker 1: For them, it's a win win situation because not only
Speaker 1: do they get to you know, show themselves as being
Speaker 1: pro Palestinian and anti Israel with these attacks and with
Speaker 1: these threats that are being made on the Red Sea,
Speaker 1: they also get to please their benefit factors a RUN
Speaker 1: and try to keep them on their side. And for them,
Speaker 1: let's say that you know, the US intervenes aggressively. Now
Speaker 1: there are active talks that I think it's very likely
Speaker 1: to occur that the US will strike Yemen directly strike
Speaker 1: some of their you know, weapons and missile systems and
Speaker 1: silos directly. That would only inhore to their benefit as well,
Speaker 1: that they're seen as being taken on directly by you know,
Speaker 1: the big bad guy, the United States of America. So
Speaker 1: that's why for them this is an lose situation. It
Speaker 1: benefits them tremendously. And with just a little bit of
Speaker 1: you know, drone warfare and boarding these ships and threats
Speaker 1: being issued, they have managed to completely upend shipping around
Speaker 1: the world. And it's very difficult to overstate what a
Speaker 1: tremendous impact this is already having. So twelve percent of
Speaker 1: global trade by volume normally flows through this area, perhaps
Speaker 1: thirty percent of global container traffic. In addition to the
Speaker 1: added cost of having to go all the way around Africa,
Speaker 1: you also have skyrocketing insurance costs which also add to
Speaker 1: you know, obviously the cost of shipping goods.
Speaker 4: So you've got fears of.
Speaker 1: A broader escalation, as Sager was laying out, fears of
Speaker 1: drawing US more directly into conflict with Iran, which you know,
Speaker 1: nobody I think wants, I hope nobody wants.
Speaker 4: Actually I'm wrong about that. There are a bunch of people,
Speaker 4: there are a.
Speaker 1: Bunch of politicians who want that, but in terms of
Speaker 1: the American people. Nobody wants that. And then you also
Speaker 1: have thematic economic impact that they are able to exact
Speaker 1: extract with very minimal, very minimal efforts.
Speaker 2: Here, Yeah, it's not good. And also just again to
Speaker 2: highlight how much this is costing American taxpayers.
Speaker 3: It's going to put this up there on the screen.
Speaker 2: There are three separate now US destroyers that have entered
Speaker 2: the Mediterranean Sea by the Strait of Gibraltar, the USS Laboon,
Speaker 2: the USS Delbert Black, and the USS the Sullivans, all
Speaker 2: in the span of just six days, all of them
Speaker 2: being dispatched specifically for a new joint mission that we're
Speaker 2: currently running with the Brits to try to protect global
Speaker 2: traffic in the Red Sea. But even with this power
Speaker 2: projection on the commercial to try and protect the commercial fleet,
Speaker 2: a lot of companies and insurance really this is a
Speaker 2: game of insurance and we all learned this during the
Speaker 2: hostage Somali crisis, where you know, during the Captain Phillips
Speaker 2: saying they're like, wait, why don't you just pay to
Speaker 2: have like mercenaries on your ships to protect them.
Speaker 3: They're like, honestly, it's just cheaper to pay the ransom.
Speaker 2: Well, what we're learning here is that you only start
Speaker 2: to take action like this until the insurance companies give
Speaker 2: you the green light such that you are allowed and
Speaker 2: you can pass these on through contracts a law. It's
Speaker 2: very complicated in terms of international shipping and maritime law.
Speaker 2: But eventually it just comes to a point where the
Speaker 2: risk becomes so high that it's made at a company
Speaker 2: wide level that everybody's willing to eat that cost, and
Speaker 2: that of course means that you get passed on to
Speaker 2: the consumer. But the significant toll right now on the
Speaker 2: US Navy I don't think can be overstated. I mean,
Speaker 2: we've already got two Terra strike groups in the region,
Speaker 2: then we moved there previously. Now we've got multiple US
Speaker 2: destroyers that are on their way here. This is a
Speaker 2: full blown, you know, international shipping crisis, even if nobody
Speaker 2: wants to name it as such, and we are really
Speaker 2: on the prespice of something. I would also add Crystal
Speaker 2: in terms of striking the hoo Thies, we would not
Speaker 2: necessarily pay the price there, although we probably pay some,
Speaker 2: but the Hoothis have demonstrated capability to target riod if
Speaker 2: they want to, And then yeah, I can you can
Speaker 2: all tell me what America is going to do if
Speaker 2: Saudi Arabia finds itself in some sort of missile war
Speaker 2: with the Hoothis, which they have in the past used
Speaker 2: Patriot missile defense defense systems. I just saw this morning
Speaker 2: the United Arab Emirates is heavily pressuring the United States
Speaker 2: to militarily target the Hoho They so there's pressure building
Speaker 2: to in the Gulf to try and have some sort
Speaker 2: of military campaign which could easily spiral oticamy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'll don't forget that.
Speaker 1: One possible idea that's been floated is to use armed
Speaker 1: escorts for all of these ships traversing this strait, and
Speaker 1: apparently we use these in the nineteen eighties during the
Speaker 1: so called tanker war between Iran and Iraq. But it
Speaker 1: would require a huge number of warships to be committed
Speaker 1: to this effort. So that's why there's major hesitation in
Speaker 1: doing that. So, you know, and there's a larger conversation
Speaker 1: to be had at a different point about the massive
Speaker 1: economic toll that is being taken on Israel, not only
Speaker 1: through the fact that you know, they have all these
Speaker 1: reservists called up people are basically you know, during the war.
Speaker 1: They're basically all tourism has stopped, all like normal activity
Speaker 1: has stopped. Huge hit to the economy, and the economy
Speaker 1: has been become very dependent on foreign direct invest Well,
Speaker 1: that was already dropping off a cliff because of the
Speaker 1: Netnyahu judicial like takeover situation, and that is expected to
Speaker 1: drop even further than you add to this that it's
Speaker 1: specifically I mean, they have targeted other ships, but they're
Speaker 1: specifically saying they're targeting any ships that are going.
Speaker 4: To Israeli ports or that are Israeli flagged.
Speaker 1: So huge impact on them in particular in terms of shipping.
Speaker 1: And you know, that's another massive cost of them of
Speaker 1: this war.
Speaker 3: Absolutely.
Speaker 1: All right, let's talk a little bit about what's going
Speaker 1: on in the Republican Party. So Donald Trump giving a
Speaker 1: rally recently and reiterating some outrageous rhetoric that he had
Speaker 1: used before with regard to immigrants.
Speaker 4: Let's take a listen.
Speaker 8: They're poisoning the blood of our country.
Speaker 4: That's what they've done.
Speaker 8: They poisoned mental institutions and prisons all over the world,
Speaker 8: not just in South America, not just the three or
Speaker 8: four countries that we think about.
Speaker 3: But all over the world.
Speaker 8: They're coming into our country from Africa, from Asia, all
Speaker 8: over the world. They're pouring into our country. Nobody's even
Speaker 8: looking at them. They just come in. The crime is
Speaker 8: going to be tremendous. The terrorism is going to be,
Speaker 8: terrorism is going to be and then we built a
Speaker 8: tremendous piece of the.
Speaker 1: Wall, so poisoning the blood of America there. He had
Speaker 1: said this in an interview previously. I mean, this is
Speaker 1: obviously just some like out and out Nazi type rhetoric
Speaker 1: and sober to me, it seems like, you know, the
Speaker 1: immigration thing has always been what he has used number
Speaker 1: one to you know, both rally his base trigger the Libs,
Speaker 1: which is what a lot of his political power comes from.
Speaker 1: Some of the old rhetoric which seems mild frankly in
Speaker 1: comparison to this. It doesn't hit the way that he
Speaker 1: used to. So he's got up the ante and just
Speaker 1: go like full Nazi in terms of the way he's described.
Speaker 2: I think Trump is a genius in terms of getting
Speaker 2: people to set the conversation.
Speaker 3: I mean, we're covering it here now. This was you
Speaker 3: pointed this out to me.
Speaker 2: I actually missed this entire news cycle, but I went
Speaker 2: back and checked, and it was dominating every single one
Speaker 2: of the Sunday shows. The reason why I honestly think
Speaker 2: it wins on a strategic ground is that he's leaning
Speaker 2: by double digits on immigration. Anytime you're talking about immigration,
Speaker 2: you're highlighting border policy. For Republicans, they've got probably the
Speaker 2: biggest lead over Biden that they have in the entire thing.
Speaker 2: So for him, I mean, as long as you can
Speaker 2: center immigration I think at the front, and you can
Speaker 2: get people to talk about you and to draw contrasts
Speaker 2: with Biden, I think it's an overall win for you.
Speaker 3: I'm not going to defend what.
Speaker 2: He said necessarily, but I do think look throughout history,
Speaker 2: what do we show when we have uncontrolled net migration
Speaker 2: that we have like right now effectively uncontrolled with the
Speaker 2: US border and with probably the highest level of form
Speaker 2: born population in modern American history, You're going to have
Speaker 2: some major ethnic strife, especially when you've got economic problems
Speaker 2: like we have right now. And it would not it's
Speaker 2: not a shocker to meet that something like this is
Speaker 2: going to hit with a lot of people who want
Speaker 2: to vote for him in the first place. It goes
Speaker 2: back to some of the original appeals of the twenty
Speaker 2: fifteen campaigns. So yeah, I mean, do I think it
Speaker 2: was a smart thing to say, Like, no, not necessarily,
Speaker 2: but from.
Speaker 3: A strategic ground.
Speaker 2: I think in that way, getting people to talk about
Speaker 2: it and to just like highlight his border policy versus
Speaker 2: Biden at a net level, it probably works for him.
Speaker 1: Policy versus Biden is not all that different at this point.
Speaker 1: But we'll talk about that a little bit more when
Speaker 1: we get to the bill that they're working to push through,
Speaker 1: which would include the border piece and Ukraine and Israel.
Speaker 2: That's if it's signed though, right even then, that's basically
Speaker 2: just a return to the twenty twenty even.
Speaker 1: Many of but even many of the policies that Biden
Speaker 1: has instituted. I mean, he's you know, remain in Mexico.
Speaker 1: He has been holdovers since the Trump era that Democrats
Speaker 1: you know, opposed then but suddenly went quiet when it
Speaker 1: was Joe Biden. So a lot of the border policy
Speaker 1: frankly isn't all that different.
Speaker 2: But he was dragged kicking and screaming two years back
Speaker 2: to remain in Mexico. The asylum process is still very different.
Speaker 2: There's some eight million illegal immigrants have entered this country
Speaker 2: probably since Biden took office. So I mean from that perspective,
Speaker 2: I mean, if you look at someone like Trump, that's
Speaker 2: just that's a massive winning issue. Like the American people
Speaker 2: do not support most of what's I mean, we seen.
