Speaker 1: Hey, guys, Saga and Crystal.
Speaker 2: Here, independent media just played a truly massive role in
Speaker 2: this election, and we are so excited about what that
Speaker 2: means for the future of the show.
Speaker 3: This is the only place where you can find honest
Speaker 3: perspectives from the left and the right that simply does
Speaker 3: not exist anywhere else.
Speaker 2: So if that is something that's important to you, please
Speaker 2: go to Breakingpoints dot com. Become a member today and
Speaker 2: you'll access to our full shows, unedited, ad free, and
Speaker 2: all put together for you every morning in your inbox.
Speaker 3: We need your help to build the future of independent
Speaker 3: news media and we hope to see you at Breakingpoints
Speaker 3: dot com.
Speaker 1: All right, good morning, and welcome to Breaking Points.
Speaker 4: That's right, that's Tuesday.
Speaker 5: I guess so we have to be breaking points hiding Ryan, I.
Speaker 1: Wis should just all be breaking points? Right? Maybe just
Speaker 1: wrap it all up?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I guess it's time.
Speaker 5: So we're just making major decisions with that, Saga and Crystal.
Speaker 6: So that's the time to make them exactly. So today
Speaker 6: we're going to have my drop site colleague Jeremy Skahele
Speaker 6: on the show to talk about the latest between and
Speaker 6: Gaza and Yemen and Syria and Lemon and all of
Speaker 6: which they are bombing. Jeremy just returned from a major
Speaker 6: interview with Osama Hamdan, who's a senior political figure at Hamas,
Speaker 6: as well as a bunch of other background interviews with
Speaker 6: other Hamas.
Speaker 1: Officials, that he can and he can and he can.
Speaker 6: Sketch out kind of where where they're feeling, what they're
Speaker 6: you know, where they're at in the negotiations. As Israel's
Speaker 6: threatening to literally quote flatten Gaza, uh, Donald Trump is
Speaker 6: promising to bring make Hollywood great again. Hollywood's kind of
Speaker 6: panicked tariff that he's gonna We're going to figure out
Speaker 6: what it means to tear off a movie.
Speaker 4: Yes, we are going to figure it out.
Speaker 5: Actually, well, I mean we who knows whether we'll figure
Speaker 5: it out, but the Trump administration is trying to figure
Speaker 5: it out at this very moment, and maybe they'll learn
Speaker 5: that there's really no good way to do it and
Speaker 5: quietly drop this news. But Trump's made this announcement on Sunday.
Speaker 5: Hollywood was in panic all day yesterday also trying to
Speaker 5: figure out what it meant.
Speaker 4: So we will have updates on that.
Speaker 6: When you promise to help someone and they panic at
Speaker 6: the thought, but that's got to be kind of a
Speaker 6: nod feeling.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well on some one did.
Speaker 1: He did kind of step back a little. He's like,
Speaker 1: I'm just trying to help.
Speaker 4: Well they yeah, I mean, we'll get into all of it.
Speaker 5: Then. We also have a former Greek finance minister, Janis
Speaker 5: Farah Fucus, who's going to join us to go through
Speaker 5: some of the latest on tariffs.
Speaker 6: If you don't you guys don't know Yannis. He's amazing.
Speaker 6: It's going to be a fun one.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Oh my gosh, he's he's super interesting. So good
Speaker 5: time to talk to him. We're going to be discussing
Speaker 5: a little bit of from Bill Maher's panel last week,
Speaker 5: there was Kevin McCarthy talking about how AOC and Bernie
Speaker 5: are really the future of the party. So there's a
Speaker 5: news about AOC in the Oversight Committee. There's all kinds
Speaker 5: of fun stuff to get into.
Speaker 6: And Brian Kemp announced that he's not going to run
Speaker 6: for Senate, which immediately has the asof for president crowd. Yes,
Speaker 6: just wondering, you know, just basically measuring the drapes at
Speaker 6: sixteen hundred Pennsylvania for president osof at they to go, Yeah.
Speaker 5: Osof Nation and Rise Up Gain a Function Research Executive
Speaker 5: was signed yesterday so by Donald Trump. So we'll break
Speaker 5: down all of that, and then Ryan, we have a guest,
Speaker 5: a guest who's going to talk about some developments in
Speaker 5: the case that we've covered before.
Speaker 6: Yes, So, Henry McKean Shapiro was one of the protesters
Speaker 6: arrested by a G Dana Nessel in Michigan, spent four
Speaker 6: days in jail yesterday with a handful of others, had
Speaker 6: his charges dropped.
Speaker 1: We're going to talk about.
Speaker 6: What those charges were, where they stemmed from, why they
Speaker 6: were dropped, and we're going to be joined by Henry
Speaker 6: to talk about what, you know, what his experience was
Speaker 6: like behind bars, and you know what he was told
Speaker 6: he was arrested for, because it does appear that these
Speaker 6: people were arrested for nothing other than protesting. Like no,
Speaker 6: there are no no, no allegations of actual crimes.
Speaker 5: Yea. And just as a heads up, by the way,
Speaker 5: we started a little bit late today. Ryan has kids
Speaker 5: to take care of it. I assume they're the.
Speaker 1: Ones my wife's yes, exactly. You like that? Which handy
Speaker 1: like better?
Speaker 4: I mean the colorful one obviously that your daughters of that.
Speaker 7: They did.
Speaker 1: They've started a nail salon in our.
Speaker 4: House whoa okay capitalism.
Speaker 6: Called Sleigh Nails. So I was one of their first customers.
Speaker 6: But yes, my wife's still recovering from surgery. So I'm
Speaker 6: just helping get the kids out to school. So when
Speaker 6: i'm when I am co hosting this weekend next will
Speaker 6: be a little bit later than normal. We're often a
Speaker 6: little bit later than normal. This time we have an
Speaker 6: actual excuse.
Speaker 5: Yes, well it's you know, whatever we can do to
Speaker 5: get our fix of Ryan Grim.
Speaker 1: There you go, we will do it.
Speaker 6: Let's they started to chip, Yeah, I need to go
Speaker 6: back to slate slay nails, and do.
Speaker 4: You get a discount?
Speaker 6: Well, and I didn't let them put the thing on
Speaker 6: this it would help them stay longler.
Speaker 1: I was like, this is good.
Speaker 6: I didn't pay anything for it, so I don't know
Speaker 6: if that's a discount or not.
Speaker 4: I guess you can go back.
Speaker 1: I don't think they've thought about their business model very deeply.
Speaker 4: Okay, well maybe it should become part of drops.
Speaker 1: The don't pay for the inputs.
Speaker 4: This could be a thing. So I don't know, we'll see.
Speaker 1: They don't really have to charge, Well.
Speaker 5: Let's bring Jeremy and speaking of drop sit, let's go
Speaker 5: ahead and bring Jeremy in to hear from him about
Speaker 5: his recent interview with Hamas.
Speaker 1: Joining us to discuss all.
Speaker 6: This is my drop site colleague, Jeremy scahe who just
Speaker 6: returned from an interview with senior political Hamas figure Osama
Speaker 6: Hamden and others.
Speaker 1: Jeremy, thank you so much for being here today.
Speaker 7: Good to be with you guys.
Speaker 1: And so let's put a four up on the screen
Speaker 1: to start.
Speaker 6: This is the first piece that you've rolled out from
Speaker 6: this interview, this very wide ranging interview with Osama Hamden.
Speaker 6: Tell us what your kind of main takeaway was from
Speaker 6: this as it relates to Israel's most recent demand that
Speaker 6: Hamas needs to disarm within greet to disarm within the
Speaker 6: next week, return all of the hostages, or else it's
Speaker 6: going to quote Flatten Gaza.
Speaker 8: I mean, Ryan.
Speaker 9: I think the first thing to be said is that
Speaker 9: over the past eighteen months there has been almost no
Speaker 9: obstintive interviewing of leaders of Hamas or other Palestinian resistance
Speaker 9: factions by Western news organizations. It's not that they're not interviewed,
Speaker 9: it happens CNN has had interviews, NBC has had interviews,
Speaker 9: But often what happens is that you have one of
Speaker 9: two things unfold. Either it's a very short interview responding
Speaker 9: to something that the United States has said or something
Speaker 9: that Israel has said, or it's an interview where it's
Speaker 9: just entirely intended to be a reltigation of the events
Speaker 9: of October seventh. And one of the things that we've
Speaker 9: tried to do at drop site is to say, this
Speaker 9: is journalistic malpractice not to understand the perspective of the
Speaker 9: leadership of HAMAS or Palestinian Islamic Jihad, or any Palestinian
Speaker 9: leaders who are at the center of what is a
Speaker 9: US fact Israeli war of annihilation. So that's the spirit
Speaker 9: in which we've been conducting these interviews. Now, Osama Hamdan
Speaker 9: is perhaps one of the most well known leaders within
Speaker 9: HAMAS because he was based in Lebanon when the Israeli
Speaker 9: war began in October of twenty twenty three. He was
Speaker 9: one of the few officials that was actually in a
Speaker 9: country where Hamas was allowed to publicly hold press conferences,
Speaker 9: and so he became a very well known figure in
Speaker 9: the Arabic language media. He's been a member of HAMAS
Speaker 9: since nineteen ninety two, just a few years after the
Speaker 9: organization was founded. He was the former head of its
Speaker 9: operations in Iran, former head of its operations in Lebanon,
Speaker 9: and was the former head of its international relations department.
Speaker 9: He's actually a chemist by training, a very very well
Speaker 9: educated guy who speaks excellent English, and so I sat
Speaker 9: down with him for on the record about a ninety
Speaker 9: minute interview, but I did spend several hours meeting with
Speaker 9: osamaham Dan and other senior leaders within HAMAS. So part
Speaker 9: of what we can talk about today is what was
Speaker 9: said on the record, and then I can give you
Speaker 9: some texture of the broader perspective of people. I haven't
Speaker 9: spoken about this yet, so this will be the first
Speaker 9: time I kind of go through some of what I've heard.
Speaker 9: The main issue that you're raising, Ryan Hamas has now
Speaker 9: staked out a very clear position that it hasn't in
Speaker 9: such a clear way in the past eighteen months. And
Speaker 9: what Osama Hamdan told me is that HAMAS is absolutely
Speaker 9: not going to agree to any more short term truces
Speaker 9: unless there is a clear path back to one of
Speaker 9: two places, either back to the original framework of the
Speaker 9: January ceasefire deal that was brokered by the United States,
Speaker 9: Qatar and Egypt. That deal, which Israel blew up after
Speaker 9: the first for forty two day phase, imposed this full
Speaker 9: spectrum blockade on Gaza. No food, no medicine, no fuel.
Speaker 9: Nothing has entered the Gaza strip in the past two months,
Speaker 9: and then on March eighteenth, Israel starts scorched earth bombing
Speaker 9: Gaza again, killing more than four hundred people in the
Speaker 9: opening night. Since then, twenty four hundred Palestinians have been killed,
Speaker 9: the majority of them women and children. Horrifying attacks too,
Speaker 9: burning people alive, intents use so called suicide drones to
Speaker 9: attack camps for displaced people. And what Hamas is saying
Speaker 9: is we either are going to go back to that
Speaker 9: framework and the second phase of that framework, which Israel
Speaker 9: wanted to avoid getting into, said that there would be
Speaker 9: a total withdrawal of all Israeli forces and that there
Speaker 9: would be technical negotiations moving toward a permanent ceasefire followed
Speaker 9: then by a full reconstruction of the Gaza strips. So
Speaker 9: either we go back to that or we go to
Speaker 9: an alternative arrangement which also has a very clear path
Speaker 9: to the end of the war full Israeli withdrawal and reconstruction.
Speaker 9: Hamas has said, we have a different proposal that we
Speaker 9: want to put forward in response to Israel, and that
Speaker 9: is what is called an Arabic ahudna, which means a
Speaker 9: long term truce. And so Osamahamdan said they are offering
Speaker 9: Israel a truce of five to seven years, the immediate
Speaker 9: release of all Israeli captives living and dead, and an
Speaker 9: internationally guaranteed agreement that Hamas and other Palastinian resistance factions
Speaker 9: are not going to engage in any offensive operations against Israel,
Speaker 9: and that they are interested in long term stability and
Speaker 9: peace and an ability to rebuild Gaza. So they said
Speaker 9: though that no matter what the deal is, they are
Speaker 9: not going to lay down their weapons. They said, it's
Speaker 9: not just a red line, it's a million red lines.
Speaker 9: They said that laying down their weapons would be tantamount
Speaker 9: to capitulating and surrendering, and once they surrender, then they're
Speaker 9: at the will of the occupier. So this was what
Speaker 9: I believe the clearest on the record statement that we've
Speaker 9: gotten to date from Hamas that they will not accept
Speaker 9: any of the proposals that have been put forward by
Speaker 9: the United States or Israel that do not include a
Speaker 9: clear path to full Israeli withdrawal, and they will absolutely
Speaker 9: not agree to hand in their weapons under any circumstances.
Speaker 5: Jeremy, one of the interesting things that stood out to
Speaker 5: me from your report is that they actually all of that,
Speaker 5: and also they feel obligated not to put their weapons down, right,
Speaker 5: could you tell us more about that part of the conversation.
Speaker 5: I mean, as I understood it, it was they say
Speaker 5: it as an obligation to continue going not just sort
Speaker 5: of the practical thing that's best for them, but also
Speaker 5: something that they must do to keep going forward.
Speaker 9: Yeah, it's an important question, Emily. You know, let's remember
Speaker 9: that oftentimes when events in Gaza are discussed in the
Speaker 9: broader Western media or the Israeli media, the story begins
Speaker 9: on October seventh with Hamas's attacks and what Hamas calls
Speaker 9: Operation al Axa flood. But this is actually a seventy
Speaker 9: six year history. I mean, you could go all the
Speaker 9: way back to the nineteen thirties and the Palestinians resisting
Speaker 9: British occupation.
Speaker 8: But let's say that.
Speaker 9: The dominant narrative or the dominant historical arc here begins
Speaker 9: in nineteen forty seven forty eight with the Knakba, which
Speaker 9: is when the United States and European powers stole the
Speaker 9: land from Palestinians and established a state primarily for Europeans
Speaker 9: that were victims of the Holocaust or were at jeopardy
Speaker 9: of being killed during the Holocaust. And so that state
Speaker 9: was established. And the idea at the time that was
Speaker 9: promoted by Zionists and also the West was that it
Speaker 9: was a people without a land for a land without
Speaker 9: a people. Well, there were a people there, and they
Speaker 9: were called the Palestinian people, and in fact there were
Speaker 9: Muslims and Jews living in relative peace on that land
Speaker 9: until the establishment of the.
Speaker 8: State of Israel.
