Speaker 1: Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here,
Speaker 1: and we here at Breaking Points, are already thinking of
Speaker 1: ways we can up our game for this critical election.
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Speaker 3: But enough with that, let's get to the show. Good morning, everybody,
Speaker 3: Happy Thursday. We have an amazing show for everybody today.
Speaker 3: When do we have crystal.
Speaker 1: Indeed, we do lots of big breaking news and a
Speaker 1: few big announcements here at Breaking Points as well, so
Speaker 1: I'll get to that in a minute. So first of all,
Speaker 1: TikTok very much on his way to being banned. We'll
Speaker 1: break that down for you in the context of some
Speaker 1: exclusive new breaking points, pull numbers, big stuff, so get
Speaker 1: excited for that one. We also have, while TikTok is
Speaker 1: being banned, wars are being fully funded. We'll show you
Speaker 1: what President Biden has to say about that. Bibi nat
Speaker 1: Yahoo says that American students who are protesting are basically Nazis.
Speaker 1: This comes amid a massive crackdown more than one hundred
Speaker 1: arrests that happened yesterday and overnight, so we'll bring you
Speaker 1: the very latest there, and it is truly astonishing what
Speaker 1: is happening right now. Idaho's abortion ban, which is nearly
Speaker 1: a complete abortion ban, was at the Supreme Court yesterday.
Speaker 1: Some very interesting dynamics in the arguments and push back there,
Speaker 1: so we'll bring some of that to you and what
Speaker 1: it could mean for the future of abortion rights in
Speaker 1: the country. An invasion of RAFA now appears imminent. We'll
Speaker 1: tell you what the latest signs are and the latest
Speaker 1: out of the Gaza strip and saga.
Speaker 4: I'm very excited for your monologue today.
Speaker 1: Is looking at the eerie parallels with nineteen sixty eight,
Speaker 1: which is something which has been much commented on recently,
Speaker 1: especially in the context of these campus protests and crackdown.
Speaker 2: This is honestly, even I was surprised at the amount
Speaker 2: of parallel so that there are.
Speaker 3: I think people will enjoy it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, indeed, so before we get to any of that, though,
Speaker 1: if you guys watch Counterpoints yesterday, you already know the
Speaker 1: big news. We are going to be a Monday through
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Speaker 1: more Emily and Ryan. We are giving you more.
Speaker 4: Emily and Ryan.
Speaker 1: They're going to do a Friday show starting tomorrow and
Speaker 1: they have a very interesting guest which we can reveal here.
Speaker 1: Now you can put this up on the screen right
Speaker 1: and Emily with Don Lemon so, I actually i haven't
Speaker 1: watched the interview yet. I'm very excited to watch it
Speaker 1: and see, you know, what they got into and all
Speaker 1: of those things.
Speaker 4: So, guys, Thursday.
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Speaker 2: That's right, So premium subscribers are going to get it
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Speaker 1: I am actually very very excited about Emilyn Ryan's new show.
Speaker 1: We debated giving it a different aim than Counterpoints because
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Speaker 4: But I think it's a great fit for Fridays.
Speaker 1: I think it's a great fit for them, So I'm
Speaker 1: personally extremely excited to see what Yeah.
Speaker 3: No it to.
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Speaker 4: Indeed, all right, shall we get to the news.
Speaker 2: Well, let's get to the news, the news of which
Speaker 2: also involves us. So, as Crystal teed up, that legislation
Speaker 2: on TikTok officially has both moved from the House of
Speaker 2: Representatives through the United States Senate and now sign by
Speaker 2: President Biden. So what does it actually do and what
Speaker 2: does it mean TikTok. The previous iteration of the legislation,
Speaker 2: Crystal had one hundred and eighty days in which TikTok
Speaker 2: would have had to divest itself of bike Dance in
Speaker 2: his parent company.
Speaker 3: The extension has now moved to three hundred and.
Speaker 2: Sixty five days, very strategically, I would add, by President Biden.
Speaker 3: So it does not happen before the twenty twenty four election.
Speaker 4: In fact, what.
Speaker 1: I saw at least is that if the band does
Speaker 1: go through, what happened like literally the day after if
Speaker 1: Trump were to win.
Speaker 3: He was, yeah, no, that's correct.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm in here very intentional because they know how
Speaker 1: much this is going to be objectly hated by young
Speaker 1: Americans Welton.
Speaker 2: Stick that would be if by Dance asides not to
Speaker 2: sell it. So this is where we should then get
Speaker 2: to the CEO of TikTok, who is now revealing their
Speaker 2: new strategy. TikTok spent approximately seven million dollars lobbying against
Speaker 2: the bill. Obviously they were not successful, and their new
Speaker 2: phase that they're moving into is a legal battle challenging
Speaker 2: this in US core based on First Amendment grounds.
Speaker 3: Let's take a listen to the CEO of TikTok and
Speaker 3: his response.
Speaker 5: Hi, everyone, the show here. As you may have heard,
Speaker 5: Congress passed the bill that the presidents signed into law
Speaker 5: that has designed to ban TikTok in the United States
Speaker 5: that will take TikTok away from you and one hundred
Speaker 5: and seventy million Americans who find community and connection on
Speaker 5: the All platform.
Speaker 6: Make no mistake.
Speaker 5: This is a band a ban on TikTok, and a
Speaker 5: band on you and your voice. Politicians may say otherwise,
Speaker 5: but don't get confused. Many who sponsored the bill admit
Speaker 5: a TikTok ban is the ultimate goal. It is obviously
Speaker 5: a disappointing movement, but it does not need to be
Speaker 5: a defining one. It's actually ironic because the freedom of
Speaker 5: expression on TikTok reflects the same American values that make
Speaker 5: the United States a beacon of freedom. TikTok gives everyday
Speaker 5: Americans a powerful way to be seen and heard, and
Speaker 5: that's why so many people have made TikTok part of
Speaker 5: their daily lives. Rest assured, we aren't going anywhere. We
Speaker 5: are confident that we will keep fighting for your rights
Speaker 5: in the courts. Throughout US data security efforts. We have
Speaker 5: built safeguards that no other pure company has made. We
Speaker 5: have invested billions of dollars to secure your data and
Speaker 5: keep our platform free from outside manipulation.