Speaker 1: Are definitely concerned about emigration, and they should by the way,
Speaker 1: I agree with you, I think they should be. I
Speaker 1: don't think that we should have you know, I think
Speaker 1: people deserve to have a controlled and orderly process at
Speaker 1: the border. I think that you know, the fact that
Speaker 1: there's been a failure to deal to with this massive
Speaker 1: backlog in terms of asylum cases is just a catastrophe
Speaker 1: and an utter failure of governance. We'll talk about that
Speaker 1: more in a minute. In terms of the politics of this,
Speaker 1: I'm not so convinced because the big problem with Trump
Speaker 1: is this sense of extremism, and you know that comes
Speaker 1: out in concert over abortion. It comes out and concert
Speaker 1: over January sixth, and most Americans are not looking at
Speaker 1: the immigration issue in this type of just like out
Speaker 1: and out Nazi, they're poisoning the blood of America way.
Speaker 1: They want law and order, they want basic security, they
Speaker 1: want it to be an orderly process. And so the
Speaker 1: more that he uses this sort of rhetoric. I do
Speaker 1: think that it can serve as a reminder of like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what it was like when this guy was president
Speaker 1: of the United States, and you know what, this was
Speaker 1: not great and it was very chaos.
Speaker 2: It's possible, I don't know. I also wonder though, if
Speaker 2: so much of this is just baked in. I mean,
Speaker 2: for example, using the word nazi, I would would just say, like,
Speaker 2: how many times have people called Trump a Nazi? Like
Speaker 2: at a certain point, the words like lose meaning, It's like,
Speaker 2: what does it mean? And so even if he were
Speaker 2: to say something which is quote unquote nazi asque like
Speaker 2: if but if it's just going to roll off, most
Speaker 2: people are like, yeah, whatever, I've heard it a million
Speaker 2: times before that Colin Trump and Nazi again. I see
Speaker 2: it's the Washington Posts. You don't pick up on the edge.
Speaker 2: Nobody is, nobody has heard for them. This is the
Speaker 2: first time that someone's gonna be like, oh my god,
Speaker 2: Trump is a Nazi. It's like this type of criticism
Speaker 2: is just it's like calling Bernie a socialist and defund
Speaker 2: the police. Anybody who supports him or is even on
Speaker 2: the everybody's heard it a million times before, so at
Speaker 2: a certain point, like, I just don't think some of
Speaker 2: this criticism is.
Speaker 3: Going to work for him.
Speaker 2: I think immigration is such a net winning issue for
Speaker 2: Republicans that anything he could say is probably gonna be.
Speaker 4: Good for him.
Speaker 1: I mean, that is possible that just by putting the
Speaker 1: issue front and center and forcing conversation about it, that
Speaker 1: he wins. I think that is an entirely possible situation.
Speaker 1: I also think it's entirely possible that people here, I mean,
Speaker 1: this is very antithetical to the idea and the concept
Speaker 1: the ideal of America, right that when people hear these
Speaker 1: type of comments, which even like Fox and Friends had
Speaker 1: to cover. I mean, this was wall to wall in
Speaker 1: terms of the coverage, and I would say understandably so
Speaker 1: that people remember some of the things that they really
Speaker 1: didn't like about him, because keep in mind, like this
Speaker 1: is not a popular man. The overwhelming majority of Americans
Speaker 1: do not like this dude. Okay, they're not giving him
Speaker 1: the benefit of the doubt, right, they are not in
Speaker 1: love with the idea of another Trump presidency. Yet because
Speaker 1: he has been out of the news cycles, he's not
Speaker 1: dominating the news cycles the way that he used to.
Speaker 1: There's been a little bit of like a fuzzy memory
Speaker 1: with regard to what he really is like and what
Speaker 1: it was really like to have him as president of
Speaker 1: the United States. So from that perspective, I'm not sure
Speaker 1: that it really serves us interesting.
Speaker 3: I just I honestly don't know. I will wait and see.
Speaker 3: I have seen.
Speaker 2: Look everyone thinks, for example, I always talk about this Charlottesville.
Speaker 3: Everyone's like, oh my god, Charlottesville. Guess what.
Speaker 2: Charlottesville wasn't even close to the lowest level of Trump's presidency.
Speaker 2: The lowest approval rating that ever got was not anything
Speaker 2: to do with Charlottesville.
Speaker 3: Was the Tax Cuts of Jobs.
Speaker 2: Act the day that had passed, and it aligned with
Speaker 2: appeals to what was it, repeal and replace Obamacare. Those
Speaker 2: were probably the two single most unpopular things Trump ever
Speaker 2: did as president.
Speaker 3: So in terms of I don't know.
Speaker 2: Honestly, I don't know, especially because the immigration situation today
Speaker 2: is still so net.
Speaker 3: Different than twenty twenty.
Speaker 2: The sheer amount of illegal mass migration the foreign born
Speaker 2: population is a higher level than ever before. I mean, look,
Speaker 2: I don't think it's a secret. I strongly support reduced
Speaker 2: illegal and illegal immigration now.
Speaker 3: At this point, and I would put it to you
Speaker 3: this way.
Speaker 2: I think one of the eras that rhymes with current
Speaker 2: America most is the nineteen twenties, like the turmoil of
Speaker 2: the post World war, the crumbling of the international system,
Speaker 2: America's trying to figure out what it is, depressions and
Speaker 2: you know, wild spikes and the economy all of that.
Speaker 2: One of the things I think that really helped with
Speaker 2: calming down politics was that we had in immigration policy
Speaker 2: where effectively restricted it for forty some years to allow
Speaker 2: so basically an assimilation of migration that was similar levels
Speaker 2: of foreign born population, and things just chilled out for
Speaker 2: a little bit before we eventually returned to the nineteen
Speaker 2: sixty five consensus. Is something Ryhan slam Is written about
Speaker 2: in his book I forget the exact title right now.
Speaker 2: I do recommend people go and read it, and I
Speaker 2: think that Trump is responding to exact Now. Listen, we
Speaker 2: got lucky because we had much more responsible politicians who
Speaker 2: were in charge at that time. But that ethos if
Speaker 2: you want to go back and look, there's a reason
Speaker 2: the KKK and all these organizations surged in popularity sometime
Speaker 2: around that time period, and it's not a secret in
Speaker 2: terms of how it could have gone in a very
Speaker 2: different direction.
Speaker 1: It's also not I mean, there's no doubt that economic
Speaker 1: stress and a lot of cynical politicians will take that
Speaker 1: out on immigrants and use them as gafegoats all the time.
Speaker 1: It's also not a secret that during that same period,
Speaker 1: when you talk about politics chilling out, that we had
Speaker 1: the new Deal, that we had, you know, a basic
Speaker 1: social safety net. I agree, we had the middle class growing,
Speaker 1: so we had people feeling a lot more secure in
Speaker 1: their economic fe future, and that also is part of
Speaker 1: what made politics quote unquote chill out.
Speaker 4: So how this plays. The other thing that I point to.
Speaker 1: Is that we've had multiple elections now where Republicans try
Speaker 1: to put immigration front and center, where.
Speaker 4: You have had very large.
Speaker 1: Populations of you know, of undocumented immigrants coming to the country,
Speaker 1: where people are saying this is a big concern for them.
Speaker 1: Hasn't worked because there are other issues that they are
Speaker 1: also very concerned about, and in particular, abortion has become
Speaker 1: incredibly central. But even in that midterm election with Trump,
Speaker 1: remember the whole migrant caravan thing, and this was really
Speaker 1: front and side.
Speaker 3: That actually helps a lot of republics.
Speaker 1: That helped in red states, yes, where it was possible
Speaker 1: that you know, Democrats were going to be able to
Speaker 1: pull off upsets in some red states, but it did
Speaker 1: not help overall. Overall, you had a very good election
Speaker 1: cycle for Democrats. So for people who are you know,
Speaker 1: with Trump and they're you know, all in on this
Speaker 1: issue and this is the primary focus, does it hurt
Speaker 1: him with them?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 1: Absolutely not With the general public, I think it is
Speaker 1: much more mixense.
Speaker 2: It would be my case for why I think it's
Speaker 2: gonna help Trump, and no matter what he says, I
Speaker 2: think it would is that the migrant situation now is
Speaker 2: so different and it's not. Honestly, the most genius policy
Speaker 2: of the Red States came up with is ship them
Speaker 2: to New York and ship them to Chicago and to
Speaker 2: all the other sanctuaryy Look at the rhetoric coming from
Speaker 2: Eric Adams. He's like pleading on his hands and knees
Speaker 2: for money from the federal government because of the New
Speaker 2: York City Right to shelter. And I can tell you
Speaker 2: from what I understand, New York politics behind the scenes
Speaker 2: is exploding over the migrant issue. You've got motels and
Speaker 2: other things in places like Rochester which are overrun. You've
Speaker 2: got Chicago with the same I believe the mayor of
Speaker 2: Chicago said something similar as well. California always has been
Speaker 2: a complete mess on this issue. But the more that
Speaker 2: the Red states continue that policy, I actually think it
Speaker 2: could could invite some sort of pushback. Although you know,
Speaker 2: you tease this, if they do some sort of border deal,
Speaker 2: things could change. The reason I don't is that the
Speaker 2: Dems are holding strong on a parole issue where they
Speaker 2: will not either have remained in Mexico or they're allowing
Speaker 2: you know, my so called you know, asylum migrants what
Speaker 2: I would say, economic migrants to be paroled into the
Speaker 2: general public and to have work permits for years to come.
Speaker 2: On that issue, If they're going to hold strong on that,
Speaker 2: that doesn't that doesn't necessarily change the overall picture. So
Speaker 2: with so many of these blue states, crystal, with so
Speaker 2: many millions of people who have now been trucked in,
Speaker 2: you know, from from California or from Texas, from all
Speaker 2: these other places, I do think that could change this calculus.
Speaker 1: I don't New York in particular, well, I don't think
Speaker 1: in terms of where the politics on immigration are I
Speaker 1: don't think there's any doubt that they've shifted hard to right.
Speaker 4: I don't think there's any doubt about that.
Speaker 1: I mean, you can look at the way Biden talked
Speaker 1: about immigration in his presidential campaign, and you can look
Speaker 1: at the policies that he's apparently open to now, which
Speaker 1: are a lot of Trump type policies that you know,
Speaker 1: let's we'll save.
Speaker 4: This a little bit.
Speaker 1: We'll get into it a little bit more and always
Speaker 1: talk about John Fatterman and the way that you know,
Speaker 1: he may be emblement of the way that.