Speaker 9: So the perspective from the Palestinian side, and this is
Speaker 9: not just Hamas. I spoke with Palestinian leaders who are
Speaker 9: not even members of armed resistance factions, who will say
Speaker 9: that every time the Palestinians have agreed to lay down
Speaker 9: their weapons that they have then just been massacred and
Speaker 9: wiped out. So it's not just about a strategic position
Speaker 9: that Hamas is taking. They, for instance, with Samahamdan, said look,
Speaker 9: we can look at the example of the North of
Speaker 9: Ireland when the Provisional IRA decommissioned itself and handed in
Speaker 9: its weapons. I was part of a many years long
Speaker 9: process and it was agreed to by both sides. Hamden
Speaker 9: said to me, Look this business about storing our weapons temporarily,
Speaker 9: He said, first of all, that's just a media story.
Speaker 9: No one has ever seriously raised that with us. But
Speaker 9: are they going to tell the Israelis to store their weapons.
Speaker 9: Who's going to monitor the Israelis? Because every time we
Speaker 9: have a ceasefire, they continue to bomb us. So I
Speaker 9: think it's very clear. And the issue of armed resistance
Speaker 9: remains one of the most popular position points in all
Speaker 9: of historic Palestine, not just in Gaza. The right of
Speaker 9: Palestinians to use armed resistance against an occupation and apartheid
Speaker 9: state that has been repeatedly condemned under international law, by
Speaker 9: world courts and by every major human rights organization in
Speaker 9: the world. They believe if they lay down their weapons,
Speaker 9: the cause of Palestinian statehood and liberation is totally dead.
Speaker 6: So it's put up a two briefly because this references
Speaker 6: this is an Axios News report about the flattening of
Speaker 6: Gaza that they're threatening if there's no deal by the
Speaker 6: time Trump makes his upcoming trip to the region. And
Speaker 6: you can add a three as well. Here's a kind
Speaker 6: of map that's been that's been circulating that is where
Speaker 6: they're suggesting basically, they're going to take upwards of two
Speaker 6: million Palestinians move them into a tiny quote unquote humanitarian zone.
Speaker 6: And they don't really say what they're going to do
Speaker 6: next beyond you know, invade, occupy, and hold the ground
Speaker 6: rather than kind of move in and move back out,
Speaker 6: which allowed then you know, Hamas to move back in
Speaker 6: after the after the IDF would move out. And so
Speaker 6: Hamas has this proposal, this counterproposal of a five to
Speaker 6: seven year truce. Donald Trump likes to talk about cards.
Speaker 6: You know, you don't have any cards. Who has the cards?
Speaker 6: What are the cards that from your reporting that Hamas
Speaker 6: has has left to play against against Israel? Like what
Speaker 6: what what makes it so that this will this is
Speaker 6: a serious counterbules that Israel needs to take seriously. And
Speaker 6: from the Israeli side, you know, they're talking about calling
Speaker 6: up tens of thousands of reservists.
Speaker 1: Do they have the cards?
Speaker 6: They do they have the ability to carry out this
Speaker 6: invasion and long term occupation and complete ethnic cleansing that
Speaker 6: they're suggesting they're going to carry out.
Speaker 9: I mean, there's a there's a technical answer to your question,
Speaker 9: and then there's a much bigger answer to your question.
Speaker 9: First the technical answer, anyone you speak to from a
Speaker 9: Palestinian resistance faction that is holding captives Israeli captives inside
Speaker 9: of Gaza will say, this is our only card right
Speaker 9: now that we have. And so when the Israelis propose
Speaker 9: short term truces with no clear path to an end
Speaker 9: to the war or an Israeli withdrawal, and they try,
Speaker 9: for instance, to get half of the living Israeli captives
Speaker 9: out in one fell swoop hamas Palestinian Islamic jihad look
Speaker 9: at that and they say, this is a death trap
Speaker 9: for us. From their perspective, they believe that they have
Speaker 9: kept as many Israeli captives alive as Israel has been
Speaker 9: killing them with its own bombings. We don't know the fate,
Speaker 9: for instance, of American citizen Aidan Alexander, who was in
Speaker 9: the Israeli military when he was taken by Palestinian fighters
Speaker 9: on October seventh, twenty twenty three, Hamas's arm duing Casambragades
Speaker 9: lost touch with him some weeks ago after an Israeli airstrike,
Speaker 9: and I was told by two senior Hamas officials that
Speaker 9: they still do not know his fate. So from the
Speaker 9: perspective of Palestinian resistance movements, their only card in these
Speaker 9: negotiations right now is the fact that they are holding
Speaker 9: Israeli captives. In the bigger picture, though, they feel that
Speaker 9: they have a moral and a legal card, and also
Speaker 9: a very strong card in the region, and that is
Speaker 9: that international resolution after international resolution has declared Israel's occupation illegal.
Speaker 9: You have a genocide proceeding that is going forward at
Speaker 9: the International Court of Justice, and you have Arab regimes,
Speaker 9: anti democratic Arab regimes that are watching their very nervously
Speaker 9: the events on the ground unfold. As Netanyahu expands Israel's
Speaker 9: attacks across the region. Public anger is growing inside the
Speaker 9: capitals and borders of many Arab nation states, and we
Speaker 9: could be at the beginning of a period where we
Speaker 9: start to see potentially major revolts happening internally in Arab
Speaker 9: countries against their rulers, against their governments, in part because
Speaker 9: they have stood silently by as the Palestinians have been
Speaker 9: subjected to genocide or because they've normalized relations with Israel
Speaker 9: under the auspices of Donald Trump's Abraham Accords, so that
Speaker 9: the Palestinians are great students of history. And one thing
Speaker 9: I just want to say parenthetically, every time I speak
Speaker 9: to an official from one of these Palestinian resistance.
Speaker 8: Movements, it's remarkable.
Speaker 9: They are doctors, their lawyers, their Islamic scholars, their veterinarians,
Speaker 9: their engineers.
Speaker 8: Osama Hamdan himself is a chemist.
Speaker 9: Several of them have been educated in Western and countries,
Speaker 9: including the United States. The portrayal of them, you can
Speaker 9: think what you want about their positions, their policies, their actions,
Speaker 9: but the portrayal of these individuals as cartoonish villains who
Speaker 9: are interested in killing Jewish people because they're Jewish, is
Speaker 9: so just clearly false and part of what I was told.
Speaker 9: And we could talk about the details of this. Ryan
Speaker 9: and Emily, you know, I met with both Hamas officials
Speaker 9: that led the talks with Adam Bohler, who was Donald
Speaker 9: Trump's special envoy on hostages. One thing I found interesting
Speaker 9: is they didn't know that he had been at Jared
Speaker 9: Kushner's roommate, or that he's a personal friend of the
Speaker 9: Trump family. And when I shared that, they said, well,
Speaker 9: that makes sense why he's still around, because Israel tried
Speaker 9: to destroy Adam Bohler after he made the mistake of
Speaker 9: just saying that he was surprised at the kind of
Speaker 9: interactions that he had with Hamas. But they described to
Speaker 9: me very cordial, friendly, at times diplomatic meeting with Adam Bohler.
Speaker 9: They said that Bohler asked a lot of probing questions,
Speaker 9: not just about the current political situation or the situation
Speaker 9: from October seventh forward, but that he seemed truly interested
Speaker 9: in understanding the historical perspective of the Palestinians. And they
Speaker 9: said he just kept remarking on how they are so
Speaker 9: different than they seem from the portrayal that he had read.
Speaker 9: And what they told me is that you know, they
Speaker 9: had these good meetings with Bohler. It wasn't just about
Speaker 9: the American captives that are being held. It was about
Speaker 9: a broader political solution. The Israelis go nuts where they
Speaker 9: learn that these direct talks had happened and that Bohler
Speaker 9: is out there in public saying on American television and
Speaker 9: Israeli television that Hamas has proposed a multi year piece
Speaker 9: deal with Israel. Ron Dermer was just like yanking his
Speaker 9: hair out. Met Yahoo's political hit man who's in charge
Speaker 9: of the negotiations now, and they said, so, you know,
Speaker 9: the Americans are subjected to this thing where Adam Bohler
Speaker 9: is now being smeared and targeted for having the audacity
Speaker 9: to say some basic civil things orss about Hamas.
Speaker 8: But what happened, Ryan is.
Speaker 9: That there was supposed to be a subsequent meeting directly
Speaker 9: with Steve Whitcoff, who is Donald Trump's the top envoy
Speaker 9: negotiating all of these deals with not just with Gaza
Speaker 9: but also Ukraine. They were going to have direct talks
Speaker 9: with Steve Whitcoff, and Hamas was confident that the way
Speaker 9: the dialogue was going that the Americans were actually understanding
Speaker 9: the position and understanding that Hamas did in fact have
Speaker 9: some flexibility in its position. And Hamden said he believes
Speaker 9: that part of the reason why Israel assassinated Ismailhaniah, the
Speaker 9: former political leader of Hamas, and has been assassinating others,
Speaker 9: is because Israel doesn't want anyone capable of actually speaking
Speaker 9: with the United States to be alive to do so.
Speaker 5: This gets to the question Ryan was asking about the
Speaker 5: cards that Israel has a clip here of Donald Trump
Speaker 5: yesterday being asked about some of this.
Speaker 4: We can go ahead and roll a one.
Speaker 10: Now, help the people of Gaza get some food. People
Speaker 10: are starving, and we're going to help them get some food.
Speaker 10: A lot of people are making it very very bad.
Speaker 8: What do you if you look.
Speaker 10: Hamas is making it impossible because they're taking everything this
Speaker 10: brought in.
Speaker 8: But we're going to help the.
Speaker 10: People of Gaza because they're being treated very badly by Hamas.
Speaker 8: Thank you very much.
Speaker 5: Hostage families, we're protesting that Yahoo's decision yesterday as well.
Speaker 5: So Jeremy, can you tell us what you make of
Speaker 5: the last twenty four hours after conversations about all of
Speaker 5: this with the other side.
Speaker 9: Yeah, I mean, first of all, you know, either Donald
Speaker 9: Trump is lying or he's being intentionally fed bad information.
Speaker 9: I mean, you can talk to anti Hamas people involved
Speaker 9: with international aid on the ground and they'll tell you
Speaker 9: that it is entirely false that there is any significant
Speaker 9: amount of aid that is being stolen or commandeered by Hamas.
Speaker 9: In fact, when private gangs that many Palestinians suspect are
Speaker 9: in some way or another collaborating with Israel have been
Speaker 9: trying to loot supplies of aid when the civil police force,
Speaker 9: this is not casambragades, but when the civil police force
Speaker 9: in Gaza tries to respond to this looting, Israel has
Speaker 9: then attacked the police who are trying to prevent the
Speaker 9: looting from happening. And of course, you know, there were
Speaker 9: public there were executions recently of people that were involved
Speaker 9: in looting, and people made a big deal about this
Speaker 9: and it was portrayed as you know, Hamas is executing
Speaker 9: Palestinians who are just trying to get food. The reality
Speaker 9: on the ground is that some of the most powerful
Speaker 9: and influential families in Gaza were demanding that somebody somewhere
Speaker 9: take action to stop the looting of what little aid
Speaker 9: is left inside of the Gaza strip.
Speaker 8: So, you know, we should be.
Speaker 9: Reporting accurately and factually on these matters and not, you know,
Speaker 9: not falling into this trap of looking for every incendiary
Speaker 9: story that we can hype and it turns out that
Speaker 9: it's actually not even based on something that is fully true.
Speaker 9: On this issue that Trump is raising them. I'll tell
Speaker 9: you something that I learned in my reporting. A few
Speaker 9: weeks ago, the Israelis approached My sources told me the
Speaker 9: United Nations, and they tried to get the United Nations
Speaker 9: to agree to take charge of distributing aid on that
Speaker 9: Israel would send in. But Israel had a long list
Speaker 9: of conditions about how many calories could be in each packet,
Speaker 9: about how who could receive the aid, About the kind
Speaker 9: of security checks that Palestinians would be subjected to if
Speaker 9: they wanted to receive aid, about the kind of checkpoints
Speaker 9: they would have to pass through and the distances they
Speaker 9: would have to travel. And the United Nations told Israel,
Speaker 9: We're not going to participate in that because it's weaponizing
Speaker 9: the use of food for crimes of war. So then
Speaker 9: the Israelis go to international aid organizations. Now, I'm told
Speaker 9: that some aid organizations initially were considering going along with
Speaker 9: Israel's plan, in part because they felt that the situation
Speaker 9: was so dire that it was a compromise to make.
Speaker 9: Other aid organizations then looked at what Israel's terms were
Speaker 9: and said, absolutely not. These are de facto internment conditions.
Speaker 9: Those that's a direct quote from a letter signed by
Speaker 9: twenty aid organizations. So these international aid organizations said we
Speaker 9: won't participate in weaponizing food for Israel's war aims. So
Speaker 9: what Israel is now left with and Trump is referring to,
Speaker 9: is that they've come up with a plan. They've already
Speaker 9: divided Gaza into three sections. With these two massive corridors,
Speaker 9: is they're essentially going to try to push as much
Speaker 9: of the Palestinian population toward the south as possible into Rafa,
Speaker 9: which basically doesn't exist as anything vaguely resembling a city anymore.
Speaker 9: They're going to work with potentially an American security company
Speaker 9: and others, and they're going to force Palestinians to go
Speaker 9: through extensive security checks just to get some food to eat.
Speaker 9: So it now is the case that Israel in the
Speaker 9: United States seem to be trying to engage in a
Speaker 9: propaganda campaign that also weaponizes food as a tool of
Speaker 9: war in an effort to say, oh, look, we're helping
Speaker 9: the starving Palestinians. This is a way to avoid having
Speaker 9: to make an actual deal that would bring some peace
Speaker 9: and stability and would halt this genocide.
Speaker 6: And in your interview, Hamdan responded to the Egyptian proposal,
Speaker 6: which he rejected out of hand, which effectively, you know,
Speaker 6: required you know, Hamas to to fully disarm. You're all
Speaker 6: saying that there's they're willing to they're willing to move,
Speaker 6: you know, and they're willing to make some concessions. So
Speaker 6: what would be the concessions that Hamas is willing to
Speaker 6: make in order to you know, get to this five
Speaker 6: to seven? Your truth is not saying that there would
Speaker 6: be no offensive operations. Obviously that's that's a concession as well,
Speaker 6: because up to today there's state of positions. They will continue,
Speaker 6: you know, carrying out offensive operations against Israel until they
Speaker 6: say they won't. So that alone is one how would
Speaker 6: they how would they allow that to be internationally guaranteed
Speaker 6: while also maintaining you know, their weapons.
Speaker 9: So one thing on this issue of offensive you know,
Speaker 9: Hamas would say all of their operations are defensive because
Speaker 9: Israel is an illegitimate, illegal, uh you know, uh, occupying power.
Speaker 8: So you know, just to be clear, that's their position.
Speaker 6: Well, does that undercut their promise then if they're because
Speaker 6: what Israel wants is them not to like do another
Speaker 6: October seventh yeah.
Speaker 9: I mean, they're not playing like semantics here. I think
Speaker 9: what they're saying is, we're not going to attack Israel
Speaker 9: unless we are directly attacked militarily. Like they're not going
Speaker 9: to launch an operation that in the existential sense of
Speaker 9: it is defensive in nature from their perspective.