Speaker 2: All right, So there we got it is going to
Speaker 2: be the legal battle of the century. This is a
Speaker 2: multi billion dollar product. From what I've been able to
Speaker 2: glean so far, this is going to be based on
Speaker 2: a First Amendment interpretation and challenge of the law. They
Speaker 2: will argue that it violates the free speech rights of
Speaker 2: users to have the app content that's banned if it
Speaker 2: does result in a removal from US markets. However, what
Speaker 2: they're going to run up against is that the previous
Speaker 2: time when President Trump tried to ban TikTok, and I
Speaker 2: think it was in twenty twenty, based upon an executive order,
Speaker 2: it was a similar pursuit of action, which was a
Speaker 2: for sale and or ban. Investors in Byte Dance, people
Speaker 2: like Jeff Yass, who is one of Trump's major campaign
Speaker 2: donors and was very influential on getting him to reverse
Speaker 2: they were actually successfully crystal able to sue in US
Speaker 2: courts arguing that their rights as investors were infringed upon
Speaker 2: by the government. This legislation was authored specifically to have
Speaker 2: a congressional authorization that comes in the form of a
Speaker 2: foreign export control which has long survived congressional court challenge.
Speaker 2: So unless Byetance sells it, it does not look like
Speaker 2: TikTok will survive the year, and I don't know what
Speaker 2: by Dance is going to do, but they're very likely
Speaker 2: not going to make a final decision until any of
Speaker 2: these court cases do come But it's possible this one
Speaker 2: goes to the Supreme Court. But just based again what
Speaker 2: people that I've spoken to, they don't expect this to
Speaker 2: be able to survive any challenge.
Speaker 4: So President Biden, given you your way.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm fine with it, but we can talk a
Speaker 2: little bit about why exactly we got here.
Speaker 4: Let's talk about that.
Speaker 1: Actually, I want you to be able to Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean we're about to share some poll numbers and listen.
Speaker 1: By the way, plenty of the members who were in
Speaker 1: favor of this were quite explicit they're banning TikTok because
Speaker 1: they don't like the fact that young people on the
Speaker 1: platform were seeing the scenes of horror out of Gaza.
Speaker 1: They don't like the fact that you were able to
Speaker 1: bypass mainstream news.
Speaker 4: They don't like the fact that pro.
Speaker 1: Palestine content was wildly more popular on TikTok than the
Speaker 1: pro Israel line. And so they were quite explicit that
Speaker 1: that's why they're moving forward with this ban and frankly,
Speaker 1: I think we should all find that terrifying. You know,
Speaker 1: they're picking up on this Chinese connection to ban TikTok.
Speaker 1: Let's say it is bought by Steve Manuchin. Is that
Speaker 1: better he has ties to Israel and Saudi Arabia.
Speaker 4: And make no mistake.
Speaker 1: If they decide they don't like the tenor of the
Speaker 1: discourse on any other platform, well now they've got a
Speaker 1: roadmap to do the exact same thing to Twitter to
Speaker 1: you know, we're going to show you some poll numbers
Speaker 1: showing that actually the most pro Palestine individuals get their
Speaker 1: news from podcasts and YouTube, So we're certainly not.
Speaker 4: Safe here either.
Speaker 1: So we should see this ban as being of a
Speaker 1: piece with the campus crackdown that we're going to cover
Speaker 1: later in the show. And oh, by the way, under
Speaker 1: the radar, someone was you know, who's quite knowledgeable on policy,
Speaker 1: was noting on Twitter that they're also coming after the
Speaker 1: nonprofit status of pro Palestine organizations. So listen, people who
Speaker 1: are in power are very concerned that they've clearly lost
Speaker 1: the debate on Israel right sixty forty against military aid.
Speaker 1: In terms of Americans, you have majority of Biden voter
Speaker 1: saying it's a genocide. You have people, a majority of
Speaker 1: Americans now disapproving of Israel's actions in the Gaza strip.
Speaker 1: So rather than change course, rather than admit that the
Speaker 1: people are not with this course of action under the
Speaker 1: Biden administration and do something from a different policy perspective,
Speaker 1: or just acknowledge like I've lost the debate, Instead they're
Speaker 1: going with banning expression, trying to crack down on freedom
Speaker 1: of expression on campuses, trying to crack down on the
Speaker 1: platforms that they feel like are fueling this objection to
Speaker 1: genocide that's unfolding, and that's what this TikTok ban is
Speaker 1: really about. And I think we can put up a
Speaker 1: two on the screen because this really underscores this point.
Speaker 4: This is quite extraordinary.
Speaker 1: So one of the things we did and are pulling
Speaker 1: where we have a lot more data to gets you guys,
Speaker 1: we just honestly haven't had a chance to go through
Speaker 1: all of it and sort through it. So next week
Speaker 1: you can look forward to a lot more data that
Speaker 1: we got from this pull from Jail Partners that we conducted,
Speaker 1: which is largely about Israel and Palestine. One of the
Speaker 1: things we wanted to focus on is okay how are
Speaker 1: people getting their news and how is that related to
Speaker 1: their views on Israel and Palestine. Look at these word
Speaker 1: clouds when you ask people in these different age demographics, Okay,
Speaker 1: where do you get your news from? Look at eighteen
Speaker 1: to twenty nine. TikTok, big bold letters. It's like the
Speaker 1: most clear of any of them, by the way, fifty
Speaker 1: plus all like Fox is such a.
Speaker 4: Big, big part of their news, which is over the oh,
Speaker 4: it's terrifying.