Speaker 4: This has shifted hard right.
Speaker 1: But let's talk a little bit more about the presidential
Speaker 1: election landscape and the question over whether this type of
Speaker 1: rhetoric and approach from Trump and him saying be a
Speaker 1: retribution and be dictator on day one, etc. Is a
Speaker 1: net positive or net negative for him. You have Obama
Speaker 1: now worried that Biden may not be able to get reelected.
Speaker 4: Put this up on the screen.
Speaker 1: So this was I think the Wall Street Journal actually
Speaker 1: picked this up, but the Daily Mail sort of noticed
Speaker 1: it and ran with the headline, Barack Obama thinks Joe
Speaker 1: Biden could lose the White House next year. With President's
Speaker 1: polls continuing to tank, his worries over his age and
Speaker 1: cost of living crisis persist, with Donald Trump edging ahead,
Speaker 1: and the polls and concerns about the President's age, immigration,
Speaker 1: Israel policy, and economic plan denting confidence. Person described by
Speaker 1: The Wall Street Journal as being familiar with Obama's thinking
Speaker 1: said the former president was troubled. Obama knows this is
Speaker 1: going to be a close race, the source said, and
Speaker 1: feels that Democrats very well could lose the.
Speaker 4: Twenty twenty four or election.
Speaker 1: Any worries the alternative is pretty dangerous for democracy. You
Speaker 1: would have to be an idiot at this point to
Speaker 1: not be worried that Joe Biden could lose now.
Speaker 4: In fairness to Obama, I think.
Speaker 1: He has always doubted Joe Biden and his political abilities.
Speaker 1: That's why he was so late to endorse back in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty. You know, he waited to see if there
Speaker 1: was anyone else, who other than Bernie, who might make
Speaker 1: a run at it, and then at the very last
Speaker 1: minute intervene to try to, you know, get things to
Speaker 1: fall into place, and successfully did so for Joe Biden.
Speaker 1: There is all that reporting about the sort of frictions
Speaker 1: and tension between Obama and Biden during the Obama administration,
Speaker 1: where you know, Obama's this like hyper intellectuals, smarty pants
Speaker 1: type of guy, and he looked down on Joe Biden
Speaker 1: as being sort of inferior to him from that perspective.
Speaker 1: So in some ways those dynamics are not new. But
Speaker 1: Obama still has a lot of sway in the Democratic Party.
Speaker 1: And I'm not just talking about with base voters who
Speaker 1: still love him, but with the party elite. He has
Speaker 1: been the ultimate like kingmaker and chess player. So the
Speaker 1: fact that he's concerned at this point is noteworthy. But
Speaker 1: of course, does that mean they're going to, like, you know,
Speaker 1: have an open Democratic primary process to try to pick
Speaker 1: a better candidate.
Speaker 3: Doesn't look like it. Yeah, absolutely, it does not look
Speaker 3: like that at all.
Speaker 2: So I am very skeptical of Joe Biden's presidency obviously
Speaker 2: for a lot of these reasons, and also just just
Speaker 2: to highlight some of the things we were talking about,
Speaker 2: let's go and put this up there on the screen.
Speaker 2: Polling wise, in every single swing state, Trump is now
Speaker 2: currently leading on average forty seven to forty two in Arizona,
Speaker 2: forty six to forty two, Georgia, forty nine to forty three,
Speaker 2: Michigan forty six forty two, Nevada forty seven forty four.
Speaker 3: North Carolina's out swing state. I don't know why they
Speaker 3: put them in.
Speaker 2: I know that Pennsylvania forty six to forty four, Wisconsin
Speaker 2: forty five, forty one.
Speaker 3: What is it? Didn't Obama win North Carolina by like
Speaker 3: a hair in two thousand and we have a one
Speaker 3: sent It hasn't been one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So let's just everybody, let's resign that to some
Speaker 2: crazy separate politics, at least in the interim.
Speaker 3: This is bad news.
Speaker 2: With the average at forty seven forty two and the
Speaker 2: individual state by state polling, the only thing Biden could
Speaker 2: hope for is a massive twenty twenty two style miss
Speaker 2: that underestimates abortion, which I am not ruling out, but
Speaker 2: that's a hell of a lot to bet on to
Speaker 2: try and win the presidency.
Speaker 4: Yeah, good luck, it sure is.
Speaker 1: And one of the things that comes out in this
Speaker 1: poll is a lot of the falloff for Joe Biden
Speaker 1: in recent weeks is among Democratic core constituencies, so among
Speaker 1: black voters, support has dropped since October. Among young voters
Speaker 1: between the ages of eighteen and thirty, four, there has
Speaker 1: been a huge drop off in disappointment over the failure
Speaker 1: to actually execute on a widespread student loan forgiveness program,
Speaker 1: and of course on his handling of the Israel War
Speaker 1: and the unconditional support for Israel, which is dramatically at
Speaker 1: odds with young people and very energizing for a lot
Speaker 1: of young people who just feel this is way too
Speaker 1: far for them to you know, not to say they're
Speaker 1: going to vote for Donald Trump, but they may vote
Speaker 1: for Cornell West, they may vote for Jill Stein, they
Speaker 1: may just not vote at all because they don't want
Speaker 1: to feel like they are supporting someone who is enabling
Speaker 1: a genocide, which I think is a very reasonable position
Speaker 1: to hold. So not only has he lost the trust
Speaker 1: of a lot of swing voters, but he has lost
Speaker 1: the trust of a lot of key constituencies that need
Speaker 1: to turn up in droves in order to help him
Speaker 1: defeat Donald Trump. So not a good landscape for him
Speaker 1: at this point. A little bit of movement actually on
Speaker 1: the Republican primary side, Nikki Haley surging in a New
Speaker 1: Hampshire poll will show you those numbers in a second,
Speaker 1: but it was an interesting moment. She was on one
Speaker 1: of the Sunday Shows, she was getting pressed over why
Speaker 1: she's very, you know, kind of tapid or timid about
Speaker 1: criticizing the guy who continues to be the overwhelming front
Speaker 1: runner in the race, Donald Trump.
Speaker 4: Let's take a listen to that.
Speaker 5: You don't want me to either love him or hate
Speaker 5: it all, I ask respond to a New Hampshire voter.
Speaker 5: So I did, and I responded to him in every way,
Speaker 5: And what I said to them was anti Trumpers want
Speaker 5: me to hate him, pro Trumpers want me.
Speaker 3: To love him.
Speaker 5: But this is where I stand. There are things I
Speaker 5: agree with the President on. I had a good working
Speaker 5: relationship with him. There are things I don't agree. I
Speaker 5: don't agree with the fact that, yes, we had a
Speaker 5: good economy while he was there, but he put US
Speaker 5: eight trillion dollars in debt that our kids are never
Speaker 5: going to forgive us for. I don't agree with how
Speaker 5: he handles national security. He focused on trade with China,
Speaker 5: but he did nothing about the fentanyl flow. He did
Speaker 5: nothing about the fact that fentyl has killed so many
Speaker 5: of our Americans. I don't think you should praise HESBLA.
Speaker 5: I don't think you should criticize netnyahu Win Israel's down
Speaker 5: on our knees. I don't think you should congratulate the
Speaker 5: Chinese Communist Party on their seventieth anniversary, and.
Speaker 9: He talks about annihilating his enemies and using the criminal
Speaker 9: justice system to do so, what do you think of that?
Speaker 5: You guys are exhausting. You're exhausting in your obsession with him.
Speaker 5: The thing is, the normal people aren't obsessed with Trump
Speaker 5: like you guys are. The normal people care about the
Speaker 5: fact that they can't afford things, They feel like their
Speaker 5: freedoms are being taken away. They think government's too big.
Speaker 5: I know y'all want to talk about every single word
Speaker 5: he says and every single tweet he does. That's exactly
Speaker 5: why we need a new generational leader, because people don't
Speaker 5: want to hear about every word a person says or
Speaker 5: every tweet. They want to know how you fought for
Speaker 5: them that day, and they want to know how their
Speaker 5: life is.
Speaker 3: Going to be different.
Speaker 5: And life would be a whole lot different if the
Speaker 5: media would stop this obsession with Trump.
Speaker 9: I mean, I was just asking you about his central
Speaker 9: campaign theme, which is I want you know, I am
Speaker 9: your retribution. And he's winning in the polls. That's why
Speaker 9: I'm asked, Well, it's you know, I'm asking about the
Speaker 9: leading candidate the year.
Speaker 3: He does everything he can not to talk about issues.
Speaker 10: It almost asks like he wasn't there, right, He doesn't
Speaker 10: want to talk about building the wall and securing the
Speaker 10: southern border because he didn't do it.
Speaker 4: What do you think of that?
Speaker 1: And by the way, that's a governor you knew of
Speaker 1: New Hampshire who's endors Sninky.
Speaker 3: I thought it was ridiculous.
Speaker 2: It's like you guys are upst with him, like, yeah,
Speaker 2: because he's beating your ass by fifty points in the
Speaker 2: overall GOP primary.
Speaker 4: Maybe you should be more obsessed. You should be more.
Speaker 2: Obsessed with Actually, I mean, look, like you said at
Speaker 2: the same time, she's actually not doing so badly in
Speaker 2: New Hampshire. We can put that up there on the screen.
Speaker 2: Our graphics team did a great job with this. You
Speaker 2: can see here in New Hampshire that Trump is currently
Speaker 2: at forty four, Nikki Haley at twenty nine, DeSantis at eleven,
Speaker 2: Christia ten, Ramaswami at five, Hutchison at one. I didn't
Speaker 2: even know he's there, was still running obviously, but that
Speaker 2: does show you that look and it makes sense Trump.
Speaker 2: If there is a anti Trump constituency, it is broken
Speaker 2: up amongst all these little candidates. Nikki, I actually think
Speaker 2: is the best case for an anti Trump candidate, because
Speaker 2: that's around where it should sit. Twenty nine percent people
Speaker 2: who are Neil Khan in traditional you know, honestly, just
Speaker 2: like the old school Mitt Romney style boomers. That's around
Speaker 2: where the support would look like between twenty and forty
Speaker 2: especially in a state like New Hampshire, which has got
Speaker 2: people like Jeane Shaheen who represent them, but the overwhelming
Speaker 2: or at least plurality in this case our Trump asked
Speaker 2: or Trump's style with Destantas and Ramaswami support in them.
Speaker 2: I would also say there's a lot of talk right
Speaker 2: now Chris sol like, oh, Christy should drop out and
Speaker 2: throw all of the support to Nicki Haley and then
Speaker 2: maybe she could beat Trump. In New Hampshire. We've seen
Speaker 2: consistently that the second choice for a lot of these candidates.