Speaker 8: But it's an interesting question.
Speaker 9: First of all, let me say this, what I was
Speaker 9: told by Hamas officials is don't we don't actually want
Speaker 9: to be the government of Gaza. We won democratic elections
Speaker 9: in two thousand and six, not just in Gaza, but
Speaker 9: in all of the Palestinian territories. Ismail Jania was supposed
Speaker 9: to be the prime minister of all Palestinian territories, not
Speaker 9: just Gaza. A civil war then breaks out between Mahmuda
Speaker 9: Bassa's FATA party and Hamas in Gaza in two thousand
Speaker 9: and seven. That results in an effective split of the
Speaker 9: Palestinian government where you have a BOSS and FATA controlling
Speaker 9: the occupied West Bank, and then you had Gaza controlled Hamas.
Speaker 9: The United States and other Western countries immediately impose sanctions
Speaker 9: and Israel imposes a blockade on Gaza. So the place
Speaker 9: has been being strangled ever since then. There hasn't been
Speaker 9: a democratic election since, not because Palestinians don't want it,
Speaker 9: but because it's been convenient for Mahmudabas not to have
Speaker 9: such elections. So Hamas is essentially viewing it as we're
Speaker 9: stuck being the government. You know, one of us officials
Speaker 9: said to me, do you know what happens if we
Speaker 9: don't pay people you know that are on our payroll,
Speaker 9: or what happens if the garbage isn't picked up? People
Speaker 9: protest against us like they would anywhere else. So it's,
Speaker 9: you know, it's an interesting point. So they're saying, we
Speaker 9: don't even want to be the government anymore. But if
Speaker 9: we sign this kind of a deal, we will fully
Speaker 9: relinquish all control of Gaza. We will submit to the
Speaker 9: democratic will of the Palestinian people, will go one of
Speaker 9: two ways. Egypt has made a proposal that there could
Speaker 9: be a sort of technocratic committee of experts that would
Speaker 9: govern Gaza until democratic elections could be organized and hell
Speaker 9: or you could do something under the auspices of the
Speaker 9: Palestinian authority. Even though Hamas is the extremely critical of Mahmudabas,
Speaker 9: who they perceive as a collaborator with the Israeli regime.
Speaker 9: They and other Palestinian factions have submitted forty to forty
Speaker 9: five names as suggestions for people that they would accept
Speaker 9: on a committee, and they're willing to submit to the
Speaker 9: authority of the Palestinian authority their political rivals. That's a
Speaker 9: massive political concession that Hamas is making. On the issue
Speaker 9: of weapons, what Hamas has said is there will be
Speaker 9: no need for resistance factions to have any weapons if
Speaker 9: Palestine as a state is allowed to constitute its own
Speaker 9: military and police forces capable of defending its territorial integrity.
Speaker 9: The final thing I'll say about this is Osama Hamdan
Speaker 9: said to me. I thought he was going to say
Speaker 9: there's no you know, I asked him about two state solution.
Speaker 9: What's called two state solution. I thought he was going
Speaker 9: to say it's dead in the water. I've been told
Speaker 9: that by other Palestinian resistance figures. He said, Israel is
Speaker 9: the party destroying the two state solution, and Hamas would
Speaker 9: welcome a two state solution if a majority of Palestinians
Speaker 9: voted for it. We would never stand in the way
Speaker 9: of it. If it was constituted along the pre nineteen
Speaker 9: sixty seven war borders, if East Jerusalem was the capital,
Speaker 9: and if Israel was forced through international oversight by the
Speaker 9: United States and others to respect those boundaries, that Hamas
Speaker 9: would not stand in the way of a two state solution.
Speaker 9: So people can dismiss what Hamas is saying. But since
Speaker 9: nineteen ninety two ninety three, the Hamas leadership has been
Speaker 9: proposing these long term truce deals with Israel, which are
Speaker 9: intended to create a multi year but defined period where
Speaker 9: Hamas and other resistance groups will agree to engage in
Speaker 9: no attacks unless they're militarily attacked, in the hopes that
Speaker 9: there can be a longer term political solution. From Donald
Speaker 9: Trump's perspective, that doesn't sound like a bad deal. And
Speaker 9: I think that's why the Israelis didn't want someone like
Speaker 9: Adam Boehler, who's a friend of the Trump family, or
Speaker 9: Steve Whitkoff directly speaking to Hamas, because it might put
Speaker 9: in their heads the idea Trump could actually preside over
Speaker 9: a very long term deal.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I think if Trump just and Amir Tabone and
Speaker 6: Haretz wrote a column saying this, if Trump just tweeted
Speaker 6: the same way he tweeted at Putin Vladimir stop, if
Speaker 6: he tweeted, this would Tabona written, Benjamin stop, get the
Speaker 6: hostages out.
Speaker 1: Make a deal like that would actually work.
Speaker 6: Like tweeting at Putin not going to get you very far,
Speaker 6: that tweet might actually work before you live. I wanted
Speaker 6: to get your response to what Israel has been doing instead,
Speaker 6: if we can put up a seven real quick from
Speaker 6: the drop site Twitter feed, in the last twenty four hours,
Speaker 6: Israel has bombed eastern and southern Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and Gaza.
Speaker 6: It's almost easier at this point to report you know
Speaker 6: which neighboring countries Israel is not bombing. I'm curious, and
Speaker 6: let's put up the one before that, which is a five.
Speaker 6: I'm curious from your conversations with the Hamas officials.
Speaker 1: This is uh.
Speaker 6: This is a Hoothy spokesperson saying that he's that the
Speaker 6: Hoothies are going to shut down air travel on an
Speaker 6: ongoing basis into Israel in response to israel siege on Gaza.
Speaker 6: They're saying that their strike on Ben Guria on airport
Speaker 6: is going to be repeated, and he warns international airlines
Speaker 6: not to fly into Ben Gurion Airport.
Speaker 1: Curious two things.
Speaker 6: One, how how does how did Hamas respond to this,
Speaker 6: this kind of escalating war that's now involving almost every
Speaker 6: country touching Israel, And how do they feel about the
Speaker 6: Houthi response in solidarity?
Speaker 9: You know, I think not just Hamas, not just Palestinians.
Speaker 9: I think that you know, really sharp observers in the
Speaker 9: region of history understand that what has happened is that
Speaker 9: Israel has run around throwing a lot of punches, and
Speaker 9: they think that that they've knocked out all of their adversaries,
Speaker 9: but no one can predict what the counter strike is
Speaker 9: going to look like. You know, I had one very
Speaker 9: senior Palestinian resistance figure tell me last week that Israel
Speaker 9: is going to be wishing one day that Hamas was back,
Speaker 9: because what's going to come next is going to be
Speaker 9: a much more radical, much more ferocious enemy. Because a
Speaker 9: whole generation of children, not just in Gaza, not just
Speaker 9: in the West Bank, but now in Lebanon, the children
Speaker 9: that were maimed by the Pager bomb plot, the Yemeni
Speaker 9: Yemeni's who are being bombed on a regular basis by
Speaker 9: the United States and Israel, increasingly Syrians. This generation that
Speaker 9: rises up is going to be coming of age in
Speaker 9: the shadow of one of the most brutal campaigns of
Speaker 9: lethal arson waged by an Israeli leader in history. And
Speaker 9: so while Netanyahu might feel that he's at the zenith
Speaker 9: of his life's mission to you know, take it to
Speaker 9: all of these resistance factions and try to redraw the
Speaker 9: maps of the Middle least, history shows that this is
Speaker 9: only the opening salvo, and what comes next is likely
Speaker 9: to be much more ferocious than what Metan, Yahoo and
Speaker 9: Israel have dealt with to date. So you know, Trump
Speaker 9: should tread very very carefully in his embrace of this
Speaker 9: arsonist agenda because history shows that what comes next, the
Speaker 9: fire next time, is going to be much more ferocious.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I could imagine ten fifteen years from now, israel
Speaker 6: officials looking back at the Hamas proposal of a five
Speaker 6: to seven year truce handing over power to a civilian
Speaker 6: authority as something that they would desperately like to go
Speaker 6: back and be able to take.
Speaker 9: Rian, Can I tell you one bit of news that's
Speaker 9: one bit of just bit of news that I haven't
Speaker 9: reported anywhere, but I feel it's appropriate to share it
Speaker 9: with you guys. You know, our colleague Hassam Shabbat was
Speaker 9: assassinated in late March by Israeli forces, and Israel had
Speaker 9: alleged that he was a Hamas sniper in the bait
Speaker 9: Hanun battalion of the Casam Brigades. I've been asking Palestinian
Speaker 9: officials about this from Hamas, and what I was told
Speaker 9: is that they actually did an audit. They wanted to
Speaker 9: get to the bottom of this, and they actually had
Speaker 9: Casam Brigades search documents, interview people. What I was told
Speaker 9: is that they are saying that not only was Hassam
Speaker 9: Shabbat not a sniper and not in the Casam Brigades,
Speaker 9: that he was not even a member of Hamas. And
Speaker 9: they formally told me, and they are alleging this that
Speaker 9: the documents that Israel released purporting to show that Hassam
Speaker 9: Shabbat and other journalists are members of Hamas are fabricated documents.
Speaker 9: That's what Hamas told me on the record.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 6: And the document that they were circulating about Hasam, it
Speaker 6: suggested he would have been I think, like sixteen years
Speaker 6: old when he was in some training camp. And what
Speaker 6: I can't understand about Israeli fabricated documents is why they
Speaker 6: don't make them more credible. Remember the one where they
Speaker 6: the guy would have been eleven when he was in it. Like,
Speaker 6: if you're going to fabricate the document, like, at least
Speaker 6: try to make it like you you have a blank
Speaker 6: space in front of you, Like the page is blank,
Speaker 6: you can write, put whatever numbers you want in there.
Speaker 6: Why why make it so incredible that that's that's interesting though,
Speaker 6: that they that they dived into those that they dived
Speaker 6: into those accusations. Do they do they plan on putting
Speaker 6: anything officially.
Speaker 1: Out about that? It's and it's hard to there's no
Speaker 1: document that I guess that can I.
Speaker 9: Was raising it with them because he's our colleague and
Speaker 9: and so you know, I had really been pushing them
Speaker 9: and saying, like, you know, can can you is there
Speaker 9: any legitimacy to this? Is there something maybe that they're
Speaker 9: basing it on? You know that I think that's the
Speaker 9: responsible thing to do as a as a journalist when
Speaker 9: these kinds of allegations are levied against a colleague. And
Speaker 9: it's been you know, weeks and weeks I've been pushing
Speaker 9: them on that, and finally they said, okay, we've done
Speaker 9: We've done that, and we've done this audit. Now people
Speaker 9: can say, oh, well, Hamas is going to say that.
Speaker 9: Not really, I mean Hamas and Kassam are you know
Speaker 9: they they claim their martyrs publicly and and so you know,
Speaker 9: their initial response was no, nobody's ever heard of it.
Speaker 9: And I said, no, well that you know, yeah, you
Speaker 9: can say that, but I mean, have you have you
Speaker 9: actually checked? And so I was quite surprised when I
Speaker 9: met personally with them that they said, we actually did that,
Speaker 9: and here's our finding.
Speaker 1: No, you're right, that's that.
Speaker 6: People should understand that point that if somebody dies who's
Speaker 6: in Kassam, they very publicly will we'll claim him, say
Speaker 6: like that, you know he was a martyr in art
Speaker 6: in this and will list all of the different affiliations.
Speaker 1: So that's that. That is the history that's accurate.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Jeremy, thank you so much. The story was fantastic.
Speaker 8: Thanks Emily, Thank you, Ryan.
Speaker 4: Will.
Speaker 5: President Trump sent Hollywood reeling on Sunday after making an
Speaker 5: announcement that he would be implementing one hundred percent tariffs
Speaker 5: on films. Just films, by the way, we can get
Speaker 5: into what all of that means, but that are produced
Speaker 5: outside of the United States. Now we don't even know
Speaker 5: what that means, because there's some questions of co production.
Speaker 5: There's production in one place and also another place. But
Speaker 5: let's just take a listen to Donald Trump on Sunday
Speaker 5: explaining what he's doing.
Speaker 11: What they've done is other nations have been stealing the
Speaker 11: the movies, the movie making capabilities from the United States.
Speaker 11: And I said to a couple of people, what do
Speaker 11: you think. I've got some very strong research over the
Speaker 11: last week, and we're making.
Speaker 12: Very few movies.
Speaker 11: Now Hollywood is being destroyed.
Speaker 5: Now you have an.
Speaker 11: Incompetent, grossly in competent governor.
Speaker 10: That allows that to happen.
Speaker 5: So I'm not just.
Speaker 11: Blaming other nations, but other nations, a lot of them
Speaker 11: have stolen our movie industry.
Speaker 7: And I'm saying, if they're.
Speaker 11: Not willing to make a movie inside the United States,
Speaker 11: and we should have a tariff when movies that come in.
Speaker 11: And not only that, governments are actually giving big money,
Speaker 11: I mean they're supporting them facial.
Speaker 4: So that's sort of a threat to.
Speaker 13: Our country in a sense.
Speaker 11: And it's been a very pot movie maker's.
Speaker 5: Love and so you can see the truth social post
Speaker 5: this is b too that Donald Trump put out that
Speaker 5: again this all sent Hollywood absolutely reeling. You can see
Speaker 5: here he narrowly mentions movies and he says movies coming
Speaker 5: into our country that are produced in foreign lands. He
Speaker 5: invokes the question of national security, and we can control
Speaker 5: them throt B three whenever we want.
Speaker 14: This is the.
Speaker 5: Hollywood Reporter, which has had pretty good coverage of this
Speaker 5: over the last forty eight hours. The Hollywood Reporter basically
Speaker 5: is I don't want to say they're forced to admit this,
Speaker 5: but Hollywood in general is kind of forced to admit
Speaker 5: that it is true. There have been incentives for some
Speaker 5: productions to go to places like Canada and Hungary. There's
Speaker 5: production that happens, post production that happens in places.
Speaker 4: Like the UK.