Speaker 1: Thirty to forty nine, you've got YouTube and CNN basically
Speaker 1: tied for number one in terms of their news consumption.
Speaker 1: But for the purposes of this conversation, just look at
Speaker 1: how influential TikTok is for that eighteen to twenty nine demographic.
Speaker 1: And if we can put the next slide up on
Speaker 1: the screen, you can see now. I think that remember
Speaker 1: that correlation is not causation. Okay, So the fact that
Speaker 1: younger people get their news from TikTok and they're more
Speaker 1: pro Palestine doesn't necessarily mean that TikTok influenced their opinions.
Speaker 1: I think young younger generations have shown to be different
Speaker 1: ideologically in a lot of respects from older generations. But
Speaker 1: just look at these numbers. When you ask okay, has
Speaker 1: Israel committed war crimes? You have a majority fifty four
Speaker 1: percent of people who get their news from podcasts and
Speaker 1: YouTube saying yes, only twenty three percent saying no. Similar
Speaker 1: numbers with TikTok, Instagram, ax, so other social media outlets,
Speaker 1: forty nine percent say yes, Israel has committed war crimes
Speaker 1: and only fifteen percent say no. The remainder are unsure,
Speaker 1: and those are significantly different from people who get their
Speaker 1: news either through cable news or print media. With cable news,
Speaker 1: you have only thirty two percent saying Israel's committed war
Speaker 1: crimes and thirty four percent so the plurality saying that
Speaker 1: they have not. So this is the reason that TikTok
Speaker 1: is being targeted right now. I have already had our
Speaker 1: debate about whether we want TikTok to be targeted, but
Speaker 1: I don't think you can deny that this is what
Speaker 1: has motivated this.
Speaker 2: To happen, right I will be very honest. I think
Speaker 2: it is absolutely because of Palestine. The reason is the
Speaker 2: thing is, though sometimes the enemy of your enemy is
Speaker 2: your friend. And I've been talking about this long before Palestine,
Speaker 2: or I mean, I think I have very first segment
Speaker 2: I ever dine on TikTok was twenty eighteen, whenever I
Speaker 2: was a guest host on Rising. So, just so people
Speaker 2: want to know about my bona fides on the issue,
Speaker 2: I accused you of just being I've been against.
Speaker 3: This for a long time.
Speaker 2: I believe it is a basic market fairness provision where
Speaker 2: our companies are banned their country and thus they should
Speaker 2: not be allowed in hours. I would have banned it
Speaker 2: back in twenty eighteen, long before it ever got to
Speaker 2: one hundred and seventy million Americans. Now that's said, you know,
Speaker 2: at the end of the day, I'm going to take
Speaker 2: it because this is a market fairness position which I
Speaker 2: vehemently have always been a proponent of. I believe strongly
Speaker 2: and reciprocal trade policy against all countries. One day Israel
Speaker 2: Palestine will end, but TikTok, China and all that that
Speaker 2: ain't going anywhere.
Speaker 3: So if this is what it takes, so be it now.
Speaker 2: The reason that I don't I do disagree though, is
Speaker 2: that if you notice the podcast and YouTube number on
Speaker 2: that one is actually larger than TikTok for people, So
Speaker 2: YouTube is not going anywhere. YouTube is a US company.
Speaker 2: Twitter is a US company. All of these other companies
Speaker 2: are podcasting platforms, et cetera. Even Spotify, although a Swedish
Speaker 2: traded in US markets, None of those have any danger
Speaker 2: of getting banned. Under this all free expression will continue.
Speaker 2: All of these what is it these platforms and alternative
Speaker 2: ones which will be able to post dissidant what, dissident
Speaker 2: facts and dissonant narratives, et cetera, will be fine. You
Speaker 2: can still watch Instagram or any of these other places.
Speaker 2: And by the way, this is my main objection on
Speaker 2: the Steve Nushen things. Stephen Ushan is a US citizen.
Speaker 2: You know, he actually is under our jurisdiction. We can
Speaker 2: control him. We can pass a law. If people feel
Speaker 2: so strongly, then we can certainly put in free speech previsage,
Speaker 2: which I absolutely one hundred percent support for all social
Speaker 2: media companies, not just TikTok, Instagram, et cetera. Any potential
Speaker 2: buyer of TikTok would have to be comply with US courts.
Speaker 3: The Chinese they don't. They're not Americans.
Speaker 2: At the end of the day, those people are a
Speaker 2: geopolitical rival who have a direct interest in fomenting whatever
Speaker 2: they want.
Speaker 3: Now what are they fomenting here? I have no idea.
Speaker 2: Okay, the Chinese, they don't particularly care about pales sign.
Speaker 2: They're just one of those people. They love chaos here.
Speaker 2: And I would say there's a reason that they've banned
Speaker 2: our tech companies in their country because they want them
Speaker 2: to have no influence.
Speaker 4: Now, they do want like basically also media for kids.
Speaker 3: That's not no, that's not very limitedly.
Speaker 2: They have their own TikTok version which has a different algorithm,
Speaker 2: and they.
Speaker 1: Have saying they have much more regulations perhaps of what
Speaker 1: kids can do. You probably support.
Speaker 3: It's complicated.
Speaker 1: Let me just say though, Okay, let's say that your YouTube.
Speaker 1: Let's say that you're I mean Elon Musk. He does
Speaker 1: whatever he does, so let's kind of put him to
Speaker 1: the side.
Speaker 4: But let's talk about YouTube.
Speaker 1: We've seen the way that the government puts pressure on
Speaker 1: them to censor. So are they gonna like completely take
Speaker 1: down YouTube. No, But after YouTube executives have seen the
Speaker 1: way that they were willing to come for TikTok because
Speaker 1: they were allowing content that the powers that be didn't like.
Speaker 1: You don't think they're going to get that message time
Speaker 1: they get one of their little friendly requests on the administration.