Speaker 3: Is also Trump.
Speaker 2: There's no evidence to support that the vast majority of
Speaker 2: the support would go there.
Speaker 1: Although Christy best case, I was going to say, with
Speaker 1: Chris Christy, I would think that you would have the
Speaker 1: best possibility of most of his support flowing to probably
Speaker 1: Nikki Haley. And you know, we could look at polling
Speaker 1: and see who the top second choice for.
Speaker 4: His for his voters is.
Speaker 1: But you know, New Hampshire is very different from a
Speaker 1: lot of the other states. For one thing, you know,
Speaker 1: they do have this sort of like muttered independent streak.
Speaker 1: For another thing, actually independence can vote in this primary,
Speaker 1: and many of them probably will since there isn't that
Speaker 1: much of a contest on the Democratic side, because the
Speaker 1: Democrats have decided not to really have much of a
Speaker 1: contest on the demok side. So that's part of why
Speaker 1: she's doing well in this state. And one of the
Speaker 1: things that was interesting in this CBS poll is they
Speaker 1: pulled Iowa and they pulled New Hampshire, and the picture
Speaker 1: is very different.
Speaker 4: In Iowa.
Speaker 1: The fact that Nikki has been perceived as a sort
Speaker 1: of like moderate on Trump is a major downfall for
Speaker 1: her there. It's a major impediment for her there. The
Speaker 1: fact that she's tried to moderate some on abortion has
Speaker 1: been a major impediment for her in Iowa. Those are
Speaker 1: things that are all boosting her in New Hampshire. These
Speaker 1: are two very different populations. A couple other things that
Speaker 1: I just thought were interesting in terms of her potential upside.
Speaker 1: If I'm going to try to make the case for
Speaker 1: Nicki Haley here in New Hampshire. So she actually tied
Speaker 1: Trump when they asked who is prepared to be president?
Speaker 1: She and Trump had the top numbers. I think they
Speaker 1: both had like fifty seven percent or something like that.
Speaker 1: But she did well on that metric and matched him.
Speaker 1: She was described fifty five percent described her as likable.
Speaker 1: She was top on that quality over DeSantis was at
Speaker 1: thirty seven. Trump was at thirty six. So people said
Speaker 1: they liked her, they felt like she was prepared. You
Speaker 1: had fifty one percent, so a majority saying that she
Speaker 1: was reasonable quote versus six percent for Trump. Trump had
Speaker 1: the edge though when it came to being seen as
Speaker 1: a strong leader and being the most electable. That one
Speaker 1: was really interesting to me because you know, it's not
Speaker 1: what the polls reflect. The polls reflect that Trump is
Speaker 1: in good position to beat Joe Biden. But actually some
Speaker 1: of the poles that have come out have shown Nikki
Speaker 1: Haley with even more of an edge over Joe Biden
Speaker 1: because she doesn't come with a lot of the Trump
Speaker 1: baggage and isn't saying things like, you know, immigrants are
Speaker 1: poisoning the blood of the nation.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but.
Speaker 1: The Republican primary electorate sees Trump overwhelmingly as the candidate
Speaker 1: to beat Joe Biden. They think he's the guy who
Speaker 1: has the best shot at it. So, you know, to
Speaker 1: the extent that that was ever one of the big
Speaker 1: concerns for a Republican electorate in one of the cases
Speaker 1: that Ron De Santis, for example, was making, it seems
Speaker 1: that seems to have not worked out for them.
Speaker 3: No, certainly.
Speaker 2: And also you know, on the Disanta side, the implosion
Speaker 2: of his tire operation is really something to behold. I mean,
Speaker 2: I still honestly can't believe it with the resignation of
Speaker 2: the never Back Down chairman Jeff Rowe, who ran ted
Speaker 2: Cruz's campaign Crystal and who really engineered a lot.
Speaker 3: Of the Iowa win, he's resigning.
Speaker 2: And we've also remember we had the stories that we
Speaker 2: played here previously about DeSantis in open war with his
Speaker 2: own super pack, Like their inability to get donors to
Speaker 2: have a tight like run an actual tight ship, have
Speaker 2: a robust campaign infrastructure is really like a catastrophic complosion,
Speaker 2: which is Jeb level I think for what's coming.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's wild said since the day before Thanksgiving, I think,
Speaker 1: did we put this up on the screen that we've
Speaker 1: got the element the pro Desanta super pac which is
Speaker 1: called Never Back Down, which, by the way, they were
Speaker 1: going to try to run their campaign different and basically
Speaker 1: Never back Down was going to be the campaign.
Speaker 4: Most of the money was going to reside.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of the strategy was going to
Speaker 1: come from there, even things like paying for on the
Speaker 1: ground organized. They had this like, oh, we're going to
Speaker 1: revolutionize the way campaigns are operated and funded, et cetera.
Speaker 4: That has not worked out.
Speaker 1: So since Thanksgiving you had the resignation of one chief executive,
Speaker 1: resignation of one board chairman, the firing of a second
Speaker 1: chief executive along with two other top officials, and now
Speaker 1: you have the late night quitting of Jeff Row. All
Speaker 1: have come after massive infighting and finger pointing. As mister
Speaker 1: DeSantis has slipped in the polls RO put down statement
Speaker 1: on x formally Twitter that said I can't believe it
Speaker 1: ended this way, And you know this came after some
Speaker 1: internal recriminations, etc. But you know, this is what happens
Speaker 1: when you're losing people place blame, they point fingers, they
Speaker 1: get angry.
Speaker 4: At each other, they throw each other under the bus.
Speaker 1: And so the fact that there is turmoil in the
Speaker 1: Rhonda Santis super Pac world, I think it's just emblematic
Speaker 1: of how his campaign is going overall.
Speaker 3: I think you are absolutely right.
Speaker 2: At the same time, let's turn to Ukraine' some really
Speaker 2: disturbing stories that are coming out, really the truth beginning
Speaker 2: to emerge about Ukraine's manpower problems. Let's go ahead and
Speaker 2: put this up there on the screen by genuinely courageous
Speaker 2: reporter Thomas gibbons Neff, who's previously been banned by Ukraine
Speaker 2: from reporting about the realities on the ground. Gibbonsneff here
Speaker 2: Crystal reports a full fledged quote people snatching campaign by
Speaker 2: Ukrainian recruiters to use to fill the ranks of conscription
Speaker 2: and recruitment depots.
Speaker 3: So here's what he writes. Quote recruiters have.
Speaker 2: Confiscated passports, taken people from their jobs, and at least
Speaker 2: one case, tried to send mentally disabled person to military training.
Speaker 2: According to lawyers, activists, and Ukrainian men who have been
Speaker 2: subjected to coercive tactics, there are now videos of soldiers
Speaker 2: shoving people into cars, holding men against their will in
Speaker 2: recruiting centers that are surfacing with increasing frequency on social media.
Speaker 2: We had some, but we didn't feel confident enough in
Speaker 2: their veracity to play them. But at the very least,
Speaker 2: a lot of these videos are going viral inside of Ukraine,
Speaker 2: and it highlights the intense manpower problems that they have.
Speaker 2: I would combine this story with one that I brought
Speaker 2: in my monologue on Thursday about Ukraine, Zelenski admitting to
Speaker 2: the US Congress that to continue the war effort, he's
Speaker 2: likely going to have to expand conscription to men over
Speaker 2: the age of forty years old. And in one case
Speaker 2: they actually describe here a fifty eight year old taxi
Speaker 2: driver who quote feared retribution, said the recruiters showed up,
Speaker 2: took his passport, returned it only after he showed up
Speaker 2: for his medical screening. He's describing it as quote lawlessness.
Speaker 2: So what they're doing is they take your passport away.
Speaker 2: You can't if you want to retrieve your passport, you
Speaker 2: have to go to the recruitment depot and they make
Speaker 2: you sign the papers for force conscription. And in many
Speaker 2: small towns across Ukraine. Many of the people who have
Speaker 2: been forcibly conscripted have unfortunately died on the front line
Speaker 2: already after only several months in the military, which is
Speaker 2: having a chilling effect because a lot of people don't
Speaker 2: want to serve.
Speaker 3: So you have two problems.
Speaker 2: One, six hundred and some thousand Ukrainian prime age males
Speaker 2: have fled the country.
Speaker 3: They don't want to fight period.
Speaker 2: Everybody left basically subject to being kidnapped by the government
Speaker 2: and thrown you into conscription, which at this point I
Speaker 2: think manpower is their single biggest problem. You will and
Speaker 2: I were discussing, want to float a credit to our
Speaker 2: friend Yegor who flagged this for us. There's a report
Speaker 2: coming out from the deputy of the ruling servant of
Speaker 2: the People Party that said that Ukraine is preparing for
Speaker 2: general mobilization, including a bill proposing to mobilize women to
Speaker 2: serve in defense enterprises and voluntarily to serve at the
Speaker 2: front under contract, I mean voluntarily doing a lot of
Speaker 2: work there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and they've already required women who have certain skills,
Speaker 1: in particular in the medical profession and pharmaceutical to register
Speaker 1: for conscription. So this would be you know, potentially expanding
Speaker 1: that and there are a lot of you know, there's
Speaker 1: obviously a lot of very domestic concern over what that's
Speaker 1: going to mean.
Speaker 4: They previously close the borders.
Speaker 1: And that has remained for military aged men, so a
Speaker 1: lot of women wondering if that is going to follow
Speaker 1: for them as well. This story is heartbreaking about the
Speaker 1: quote unquote people snatchers, and what comes out is not
Speaker 1: only have you had you know, devastating losses and casualties
Speaker 1: high numbers, so that obviously there's a loss of men,
Speaker 1: so there's a need to recruit more men and bring
Speaker 1: in more men. There's also because of that and because
Speaker 1: the war's not going well. It was one thing in
Speaker 1: the beginning, people wanted to sign up for the cause.
Speaker 1: There was a huge surge in recruitment because people wanted
Speaker 1: to be part of a winning war effort. Now the
Speaker 1: Zelenski you know, propaganda efforts have sort of faltered. They
Speaker 1: can see the distance between how things are actually going
Speaker 1: and how it's been portrayed to them, so that has
Speaker 1: dampened enthusiasm for getting involved in this. And the other
Speaker 1: piece is massive corruption. So people who are wealthy they
Speaker 1: pay off their recruiters and recruiters go to a doctor.
Speaker 1: This is all reported out in this piece. They go
Speaker 1: to a doctor, They'll get them to write up a
Speaker 1: medical exemption and boom, you're good to go. So they
Speaker 1: have a quote here from one Key based lawyer who's
Speaker 1: been representing some of the individuals who been wrongly or
Speaker 1: who are saying they were wrongly drafted, said, it's a
Speaker 1: war for poor people because those anybody who doesn't have
Speaker 1: the means to pay, those are the ones who are
Speaker 1: being snatched up and sent to the front lines. So
Speaker 1: it is, it is truly heartbreaking.