Speaker 5: But what's I think also very interesting is this sounds
Speaker 5: like Donald Trump is thinking about China in particular. So
Speaker 5: when he is invoking national security, it sounds like he's
Speaker 5: making an argument people like me made five years ago
Speaker 5: about China, and since then, since the pandemic, actually a
Speaker 5: lot of that has changed. I'm going to skip ahead
Speaker 5: here to be five and we can just roll through
Speaker 5: A and B. But if we look at B five
Speaker 5: A this is a chart from the New York Times
Speaker 5: and You can see here the top ten movies each
Speaker 5: year in China. In the twenty tens, a lot of
Speaker 5: them were actually Hollywood movies. Now a lot of them
Speaker 5: are not Hollywood movies. Twenty twenty three, not a single
Speaker 5: Hollywood movie in the top ten. And so what happened
Speaker 5: is that Hollywood reached out to China. We've had Chris
Speaker 5: Benton on to talk about how he was a leader
Speaker 5: in trying to broker that relationship between Hollywood and China,
Speaker 5: and it was a massive source of growth for Hollywood
Speaker 5: as they were being wrecked by streaming, as everything was
Speaker 5: being thrown into chaos by streaming. And here's another great
Speaker 5: chart from the New York Times. Revenue from top grossing
Speaker 5: movies is shrinking in China. So again, twenty twenty three,
Speaker 5: non Hollywood movies all the revenue in China. So all
Speaker 5: this is to say this has changed significantly over the
Speaker 5: last five years. These questions of Nash security concerns that
Speaker 5: were raised during the filming of Top Gun two, for example,
Speaker 5: where you had the Pentagon heavily collaborating on a movie
Speaker 5: that's all Pentagon equipment that's very common in Hollywood, has
Speaker 5: been for a couple of decades. They literally cooperate with
Speaker 5: the Department of Defense and bring in training exercises, and
Speaker 5: that's what you've seen a lot of like Jerry Bruckheimer
Speaker 5: movies and things like Top Gun.
Speaker 4: Frankly, so that.
Speaker 5: Was considered national security concern because China had censorship power.
Speaker 4: Over the script.
Speaker 5: They took the Taiwanese flag off Tom Cruise's bomber jacket,
Speaker 5: and what's very cpirt.
Speaker 1: Why did he have a Taiwanese flag on his bomber jacket.
Speaker 4: It was in the eighties too. It's sort of like
Speaker 4: part of the whole thing.
Speaker 5: But anyway, this has already changed so much. Hollywood feels
Speaker 5: like China has already learned everything that it can and
Speaker 5: is already making some of these incredible movies by using
Speaker 5: what Donald Trump says there about how they're taking American
Speaker 5: film nohow.
Speaker 4: I mean that sort of has.
Speaker 5: Already that process is kind of already played out, and
Speaker 5: China isn't even the concern anymore because Hollywood isn't cooperating
Speaker 5: with China at the rate that it was just a
Speaker 5: couple of years ago.
Speaker 4: So it's it's a really interesting move.
Speaker 5: I mean, you can I guess reshore some stuff that's
Speaker 5: been pushed to Canada in the UK, but a lot
Speaker 5: of this. First of all, movies do need to be
Speaker 5: filmed on location in other parts of the world, and
Speaker 5: some of it is just the For example, for atasit
Speaker 5: to you Ryan the strikes in Hollywood a couple of
Speaker 5: years ago, it costs more money to make movies in
Speaker 5: the United States that does in other places. And so
Speaker 5: if you're also not dealing with ensuring that Hollywood is
Speaker 5: paying writers in this age of IP questions and technological upheaval, actors,
Speaker 5: anybody in this space. I mean, it's just an enormous,
Speaker 5: thorny challenge. One hundred percent tariff maybe can have some effect,
Speaker 5: but it'll have to be like all the other tariffs,
Speaker 5: augmented with other significant policies.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it's another example of us trying to you know,
Speaker 6: compete with the rest of.
Speaker 1: The world while the rest of the world is.
Speaker 6: Able to do sophisticated strategic policy making and we just don't,
Speaker 6: like we we have tariffs. In this case, Trump is
Speaker 6: gonna I'm gonna put a tariff. Well, and then you're like, oh,
Speaker 6: what does that mean is does it get tariff because
Speaker 6: like one of your editors was in Paris or London
Speaker 6: or and yes, like it's not just other countries like Atlanta.
Speaker 1: You know, it has been pulling a rug out from.
Speaker 6: Under Hollywood as well, by reaching out to these production
Speaker 6: companies and telling them if you come here, we will
Speaker 6: give you this tax break, this this expat so the
Speaker 6: way to well, I mean, it's also just kind of
Speaker 6: industrial policy in another way, like you're you're sub you're
Speaker 6: subsidizing the thing that you want. And so the US
Speaker 6: would then have to say, okay, Hungary just doing this.
Speaker 6: You need to negotiate with hunger in Canada and say
Speaker 6: stop doing this or else we're going to retally against
Speaker 6: X and like that. That's how you do a kind
Speaker 6: of trade war, because this is you know, this is
Speaker 6: a service that is an export of ours, and we
Speaker 6: import your maple syrup and we're gonna be mean to
Speaker 6: it if you're if you don't stop subsidizing these Toronto
Speaker 6: film shoots, or we equalize the subsidies and go to
Speaker 6: the Hollywood and say, look, if you do it here,
Speaker 6: it's worth it to us as a taxpayer to match
Speaker 6: those subsidies.
Speaker 1: And that would require Congress. Good luck with that.
Speaker 5: So Yeah, let's roll, Howard letnink because actually filming it
Speaker 5: Canda has been happening for a very long time. So
Speaker 5: this is B six Howard Latink talking about the policy.
Speaker 14: So Mark Carney, whom I managed, Essential Banker, you're gonna
Speaker 14: are you optimistic? Can we make a deal with Canada?
Speaker 15: I think it's really complex. I think this is really
Speaker 15: complex because they have been basically feeding off of us
Speaker 15: for decades upon decades upon decades, right, they have their
Speaker 15: socialist regime and it's basically feeding off of America. I mean,
Speaker 15: the President calls that out all the time. Why do
Speaker 15: we make cars in Canada? Why do we do our
Speaker 15: films in Canada? Come on? So, I think the President's
Speaker 15: going to have I think it's going to be a
Speaker 15: fascinating meeting. I'm glad I'm going to be there listening.
Speaker 15: But it's going to be a fascinating meeting tomorrow.
Speaker 5: And of course that meeting is happening later today, Donald
Speaker 5: Trump and Mark Carney. So it's possible Ryan that one
Speaker 5: read on the situation is that Donald Trump was trying
Speaker 5: to put more on the table ahead of his meeting
Speaker 5: with Mark Carney. I mean, this is not an insignificant
Speaker 5: part of.
Speaker 4: The Canadian economy.
Speaker 5: There have been productions in Canada for a long time,
Speaker 5: and Hollywood has done movies and TV shows there for
Speaker 5: a long time. Trump's true social posts again only mentioned movies.
Speaker 5: This is another question that the Hollywood Reporter has raised
Speaker 5: is first of all, how are you tariffing things that
Speaker 5: are coming across borders when it's a lot of this
Speaker 5: is just streaming. It's a significant like, I mean, some
Speaker 5: of people are buying DVDs that are produced.
Speaker 4: It's a very the.
Speaker 5: Data that is encoded onto a DVD, I guess potentially
Speaker 5: is produced in China if it's post production, or I
Speaker 5: mean in Canada it's post production. But I guess it's
Speaker 5: possible that Trump just wanted to throw some leverage out
Speaker 5: there ahead of his conversation with Mark Karney.
Speaker 4: That might be one way to look it up.
Speaker 1: It's probably more animalistic Trump. Trump loves Hollywood like he
Speaker 1: has a love hate relationship with Hollywood, and you know,
Speaker 1: like an old man, he sees that it was better
Speaker 1: when he was younger, and he's right about that. What
Speaker 1: he doesn't want to think about is that.
Speaker 6: The biggest blow probably you know, to Hollywood is his
Speaker 6: trade war with China. One of the first responses from
Speaker 6: China was, we're going to significantly reduce the amount of
Speaker 6: the movies that we're gonna, you know, allow from Hollywood
Speaker 6: into China.
Speaker 4: Even it stopped significantly, Even though.
Speaker 6: It was down, it's still on an absolute basis, represents
Speaker 6: enormous sums of money. And that's that's the thing about
Speaker 6: the Chinese market. Now it can be maybe we're not
Speaker 6: in the top ten, but it's still huge amounts of money.
Speaker 5: Right, Yeah, I mean it was a it was a
Speaker 5: really big part of their growth plan going forward, and
Speaker 5: then sort of the pandemic made them realize that probably
Speaker 5: wouldn't be the case.
Speaker 4: But yes, there's still you know.
Speaker 5: I imagine a decent drink of money on the table,
Speaker 5: but a ton of money on the table in Canada, UK,
Speaker 5: Hungary where some of these productions have been moved.
Speaker 4: So we'll see.
Speaker 6: Well, looks like twenty twenty three, Hollywood firms earned eight
Speaker 6: billion in.
Speaker 5: China and a lot of that is probably on older
Speaker 5: stuff too, would be my guess.
Speaker 4: That's what will is that box office a lot.
Speaker 1: Of money revenue?
Speaker 4: I don't know, Okay, Yeah, So also it's.
Speaker 1: Way down but it's a lot of money, and that's
Speaker 1: my point.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, of course, especially when they don't have a
Speaker 5: lot of money to toss around like they're doing great
Speaker 5: right now.
Speaker 4: Anyway, all that.
Speaker 5: Is to say, and we will see how Donald Trump's
Speaker 5: meeting with Mark Carney goes today. We will see how
Speaker 5: real this policy actually is going forward, you know, if
Speaker 5: Donald Trump wants it to be real, even just the
Speaker 5: process of implementing it. Given everything we just laid out,
Speaker 5: does it apply to things that are co produced in
Speaker 5: other countries, that are partially produced in one country? Does
Speaker 5: it apply to TV shows? Does it apply just to
Speaker 5: box offices, does it apply to streaming? There's really no
Speaker 5: clear idea of what this would look like, so Hollywood
Speaker 5: is left to scramble and lobby and I guess.
Speaker 4: Hope for the best.
Speaker 5: So we'll see what happens, and we should get to
Speaker 5: Jannis Faa Fucus Now, Ryan, all.
Speaker 1: Right, stick around for that.
Speaker 6: We're moving now to Jannis Vera, Faucus writer and former
Speaker 6: Greek finance minister Giannis thank you.
Speaker 1: So much for joining us.
Speaker 7: Peaks make great pleasure to thank you for having me.
Speaker 6: And so let's start with Howard Lutnik who's the kind
Speaker 6: of man about cable lately? Commerce Secretary for President Donald
Speaker 6: Trump speaking yesterday, I believe this on CNBC.
Speaker 14: So of course it's going to be a top ten
Speaker 14: what's up a top ten economy from Asia?
Speaker 15: Listen, the Asian markets are very complex and there's a
Speaker 15: lot of talking to do right. To get these things right,
Speaker 15: you've got to do a lot of talking that We've
Speaker 15: only got ninety days and we all got sixty left,
Speaker 15: so these things are coming, but you gotta be patient. Now,
Speaker 15: we're going to get some deals done pretty soon. The
Speaker 15: President will decide when he announces it. Because remember I'm
Speaker 15: as Commerce Secretary. I do the work, but the boss,
Speaker 15: and you know the boss as well as anybody in
Speaker 15: the world, and this is his deal to me, I'm told,
Speaker 15: and his deal to do.
Speaker 1: No I appreciate that.
Speaker 6: Yes, that was on Fox Business, but I want to
Speaker 6: play that clip because as we've been trying to report
Speaker 6: on the Trump Administration's ongoing trade war, we've tried to
Speaker 6: give kind of the best possible perspective, the best put
Speaker 6: the Trump administration's argument in the best possible light so
Speaker 6: that people can agree with or disagree with it, and
Speaker 6: I've had a really hard time figuring out what it is.
Speaker 6: I don't exactly know what they're trying to accomplish, and
Speaker 6: some of your writing has been really helpful in laying
Speaker 6: out what possibly could be driving some of what the
Speaker 6: thinking is behind the Trump administration's kind of reorganizing of
Speaker 6: the world economy at this point in time, What do
Speaker 6: you think the Trump administration is trying to accomplish.
Speaker 7: Two basic things.
Speaker 16: The first thing they want to do is they want
Speaker 16: to devalue, substantially devalue the dollar while simultaneously, and that
Speaker 16: may sound like a part of expert I don't believe
Speaker 16: it is maintaining the exobitant privilege, a so called exobitant
Speaker 16: privilege of the dollar, maintaining its hegemonic presence in the weldicon.
Speaker 16: That's one of the possibly the most significant goal. The
Speaker 16: second thing they're trying to do is essentially tie together
Speaker 16: the extent to which the Trump administration is going to
Speaker 16: assault it's allies and foes with Trump with Trump's tariffs.
Speaker 16: To tie this in to the extent to which tips
Speaker 16: are going to be used. So use tartiffs in order
Speaker 16: to enhance the penetration of the American military industrial complex
Speaker 16: in other people's economies and to calibrate that.
Speaker 7: Penetration by the means of the tips.
Speaker 16: But the first task, which I mentioned, seems to be
Speaker 16: judging by what Scott Pasient is saying, what seven miran
Speaker 16: are saying, it seems to be the number one priority.
Speaker 1: It seems to be working right.
Speaker 6: And what would be the consequence if they do successfully
Speaker 6: devalue the dollar but maintain the hegemonic presence?
Speaker 5: And can I also say Joannest, especially in the context
Speaker 5: of Trump pulling back originally because of what he saw
Speaker 5: on the bond market, I think he said people were
Speaker 5: getting quote a little yippie. How does that all? How
Speaker 5: does all of this fit together?
Speaker 16: Well, there's no doubt that he got the scare. He
Speaker 16: felt that less trusts moment may be coming his way, undoubtedly,
Speaker 16: so he stepped back. But he's going to step forward
Speaker 16: again in his usual shuffle. But allow me to just
Speaker 16: by the way less I am misunderstood. I'm not supporting
Speaker 16: the Trumpian project, but I do believe that those of
Speaker 16: us who are politically opposed to it, we have a
Speaker 16: duty to understand it and not to dismiss them as
Speaker 16: a bunch of Neanderthals, which is what the liberal establishment,
Speaker 16: to the detriment, I have to add, are doing.
Speaker 7: So.
Speaker 16: Look, if you heard Scott Bessant at the IMF the
Speaker 16: other day, he was really very clear. He talked about
Speaker 16: the Breton Woods institutions, he talked about the Nixon shock
Speaker 16: in nineteen seventy one, and essentially what he was telling
Speaker 16: his audience was, and it's not any rational perspective to
Speaker 16: present the world.
Speaker 7: What you were saying was, Look, folks.
Speaker 16: Ever since we became a deficit country at the end
Speaker 16: of the nineteen sixties, by ninety seventy, America was a
Speaker 16: deficit country. We achieved something quite spectacular. We managed to
Speaker 16: grow our hegemonic power in proportion to our trade deficit
Speaker 16: and our budget deficit. That has never happened before. No
Speaker 16: empire has managed to grow its power while going into
Speaker 16: the red. And the United States managed to do it
Speaker 16: at the expense of the American working class, at the
Speaker 16: expense of a very substantial portion of the American middle class.
Speaker 16: But we did it, And then he adds, I don't
Speaker 16: believe we can carry on doing it because there is
Speaker 16: a limit beyond which trade deficits are not sustainable. Anymore,
Speaker 16: and you see the success of the Nixon administration, the
Speaker 16: Cardon administration, the Reagan administration, and so on and so forth,
Speaker 16: was that they managed to make other people's capitalists pay
Speaker 16: for the American deficits in a manner which enriched violently
Speaker 16: reached the American renteer class.