Speaker 1: Of course they are, So you know, I think this
Speaker 1: opens the floodgates. I think it's naked censorship. I think
Speaker 1: it's clearly because they didn't like what happened on the platform.
Speaker 4: And once you.
Speaker 1: Justify one massive social media company being banned under that context,
Speaker 1: I think you've opened Pandora's box.
Speaker 4: And the last thing I'll say is listen.
Speaker 1: Number one, even the Intel agencies have admitted that any
Speaker 1: like Chinese data problem is purely hypothetical.
Speaker 4: Okay, No one's been able to.
Speaker 1: Lay out like, Okay, here's exactly the problem, here's exactly
Speaker 1: what we're concerned about.
Speaker 4: That's number one.
Speaker 1: Number Two, if you're concerned about data privacy, pass a
Speaker 1: data privacy law that applies to everyone, that doesn't just
Speaker 1: take out this one platform because you don't like the
Speaker 1: views that are being expressed.
Speaker 2: Again, my counter would be this is that if a
Speaker 2: government is censoring of social media companies like YouTube and
Speaker 2: all that, you and I, as citizens of a journalist organization,
Speaker 2: can submit a Freedom of Information Act request and we
Speaker 2: can get access to that. We can sue the government,
Speaker 2: We can pressure our Congress to actually enable legislation. We
Speaker 2: have no zero visibility on the ability to do that
Speaker 2: with TikTok. Second, you know, and what you're saying, I mean,
Speaker 2: let's think about this and really extrapolate it. If Israel
Speaker 2: owned TikTok, I mean, I think I know what your
Speaker 2: position would be, and I would support it too. I
Speaker 2: would say fuck them. I would say absolutely we can
Speaker 2: force the sale of TikTok. Now would our Congress ban TikTok? No,
Speaker 2: probably not. But if Israel any foreign government, and I
Speaker 2: really mean this has that amount of influence over an
Speaker 2: American company or an American populace, and has that amount
Speaker 2: of data penetration, I would say absolutely not. So this
Speaker 2: is not about me singling out China. I'm saying I
Speaker 2: believe strictly in market fairness. If Israel ban Facebook, Twitter,
Speaker 2: et cetera, and they own the largest social media platform
Speaker 2: in America, I would say absolutely not, You're not owning
Speaker 2: this company. And again on the YouTube front, that is
Speaker 2: an American company. We have jurisdiction, we have the democratic
Speaker 2: process that we can work through.
Speaker 3: We have no say on TikTok content policy.
Speaker 2: Even on data privacy, Let's say that we did pass
Speaker 2: some data privacy law and transparency, et cetera. It still
Speaker 2: wouldn't get to the algorithmic and influence changes that would
Speaker 2: happen from the Chinese Communist Party.
Speaker 3: And I also would dispute what you said.
Speaker 2: I mean, I've done a lot of monologues here about
Speaker 2: how bike Dance and the CCP does directly control a
Speaker 2: lot of TikTok and specifically has those people answer them
Speaker 2: and have used them for spying purposes on US citizens.
Speaker 2: This is out there in the public. The CEO directly
Speaker 2: lied to Congress. It is a unique situation.
Speaker 1: I mean, let's say, data that is available to them
Speaker 1: via you know, owning TikTok is also like available for
Speaker 1: sale anywhere. So it's not like getting rid of TikTok
Speaker 1: gets rid of access to this data.
Speaker 4: It is true, Well, then.
Speaker 3: They can buy it.
Speaker 2: They can buy it on the dark web like the
Speaker 2: Russians do. They're not going to at least get it
Speaker 2: handed to the bar the US. My fine, I don't
Speaker 2: care about that at the very least.
Speaker 1: Why do you care about it when it comes from
Speaker 1: TikTok but not when it comes from you know, other sources.
Speaker 2: Because it is a foreign government that has direct control
Speaker 2: of a U.
Speaker 4: I think you're listen.
Speaker 1: I know that you are genuine and also consistent in
Speaker 1: these principles. I just really disagree about both the means
Speaker 1: in which this was done and also that I mean,
Speaker 1: first of all, I don't think that American data is
Speaker 1: any safer from getting rid of TikTok or forcing it
Speaker 1: to be sold to Steve Manduchin, who does have these,
Speaker 1: you know, foreign government entangles and entanglements in his own agenda,
Speaker 1: et cetera. I don't see that as a superior situation.
Speaker 1: And now you have passed this bill explicitly under the
Speaker 1: pretense of we don't like what's on this platform, so
Speaker 1: we are going to ban it.
Speaker 4: Now, yes, there's stuff in.
Speaker 1: There about China and data and whatever, But if you
Speaker 1: don't think that that same logic is going to be
Speaker 1: applied elsewhere, or that other platforms aren't going to look
Speaker 1: at how heavy handed this is and say, gosh, we
Speaker 1: don't want that to happen to us, I guess we
Speaker 1: better crack down on these pro Palestine voices or on
Speaker 1: shows like ours or podcasts that are similar. I just
Speaker 1: think that that's really I think it's naive.
Speaker 2: I understand where you're coming from. I read the legislation
Speaker 2: very thoroughly. There is no danger for YouTube, podcast, Twitter, rumble,
Speaker 2: any of the companies that people have been worried about.
Speaker 2: If there was to be a danger, and this is
Speaker 2: people are like, well, they could come after Elon because
Speaker 2: he does a lot of business in China. I'm like, well,
Speaker 2: first of all, you probably shouldn't be doing a lot
Speaker 2: of business in China. They're Elon, But number two, that's
Speaker 2: not even true because they don't own a twenty five
Speaker 2: percent or whatever stake in the company.
Speaker 3: Like, the legislation is very very thing.
Speaker 1: I'm not just talking about this legislation. I'm talking about
Speaker 1: what you've opened the door to. The precedent has now
Speaker 1: been set that Congress can move and act if they
Speaker 1: don't like the content that's on a platform.