Speaker 4: And you know, we're.
Speaker 1: About to talk about the AID situation, and I just
Speaker 1: I think that our approach to this has been disgusting
Speaker 1: because we've given them enough weapons to give them hope,
Speaker 1: We've given them enough to basically like stay in and
Speaker 1: fight to the last man. And yet you know we
Speaker 1: have we blocked piece at the beginning. You know, we
Speaker 1: are now likely to suspend AID altogether. I don't even
Speaker 1: know what you do at this point, because Russia has
Speaker 1: no interest in doing any sort of deal at this
Speaker 1: point because they're in such a strong position. So I'm
Speaker 1: just thoroughly disgusted by our political class. I'm thoroughly disgusted
Speaker 1: by our media class, by the fact that you couldn't
Speaker 1: even have these discussions until right now, and they're they
Speaker 1: are in a horrific situation.
Speaker 4: At the moment.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's highlight some of that. So let's put this
Speaker 2: up there and again. These are the voices of Ukrainian
Speaker 2: marines and soldiers from the front line who are saying
Speaker 2: on the record that they are quote, engaged in a
Speaker 2: suicide mission on the Denipro River, And one I really
Speaker 2: want to read is about this is that quote. For
Speaker 2: two months, the Marine Corps has been spearheading in as
Speaker 2: Salt across the river in the southern region of Kursan
Speaker 2: to recapture territory. The operation is the latest in the
Speaker 2: flagging counter offensive. Soldiers and marines who have taken part
Speaker 2: in this river crossing describe it as brutalizing and futile.
Speaker 2: Waves of Ukrainian troops struck down on the river banks
Speaker 2: or in the water before they even reach the other side.
Speaker 3: Conditions are so difficult.
Speaker 2: Half dozen men involved in the fighting said in the
Speaker 2: interviews there is nowhere to dig in that there are,
Speaker 2: and including bodies that are rotting in the mud. And
Speaker 2: in the river for a period of now two months,
Speaker 2: dead marines that have just been laying there because they're
Speaker 2: unable to be retrieved from intense shelling. That is straight
Speaker 2: out of Passiondale and of the First World War. I've
Speaker 2: even visited some of these places, some of their graveyards,
Speaker 2: where you'll go there and there's just graves randomly scattered
Speaker 2: in a field, and I was like, what's going on here,
Speaker 2: And they're like, oh, this was a mud pit, and
Speaker 2: we don't even know who died here because we didn't
Speaker 2: reclaim until nine months later, so we just put up
Speaker 2: a bunch of crosses. That's what we're dealing with here
Speaker 2: now inside of Ukraine. And really what they talk about
Speaker 2: is that in this case, they specifically went on the
Speaker 2: record because they said that Zelenski and other defense officials
Speaker 2: quote recently suggested that marines have gained a foothold on
Speaker 2: the eastern bank. These marines say, quote, there are no positions.
Speaker 2: There is no such thing as an observation post or position.
Speaker 2: It is impossible to gain a foothold there. It is
Speaker 2: impossible to move equipment there. It is not even a
Speaker 2: fight for survival. It is a suicide mission.
Speaker 3: Period.
Speaker 2: I mean, this is a commander who put on the
Speaker 2: record to the New York Times here for one reason,
Speaker 2: he wants to stop the and I can guarantee you
Speaker 2: he's probably only going to face retribution as a result
Speaker 2: of this, when all he's trying to do is save
Speaker 2: himself and all of his men who are being brutally killed,
Speaker 2: you know, in this defensive and this is the reality.
Speaker 2: Now you've got the manpower problems on top of the
Speaker 2: tactics and the way that they want to fight. This
Speaker 2: is what they want us to try and continue to fund.
Speaker 2: And it's just so obvious that it is not only
Speaker 2: not going to work, but at the very best, you
Speaker 2: are just bleeding the poorest people who can't afford to
Speaker 2: bribe their way out of getting into the draft. And
Speaker 2: now like mentally disabled people who have an actual medical
Speaker 2: exemption and are still being forced into conscription. I made
Speaker 2: the reference last time, like the Hitler Volkstrom policy of
Speaker 2: calling up like really old men and thirteen year old
Speaker 2: boys to defend the fatherland.
Speaker 3: They're not that far away from that right now. They're
Speaker 3: really not.
Speaker 2: And this religious highlights too, where they're asking for more ammunitions,
Speaker 2: artillery and weapons to just continue to fight this way.
Speaker 2: So let's put this up there on the screen. This
Speaker 2: is about really two weeks of reality for Zelenski. Number one,
Speaker 2: his visit to Washington, where you know, he did not
Speaker 2: get the aid that he wanted. It's possible they may
Speaker 2: still get more. But there also was in a fifty
Speaker 2: billion dollar appropriation from the European Union which was rejected
Speaker 2: by Hungary, which stopped some of the flow of future
Speaker 2: aid to Ukraine. There's a splintering in international and global
Speaker 2: support now in economics support, and it just again raises
Speaker 2: a question of like what are you even going to
Speaker 2: use the money for to continue this to what possible
Speaker 2: benefit is this to your country and to our country?
Speaker 3: Zero?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm there are no good solutions. I think that's
Speaker 1: the bottom line answer. And all I can keep thinking
Speaker 1: is when you're in a whole stop digging. You know,
Speaker 1: if we continue this policy of like dribbling out aid
Speaker 1: to enable them to you know, send their young men,
Speaker 1: and now there are older men and now potentially they're
Speaker 1: women to fight and die in the trenches with basically
Speaker 1: no hope of being able to secure a victory, Like
Speaker 1: you're only going to end up in an even worse
Speaker 1: position down the road for any sort of a negotiated settlement.
Speaker 4: So it's an utter disaster.
Speaker 1: With regard to Zelenski's trip at the White House, they
Speaker 1: say Biden was forced to downgrade the US's pledge from
Speaker 1: supporting Kiev for as long as it takes to supplying
Speaker 1: the country with weapons as long as we can.
Speaker 4: And keep in mind, let's say they get this package through.
Speaker 1: You know, Republicans are eager enough to get their border deal,
Speaker 1: and everybody apparently is eager enough to get their Israel money,
Speaker 1: and so Ukraine gets another tranch of funding.
Speaker 4: What then?
Speaker 3: What then?
Speaker 1: You've got a presidential election around the corner where it
Speaker 1: looks damn well likely that Donald Trump could be coming
Speaker 1: back to the White House. And if you think that
Speaker 1: he's going to continue this, I think that's.
Speaker 4: Very very unlikely.
Speaker 1: So it's nothing but grim scenarios and grim possibilities from
Speaker 1: here on out with Ukraine.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, it's nothing looks good in terms of what
Speaker 2: their future is. We also highlighted to the Russian response
Speaker 2: where they currently are probably less likely to pursue a
Speaker 2: deal in terms of what Putin and all of them
Speaker 2: said because they're like, listen, what.
Speaker 3: Are you guys going to do?
Speaker 2: And it's a geopolitical reality where the current cope that
Speaker 2: I see is, oh, if we've just given them the
Speaker 2: planes and all this stuff in the first place, and
Speaker 2: they would have won and we would never have been
Speaker 2: in this position.
Speaker 3: I actually don't think that's true at all.
Speaker 2: They've been incompetent in all of their employed use of
Speaker 2: Western style tactics and technology on the battlefield, which is
Speaker 2: why they're throwing guys into a river and making them
Speaker 2: die like it's World War One. That's what they know
Speaker 2: how to do, and that's fine. But in a world
Speaker 2: where constraints exist for our a to Ukraine like F
Speaker 2: sixteens and long range missiles, where it could spark a
Speaker 2: broader war, then this was the inevitable outcome, which is
Speaker 2: why peace deal itself was always the best policy.
Speaker 3: April twenty twenty two.
Speaker 2: Now you've got who knows, maybe half a million dead,
Speaker 2: nobody knows what the real number is, or at least
Speaker 2: dead and wounded inside of Ukraine. You've got diminishing manpower,
Speaker 2: you've got basically zero industry of their own, and the
Speaker 2: Kremlin is revved up for war production and they don't
Speaker 2: care at all. So honestly, the worst case Mario was
Speaker 2: actually more likely I think today than ever before.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean on the other side, like, I actually
Speaker 1: do have more sympathy now though for that idea of Hey,
Speaker 1: if we're gonna block them from doing a peace deal
Speaker 1: early on, you better give them everything you can to
Speaker 1: give them at least a fighting chance of actually securing
Speaker 1: some kind of a meaningful gain and meaningful victory. They
Speaker 1: had momentum at the beginning. The Russians were a chaotic,
Speaker 1: disastrous mess. They hadn't been able to spin up their
Speaker 1: war production. You know, everything was going awry in the
Speaker 1: field for them. Now they have become a much more
Speaker 1: effective fighting force at this point, and they've been able
Speaker 1: to spin up their industrial domestic production.
Speaker 4: So I agree with you, Sager. Do I think it
Speaker 4: would have worked.
Speaker 1: Probably not, but in a lot of In one sense,
Speaker 1: we've really ended up with like the worst of all
Speaker 1: worlds for them, because we've bled them out and given
Speaker 1: them no possibility of any sort of victory.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 1: Obviously, the reason we opposed the other approach of going
Speaker 1: all in was because of the very real risk of
Speaker 1: a broader war between two nuclear arms superpower, which was
Speaker 1: a risk that I always found wholly unacceptable. Is why
Speaker 1: I post that position from the jump. But I do
Speaker 1: think that the people who were like, we got to
Speaker 1: go all in with them if we were going to
Speaker 1: block the peace deal, you know what, that was the
Speaker 1: like correct moral and strategic position to take at that point.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I totally agree, And it's obvious. Now, however, will
Speaker 2: they change their tune? No, they certainly.
Speaker 1: Want all right, So let's talk a little bit about
Speaker 1: our friend, Senator John Fetterman, your friend what was not
Speaker 1: my friend anymore?
Speaker 4: So put this up on the screen.
Speaker 1: Senator Fetterman, who has become very aggressively pro Israel, like
Speaker 1: one of the most pro Israel members of the Senate,
Speaker 1: just gave an interview in which he also broke with
Speaker 1: the left on immigration, and he told NBC News quote unquote,
Speaker 1: I am not a progressive.
Speaker 4: Really. It's very interesting because that is not.