Speaker 7: But that gave rise in the end to an incongruity.
Speaker 16: If you look at the dollar world, the world out there,
Speaker 16: the economic sphere that is denominated in dollars, it is gigantic,
Speaker 16: and it has been growing since the ninety seventies. But
Speaker 16: the manufacturing capacity, the real material economy of the United States,
Speaker 16: on which this dollar world is parasitic has been shrinking
Speaker 16: and shrinking and shrinking. So you have a huge parasite
Speaker 16: and a tiny little organism on which the big parasite
Speaker 16: is being parasitic too. So their concern is that this
Speaker 16: is becoming completely disproportional. They need to shrink the dollar
Speaker 16: world and increase the extent to which the American economic
Speaker 16: and manufacturer stuff.
Speaker 7: This is what they want.
Speaker 16: So from their perspective, at the valuation of the dollar
Speaker 16: by around thirty percent, which is ballpark, what they want
Speaker 16: will restore something like an equilibrium, not an equilibrium, but
Speaker 16: it will take the whole gamut closer to an equilibrium.
Speaker 16: But they're very, very worried that this devaluation should not
Speaker 16: be allowed to diminish the exorbitant privilege of the dollar.
Speaker 16: And this is why they're playing hardball with China. This
Speaker 16: is why they're playing hardball with the Japanese. They're telling
Speaker 16: the Japanese, sell a chunk of your one point two
Speaker 16: trillion dollars of savings, but don't buy Japanese yen. Do
Speaker 16: not buy the euro, do not buy the Chinese one.
Speaker 16: We will tell you what to buy. So tariffs are
Speaker 16: in that context, in the context of present.
Speaker 7: Their side show. They may be very high.
Speaker 16: Up the list of priorities of the Great Donald, but
Speaker 16: not his economic team. His economic team is far more
Speaker 16: interested in what they call the imbalancing of the dollar,
Speaker 16: paper money trail and the actual productive capacities of the
Speaker 16: United States.
Speaker 4: And let's put see one on the screen.
Speaker 5: So this is from Arnold Bertrand who points out that China, Japan,
Speaker 5: South Korea, and the countries of Asen just issued a
Speaker 5: joint statement in which they take a unified stance against
Speaker 5: quote escalating trade protectionism, clear reference to Trump's tariffs.
Speaker 4: And I want to.
Speaker 5: Ask you, honest, now that we've sort of established, I
Speaker 5: think very accurately what the administration's goal is, and that's
Speaker 5: hazy and a lot of corners of the media where
Speaker 5: they have this distorted idea of what the administration is
Speaker 5: actually trying to doing, is actually trying to do? How
Speaker 5: would you say that they're doing towards their own goal?
Speaker 5: If that is their own goal, how is the progress
Speaker 5: is it working, let's say, on their own terms.
Speaker 7: Allow me to be frank, it is far too early
Speaker 7: to know.
Speaker 16: Imagine we had the time machine and we went back
Speaker 16: to let's say October ninety seventy one, a couple of
Speaker 16: months after the Nixon Shock, it would have been impossible
Speaker 16: to predict whether the Nixon shock could have worked, because
Speaker 16: it took it a decade for the Nixon Shock to
Speaker 16: be implemented fully. Which means that the Trump administration, this
Speaker 16: Trump administration, can all explaining it, to.
Speaker 1: Explain to us what the Nixon shock is.
Speaker 16: In nineteen seventy one, fifteenth of August, those old enough
Speaker 16: can remember that because it was a shocking day. It
Speaker 16: was the day when effectively Nixon blew up the international
Speaker 16: monetary system that the United States had painstakingly put together
Speaker 16: at the Breton Moods Conference in ninety forty four. The
Speaker 16: golden age of American capitals with global capitalism, which was
Speaker 16: the nineteen fifties and sixties as well. We all know
Speaker 16: and remember it was predicated. It was built on that
Speaker 16: monetary system. It was a remarkable system, come to think
Speaker 16: of it. It had the anchor was the dollar. People
Speaker 16: say that it was the gold, because indeed the United
Speaker 16: States guaranteed anyone with thirty five dollars an ounce of
Speaker 16: gold from Fort Knox, But.
Speaker 7: That was a side show. It was more for show.
Speaker 16: The reality was that it was a monetary system predicated
Speaker 16: on the United States dollar, which was in fixed exchange rates,
Speaker 16: completely pegged to every other currency in Europe and in
Speaker 16: Japan and the Japanese yen. For years, for decades, there
Speaker 16: were no fluctuations in exchange rates. Interstates were stuck at
Speaker 16: around four and a half percent plus on minus zero
Speaker 16: point one zero point two percent.
Speaker 7: It was wonderfully boring.
Speaker 16: You know, the whole financial establisher imagine, you know, you
Speaker 16: never had to check the exchange rates or interstates because
Speaker 16: we're for decades they were the same, and it was
Speaker 16: a golden era because what was the essence of the
Speaker 16: Breton Wood system. It was that the United States exited
Speaker 16: the Second World War as the only creditor nation, as
Speaker 16: the only plus nation, the only country with a large,
Speaker 16: gigantic trade surplus. It was the only country that was
Speaker 16: not in ashes after the Second World War, and the
Speaker 16: idea was to maintain those surpluses. The American administration would
Speaker 16: do whatever it took in order to dollarize Europe and Japan,
Speaker 16: essentially essentially taking part of its surpluses, sending it to
Speaker 16: Europe into Japan, either in the form of aid or loans,
Speaker 16: private loans, public loans, so that the Europeans that the
Speaker 16: Japanese could afford would have enough dollars to purchase the
Speaker 16: American experts. And this worked brilliantly until the United States
Speaker 16: no longer had the surplus.
Speaker 7: And with typical.
Speaker 16: Bravado brigard Nixon, there wasn't Nixon himself, there were some
Speaker 16: very interesting people around him. The Nixon team comprised Henry Kissinger,
Speaker 16: who was the National Security Advisor at the time before
Speaker 16: he became the Secretary of State. It was John Connolly,
Speaker 16: the former Texas governor Democrat who abscondent joined the Nixon
Speaker 16: administration became the Treasury secretary. Yes, indeed he was in
Speaker 16: the car when JFK was shot and primarily a young
Speaker 16: man called Paul Volke that no one knew at the
Speaker 16: time who was the real brains of the Nixon shock.
Speaker 16: But there is one mentioning that, and thank you for
Speaker 16: giving the opportunity to say that the Nition Shock took
Speaker 16: place on the fifteenth of August ninety seventy one.
Speaker 7: It was major.
Speaker 16: You know, Nixon sent Connelly, his Treasury secretary, to the
Speaker 16: Europeans who were pulling their hair out because the dollar
Speaker 16: divided so fast and essentially inflation and unemployment was coming
Speaker 16: the way of the Europeans as a result of that
Speaker 16: move by Nixon, and Connelly very arrogantly and aggressively looked
Speaker 16: at them with cynicism, I would say, and said to them, guys,
Speaker 16: the dollar is our currency, but from today it is
Speaker 16: your problem. So when people say that, you know, what
Speaker 16: Trump did is unprecedented, and never before has America treated this.
Speaker 7: Allies so badly, that's rubbish.
Speaker 16: They did it in ninety seventy one and they kept
Speaker 16: doing it for years and years. And indeed, Paul Volker,
Speaker 16: before he was appointed by Carter chairman of the FED,
Speaker 16: a couple of months before that in nineteen eighty seventy five,
Speaker 16: in actually in ninety seventy eight, if I remember correctly,
Speaker 16: he gave a speech that the University of Warwick in England,
Speaker 16: which was remarkable because there he outlined the plan and
Speaker 16: the plan was and I am quoting here the button
Speaker 16: because I've it's etched in my mind this speech of his.
Speaker 7: He said, the.
Speaker 16: United States has opted, for reasons of its own national interest,
Speaker 16: for the control disintegration of the world economy.
Speaker 7: Does this remind you of anything?
Speaker 16: This is sevity had the control disintegration, and the Japanese
Speaker 16: and the Europeans were pulling their hair out. So but
Speaker 16: you see, it took ten years because it wasn't just
Speaker 16: an some shog ninety seventy one. It was a content
Speaker 16: administration that continued that by appointing that's the same man,
Speaker 16: you know, Paul Volga to be the head of the FED.
Speaker 16: And then Reagan continued it, and then Bush continued it,
Speaker 16: and Clinton continued it.
Speaker 7: So whether you know.
Speaker 16: This, this is my excuse for saying it's too early
Speaker 16: to judge whether the truck shock is going to work,
Speaker 16: because the question is is there going to be this
Speaker 16: continuity in implementing the basic idea which people like Scott
Speaker 16: Peasant are outlining.
Speaker 6: And so I often also fall into the trap of
Speaker 6: thinking that these are Neanderthals that are organizing this policy,
Speaker 6: but I agree and follow along with their analysis all
Speaker 6: the way up until basically implementation. When it comes to
Speaker 6: the implementation, it feels like there's no and therefore this
Speaker 6: is how it's going to work out. And maybe I'm
Speaker 6: missing this as well, but they are you know, effectively
Speaker 6: you know, devaluing the dollar, creating conditions that could you know,
Speaker 6: create some manufacturing turnaround without having done the work of
Speaker 6: giving us the foundation on which we could build a
Speaker 6: manufacturing capacity, like you still need things and people in
Speaker 6: order to feed that. You know, economics by itself is
Speaker 6: just just magic. Like it can't you know, by magic,
Speaker 6: It can't just create things out of nothing. And if
Speaker 6: China tells us, well, we're not sending you any semiconductors,
Speaker 6: We're not sending you any any of the magnets, You're
Speaker 6: not going to get any of the fund refined rare
Speaker 6: earths that you're manufacturing capacity needs. We're going to have
Speaker 6: a collapse in our manufacturing base relative to last year,
Speaker 6: and then the politics are going to reverse and end
Speaker 6: this entire experiment before it even you know, gets out,
Speaker 6: gets out of the lab And that would answer, then
Speaker 6: answer your question of whether it's working, because in order
Speaker 6: for it to work, you need political continuity, and you
Speaker 6: can't have political continuity. I wouldn't think if you get
Speaker 6: a significant recession and you don't see any green shoots
Speaker 6: of Manu factoring out of it. So what am I
Speaker 6: missing there?
Speaker 1: Like?
Speaker 6: What is best and see as the as the potential
Speaker 6: for us to revitalize our manufacturing capacity while simultaneously cutting
Speaker 6: ourselves off from trade.
Speaker 5: And you honest, I'll just add there now saying the
Speaker 5: tax cut bill that Trump hopes to pass over the
Speaker 5: summer will include like one hundred percent right offs on.
Speaker 1: Building expenses something of an answer.
Speaker 5: Retroactive to January twenty. So I don't know how you
Speaker 5: would react to all of that.
Speaker 16: Yeah, well, I'll sell the last point you made about
Speaker 16: the tax scats. We keep forgetting that Trump's shotgun has
Speaker 16: two battles, one of them contained the tariffs. The second
Speaker 16: one the tax scats. The second has not been fired yet.
Speaker 16: And I think this is a very important part of
Speaker 16: their plan for attracting foreign capital, particularly particularly German capital,
Speaker 16: or Japanese capital, or Taiwanese capital in the United States.
Speaker 7: But yes, look, you have every reason.
Speaker 16: To be despondent about the lack of preparation, the the
Speaker 16: chaotic nature of all these announcements, the very sloppy language
Speaker 16: that Donald Trump in particular uses reciprocal tariffs.
Speaker 7: There's no reciproces in what he's doing.
Speaker 16: He's just going all out with Jake and the tariffs
Speaker 16: in proportion to the trade deficit that.
Speaker 7: The United States has vis a very particular countries.
Speaker 16: So yes, I mean it is a bit you will
Speaker 16: excuse my unscientific term, it's a bit of a shit show.
Speaker 16: But then again, then again, I have to take you
Speaker 16: back to nineteen seventy one.
Speaker 7: It was exactly that.
Speaker 16: In ninety seventy You know, Richard Dix was not the
Speaker 16: most coherent for reasonable people in the world, right, he
Speaker 16: was probably one of the worst ones. He also on
Speaker 16: the fifteen of August. What we tend to forget is
Speaker 16: that not only did he uncoupled the United States dollar
Speaker 16: from gold and had the massive.
Speaker 7: Evaluation of the dollar. But he also did something else.
Speaker 7: He introduced tariffs ten percent tariffs.
Speaker 16: Immediately the same day, and then he took those back
Speaker 16: three months later. So that's why I keep insisting that
Speaker 16: we've seen this play before, and we have seen the chaos,
Speaker 16: and we have seen how remarkably it worked. Not on
Speaker 16: behalf of the working class of the United States, of
Speaker 16: the middle class of the United States, they were destroyed.
Speaker 16: I mean, as you know, in your country, hourly real
Speaker 16: wages are still below the level that they used to
Speaker 16: be at in nineteen seventy three. When Trump talks about
Speaker 16: the carnage in the heartlands of the United States, he's
Speaker 16: completely right. Of course, he uses this to exploit the
Speaker 16: people who vote for him and trust him, and I
Speaker 16: think they trust him in a manner which they will
Speaker 16: live to regret one at some point. But we've seen
Speaker 16: all this before. Now let's get to the point. Is
Speaker 16: this going to work or not? Well, I don't think
Speaker 16: it's going to work. I think that it's not going
Speaker 16: to work from the perspective of the mega base who
Speaker 16: put their trust in Trump to bring back a sufficient
Speaker 16: number of jobs and equality of jobs that would somehow
Speaker 16: restore their capacity to dream, the American dream. And the
Speaker 16: reason is not that capital is not going to rush
Speaker 16: to the United States. I have no doubt that it
Speaker 16: is already rushing into the United States. I've spoken to
Speaker 16: people in Germany, I've spoken to people in France, I've
Speaker 16: spoken to people in Japan, and they are increasing very
Speaker 16: substantially the amount of investment they are going to be
Speaker 16: putting into the United States. That is not a problem.
Speaker 16: Capital is flowing already in the United States. But I
Speaker 16: don't think the number of jobs is going to be
Speaker 16: proportional to the amount of capital. Because if you think
Speaker 16: about take Apple for instance, when Apple introduced manufacturing again
Speaker 16: in the United States some years ago, they built that
Speaker 16: factory that makes their laptops MacBook pros in somewhere near Austin, Texas. Well,
Speaker 16: the number of jobs was miniskilled because of automation. So
Speaker 16: a lot of the new manufacturing capacity is going to
Speaker 16: create a jobless search.
Speaker 7: So this is problem number one.
Speaker 16: But allow me to tell you what I think is
Speaker 16: the real the real danger that Trump should be thinking about,
Speaker 16: you know, especially during.
Speaker 7: The night keeping him awake.