Speaker 4: There's no putting that back in the box.
Speaker 3: I would put it this way.
Speaker 5: Then.
Speaker 2: I believe in much higher taxes for the rich if Republicans,
Speaker 2: and I also believe in one hundred percent endowment tax.
Speaker 2: So if Republicans are like, hey, we need to tax
Speaker 2: Columbia's endowment for anti Semitism, I'd be like, listen, I
Speaker 2: think that's dumb, but take it. You know, because I'm
Speaker 2: gonna nupe them with it whatever I can in the
Speaker 2: political system. If we can get taxes for the ultra
Speaker 2: wealthy through and realistically have to work through the US
Speaker 2: political system, and whatever their stupid impetuses are, fine, I mean,
Speaker 2: that's just at the end of the day, that's what
Speaker 2: politics is. If you have things that you want for
Speaker 2: a desired outcome, then you have to work within the
Speaker 2: constraints that you have.
Speaker 3: I agree.
Speaker 2: Look, my principles will never be compromised, but in terms
Speaker 2: of desired end states, if they hit Columbia with one
Speaker 2: hundred percent of downment tax for anti Semitism, it's going
Speaker 2: to have the same net effect that I want. Regardless, now,
Speaker 2: I will continue to fight and I would say that
Speaker 2: it was dumb to do so.
Speaker 3: I think it's dumb to.
Speaker 2: Do this now, and I certainly agree in terms of
Speaker 2: rhetorical precedent, I don't think you're wrong at all. But
Speaker 2: there is a reality to working within the US political
Speaker 2: system and getting things done. I mean, this is something
Speaker 2: that we all recognize. For the end states of what
Speaker 2: we want, Disparate coalitions can come together for different things. Now,
Speaker 2: I don't support the vast majority of the rest of
Speaker 2: the package or any of that. But you know, I
Speaker 2: mean just think, like, think about the tax counterfactual. If
Speaker 2: we got higher taxes on like a lot currently a
Speaker 2: lot of Republicans. The way that they want to tax
Speaker 2: the ultra wealthy is we need to tax opponents.
Speaker 3: I'm like, okay, fine.
Speaker 2: You know, it's like, let's take it. Let's take what
Speaker 2: we can get. I don't think it's necessarily a good impetus.
Speaker 2: But if that leads to a blanket you know, ultra
Speaker 2: millionaire reduction in nepotism and in generational wealth, I'm fine
Speaker 2: with that.
Speaker 1: See, I don't agree with that because if because there's
Speaker 1: a limit, you know, obviously, look, there's there's cases where
Speaker 1: you're like, Okay, well I don't have the argument that
Speaker 1: you're making for this, but I like the o income.
Speaker 3: So fine.
Speaker 1: But let's say let's let's just take your example. Let's
Speaker 1: say the argument to tax Colombia's endowment or raise taxes
Speaker 1: on the rich or whatever is like, they're Nazi, so
Speaker 1: we have.
Speaker 4: To tax them.
Speaker 1: Well, again, once you are going down the pathway of
Speaker 1: we're going to use the power of the state against
Speaker 1: people whose political ideology we don't like, that's a really
Speaker 1: slippery slope to all sorts of outcomes that I don't want,
Speaker 1: And I mean to start with, I don't want.
Speaker 4: This outcome with TikTok.
Speaker 1: So it's not really an applicable example here, but you know,
Speaker 1: just to we have one more slide we can put
Speaker 1: up here that under scores why this is happening right now.
Speaker 1: So the question here is, you know, who do you
Speaker 1: feel more sympathy with Israel or the Palestinians. And if
Speaker 1: you look at print media, if you look at cable news,
Speaker 1: very clear pluralities in favor of Israel. If you look
Speaker 1: at TikTok, and if you look at podcasts, it's totally
Speaker 1: flipped the TikTok social media folks a third say they're
Speaker 1: more sympathetic with Palestinians. Only twenty percent say they're more
Speaker 1: sympathetic with Israel. Similar numbers with podcasts and YouTube, twenty
Speaker 1: six percent say they're more sympathetic with Palestinians, twenty one
Speaker 1: percent say they're more sympathetic with Israel.
Speaker 4: So you know, I just I look.
Speaker 1: At these numbers, and especially since the podcast YouTube piece
Speaker 1: is similar to the social media piece, like that's the
Speaker 1: next logical target, and you can see what's happening, you know,
Speaker 1: right now on cause campuses.
Speaker 4: You can see how much energy this has.
Speaker 1: It's one hundred percent support in the Republican Caucus and
Speaker 1: probably like percent supported within the Democratic Caucus. So you've
Speaker 1: now got this bipartisan consensus in favor of we're going
Speaker 1: to ban platforms, We're going to crack down and like
Speaker 1: the most authoritarian police state way imaginable. All the things
Speaker 1: that I was like terrified under Trump are actually happening
Speaker 1: now with this bipartisan anti Palestine, anti Palestinian human rights
Speaker 1: coalition that has come together in this context to severely
Speaker 1: crack down on our rights because they don't like the
Speaker 1: conclusions that the American people are coming to.
Speaker 2: I do not disagree with you in terms of the protesters,
Speaker 2: it's specifically in this case. I will say, look, if
Speaker 2: they do come for YouTube, podcast, RSS, feed encryption, et cetera,
Speaker 2: I'll be right there on the front lines with you,
Speaker 2: and I will be marching. And if I here's it, Okay,
Speaker 2: here's another one, since I've had to eat a stock
Speaker 2: before on camera. If they use this specific legislation to
Speaker 2: target any single other company as many bad faith. Critics
Speaker 2: of this bill have claimed, I will eat another sock
Speaker 2: right here on the camera.
Speaker 3: I don't believe that it's humanly possible.