Speaker 1: At all what you've been saying for the entirety of
Speaker 1: your political career since you burst on the scene in
Speaker 1: Pennsylvania where you wrapped yourselves yourself when it was convenient
Speaker 1: in Bernie Sanders and endorsed him in twenty sixteen and
Speaker 1: called yourself, you know, progressive routinely, especially when you're asking
Speaker 1: for money.
Speaker 4: I'll give you some of those examples in a moment.
Speaker 1: But even on an immigration piece, this is a total
Speaker 1: one point eighty from the way that he campaigned, and
Speaker 1: noteworthy because his own wife is actually an undocumented immigrant
Speaker 1: from Brazil. Here's one of the campaign ads that he
Speaker 1: ran when he was sounding a very different note on
Speaker 1: the topic.
Speaker 4: Take a listen.
Speaker 11: I'm proud of my wife, Jizelle's origin story, and I'm
Speaker 11: so grateful for the sacrifices that her mother made all
Speaker 11: those years ago to come to this country looking for
Speaker 11: a better life, because if they didn't, I wouldn't have
Speaker 11: the incredible family that I have now and the partner
Speaker 11: that I have in Gizelle. The Statue of Liberty says,
Speaker 11: send us your poor, huddled masses, and as long as
Speaker 11: we remain true to that original sentiment, America will continue
Speaker 11: to grow and prosper because immigration makes America America. We
Speaker 11: diminish ourselves and are never more Unamerican when we eliminate
Speaker 11: citizenship for those that just simply want to contribute and
Speaker 11: be a part of our great country.
Speaker 1: So, like I said, very different from the tone he
Speaker 1: is striking now on immigration. And this is all, of course,
Speaker 1: in the context of this potential aid bill, which absurdly
Speaker 1: ties together Israel, Ukraine and tougher border enforcement policies. Fetterman
Speaker 1: signaling to NBC News that he is very open even
Speaker 1: to the toughest of those increased enforcement border policies, which
Speaker 1: is really different from the way he campaigned and what
Speaker 1: he said in the past on this issue.
Speaker 12: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, we especially have to highlight and this is part
Speaker 2: of why I get annoyed about the conflation of immigrant
Speaker 2: and we don't apply the proper rhetoric here. She was
Speaker 2: an a legal immigrant now I guess she was brought
Speaker 2: here by her mother whenever she was a child, but
Speaker 2: is a direct recipient of an amnesty policy from the
Speaker 2: Bush administration, gaining her green card in two thousand and four,
Speaker 2: becoming a US citizen eventually in two thousand and nine.
Speaker 2: So that is why I think his comments are especially
Speaker 2: noteworthy because he's not talking about immigration. He's talking specifically
Speaker 2: about illegal immigration, of which his wife literally was the
Speaker 2: beneficiary of said policy, and he's changing his tune. I
Speaker 2: have no problem with that, because that's the policy that
Speaker 2: I support. I don't even think his wife should be
Speaker 2: allowed to have citizenship, but that's the secondary question because
Speaker 2: it's done now. But I think it does highlight Crystal
Speaker 2: for your point about something that I personally hate, which
Speaker 2: is taking advantage of political constituencies when convenient and then
Speaker 2: turning upon a dime. And with this guy, he was
Speaker 2: a Bernie Sanders like progressive type person when it was
Speaker 2: convenient and he was running against Connor Lamb, and I mean,
Speaker 2: you remember that the Democratic establishment was totally pro Lamb.
Speaker 2: They only came to him after they saw how much
Speaker 2: he won in the prime and really after he won
Speaker 2: his election that they were able to reconcile themselves. But
Speaker 2: now it's like his change completely on a dime. I honestly,
Speaker 2: I don't know what to make of his thing. I
Speaker 2: personally just think like it's obvious that the money played
Speaker 2: a huge role here on the Israel side, based on
Speaker 2: Ryan's book. On the immigration side too. I think he's
Speaker 2: trying to save his ass, like Eric Adams and all
Speaker 2: these other Democrats because Pennsylvania is a you know, Pennsylvania
Speaker 2: is not a red state per se, but it's a
Speaker 2: swing state.
Speaker 3: It's certain state.
Speaker 4: But he does need to.
Speaker 1: I mean, he has pissed off progressives so much, especially
Speaker 1: on Israel. I have to say the immigration comments are new,
Speaker 1: but that's certainly going to piss.
Speaker 4: People off as well. That he does actually have to worry.
Speaker 1: I think about a primary challenge in the state of
Speaker 1: Pennsylvania and on the immigration front. Like it's a long
Speaker 1: time before he has to face reelection, so to be
Speaker 1: making this hard pivot right now, it really is a
Speaker 1: head scratcher. And just to give you some of the proof,
Speaker 1: because there are a lot of people put this up
Speaker 1: on the screen who were like, hey, this individual says, funny,
Speaker 1: he was a progressive when he was asking me for
Speaker 1: my effing money and posted a bunch of examples. I mean,
Speaker 1: these were not hard to find. He's retweeting. His tweeting
Speaker 1: is Bernie's support. Retweet if you're standing with these progressive champions,
Speaker 1: he says, with a picture of Bernie, a picture of him.
Speaker 1: Progressive rhetoric is great, but progressive results are one hundred,
Speaker 1: he tweeted. He tweeted, also, we have started a progressive
Speaker 1: movement here in Pennsylvania. So gee, I wonder John Fetterman,
Speaker 1: where people got the idea that you were a progressive
Speaker 1: with consistently progressive principles.
Speaker 4: Now what the hell happened here?
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 1: I mean, did the Strokes chake something loose? Possible? But
Speaker 1: I think you're right Zager that the best indication we
Speaker 1: have is what happened with Israel. He made an incredibly
Speaker 1: politically cynical and expedient decision with regard to Israel policy.
Speaker 1: Ryan Grimm reported it out. Basically, he saw that a
Speaker 1: pack money in a pack affiliated money was coming into
Speaker 1: these democratic primary races aggressively on the side of anyone
Speaker 1: who had any dissenting word on Israel and Palestine, and
Speaker 1: so he went to them himself and was like, Okay,
Speaker 1: here's my position. Is this good enough? They're like, no,
Speaker 1: you need to make this change, in this change.
Speaker 4: In this change.
Speaker 1: She's like, okay, done, here's where it is. And he
Speaker 1: ran with that, and it has now aggressively leaned into that.
Speaker 1: So I have to think this is all cynical political maneuvering.
Speaker 1: Is it intelligent cynical political maneuvering? That part is not
Speaker 1: so clear to me, because, like I said that, there,
Speaker 1: you know, there is a sizable progressive movement, organized movement
Speaker 1: in the state of Pennsylvania. And I do think that
Speaker 1: he is becoming like Kirsten Cinema or Joe Manchin level
Speaker 1: of hated by plenty of progressives in the Democratic base,
Speaker 1: especially among young people. So you know, it's not just
Speaker 1: the general election that I think he would ultimately have
Speaker 1: to worry about here if he continues in this direction,
Speaker 1: but just the political cynicism here and the denying that
Speaker 1: the posturing like you never presented yourself as a progressive.
Speaker 1: If you've had a genuine evolution, you want to explain
Speaker 1: how you came there. Okay, fine, Like I may still
Speaker 1: believe that it's political, but at least you can acknowledge.
Speaker 4: That this is a shift.
Speaker 1: But he's just pretending like, oh, this is who I've
Speaker 1: always been, and it's complete non sense.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think it's personally. Listen, I tried
Speaker 2: to tell you guys the dressing thing. It wasn't about
Speaker 2: the connecting to the people. He's a narcissist and it's
Speaker 2: all about egoism. Viere just I would just say, I
Speaker 2: mean Cinema and Fetterman, the two worst dresses, Yeah, are
Speaker 2: the two biggest narcissists.
Speaker 1: Two most cynical political operators. And you know, if you're
Speaker 1: happy with his positions now on this like, he is
Speaker 1: going to just go wherever it is most politically convenient
Speaker 1: for him, Wherever the campaign donations are the richest, that's
Speaker 1: where he's going to position. And that's what we saw
Speaker 1: with Cinema as an example here. But yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: pretty wild to watch this all unfolding in real time.
Speaker 2: Tried to tell you, all right, let's move on to
Speaker 2: the I don't even know how to set this up.
Speaker 3: Let's just put it this way.
Speaker 2: There is a Senate staffer who was engaged in some
Speaker 2: pretty crazy conduct.
Speaker 3: Let's go and put this up there on the screen.
Speaker 2: So my old colleagues, my old friend Henry Roger, reports
Speaker 2: this story. This is definitely not safe for work though,
Speaker 2: for everybody who's watching. Senate Stafford has taught filming a
Speaker 2: graphic gay sex tape in a Senate hearing room, posing
Speaker 2: both in amateur pornography images that he distributed on Instagram
Speaker 2: and amongst a group chat of fellow gay staffers on
Speaker 2: Capitol Hill, in addition to posting video of himself engaged
Speaker 2: in a gay sexual act while he was while he.
Speaker 3: Was in the Senate hearing room.
Speaker 2: Now, this hearing room is the Senate Judiciary Room, of
Speaker 2: which he actually worked for Senator Ben Carden and had
Speaker 2: access to this room as a high level staffer, largely
Speaker 2: because this is open previously to things like Sonya Sotomayor's
Speaker 2: hearing room, the James Comy testimony, and it's also one
Speaker 2: that he posted about on his private Instagram. Anyway, this
Speaker 2: was I was telling our editorial team the number of
Speaker 2: people who have sent me a gay pornography of this gentleman,
Speaker 2: please stop, because my phone is now full of gay
Speaker 2: porn of this man.
Speaker 3: And I don't want to see this man's ass ever. Again.
Speaker 2: I've seen so much of it now at this point,
Speaker 2: and largely it was people who worked with him on
Speaker 2: Capitol Hill and they were like, you got to put
Speaker 2: this out there. I'm like, I'm sorry, enough has been
Speaker 2: done at this point. What I find personally humorous is
Speaker 2: this gentleman's defense of himself.
Speaker 3: Let's put this up there on the screen. His name
Speaker 3: is Aiden.
Speaker 2: I'm going to go with Mace Kruzepski. Anyway, Here's what
Speaker 2: he says on LinkedIn, which is also amazing. This has
Speaker 2: been a difficult time for me, as I have been
Speaker 2: attacked for who I love to pursue a political attend right.
Speaker 2: While some of my actions in the past have shown
Speaker 2: poor judgment, some I love my job would never.
Speaker 3: Disrespect my workplace.
Speaker 2: Any attempts to characterize my actions otherwise are fabricated, and
Speaker 2: I will be exploring what legal options are available to
Speaker 2: me in these matters. As for accusations regarding Congressman Max Miller,
Speaker 2: I have never seen the congressman had no opportunity to cause,
Speaker 2: yell or confront an.