Speaker 16: If I were him, I would worry about success because
Speaker 16: if he is success in bringing back manufacturing to the
Speaker 16: United States to the extent that he says that he will,
Speaker 16: which I don't think he will. But let's say that
Speaker 16: he does. Then what happens Then the trade DEFs of
Speaker 16: the United States shrinks. But the great deficit of the
Speaker 16: United States is the flip side of the massive rents
Speaker 16: extracted from the global economy by American redeers. Because, come
Speaker 16: to think of it, it is the American trade deficit
Speaker 16: which keeps German factories churning, Japanese factories and Chinese factories.
Speaker 16: And it is the dollars that these capitalists in Germany,
Speaker 16: Japan and in China collect, which they accumulate and then
Speaker 16: they bring it back to or send it to New
Speaker 16: York to Wall State to be recycled in the form
Speaker 16: of US government debt, treasuries, some equities, and a lot
Speaker 16: of real estate. So the reason why financial markets have
Speaker 16: been doing so well over the last forty years or so,
Speaker 16: the reason why realtors like Trump have been amassing these
Speaker 16: gigantic rents for the last forty years is.
Speaker 7: The American trade deficity. So what happens when eliminated.
Speaker 16: If he succeeds in eliminating, he's going to have some
Speaker 16: really very cross re reenteers, financiers, and realtors. His tribe
Speaker 16: are going to be living with him. Can he sustain
Speaker 16: that or would he choose to betray the working class
Speaker 16: that voted for him?
Speaker 7: I suspect it will be the letter.
Speaker 1: And so yeah, so what would that look like?
Speaker 6: So let's say the rentier class is now getting pinched,
Speaker 6: and it's incredible irony that it is a kingpin of
Speaker 6: the rentier class that you know, he's literally a real
Speaker 6: estate developer that is, that is leading this operation that
Speaker 6: that then pinches people like him?
Speaker 1: What what? What?
Speaker 12: Then?
Speaker 6: What then happens if you no longer have these dollars
Speaker 6: you know, flowing out to German factories, Chinese factories, Japanese
Speaker 6: factories and then recycled back into into Wall Street and
Speaker 6: then circulated throughout the US rentier class?
Speaker 1: Like what?
Speaker 12: So?
Speaker 1: What what does happen?
Speaker 5: Like?
Speaker 6: How do the how do the what are the factories do?
Speaker 6: What are the and what are the rentiers do?
Speaker 7: Well?
Speaker 16: You see, I don't think we will reach the point
Speaker 16: where they're in tears.
Speaker 7: Interests will be so seriously jeopardized.
Speaker 16: That is, even if the trumpion playbook is implemented and
Speaker 16: starts working and the trade deficits starts shrinking, at some
Speaker 16: point the administration itself will stop it from shrinking. They
Speaker 16: will say, okay, well, we have reduced it by I
Speaker 16: don't know what percentage. We have recalibrated, rebalanced the dollar
Speaker 16: world and the manufacturing world, the US manufacturing world to
Speaker 16: some extent, and that's enough.
Speaker 7: And now we are going to do.
Speaker 16: Other things like, for instance, we are going to give
Speaker 16: even more tax cuts. We are going to allow Elmask
Speaker 16: to go crazy with his uh you know, tesla autonomously
Speaker 16: driven vehicles, deregulate completely, put all our eggs in the
Speaker 16: big tech basket, which is where the United States still
Speaker 16: has a significant advantage visa vidas of the world and
Speaker 16: to some extent China, and accumulate trends in that regard.
Speaker 16: But that will create political cares because the megabase will
Speaker 16: have been betrayed firstly by Obama in two thousand and eight,
Speaker 16: then by Biden, and now by Trump two point zero.
Speaker 16: And therefore nothing good is going to transpire when it
Speaker 16: comes to the quality of what we call our democratic
Speaker 16: process here in the West, be.
Speaker 4: Honest, very focus. Thank you so much for joining us
Speaker 4: as was fascinating and very helpful. We appreciate it.
Speaker 7: Thank you. I enjoyed it.
Speaker 6: Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy was on Bill Maher talking
Speaker 6: about AOC and Bernie.
Speaker 1: Let's roll over this. They gained the system, they.
Speaker 17: Changed the horizon for twenty twenty eight in the Democratic
Speaker 17: primary right now.
Speaker 7: Yeah, Bernie and AOC.
Speaker 17: No, they got the biggest crowds.
Speaker 7: That doesn't matter.
Speaker 8: It wants sustain itself.
Speaker 17: But right now they have no leader, you know. But
Speaker 17: this is the thing the Republican Party has to understand too.
Speaker 17: Both parties lost in the last election. Trump won, okay,
Speaker 17: and I don't know if that's going to transfer. We
Speaker 17: should have won four more seats in the Senate if
Speaker 17: you look at the last seventy races for the Senate,
Speaker 17: sixty nine and folly.
Speaker 8: But exactly that.
Speaker 4: I think it's more versus Younkin.
Speaker 17: That's where I see it, Youngkin would be. I think
Speaker 17: it's going to go back, get adjacent, and then Vansen
Speaker 17: Junior will fight it out for that crowd. You're the
Speaker 17: AOC and Bernie and who's at the top of taking
Speaker 17: a lead right now?
Speaker 1: Who's at the.
Speaker 17: Top of that ticket, Kevin, Because if it's if it's
Speaker 17: not Bernie, what he's going to be vice president?
Speaker 15: And wait his turn, it would be Vernie's been running
Speaker 15: each time.
Speaker 8: I'm just saying who's in the.
Speaker 14: Lead right now.
Speaker 17: I don't think that nobody ends up.
Speaker 12: But big crowds don't necessarily mean who's the right candidate?
Speaker 7: You know when I started.
Speaker 17: But it drives, It drives where the ideas are going
Speaker 17: to go. Is going to drive them money for a while.
Speaker 12: It doesn't make them the winner.
Speaker 8: It doesn't make it a winner.
Speaker 17: You'll have to wait till you'll get two years out
Speaker 17: and then you'll start seeing these governors they start showing solutions.
Speaker 17: You also have to know what is the issue going
Speaker 17: to be. Are we going to have a foreign policy issue?
Speaker 17: We're going to have an economic issue? And who's been
Speaker 17: the best and leading in that? But right now, for
Speaker 17: the Democrats, who's going to lead for the next two years?
Speaker 17: The money is going to AOC outraised everybody in the House,
Speaker 17: and it's all small doughters. This is exactly where Trump
Speaker 17: was when no one gave him a chance. Is empty.
Speaker 17: He outraised everybody else. So that's where the base is at,
Speaker 17: right and so what will happen. It'll move after the
Speaker 17: next midterm elections.
Speaker 6: We do know what AOC will not be doing, and
Speaker 6: that's running for the top spot on the Oversight Committit.
Speaker 1: If you can put a zero zero here, she.
Speaker 6: Says, Jerry Connolly stepped aside, who had beat her in
Speaker 6: the race for ranking them on oversight, and she says
Speaker 6: she's not running this time. She says, quote is actually
Speaker 6: clear to me that the underlying dynamics in the caucus
Speaker 6: have not shifted with respect to seniority as much as
Speaker 6: I think would be necessary. And so I believe I'll
Speaker 6: be staying put at Energy and Commerce unquote, because if
Speaker 6: she would be ranking member, then she couldn't serve on
Speaker 6: Energy and Commerce Committee, which is an a committee.
Speaker 1: It's very they used.
Speaker 6: To be a powerful committee back when committees mattered. Meeties
Speaker 6: don't really matter anymore. But it's not there's not zero.
Speaker 5: It sounds like what she's saying that, if you read
Speaker 5: between the lines, is that leadership is still trying to
Speaker 5: wield significant power over oversight.
Speaker 6: She feels like, if I don't think it's leadership, I
Speaker 6: think what she's saying is what she means, which is
Speaker 6: that the caucus itself is so filled with people who
Speaker 6: believe in the dogma of seniority and that you rise
Speaker 6: up through the ranks based on how many terms you've served,
Speaker 6: and that they're not willing to upend that even at
Speaker 6: this moment, that seniority trumps everything else. And so if
Speaker 6: because you know there's a there's there's a very uh.
Speaker 6: The incentive for each member of Congress is to support
Speaker 6: the seniority system because it's not a merit system.
Speaker 1: It just means if you stick.
Speaker 6: Around long enough, you will matter. If you suck, it
Speaker 6: doesn't matter, nothing matters. You will eventually get your turn.
Speaker 6: As Connley called, he said, I've never gotten to be.
Speaker 1: A ranking member.
Speaker 4: Don't ask Tony Hoyer about that, though.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, the very top thing. You got to compete.
Speaker 18: Uh.
Speaker 1: And yes, because he was he had.
Speaker 6: Six years of seniority on on Pelosi, who he allegedly
Speaker 6: allegedly went on a date when their interns back in
Speaker 6: the fifties, which is hilarious. It was the fifties interning
Speaker 6: from a Maryland senator.
Speaker 4: Genuinely hilarious. Before the Civil Rights Act is.
Speaker 1: When they well won a date.
Speaker 6: Yeah, even before the fifty seven Civil Rights Act, many events.
Speaker 6: So she's saying that she wouldn't have a chance. And
Speaker 6: I think losing once is hey, you take your shot,
Speaker 6: you show your play on the inside, to play the
Speaker 6: inside game. You maybe even have a shot at winning.
Speaker 6: You lose, you know, then you go out and go
Speaker 6: back to what you were doing. Lose twice, you start
Speaker 6: to get the stench of loser on you. So's so
Speaker 6: she's just not going.
Speaker 1: To go for it this time.
Speaker 5: And this is becoming something of a panic because we
Speaker 5: have this other clip.
Speaker 4: This is D two.
Speaker 5: So not only was Bill Maher pushing back vociferously in
Speaker 5: that clip to Kevin McCarthy's point in a way that
Speaker 5: you know, I think maybe did reek of a little
Speaker 5: bit of I shouldn't say little, but significant concern.
Speaker 6: Yeah, wishful thinking in his party. Right, Please tell me
Speaker 6: this can't be true.
Speaker 5: Well, and this is an interesting divide on the right
Speaker 5: is that you have people like Kevin McCarthy, who I
Speaker 5: think are accurately pointing out that this is where the
Speaker 5: energy is on the left, and then you have people
Speaker 5: who say AOC's political career on.
Speaker 4: A national level is done on the water, done in
Speaker 4: the water.
Speaker 5: She is a joke, she's way too radical, but she's
Speaker 5: both of those things can't be.
Speaker 4: True at the same time.
Speaker 5: And so there's some people on the right like, it's it,
Speaker 5: it's AOC, and then oh, but also AOC is a
Speaker 5: disaster for Democrats, so let's go ahead and enroll D two.
Speaker 5: This is part of an MSNBC panel where they started
Speaker 5: to talk about this.
Speaker 19: They've got to get out of the policy discussion and
Speaker 19: the policy fight and focus on a purpose. They've got
Speaker 19: to broaden the party, and they've got to go with
Speaker 19: a forty year old because they do well with Obama,
Speaker 19: Jack Kennedy, Bill Clinton, and they've got to They've got
Speaker 19: to well they they've got to get So to me,
Speaker 19: I would get in a room and call a summit,
Speaker 19: and I would say just.
Speaker 4: To not go off his hides behind a clipboard. That's
Speaker 4: the Democrat Party.
Speaker 19: The Democratic Party will never listen to Aaron, but they
Speaker 19: should hear erin and say the following.
Speaker 8: You guys are in disarray. You're having a civil war.
Speaker 19: You're going hard left with AOC and Bernie very bad mistake.
Speaker 7: Country doesn't want that.
Speaker 8: I can't tell.
Speaker 13: I know, but point look California we got twenty six
Speaker 13: thousand people, twenty thousand in Salt Lake City thirty six
Speaker 13: thousand California, twelve thousand, in Idaho, Denver, Colorado thirty four thousand,
Speaker 13: and on Arizona twenty three thousand.
Speaker 18: I mean what Kirts need to do is in power
Speaker 18: of the Alyssa Slockins, the tim Ryans, the seth Multons,
Speaker 18: the moderate young Democrats that they've been head padding for
Speaker 18: the last ten years and saying just wait, you're child.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but when is till their turn?
Speaker 13: But let me ask, I mean the all of those people.
Speaker 13: Do you think any of those people have to take
Speaker 13: to run for president and win?
Speaker 5: No?
Speaker 18: Because the Democratic Party has not conditioned them.
Speaker 4: No.
Speaker 13: I mean in the in a perfect world, do they
Speaker 13: really have what it takes to run for president of
Speaker 13: these United States?
Speaker 12: And when.
Speaker 4: Senate candidates they're.
Speaker 18: Greed, Well, I think they have a better chance than
Speaker 18: the progressive people that alien.
Speaker 5: I feel like Stefan watching that clip, like this MSN
Speaker 5: or the CNN pannel that's what it was, has everything.
Speaker 5: It has Anthony Scamucci, a man in a cowboy hat
Speaker 5: and sc cup in a demon gumpsuit screaming about Alyssa's luck.
Speaker 1: Well, it's such a funny network for it.
Speaker 6: It's such a funny network because the MSABC is almost
Speaker 6: the same that it's a center left network and they've
Speaker 6: been covering the Democratic Party sympathetically for you know, for
Speaker 6: ten years, ten plus years, and Bernie Sanders rose in
Speaker 6: twenty fifteen, and they still don't have as far as
Speaker 6: I can tell. So definitely not in that panel. I
Speaker 6: don't think anywhere on the network somebody who aligns with
Speaker 6: that major faction of the party. Yeah, not just people
Speaker 6: like looking at them like zoo creatures.
Speaker 5: They have like Bernie curious people like a like maybe
Speaker 5: like a Van Jones, I.
Speaker 1: Van Jones, I know, I know. He just took a wall.
Speaker 1: You take a hundred million dollars from Jeff Bezos a
Speaker 1: couple of years ago.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, yeah, and so this isn't it.
Speaker 6: Was a mauist in like the nineties. It was literally
Speaker 6: like uh now as the activists in San Francisco.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it was why he was.
Speaker 1: That would be they don't have they didn't have him
Speaker 1: on that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, No, it's amazing there are like this is again,
Speaker 5: it's something that a lot of people in the right
Speaker 5: don't understandbout these networks.
Speaker 4: They are center left. They just actually hate the left left.
Speaker 5: It's almost more than they hate the center right. Given
Speaker 5: that Anthony Scaramucci was on that panel. Let's take a
Speaker 5: look at AOC being disrupted by protests. I think this
Speaker 5: was at a town hall. This is D three.
Speaker 6: Question, So sorry, that was pretty hard to hear, but
Speaker 6: you probably saw clips of it going around. Basically, it's
Speaker 6: somebody protesting her out a town hall, saying you're a
Speaker 6: war criminal. What are you going to do about the
Speaker 6: genocide in Palestine, the genocide in Gaza?
Speaker 1: And I do think for.