Speaker 2: Every lawyer that I've spoken to, everything that we're down
Speaker 2: the line is talking about hypotheticals. And again, if and
Speaker 2: when there is some some bipartisan consensus directly to censored
Speaker 2: this program, podcasting, Rumble, Twitter, YouTube with Snapchat, any of
Speaker 2: these other US based companies, Facebook, Instagram, I will radically
Speaker 2: oppose it, and I do not believe actually it would
Speaker 2: pass in the same way. And those companies have a
Speaker 2: lot more rights than TikTok does because they are actually
Speaker 2: US flagged and traded on a US public market.
Speaker 1: So it seems to me that in terms of the
Speaker 1: China agenda, Joe Biden has done a lot of the
Speaker 1: things that were on your wish list.
Speaker 3: I continue the.
Speaker 1: Tariffs, well hips sacks, but that's actually up for branning tiktoks.
Speaker 4: You're gonna give them some credit.
Speaker 2: Sure, I'll give them credit, absolutely. I mean, who championed
Speaker 2: the chipsack me? I said, your SAA, that was great.
Speaker 2: I mean, I'm not necessarily saying everything the man had
Speaker 2: done is bad.
Speaker 3: He pulled out of Afghanistan. I supported it.
Speaker 2: I support the Chipsack, I support the TikTok legislation. I'm
Speaker 2: trying to think what else has he done on China?
Speaker 2: On the tariffs, he kept the Trump tariffs.
Speaker 1: But would you say, from your perspective, he's been better
Speaker 1: on China than Trump.
Speaker 2: No, I don't think you could say that in terms
Speaker 2: of in terms of actual execution. The only things he
Speaker 2: really built on were chips Act. Even here on TikTok,
Speaker 2: I mean, he didn't actually propose it. Congress is the one.
Speaker 4: Is getting done under him.
Speaker 3: You guys. But I'm not saying that he's.
Speaker 4: Trumps book club now he's on the other side.
Speaker 2: It is true, absolutely, I was comparing it to his
Speaker 2: record for the tariffs. I would give Trump more credit
Speaker 2: because he actually fought against the establishment to put it in.
Speaker 3: Biden simply renewed it.
Speaker 2: In terms of how the two would govern on Trump,
Speaker 2: I genuinely have no idea which way you would go the.
Speaker 3: Next time around.
Speaker 2: Biden also, though, has been very very different in terms
Speaker 2: of some like fake climate policy whenever he's done with China,
Speaker 2: which I do not support, and there's a couple of
Speaker 2: other things. But yeah, I mean, look, you're not wrong.
Speaker 2: He's done certainly some of the things that I would
Speaker 2: have advocated for. And as the chorus, I think I
Speaker 2: could say too that you will ask me. I have
Speaker 2: given him credit where I think he deserves it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I do. No, it is it is absolutely one
Speaker 3: of my core issues, no question.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about some of the things we agree upon
Speaker 1: and both hate.
Speaker 3: Let's go to wars.
Speaker 2: Yeah, these wars were definitely both going to be against
Speaker 2: jee President Joe Biden. He has come out and now
Speaker 2: said that the one hundred billion dollars we will be
Speaker 2: shipping to foreign wars, both in Israel and Ukraine, will
Speaker 2: bring peace and peace and strength in our land, and
Speaker 2: very much in the way that Neville Chamberlain once did
Speaker 2: in Munich in nineteen thirty eight.
Speaker 3: Here was his remarks when he signed the legislation.
Speaker 7: It's a good day for America. It's a good day
Speaker 7: for European it's a good day for world peace and
Speaker 7: for real, this is consequential. I just signed in the
Speaker 7: law of the National Security Package that was passed by
Speaker 7: the House Representatives this weekend and by the Senate yesterday.
Speaker 7: It's going to make America safer it's going to make
Speaker 7: the world safer, and it continues America's leadership in the world,
Speaker 7: and everyone knows it gives vital support to America's partners
Speaker 7: and so they can defend themselves against threats to their
Speaker 7: sovereignty and lives and freedom of their citizens. And it's
Speaker 7: an investment in our own security because when our allies
Speaker 7: are stronger, and I want to make this burn again
Speaker 7: and again, when our allies are stronger, we are stronger.
Speaker 2: There you go, When our allies are stronger, we are stronger.
Speaker 2: This is going to be all about peace through strength.
Speaker 3: It's funny.
Speaker 2: The reason I put that Munich and dig in there,
Speaker 2: Crystal is that they often try and use that against opponents,
Speaker 2: and I'm going to try and start weaponizing it and
Speaker 2: say no, no, no, Actually you're the chamberlains because they're like,
Speaker 2: this is if everything is peace through strength, or everything
Speaker 2: is peace in our time, then nothing is peace in
Speaker 2: our time. And in fact, this is just fundling an
Speaker 2: endless war machine. But something I was remarking to you
Speaker 2: while the clip was happening, which I just find amazing,
Speaker 2: is you know we've all watched Biden now for several years.
Speaker 2: This man you know, he is falling apart on the camera,
Speaker 2: loses his way even here. He had a gaff later on,
Speaker 2: but in this moment you could see a glint in
Speaker 2: his eyes. And just look at the religion that these
Speaker 2: people feel whenever they are sending our money and weapons
Speaker 2: to foreign countries so that they can continue to fight
Speaker 2: pointless and endless wars which are keeping us less safe.
Speaker 2: That's actually what struck me most about the clip. It
Speaker 2: wasn't just the rhetoric. Is he truly he was alive
Speaker 2: in that moment, from one of those brief times where
Speaker 2: you could see the glimmer and the glint in his eyes.
Speaker 2: And that's what gets these people going, especially Biden is
Speaker 2: funding Ukraine and funding Israel.
Speaker 3: You really see it in that.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't even know what to say about
Speaker 1: this crap anymore. Like it's just sickening to me. It's
Speaker 1: sickening to me, you know, especially with regard to Israel.