Speaker 3: So there was a dual controversy.
Speaker 2: So the other part of the controversy was that aiden
Speaker 2: this staffer was a staffer who yelled at a congressman
Speaker 2: Free Palestine, who was a pro Israel congressman. They had
Speaker 2: named him anonymously, but nobody knows who was actually him,
Speaker 2: Max Miller has Max Miller has not confirmed that it
Speaker 2: was him. At this point, I have no idea. I mean,
Speaker 2: he rejects it. Nobody else seems to have any information
Speaker 2: of the contrary. Well, we certainly do have information to
Speaker 2: is how this gentleman was conducting himself very openly. What
Speaker 2: I find astounding about this guy is that this was
Speaker 2: not a single incident. As I said, I've got plenty
Speaker 2: of examples right here that have been going on for months,
Speaker 2: and it was out in the open, I mean, posting
Speaker 2: on his Instagram and even sharing like with dozens of
Speaker 2: fellow Capitol Hill Capitol Hill staffers.
Speaker 4: But other things happening in the Capitol or yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean, look, I mean, I've got some photos here
Speaker 2: on this firstime.
Speaker 3: I meant the funniest one.
Speaker 2: I'm just gonnay, there's no allegation behind This is him
Speaker 2: in the Senate.
Speaker 3: I could literally have it. Here is of.
Speaker 2: Him in his Senate in the Senate shower being like
Speaker 2: in the work shower, waiting for you, Lindsey Graham.
Speaker 3: Which is kind of pretty wild.
Speaker 13: There's a couple others that I have obtained which show
Speaker 13: him like with members of Congress, like staring at his fingers,
Speaker 13: being like, I want to lick his luscious fingers when
Speaker 13: the guy.
Speaker 3: I swear this is all real. This is in the workplace.
Speaker 2: I don't personally care about anything he's doing in his
Speaker 2: personal life.
Speaker 3: All of us of wild photos from that too.
Speaker 2: Just the ones that I'm willing to talk about here
Speaker 2: are all the Capital you know, posting a lot of
Speaker 2: stuff and actually apparently was told Crystal behind the scenes, bro,
Speaker 2: you need to calm down. After he was after he
Speaker 2: was promoted in Senator Card's office, because his social media
Speaker 2: was like a widespread, like a known thing amongst a
Speaker 2: lot of his coworkers. NBC News putting this out here.
Speaker 2: Let's put this up there. Also, their headline is so ridiculous.
Speaker 2: Put this up there. Senate staff are alleged by concerned Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's not alleged. Okay, we've got the video to have
Speaker 2: had sex. And hearing room is no longer employed. So
Speaker 2: Senator Cardin's office just says this aiden is no longer
Speaker 2: employed by the US Senate after the Daily Caller publish it.
Speaker 2: Just ludicrous that they wouldn't be able to just confirm it.
Speaker 2: And last, but not least, here, Madison Cawthorne, who once
Speaker 2: alleged Coke Field orgies happening on Capitol Hill, tweets this
Speaker 2: out quote. I told you, and look, he was right.
Speaker 2: He was certainly right.
Speaker 4: So that's where that's where we're at.
Speaker 2: He should he should have named more names. Uh yeah,
Speaker 2: that's all. I got this this ge just so everyone knows, Yeah,
Speaker 2: George George. Of course he's waited and he went after
Speaker 2: He's like, you're not being fired because you're gay, So
Speaker 2: you can fire because you fuck somebody in the set
Speaker 2: a hearing room and you put it out on the
Speaker 2: social media, which is certainly something. Also from what I understand,
Speaker 2: Christ is this last thing, the alleged top is actually
Speaker 2: a former employee of the German government, So there's there's
Speaker 2: even an international spying.
Speaker 3: Oh god, great.
Speaker 4: Great. In some ways, the wildest part to me is.
Speaker 3: The statement he yeah, I think I think you're right.
Speaker 4: It's like people are attacking me for who I love.
Speaker 1: Dude, Come on, I mean, yeah, if it was if
Speaker 1: it was heterosexual sexture, people.
Speaker 4: Would also care about this.
Speaker 1: If it was a woman, I mean, can you imagine
Speaker 1: the level of like slutshaming perhaps appropriagious.
Speaker 3: So there's no on it.
Speaker 4: This was so put the identity piece aside.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there were a lot of jokes being made about
Speaker 1: like this is probably the most awesome thing that's happened
Speaker 1: in the Senate hearing room and in some time or
Speaker 1: like at least someone's deriving some joy from the things
Speaker 1: that are.
Speaker 4: Happening in the sun room.
Speaker 1: So I guess there is a bit of a point there,
Speaker 1: but I don't know. It's just when I see characters
Speaker 1: like this, you know, like George Santosis of the World,
Speaker 1: where he's just so brazen in his lies and just
Speaker 1: over and I'm like, you're so brazen with this. I
Speaker 1: can't wrap my head around it. It's that's the part
Speaker 1: of it to me that's fascinating and interesting.
Speaker 3: Call me a boomer.
Speaker 2: I don't really know why you have to talk about
Speaker 2: your sex live period with all your coworkers. And look,
Speaker 2: if you want to post it on your social media,
Speaker 2: I mean that's fine, but like, look, I don't think
Speaker 2: people understand this too. When you're young. He's what like
Speaker 2: twenty four, twenty five something like that. He's something like
Speaker 2: that On Capitol Hill, it's a social network. You all
Speaker 2: go out drinking together, like everybody knows each other and
Speaker 2: all of this. And this was a well known secret
Speaker 2: ammarently amongst all of his coworkers, such that his bosses
Speaker 2: had to talk to him whenever he got promoted and
Speaker 2: they're like, you need to tone down some of the
Speaker 2: stuff you're pos like, for example, talking about how you
Speaker 2: want to lick the fingers of a fellow congressman, which.
Speaker 10: Is crazy in the Senate cafeteria, literally in the Senate cafeteria,
Speaker 10: you know the shower photos. Also also ran a Twitter
Speaker 10: account without a space blurred purely of just like sexually suggestive,
Speaker 10: evocative photos that was open to the public up until
Speaker 10: this entire thing. So there's a there's an insane narcissism
Speaker 10: going on in the minds of this individual.
Speaker 3: And I would just say they just think, I don't.
Speaker 1: Know, it's never going to come out, that was never
Speaker 1: going to apply to them.
Speaker 3: I think that, yeah, you.
Speaker 4: Get away with it once and you're just like addicted
Speaker 4: to that thrill.
Speaker 3: I think it's a culture of narcissm.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it's a culture of narcissism where they
Speaker 2: just think you can use identity politics to shield yourself
Speaker 2: from any inevitable like criticism, and in the reality is
Speaker 2: is that you're just engaging in like really disgusting behavior.
Speaker 4: It really almost seems public addictive behavior.
Speaker 3: I agree.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think I honestly think there's something wrong with him,
Speaker 2: like on a mental level, and not having anything to
Speaker 2: do with is gay, just like this crazy amount of
Speaker 2: exhibitionism and clearly like indulging it and forcing your coworkers to.
Speaker 1: Yeah, where it's impacting your whole limit. I mean, that's
Speaker 1: like the telltale sign of like some sort of addiction issue.
Speaker 1: Is it's you know, you're not able to confine it
Speaker 1: to the appropriate spaces in your life.
Speaker 2: Look, you know, honestly, I wish him the best. I
Speaker 2: hope he gets to help the Indians and all that.
Speaker 2: You hurry, if we learn from this, and I hope
Speaker 2: every other Capitol Hill staffer, you guys should learn too,
Speaker 2: if it will eventually come out. If you're going to
Speaker 2: conduct yourself this way, Crystal, what are you taking a
Speaker 2: look at?
Speaker 4: Well?
Speaker 1: Americans have for years been fed a pack of lies
Speaker 1: about Israel and Palestine. These lies enabled successive administrations of
Speaker 1: both parties to offer nothing but unconditional support for Israel
Speaker 1: and nothing but unrestrained contempt for Palestinians. American presidents stood
Speaker 1: meekly by as Israeli governments blatantly violated international law.
Speaker 4: Year after year.
Speaker 1: Israel aggressively expanded settlements in the West Bank, imposed a
Speaker 1: brutal blockade of Gaza, aided settler violence, passed apartheid style laws,
Speaker 1: and used a vast bureaucracy to put in the near
Speaker 1: of legality on seizures of Palestinine homes and land. Our
Speaker 1: support for this criminal and inhumane status quo was enabled
Speaker 1: by an elaborate mythology surrounding the so called two state solution. Now,
Speaker 1: there are a number of components to this myth. First
Speaker 1: that Palestinians have received muti to puld generous offers of
Speaker 1: statehood and have unreasonably rejected them. Second, that the Israeli
Speaker 1: government would love nothing more than to come to some
Speaker 1: sort of a two state peaceful resolution, but have no
Speaker 1: quote partner for peace. Every part of all of that
Speaker 1: is a lie. Fortunately, this mythology is actually crumbling in
Speaker 1: real time, killed by friendly fire, you might say, as
Speaker 1: Netanyahu himself has announced, not only will he do everything
Speaker 1: in his power to block a Palestinian state forever, but
Speaker 1: that he is proud to have been a primary impediment
Speaker 1: to the dream of a peaceful settlement. In a press
Speaker 1: conference last week, he said the following quote, You and
Speaker 1: your journalist friends have been blaming me for almost thirty
Speaker 1: years for putting the brakes on the Oslo Accords and
Speaker 1: preventing the Palestinian state.
Speaker 4: That's true.
Speaker 1: I'm proud that I prevented the establishment of a Palestinian state,
Speaker 1: because today everybody understands what that Palestinian state could have been,
Speaker 1: now that we've seen the little Palestinian state in Gaza. Now, this,
Speaker 1: of course, is a transparent bit of blame shifting from BB.
Speaker 1: He would absurdly have you believe that those who supported
Speaker 1: the Oslo process were to blame for October seventh, rather
Speaker 1: than him, the dude who promised you could keep Palestinians
Speaker 1: locking in cage forever with zero consequence, who cynically built
Speaker 1: up Hamas as a Machiavelian means to an end of
Speaker 1: blocking Palestinian statehood, whose administration was so distracted by his
Speaker 1: own corruption scandals and pandering to extreme settlers that they
Speaker 1: completely ignored the October seventh planning that was happening right
Speaker 1: in front of their faces. But I rather appreciate Bbe's
Speaker 1: comments here, nonetheless, because they are the beginning of the
Speaker 1: end of our national delusions about the two state solution.
Speaker 14: Now.