Speaker 6: Maybe ever, but for a very long time, she's going
Speaker 6: to have to answer for her convention speech where she
Speaker 6: said that Kamala Harris is working tirelessly for a ceasefire,
Speaker 6: because at the time, nobody really believed that she was
Speaker 6: working tirelessly for a ceasefire, Nora that Biden was working
Speaker 6: tirelessly for a ceasefire. We've since had Israeli officials come
Speaker 6: out and say, yeah, the Biden administration never actually.
Speaker 1: Pressured us to reach a ceasefire. So it raises the
Speaker 1: question of was the Biden administration lying to AOC or
Speaker 1: was she lying to the DNC.
Speaker 6: And if they were lying to her, why couldn't she
Speaker 6: see that it was a lie that day, I believe
Speaker 6: it was, or maybe it was the next it was
Speaker 6: the next day at a protest or at a public
Speaker 6: event in where was it, Chicago? Ilhan Omar held a
Speaker 6: spoke at a rally where she said, you know they're
Speaker 6: not they're not working tirelessly. She quoted AOC or a
Speaker 6: fellow squad memerics quoter saying they're not working tires and
Speaker 6: Omar brought that up again in the last couple of weeks, saying,
Speaker 6: you know, they lied to us when they said they
Speaker 6: were working tiresly. And she's so kind of direct shots
Speaker 6: at AOC, and she's never, as far as I've seen,
Speaker 6: kind of you know, confronted that directly. So if she wants,
Speaker 6: if she does end up running for president, that's going
Speaker 6: to be something that she's going to have to address.
Speaker 1: What was her because she has been you know, she
Speaker 1: took a.
Speaker 6: Week or two longer than some others to use the
Speaker 6: word genocide, but she said it very early. She was
Speaker 6: one of the first sponsors of a ceasefire resolution, but
Speaker 6: then she takes some other votes that gets that get
Speaker 6: people frustrated. So you know, from her perspective, she's basically
Speaker 6: done everything she can. From the perspective of her critics,
Speaker 6: she's lying about the Biden administration working to quote unquote
Speaker 6: working tirelessly towards ceasefire and undermining pressure on the Biden
Speaker 6: administration to actually do that.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah, And when we were on the ground at
Speaker 4: the DNC.
Speaker 5: It was easy to sense a lot of cynicism aboutes
Speaker 5: among the people that we were talking to. Let's put
Speaker 5: D four up on the screen, because this is another
Speaker 5: sort of shot in the arm, perhaps for the ascendant left.
Speaker 5: Ryan Brian kem announced Kempt announced yesterday Georgia governor that
Speaker 5: he will not be running for Senate, and the New
Speaker 5: York Times headline actually adds Osoff's team must have been
Speaker 5: stoked about this headline quote giving asoff a lift. Osoff
Speaker 5: nation is rising up. We'll put D five here on
Speaker 5: the screen, Ryan, and maybe you can explain it for
Speaker 5: the offline left.
Speaker 6: Old Germantum So what among his many posts about this yesterday,
Speaker 6: basically he's saying, asof vance race in twenty twenty eight,
Speaker 6: would be similar to JFK.
Speaker 1: Nixon.
Speaker 6: So comparing as off to JFK advance to Nixon Nixon
Speaker 6: in sixty not that I don't think it's that off
Speaker 6: in an interesting way.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I don't know. Is this not crazy?
Speaker 6: You know, there's a lot of cynicism about ostof But
Speaker 6: like I've said on this show, before you look into
Speaker 6: his actual record, you know, investigative journalist, and his run
Speaker 6: is run as a pretty strong kind of populist progressive
Speaker 6: in Georgia. He didn't use the terms like Green New
Speaker 6: Deal and Medicare for all, but when you look at
Speaker 6: what he was saying, he was supportive of those basic
Speaker 6: ideas but talking about them in a way that he
Speaker 6: thought would resonate with you know, majority of Georgians.
Speaker 1: And so if he is able to win.
Speaker 6: Reelection in twenty twenty six, then yeah, he's a top
Speaker 6: tier front runner for twenty twenty eight.
Speaker 4: It's super interesting.
Speaker 5: Right, let's move on to the gain of function news
Speaker 5: that broke yesterday. We can go ahead and roll this
Speaker 5: clip of Robert F. Kennedy Junior, now obviously Secretary of
Speaker 5: Health and Human Services talking as Donald Trump signs as
Speaker 5: one of those classics, Donald Trump second administration EO signings
Speaker 5: in the Oval Office where he's flanked by Marty McCay, J.
Speaker 4: Baticharia, and Robert F. Kennedy Junior.
Speaker 5: He is signing an executive order that against gain of
Speaker 5: function research.
Speaker 4: So let's just take a listen to this.
Speaker 20: As a E one, GAANA function is and it's worked
Speaker 20: at the end of GAINA function research funding by the
Speaker 20: federal government, DNA halls of controls, by project corporations on
Speaker 20: GATA function studies. This was a kind of study that
Speaker 20: was engaged in by the United States military and intelligence agencies,
Speaker 20: begetting in nineteen forty seven. By nineteen sixty nine, CIA
Speaker 20: that they had reached nuclear equivalents that they could kill
Speaker 20: the entire US population for twenty nine cents person.
Speaker 5: So Robert Kenny Junior went on for a couple of
Speaker 5: minutes there, going back into the history of gain and
Speaker 5: function research. But what the EO did was restrict federal
Speaker 5: funding for research known as quote gain of function. And
Speaker 5: what's interesting about that, Ryan, is that Facci likes to stretch.
Speaker 5: You know, he used to say he was enhancing pathogens.
Speaker 5: You may remember that infamous exchange she had with Senator
Speaker 5: Rand Paul, but it wasn't quite quote unquote gain of function.
Speaker 5: So maybe there are still ways for the medical establishment
Speaker 5: that wants to continue desperately many people want to continue
Speaker 5: doing gain and function research. Wiggling around the boundaries of this.
Speaker 5: But I think you actually checked in with eat write
Speaker 5: on this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I read the EO and it's it's pretty tight.
Speaker 6: I mean, the the language is pretty tight, so I
Speaker 6: think it'll be difficult for them to them to get
Speaker 6: around it. But it really focuses in an annoying way
Speaker 6: on it says quote unquote countries of concern e g.
Speaker 1: China.
Speaker 6: It's like, okay, fine, whatever, but like it doesn't matter
Speaker 6: where the research is done. Like you you get a
Speaker 6: pathogen out in the air, like it can be in Toledo,
Speaker 6: it can be in China, it can be in Sierre Leone.
Speaker 6: Like people travel, there's airports everywhere.
Speaker 17: Hm.
Speaker 6: So like just focusing on countries of concern, it's it's
Speaker 6: Trump's kind of obnoxious xenophobia manifesting in a place to
Speaker 6: where it's like completely unnecessary.
Speaker 5: Well, I don't know if it makes anybody feel better
Speaker 5: if we're even doing it here, right, I mean.
Speaker 1: Maybe feel like why would that be better? Like, it's cool.
Speaker 6: We're gonna do all of our gain of function research
Speaker 6: on viruses in your backyard, not.
Speaker 1: In China, North Carolina.
Speaker 6: It's gonna be it's gonna be downtown watching DC. You're
Speaker 6: gonna be fine. You gotta, you know, make America great
Speaker 6: again for gain function research.
Speaker 1: But yeah.
Speaker 6: So I asked Richard Ebright about RFK Junior's claim there, which,
Speaker 6: if you could hear him, what he was saying was
Speaker 6: gain of function research has basically produced nothing of value
Speaker 6: for the scientific community. And so Ebright, he's a molector
Speaker 6: or biologist at Rutgers. He's an outspoken critic of a
Speaker 6: lot of the scientists involved with his research and also
Speaker 6: the research.
Speaker 1: So I asked him for his take.
Speaker 6: I was like, really, like, blanket zero nothing, And he
Speaker 6: says it has added nothing of substantive value. It has
Speaker 6: had zero civilian applications, It has not contributed to the
Speaker 6: development of any vaccine or therapeutic agent, and it is
Speaker 6: not contributed to preventing or responding to pandemics. I mean,
Speaker 6: its origin and it's financing is mostly around bioweapons, like
Speaker 6: in the military capacity, both whether it's the US investing
Speaker 6: in a Pentagon or or the Chinese military. That's you know,
Speaker 6: that's what really gave it its boosts, and particularly after
Speaker 6: the anthrax attacks back back in two thousand and one,
Speaker 6: two thousand and two, that's when all of this money
Speaker 6: started flowing into it. So and they've kind of then
Speaker 6: retconned some rationale for some civilian applications. But according to EBRAI,
Speaker 6: so far like zero, like nothing has come of it.
Speaker 6: And it's it's interesting to think about the Wuhan Institute
Speaker 6: of Virology, so like the goal of that institute was
Speaker 6: to identify pandemics early pathoges that could be of concern
Speaker 6: to become become a pandemic before they spread too far.
Speaker 6: I think the evidence is clear that they produced the pandemic.
Speaker 1: Setting that aside, let's say that.
Speaker 6: They didn't, but it started in Wuhan, like it, So
Speaker 6: it started like next door to them. Their whole job
Speaker 6: is to around the entire world identify potential pandemic viruses
Speaker 6: and then control them before they become a virus. It
Speaker 6: happened right there, and you still didn't stop it. So
Speaker 6: at very best, you didn't start the pandemic, but it
Speaker 6: was next door to you, and you didn't stop it.
Speaker 6: How are you going to stop one that happens, you know,
Speaker 6: thousands of miles away from you anyway, So it's not
Speaker 6: a not a great not a great track record.
Speaker 1: That brings us to.
Speaker 6: Our our friend of the show, Jeffy Sacks, who chaired
Speaker 6: UH the pant who chaired the commission that looked into
Speaker 6: the origin of COVID. And so speaking of Wuhan, there's
Speaker 6: there's another you know, UH locale that also gets brought
Speaker 6: up here. Let's roll Jeffrey Sachs here.
Speaker 21: I'll tell you a sad truth, also a little surprising,
Speaker 21: and I have to admit what I'm about to tell
Speaker 21: you is only ninety nine percent sure. But my view,
Speaker 21: based on very extensive work over the last four and
Speaker 21: a half years, is that COVID came from the University
Speaker 21: of North Carolina, which is the leading researcher on beta coronaviruses,
Speaker 21: working with the US government on a set of grant
Speaker 21: proposals that identified putting in the viral change that created
Speaker 21: Sar's cove two. It's a grim truth, it's ugly, it's
Speaker 21: been hidden from view. The reason I mentioned in this
Speaker 21: context is we don't have any global governance that is
Speaker 21: effective right now to control the manipulation of dangerous pathogens
Speaker 21: like the manipulation that created the pandemic and when it happened,
Speaker 21: and officially it took seven million deaths, but probably if
Speaker 21: you count all of the deaths associated with COVID, it
Speaker 21: was probably closer to twenty million deaths. Even when that happens,
Speaker 21: it's never properly investigated, it's covered up, it's hidden from view.
Speaker 1: And so that's actually quite a plausible claim.
Speaker 6: Like you, if you want to look into it, just
Speaker 6: google kind of Ralph Barrack, who's the head of the
Speaker 6: program there, who was working directly with people in the
Speaker 6: Wuhan lab. He was he was you know, he led
Speaker 6: the project that came up with basically the recipe that
Speaker 6: appears to be the thing that led to the creation
Speaker 6: of COVID later. And I think when you understand the
Speaker 6: role of UNC in the origin of COVID, it helps
Speaker 6: to explain why there wasn't an investment gation because.
Speaker 4: Well, I mean even our own funding of Luhan either way.
Speaker 6: Right, and so yeah, from so from early on, you're like,
Speaker 6: wait a minute, if this was the Chinese and it
Speaker 6: happened in Wuhan. Will where's where's the US propaganda apparatus
Speaker 6: to start? You know, staber rattling and you know, you know,
Speaker 6: banging the drum about how awful China is.
Speaker 5: If anything, it was if you were blaming China, the
Speaker 5: Nancy Pelosi was calling you racist.
Speaker 6: Right right, So and so it's like, oh, oh, I
Speaker 6: see why because the US was intimately involved in this
Speaker 6: as well, and so both China and the US then
Speaker 6: have motivation to be like what you say, it was,
Speaker 6: there's rednecks in Wuhan, you know, buying pangolins.
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's let's go with that.
Speaker 4: Sounds right. Yeah.
Speaker 5: So finally we back at the Hill hosted a lot
Speaker 5: you set this up. It was a fascinating debate between
Speaker 5: JOHNS Hopkins professor named Gigi gromfol and an MIT professor
Speaker 5: named Kevin as well. And this was like, I think
Speaker 5: we went for an hour having a pro gain of
Speaker 5: function person and an anti gain of function person talk
Speaker 5: about whether it's ultimately valuable and whether the costs are
Speaker 5: worth the benefits of doing the research. So, if you're
Speaker 5: curious in hearing out both sides, I would recommend taking
Speaker 5: a look back at that because it was very very
Speaker 5: helpful for me to hear both of them.
Speaker 6: And we kept trying to pin her down on what
Speaker 6: have been the what has it produced?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 20: Right?
Speaker 1: Not that science, It's.
Speaker 6: Okay, Like science doesn't always produce results, Like that's what
Speaker 6: science is. You have a hypothesis, you explore it, and
Speaker 6: sometimes it goes down a rabbit hole and you get
Speaker 6: and your hypothesis was wrong. So that alone is not
Speaker 6: a reason not to do it. If it's extremely dangerous
Speaker 6: and you're putting a whole world at risk, that's kind
Speaker 6: of can be a reason not to do it. But
Speaker 6: she never You guys can go back and watch it
Speaker 6: if you want. But like, to my mind, she never
Speaker 6: effectively presented to us anything that made us feel like, oh, okay,
Speaker 6: that is that is a benefit that we have derived
Speaker 6: from this research, which can be weighed against the risk of.
Speaker 1: A global pandemic and millions of people dying. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: so then we can balance that out.
Speaker 6: I was left with, well, we know the risks even
Speaker 6: if you don't think this happened in the lab, which
Speaker 6: I think it did.
Speaker 1: But even if you'd think it didn't, it could. Their
Speaker 1: leaks all.
Speaker 6: The time, So we know the risk, but we don't
Speaker 6: know the benefits. We haven't seen anything yet.
Speaker 5: I remember wrapping that segment and being like, yeah, thanks
Speaker 5: so much to both of you, hearing both of it out,
Speaker 5: and Ryan, you just jumped in and you're like, think
Speaker 5: it's pretty clear who won.
Speaker 1: Was like, oh my god, she didn't like that.
Speaker 5: I don't think so, but I was really to shoot
Speaker 5: the messenger. So yeah, go ahead and take a look
Speaker 5: at that if you're curious. And on that note, let's
Speaker 5: go ahead and get to our second guest of today's show.