Speaker 1: Like here we are watching an imminent invasion of Rafa,
Speaker 1: which five seconds ago the media was claiming it was
Speaker 1: a red line for Biden. Now it's about to happen
Speaker 1: or have ampted up strikes most severe in Goza that
Speaker 1: we've had in a while unfolding as he's claiming this
Speaker 1: is for peace, like it's disgusting, it's disgusting, it's insulting
Speaker 1: that he thinks any of us would buy this crap.
Speaker 1: And you know, it just makes you despaired that there's
Speaker 1: like an ounce of democracy left in this country, because
Speaker 1: look at what's unfolding across the Look at the way
Speaker 1: that Americans have shifted against this war. Look at how
Speaker 1: majorities of Americans have been for a ceasefire from the
Speaker 1: very early days. And now those numbers, which we also
Speaker 1: have some in our poll that we can bring you.
Speaker 4: Next week, are overwhelming.
Speaker 1: There's a bipartisan consensus among the American people in favor
Speaker 1: of among Republicans, Democrats, and independence, in favor of stopping
Speaker 1: the slaughter in Gaza. And he's out here talking, oh,
Speaker 1: this is going to bring peace.
Speaker 4: It's sick.
Speaker 1: And on Ukraine, listen, you know it's I think the
Speaker 1: Ukrainian piece is frankly more complicated. But what's the goal here,
Speaker 1: what's the end plan? How are you going to say
Speaker 1: this money is going to fund peace when all it
Speaker 1: does is lead to more war. I mean, that's the
Speaker 1: bottom line. But the next piece you highlighted this, you
Speaker 1: can explain this.
Speaker 3: Let's up there please.
Speaker 1: You know we're instantly now shipping long range missiles to Ukraine.
Speaker 1: I'm the type that the Biden administration previously said like, oh, no,
Speaker 1: we don't want to do that because we might risk
Speaker 1: a provocation with Russia. Now Here we frickin are And again,
Speaker 1: what's the plan? If you've got a plan for peace,
Speaker 1: we would dearly love to know how these billions of
Speaker 1: dollars are going to lead to anything more than the
Speaker 1: continued slaughter of Ukrainian men.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so these longer range missiles were ones that we
Speaker 2: refuse to send to Ukraine out of fear that they
Speaker 2: would escalate the war with Russia. Now this is actually
Speaker 2: a duel betrayal because not only has Biden reversed his
Speaker 2: policy and sent these missiles to Ukraine, which they then
Speaker 2: used in the last two weeks to strike deep inside
Speaker 2: of Russian tour territory, including into Crimea, but also that
Speaker 2: they shipped these weapons to the Ukrainians and allowed them
Speaker 2: to use the most offensive weapons to date at the
Speaker 2: very same time that we were all debating Ukraine aid
Speaker 2: in Congress that their most offensive weapons that we've given
Speaker 2: to Ukraine, which are the most destabilizing towards Russian communications
Speaker 2: line and Russian territory. We're given to them at exactly
Speaker 2: the same time that we were all debating Ukraine AID.
Speaker 3: Now, why do you think that all is?
Speaker 2: It's so that none of us were to actually realize
Speaker 2: both the Ukrainian desire to actually bring the war to Russia,
Speaker 2: to actually make sure that we get pulled into the
Speaker 2: war with Russia, but second, so that all of us
Speaker 2: don't debate and understand the stakes of an extra sixty billion.
Speaker 3: Dollars to this dangerous regime.
Speaker 2: Second is that is very clear in terms of the
Speaker 2: artillery numbers that are now acknowledged by the Ukrainian General
Speaker 2: staff in the Ukrainian military that they have put out
Speaker 2: there publicly.
Speaker 3: At best, given their current.
Speaker 2: Fires rate where they are right now for defense, they
Speaker 2: will run out of artillery in one year, and that
Speaker 2: the Russian artillery advantage will remain of five to one.
Speaker 2: So all we have done is fund the continued slaughter
Speaker 2: of these Ukrainian men and give them the ability to
Speaker 2: continue losing the way that they have lost. And when
Speaker 2: we consider what the Russian negotiators ask them for this
Speaker 2: is another canard which is driving me nuts. Now that
Speaker 2: all the documents are public from those peace talks in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty two, you know what the Russians wanted. They're like, look,
Speaker 2: well stop where we are, and you guys just have
Speaker 2: to agree to neutrality.
Speaker 3: That's it.
Speaker 2: They kept saying neutrality, neutrality, and neutrality andutrality. You can't
Speaker 2: join NATO, you can't join NATO, you can't join NATO.
Speaker 2: And everyone's like, this war is not about NATO. Well
Speaker 2: then why whenever the actual war was going on and
Speaker 2: they were trying to get concessions with the Ukrainians, did
Speaker 2: they say just say that you won't join NATO.
Speaker 3: That's it. So if that's really all that we could get,
Speaker 3: that's all.
Speaker 2: We have to do is tell them like, hey, guys,
Speaker 2: all right, we're gonna give you some weapons, a little
Speaker 2: bit of security guarantee on the side, not you know,
Speaker 2: full blown war, but you're not going to join NATO
Speaker 2: and then we could all just move on with our
Speaker 2: lives and there could be peace or at least lack
Speaker 2: of conflict for now in Eastern Europe.
Speaker 4: How is that not.
Speaker 3: Worth it compared to you know where we are right now.
Speaker 3: It's madness.
Speaker 1: Well here's the thing, like, here's what they'd say, Well,
Speaker 1: you can't trust Podin. They Okay, we may say that,
Speaker 1: but you know he's just going to use that as
Speaker 1: an excuse to then continue his.
Speaker 4: March through Europe or whatever the hell.
Speaker 1: And listen, maybe maybe I severely doubt it, because it's
Speaker 1: not like this has been really great for Russia either,
Speaker 1: especially at that point.
Speaker 4: But there's one way to find out. And then if
Speaker 4: this was.
Speaker 1: Just a pretext to then go and break the agreement
Speaker 1: immediately and move into you, then we can act accordingly.