Speaker 1: Literally, no one should be surprised that BB is bragging
Speaker 1: about blocking Palestinian state. This has been his entire political
Speaker 1: program in Race on Deetra for decades. But such comments
Speaker 1: and naked admissions rarely make it into the US press.
Speaker 1: They're said in Hebrew from Israeli domestic audience, and American
Speaker 1: politicians just pretend they didn't hear them, or they pretend
Speaker 1: that BB is some outlier, a fringe political character inconsistent
Speaker 1: with mainstream as Raeli politics. This is all false. In fact,
Speaker 1: Nanyahu gives himself far too much credit as the sole
Speaker 1: bulwark against a Palestinian state. In fact, the various Israeli
Speaker 1: prime ministers differ not in their opposition to an actual
Speaker 1: Palestinian state, but in their tactics for permanently blocking one.
Speaker 1: So first, it's simple enough to demonstrate that opposition of
Speaker 1: Palestinian statehood has been a permanent feature of Israeli politics,
Speaker 1: no matter the prime minister may be. Most illustrative is
Speaker 1: this chart. Under every Israeli prime minister, moderate liberal or
Speaker 1: right wing, from lionized hero Yitzak Rabin to the odious
Speaker 1: net Yahoo, year after year, a legal settlement building continued
Speaker 1: and the settler population exploded.
Speaker 4: Now, why you might ask, is this the key fact?
Speaker 1: Because the entire purpose of these settlements is to block
Speaker 1: a Palestinian state. Don't ask me, ask the settlers themselves.
Speaker 1: One of their activist leaders was recently interviewed by Isaac Chottner,
Speaker 1: and she explained it very plainly. Quote, the world, especially
Speaker 1: in the United States, thinks there is an option for
Speaker 1: a Palestinian state, and if we continue to build communities,
Speaker 1: then we block the option for a Palestinian state. We
Speaker 1: want to close the option for a Palestinian state, and
Speaker 1: the world wants to leave the option open. It's a
Speaker 1: very simple thing to understand, and she's right, it is
Speaker 1: indeed a very simple.
Speaker 4: Thing to understand.
Speaker 1: The consistent commitment to settlements under every single Israeli government
Speaker 1: exposes the lie that Viba's somehow an outlier in his opposition.
Speaker 1: Now here's another key fact in understanding the consistent opposition
Speaker 1: of Palestinian statehood. Let's allow Professor Norman Finkelstein to lay
Speaker 1: this one out.
Speaker 7: Every year, every single year, the United Nations General Assembly
Speaker 7: passes a resolution quote peaceful.
Speaker 15: Settlement of the Palestine question. And every year it lays
Speaker 15: out the terms, which I just describe. The terms of
Speaker 15: the settlement are anchored, embedded in international law. Every year,
Speaker 15: the vote is the whole world, which is to say,
Speaker 15: approximately one hundred and ninety countries on one site embracing.
Speaker 16: Those terms, including the Palestinian representative organizations, and on the
Speaker 16: other side it's usually the United States, Israel, and several
Speaker 16: South Sea islands the Marshall Islands allow to volu Hanga
Speaker 16: on the other side.
Speaker 1: So next time you hear someone lazily parrot the mantra
Speaker 1: that Israelis have no quote partner for peace on the
Speaker 1: Palestinian side, you might challenge them on whether Palestinian extremists
Speaker 1: have really been the primary impediment to peace when the
Speaker 1: UN record here that Norm Finkelstein lays out is extraordinarily
Speaker 1: cut and dry, and just wait until they find out
Speaker 1: what the Lukud party charter has to say about from
Speaker 1: the River to the Sea.
Speaker 4: But you might say, what about Oslo, what about Camp David.
Speaker 1: Weren't Palestinian's offered statehood through the Clinton negotiations. Weren't some
Speaker 1: Israeli prime ministers genuinely committed to this process?
Speaker 4: The answer is yes, some were committed.
Speaker 1: To Oslo, but unfortunately Oslo was never meant to achieve
Speaker 1: full statehood. Even the venerated Prime Minister Yitzak Rabin assassinated
Speaker 1: by a Jewish extremist over Oslo, probably the most committed
Speaker 1: to this process of any prime minister, even he admitted
Speaker 1: he never envisioned a full Palestinian state. Interestingly, current BB
Speaker 1: senior advisor Mark Regev just explained this to Pierce Morgan.
Speaker 4: Take a listen.
Speaker 12: It's cut Rubbin, the prime minister of Israel who wanted
Speaker 12: to make peace with the Battlestinians, who was the prime
Speaker 12: minister of the time of the signing of the Oslo Accords.
Speaker 12: He gave a speech and he was very clear. He
Speaker 12: said that the Palestinians will have less than a state.
Speaker 12: Jitzch Krabin, said, the man who was shot for his
Speaker 12: efforts to move forward on the peace process. He said
Speaker 12: that the future Palestinian areas will have to be demilitarized.
Speaker 12: He said, the Jordan Valley, that area on the eastern
Speaker 12: edge of the Palestinian territories would have to remain under
Speaker 12: Israeli control. The idea that a Parastonian area will have
Speaker 12: to be demilitarized in any future settlement, that's common sense.
Speaker 4: Another important moment of honesty there.
Speaker 1: So what does he mean by less than a state
Speaker 1: or state minus as Netnyahu has called it. Well, Palestinian
Speaker 1: American activist and intellectual Edward Side laid out in a
Speaker 1: famous piece what that is meant In opposing OSLO. He
Speaker 1: argued that, far from a process to achieve statehood, OSLO
Speaker 1: and vision placing is really security needs above actual Palestinian
Speaker 1: statehood and autonomy in perpetuity. This led Side famously to write,
Speaker 1: let us call the agreement by its real name, instrument
Speaker 1: of Palestinian surrender, a Palestinian Versailles. So actual statehood was
Speaker 1: never on the table, but something short of that was,
Speaker 1: and plenty of Palestinians did support trying to achieve that
Speaker 1: negotiated settlement, which brings us to the supposed conclusion of
Speaker 1: the Oslo taiale. As routinely recited by American politicians and
Speaker 1: media outlets. In their telling, Bill Clinton came tantalizingly close
Speaker 1: to a peace deal in two thousand Camp David, only
Speaker 1: to see Yasser Arafat walk away from a generous offer
Speaker 1: over the smallest of differences. At this point, you should
Speaker 1: be unsurprised to learn that this narrative is also nothing
Speaker 1: but invented ass covering to serve the Israelis and their
Speaker 1: American benefactors. So start with the deal was very lopsided,
Speaker 1: far from the generous offer that it's routinely presented to
Speaker 1: have been required extreme concessions from the Palestinians, including security
Speaker 1: demands which would have divided the West Bank into three cantons,
Speaker 1: effectively continuing some of the worst parts of the Israeli occupation,
Speaker 1: creating not a state but a series of bantu stands
Speaker 1: with no control over airspace, no military, no control over
Speaker 1: their own borders with Egypt and Jordan. Even one of
Speaker 1: the top Israeli negotiators, Shlomo Benami, later admitted if I
Speaker 1: were a Palestinian, I would have rejected Camp David as well.
Speaker 1: What's more, far from Airfat walking away, negotiations actually continued.
Speaker 1: Formal negotiations continued at Taba until right wing Israeli governments
Speaker 1: were elected to kill the process entirely, and the rest,
Speaker 1: at least for our purposes today, is history. So to
Speaker 1: sum up, the deal was far from generous. Airfat had
Speaker 1: some good reasons to walk away, but he actually didn't,
Speaker 1: and it was the Israelis who put the final nail
Speaker 1: in the coffin of Ozla, with help from extremists. Let's
Speaker 1: be clear on both sides, but don't take my word
Speaker 1: for it as our own. Ryan Grim has been pointing
Speaker 1: out the right wing hawk is the big new Brazinski
Speaker 1: said Joe Scarborough straight in spectacular fashion on the Camp
Speaker 1: David fairy tale many years ago.
Speaker 4: Take a listen.
Speaker 8: You can't blame what is happening in Israel right now
Speaker 8: on the Bush ad minutes.
Speaker 14: Yes you can.
Speaker 12: You can't.
Speaker 9: Well, let's go back to two thousand, doctor Brazinski. I
Speaker 9: both know Bill Clinton gave Arafat and the Palestinians everything
Speaker 9: you know, you hey could.
Speaker 14: It was a stunningly superficial knowledge of what went on
Speaker 14: that it's almost embarrassing to listen to you. If you
Speaker 14: were to look more closely what happened in the Clinton
Speaker 14: MCEE Camp David discussions, you would know that we have
Speaker 14: just said is absolutely wrong. There were all sorts of
Speaker 14: provisions and catches to the so called proposal, and it
Speaker 14: wasn't rejected. The negotiations went on in Taba, and then
Speaker 14: there were elections in Israel and Charon came in and
Speaker 14: everything got aborted.
Speaker 1: Now, listen, I think it'd be fair to look at
Speaker 1: this history and say, even so, given what we know today,
Speaker 1: Arafat should have just taken what was on the table
Speaker 1: in two thousand, because it's got to be better than
Speaker 1: the horror, pain and bloodshed that we are witnessing.
Speaker 4: Very possible.
Speaker 1: I think it's also fair to point out the Palestinian
Speaker 1: violence in the second anti fatt in particular, is what
Speaker 1: helped you turn the Israeli public away from those politicians
Speaker 1: promising a settlement and toward those openly advocating for brutality,
Speaker 1: leading to a parade of maniacs ca dominating in this
Speaker 1: Netnakh government, complete with overt genocidal psychos. But I think
Speaker 1: you can also see, when you look at all of
Speaker 1: the facts, there were legitimate reasons for Palestinans to oppose
Speaker 1: OSLO in its entirety. It wasn't just extremists been on
Speaker 1: genocide who found the framework unacceptable and sought to undermine it. Now,
Speaker 1: in some ways, this past is irrelevant, since the thing
Speaker 1: that really matters is what happens next. But if there's
Speaker 1: one thing that's clear to me watching this conflict unfold,
Speaker 1: is that the lies of the past, the narratives that
Speaker 1: color our understanding of this current moment, are the most
Speaker 1: potent weapon enabling the atrocities that are unfolding today. So
Speaker 1: let's take a cue from Phoebe and drop all the fakery.
Speaker 1: Biden can say two state solution as much as he wants,
Speaker 1: Israelis do not want one, So what now?
Speaker 4: And Sager as.
Speaker 2: Usual And if you want to hear my reaction to
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Speaker 2: otherwise we'll see you all then.
Speaker 7: Keep keep.
Speaker 17: Shop shut, Keep, keep shop shot, keep don't keep