Speaker 6: Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel has dropped charges against people
Speaker 6: that she rounded up recently for protesting against Israel's war
Speaker 6: in gazif rolled F two here. This is vo You
Speaker 6: guys might remember this kind of viral footage that went
Speaker 6: around of the Michigan police backed up by the FBI,
Speaker 6: literally smashing their way into into people's homes, dragging people
Speaker 6: off and then and then charge and then charging them
Speaker 6: with you know, serious felonies and keeping them behind bars
Speaker 6: for quite some time they have. Now she has now
Speaker 6: dropped those charges. And so we are joined by Henry
Speaker 6: McKean Shapiro, who was one of the protesters who was
Speaker 6: who was rounded up by Nessel and her federal accomplices
Speaker 6: ended up spending Henry Wood.
Speaker 1: Four days and behind bars before you were released. Is
Speaker 1: that right?
Speaker 12: Yeah? Actually, just a bit of the correction is that
Speaker 12: are the charges.
Speaker 22: The felony charges that were just dropped against me and
Speaker 22: six others yesterday are unrelated to the FBI raids.
Speaker 12: So it's the same prosecutor for them.
Speaker 22: But our charges come from back in September related to
Speaker 22: the U of M encampment.
Speaker 6: Yeah, so actually walk us, walk us through why we
Speaker 6: ended up seeing these raids recently.
Speaker 1: So what what what charges resulted from the original encampment
Speaker 1: and what was.
Speaker 4: The what's the relationship between both?
Speaker 12: Yeah, that's a great question.
Speaker 22: So in September of twenty twenty four, Dana Nessel dropped
Speaker 22: eleven charges against people for their involvement in the U
Speaker 22: of M encampment, seven of which were felony charges, and
Speaker 22: all of us, including myself, had felony resisting and obstructing
Speaker 22: arrest in misdemeanor trespassing, and four others got various different
Speaker 22: kinds of misdemeanors, ranging from stepping on a two dollars
Speaker 22: small Israel flag to other other just ridiculous ones like
Speaker 22: trespassing and data nestil Is also will continue to do
Speaker 22: charges against people for their involvement in Propolsetyne activism at
Speaker 22: U of m SO in January, she dropped charges against
Speaker 22: people who participated in a die in demonstration on the
Speaker 22: Yumish Diag at the at the beginning of the school year,
Speaker 22: and then on just on April twenty third, she requested
Speaker 22: a judicial warrant which authorized the FBI and a bunch
Speaker 22: of different police precincts from across the Strait, across the
Speaker 22: state to raid the homes of several prominent pro Palestine activists.
Speaker 1: And so what are the what are the actual charges?
Speaker 6: Like how is she trying to take political activism on
Speaker 6: a college campus and transform it into felonies?
Speaker 1: Like what does the paperwork look like there?
Speaker 22: Yeah, I mean, it's a good question because it's really
Speaker 22: quite ridiculous the way she's trying to do it is
Speaker 22: so for these these raids that happened on April twenty third,
Speaker 22: it's only it's so she can actually has a bit
Speaker 22: of a loophole when it offers warrants to people who
Speaker 22: are being searched, which is that they don't have to
Speaker 22: list the probable cause for why they obtained the search warrants,
Speaker 22: so it's actually extremely unclear to even the people who
Speaker 22: were searched what purpose or what they're even going perhaps
Speaker 22: going to be charged with. They in the press releases
Speaker 22: have mentioned multi jurisdictional vandalism, which is not an actual
Speaker 22: legal term, but it's clear that they're trying to quickly
Speaker 22: manufacture consent for the Attorney General's office handling these cases
Speaker 22: and to bring in the FBI, which is usually not
Speaker 22: brought in to handle small protests related issues within the state.
Speaker 12: So it's it's.
Speaker 22: So far she's mentioned this multi jurisdictional vandalism thing, which
Speaker 22: we know is really just a kind of a ridiculous
Speaker 22: way of trying to justify her presence across the state
Speaker 22: and her cooperation with the Trumpet.
Speaker 6: And to set the context right, there was some frustration
Speaker 6: among a lot of people that local police they were
Speaker 6: not sufficiently aggressive enough against protesters like they wanted. They
Speaker 6: wanted they wanted more protesters blood.
Speaker 1: The Guardian had a good piece.
Speaker 6: On this recently where they say are the Guardian's investigation
Speaker 6: revealed concrete evidence of conflicts that defense attorneys argued factored
Speaker 6: into the prosecutions. Among the findings, the story revealed a
Speaker 6: g Nessl's office charged propile stating protesters at a higher
Speaker 6: rate than other state prosecutors. Nessel was recruited by university
Speaker 6: regents who were frustrated by local prosecutors unwillingness to crack
Speaker 6: down when most of the students arrested, to take over
Speaker 6: the case and file charges, three people with direct knowledge
Speaker 6: of the decision told The Guardian at the time. The
Speaker 6: investigation also found that six of eight regents contributed more
Speaker 6: than thirty three thousand dollars combined to Nessl's campaigns. Additionally,
Speaker 6: her office hired a regent's law firm to handle major
Speaker 6: state cases, and the same regent co chaired her twenty
Speaker 6: eighteen campaign. And so if people remember, there was a
Speaker 6: multi day controversy when Rashida Talib said that she felt
Speaker 6: like Dana Nessl's office was biased against Michigan protesters, and
Speaker 6: she said it was because, in her understanding, Nessl was
Speaker 6: getting pressure from the regent's office. She was then accused
Speaker 6: of anti semitism, saying.
Speaker 1: That by Dana Nessel, right, by Dana Nessel.
Speaker 6: And then by CNN, who repeated for many days that
Speaker 6: charge and then wrote stories about how she wasn't apologizing
Speaker 6: for anti Semitism. Their argument was, well, Dana Nessel is Jewish,
Speaker 6: and so that so Rashida Talib is saying that Nessl
Speaker 6: is biased because Dana Nessel is Jewish. When Talib gave
Speaker 6: the reason that she said why Nessl was biased, and
Speaker 6: that was because she was being pressured by the regents.
Speaker 6: So now we have this investigation the shows, in fact,
Speaker 6: the regents of the university were indeed upset that local
Speaker 6: police and local prosecutors weren't, you know, bringing the hammer
Speaker 6: down hard enough on you and fellow protesters, and so
Speaker 6: they roped Dana Nessel into this. So can you you
Speaker 6: talk about what your interactions were like, you know, with
Speaker 6: local police and prosecutors versus now with the state and
Speaker 6: the FBI.
Speaker 12: Yeah, I mean, it's this whole thing has been. It's
Speaker 12: just a total, total circus.
Speaker 22: In fact, a huge factor of why Nessel likely dropped
Speaker 22: the charges is the fact that it's so unclear why
Speaker 22: she had why she was taking up this case to
Speaker 22: begin with. In fact, even came out that seems like
Speaker 22: our local prosecutor, Elie Sabatt had never even received the
Speaker 22: charges from the encampment. And something that had become really
Speaker 22: clear to the to the Attorney General's office in this
Speaker 22: ongoing our lawyers had filed emotion to recuse Dana Nessel
Speaker 22: for you know, impropriety in taking these cases and.
Speaker 12: Strong both real and appearance of.
Speaker 22: Anti aram and anti Muslim bias is the fact that
Speaker 22: if she was to continue with this case, it would
Speaker 22: have opened up her office into evidentiary hearing and opened
Speaker 22: them up to discovery to figure out exactly why they
Speaker 22: picked up these charges, because it doesn't make any sense.
Speaker 22: You know, this was not even remotely a multi jurisdictional case.
Speaker 12: It all happened within.
Speaker 22: The Image diag, which is about you know, like two
Speaker 22: hundred square feet.
Speaker 12: So it doesn't make any sense that.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that's what I was wondering, like this multi jurisdictional vandalisman.
Speaker 6: You guys were literally camped in one place.
Speaker 12: Weird.
Speaker 1: That's the whole thing was. It was an encampment, right.
Speaker 22: I mean, it's totally ridiculous, and you know, like you
Speaker 22: mentioned before, it's just clearly a result of the regents
Speaker 22: not getting the response that they wanted from Elie savat
Speaker 22: the sufficient response that they had wanted to a previous
Speaker 22: protest that happened in November twenty twenty three. And I mean,
Speaker 22: the link is just going to be clear. Even on
Speaker 22: the eve of Dana Nessel dropping the decision to charge
Speaker 22: those of us from the encampment, just the day before,
Speaker 22: a regent Jordan Aker had posted a selfie on Instagram
Speaker 22: with himself, Data Nessel, and Jeremy Moss, who are like
Speaker 22: a kind of like zionist three stooges in Michigan politics.
Speaker 12: So it's just very clear.
Speaker 22: And Mark Bernstein, who you mentioned he's was a co
Speaker 22: chair of Dana Nessel's campaign, has given you tens of
Speaker 22: thousands of dollars in financial contributions to a campaign. And
Speaker 22: it's clear that Dana Nessil has basically just been recruited
Speaker 22: by them due to their dissatisfaction with Ellie Sabbott's like
Speaker 22: insufficient zeal for prosecuting pro Palestine protesters at.
Speaker 7: You of them.
Speaker 5: Last question for me is just basically what this has
Speaker 5: been like for you, this crazy experience, you know, any
Speaker 5: any major takeaways or any reflections on it.
Speaker 22: I think, I mean, I think right now, those those
Speaker 22: of us who just had our our charges just dropped,
Speaker 22: or obviously very personally relieved, but I think we're also
Speaker 22: very like invigorated with I think what we see as
Speaker 22: like a massive victory for pro Palestine activism, not just
Speaker 22: in Michigan but nationwide, which is to show that you can't,
Speaker 22: you know, build up these ridiculous charges against pro Palestine
Speaker 22: protesters and expect to get away with it, that you know,
Speaker 22: unlike what might have been the case three years ago,
Speaker 22: that taking such a vigorous stance against anti genocide protesters
Speaker 22: is not acceptable, uh with with the public and showing that,
Speaker 22: you know, you can't get away with just you know,
Speaker 22: concocting some ridiculous narrative about you know, anti Semitic protesters
Speaker 22: is just not gonna not gonna work. So, uh, the
Speaker 22: fact that we were able to hold on long enough
Speaker 22: for her office to to drop the charges under under
Speaker 22: the massive amount of popular pressure, we see as a
Speaker 22: huge victory.
Speaker 1: And we're very proud of that.
Speaker 6: And I'm curious when you were when you were in jail,
Speaker 6: what did the other folks who were in there with
Speaker 6: you say when they're like, yo, know, what are you
Speaker 6: here for? And you're like protesting the war genocide.
Speaker 12: No, I mean obviously all of them.
Speaker 22: I didn't meet a single person there that wasn't supportive
Speaker 22: of of, you know, of our cause. I mean all
Speaker 22: of you know, a lot of them not a not
Speaker 22: a fan of the local prosecutors as well a lot
Speaker 22: of people there who had been you know, screwed over
Speaker 22: by them for just simple things such as you know,
Speaker 22: unpaid parking tickets or just being unable to meet bail.
Speaker 22: And in general, they were super you know, a lot
Speaker 22: of them even had actually been towards the encampment and
Speaker 22: mentioned that to me. And I also been targeted by
Speaker 22: the University of Michigan police before for and we're very
Speaker 22: sympathetic to our cause, which was very comforting for those
Speaker 22: four days I was there.
Speaker 1: All right, well glad you're out.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it must be a relief, you know, were you like,
Speaker 6: were you getting threats from the prosecutors like this is
Speaker 6: the amount of like you're going to spend years if
Speaker 6: you don't know, plead down or something.
Speaker 12: No.
Speaker 22: Actually, it's interesting is that wasn't the kind of thing
Speaker 22: that they were even looking for. And most of all,
Speaker 22: they wanted us to accept a plead that would have
Speaker 22: required giving them some kind of political victory, like saying,
Speaker 22: we admit that we did not participate in peaceful protest,
Speaker 22: and we didn't want to do that because first of all,
Speaker 22: it could be like legally problematic for us down the line,
Speaker 22: but also we didn't want to. I mean, you know,
Speaker 22: she's clearly fishing for that for a reason, and probably
Speaker 22: as an excuse to continue pushing charges against people who
Speaker 22: have been speaking out against you of M's complicity and genocide.
Speaker 6: Oh so they were offering if you would admit that
Speaker 6: you were violent, that then they would give you no
Speaker 6: time basically, but you would get a charge on.
Speaker 22: Your record, or that it would be like the charge
Speaker 22: would be there would be a diversion of the charge
Speaker 22: with time. But like it was very clear that the
Speaker 22: admission of you know, her political agenda was like the
Speaker 22: most important demand for coming from her office.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 6: Well, glad you guys you know, stood up for yourself
Speaker 6: and didn't didn't capitulate to that.
Speaker 12: Thanks Henry, Thanks for your time, Thanks for having me on.
Speaker 1: Take it easy. Well, Emily, I think the kids are
Speaker 1: all right.
Speaker 5: What do you think if everyone decides to include that,
Speaker 5: if the people who edit the show have decided to
Speaker 5: include us both counting in one or the other, then
Speaker 5: that is what happened.
Speaker 4: For the audience's sake.
Speaker 6: We can start that over all, right, do you want
Speaker 6: to start it two?
Speaker 1: Well, Emily, I think the kids are all right. What
Speaker 1: do you say?
Speaker 4: Super interesting? What a wild year he has had, I.
Speaker 5: Mean, truly the roller coaster of Michigan politics, throwing students
Speaker 5: through the ringer.
Speaker 1: Not fun to have felony strown at you.
Speaker 5: No, and then being forced to admit. I mean, their
Speaker 5: attorneys obviously helped them. Do you make a good decision there?
Speaker 12: Yeah?
Speaker 6: Good, Good for him for standing up, because if he
Speaker 6: would have admitted and he and his you know, colleagues,
Speaker 6: comrades would have admitted confessed to some violence that didn't happen,
Speaker 6: then yeah, then they would use c told you, this
Speaker 6: is a legitimate thing that we're doing. Now we're going
Speaker 6: to go round up other people. Yeah, So good for
Speaker 6: him for standing firm. Yeah, I'm sure that the apologies
Speaker 6: are coming for Rashida to leave any time now.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I'm sure that'll take just another couple of days
Speaker 5: packed show today. Thank you everyone for tuning in, for
Speaker 5: sticking with us for these slightly later starts, But we've
Speaker 5: all got so much going on.
Speaker 4: Crystal will be in tomorrow, right Ryan.
Speaker 5: Christmas Crystals and tomorrow, and then you and Crystal are
Speaker 5: on Thursday.
Speaker 1: I think it's you and Crystal. According to this guy Joel.
Speaker 4: No right here, we could.
Speaker 5: Yeah, we should just start doing this stuff actually on
Speaker 5: camera though everyway it's more like reality TV.
Speaker 6: And then we have an A M A up next
Speaker 6: that's right for the premium subscribers, So breakingpoints dot com
Speaker 6: make sure you're throwing away your last hundred bucks on that.
Speaker 4: See you there,