Speaker 1: But you have to do peace deals with people you
Speaker 1: don't like or trust, with nation state governments that you don't.
Speaker 4: Like or trust. That's the way that it works.
Speaker 1: So listen, we know what's going on here, because even
Speaker 1: you know, in our lives, we've seen the way that
Speaker 1: these the logic of these wars just continues and continues
Speaker 1: and continues. Because think about President Biden. Okay, the truly
Speaker 1: courageous thing that he did on foreign policy is to
Speaker 1: withdraw from Afghanistan, and nothing hurt him more in terms
Speaker 1: of his approval ratings and in terms of media coverage
Speaker 1: than that actually truly courageous thing that he did, which
Speaker 1: was to say, Nope, I am not just gonna continue
Speaker 1: to fund and support the status quo and kick the
Speaker 1: cand to the next guy and hope that they clean
Speaker 1: up this, you know, multi decade mess and utter foreign
Speaker 1: policy catastrophe. I'm going to actually do it. And it
Speaker 1: was a disaster for him Politically, it was a disaster
Speaker 1: for him. I think that's outrageous, but that's reality and
Speaker 1: they're not stupid. So now we're settling into an endless
Speaker 1: status quo in Ukraine where there is.
Speaker 4: Not even any talk of it ending.
Speaker 1: It's just we're going to continue to spend this money
Speaker 1: and write another check and whatever we need to do.
Speaker 1: We've got our little pro Ukraine consensus. We've got Trump
Speaker 1: on board. Now, we got McConnell, we got a Keen Jeffries,
Speaker 1: we got Mike Johnson, we got Joe Biden, like we
Speaker 1: got a lock on both parties to just continue funding
Speaker 1: this thing forever and never have to take the heat
Speaker 1: over because imagine, imagine that Biden did what we would
Speaker 1: want him to do, and he actually said, you know what,
Speaker 1: we're not funding this anymore. We're pushing both parties the
Speaker 1: negotiating table. We have to bring this thing to a conclusion.
Speaker 1: He would be slaughtered by the press. It would be
Speaker 1: over for his realaction. I mean, that's the reality because
Speaker 1: of the way it would be covered right now preposterously.
Speaker 1: The area that he has the highest approval ratings on
Speaker 1: in many polls is his handling of the Ukraine War.
Speaker 1: So that's how these things become ten twenty year engagements,
Speaker 1: because these presidents realize that to actually do the right
Speaker 1: thing and bring this to some sort of conclusion, which
Speaker 1: we know would require Ukraine giving up some part of
Speaker 1: territory after they promised not one inch and we're going
Speaker 1: to take back not only the Dunbass, but we're going
Speaker 1: to take back Crimea, et cetera. It would be a
Speaker 1: political blood bath for Joe Biden. So I mean, even
Speaker 1: if he was inclined to do it, there's no way
Speaker 1: he's going to.
Speaker 4: So that's where we are.
Speaker 1: We are in the indefinite, forever war phase of the
Speaker 1: Ukraine War where they don't even talk anymore about how
Speaker 1: it might come to a close because they have no
Speaker 1: plan for that. They have no plan for that. And
Speaker 1: you know, with Israel, by the way. One other thing
Speaker 1: I want to mention about the actual vote. There were
Speaker 1: only this is so disgusting to me. There were only
Speaker 1: three Democrats who voted against it. Peter Welsh, kudos to him.
Speaker 1: Bernie Sanders, kudos to him, and Jeff Murkley kudos to
Speaker 1: him over their objections on Israel. How many people do
Speaker 1: you have now in the Senate Democratic Caucus who have
Speaker 1: said we're worried about the humanitarian crisis. Chris Van Holland
Speaker 1: has been one of the most strident critics. He actually
Speaker 1: went over and saw the way that Israel was blocking
Speaker 1: humanitarian aid and causing a literal famine. People, children, babies,
Speaker 1: starving to death, and he votes for it, and he
Speaker 1: votes for it, like how do you live with yourself?
Speaker 1: Ryan Emily made a great point saga that I want
Speaker 1: to raise here as well and make sure everybody hears it.
Speaker 1: Which is part of the reason they put all this
Speaker 1: crap together and why they do this all the time,
Speaker 1: these omnibus bills is to avoid any sort of democratic understanding,
Speaker 1: so there's no clarity because it's just so many things,
Speaker 1: you're like overwhelmed.
Speaker 4: By all the pieces.
Speaker 1: And also so that people don't have to be on
Speaker 1: the record on each of these individual pieces, because I
Speaker 1: guarantee you if you went to van on, why'd you
Speaker 1: vote for this Israel funding unconditional support, He'd say, well,
Speaker 1: I have the Ukrainians.
Speaker 4: So that's how you end up.
Speaker 1: With, you know, people who have claimed to be opposed
Speaker 1: at this point to unconditionally supporting bb Net and Yahoo's genocide,
Speaker 1: how they still end up voting for it and sleeping
Speaker 1: at night apparently looking at themselves in the America.
Speaker 4: Oh, because it's the Ukrainians.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, you're right. And also we've just seen continued escalations.
Speaker 2: Put this up there here, you know, from the Israelis,
Speaker 2: the Israeli strikes. This is from Haretz quote reports the
Speaker 2: most severe attacks there in weeks. So we'll end, you know,
Speaker 2: with some of the words from Michael Tracy, who I
Speaker 2: thought put it well. Putting aside my disagreement with him
Speaker 2: on the TikTok piece, let's go to his tweet bear please.
Speaker 2: He says, this was the most disturbing legislative process I've
Speaker 2: seen in fifteen plus years of covering US politics. A threshold,
Speaker 2: husband cross. The US has now made an enormous down
Speaker 2: payment on global war across at least three geographs, theaters,
Speaker 2: and imposed radical government control of the Internet. My disagreement
Speaker 2: on the last sentence there aside, I do absolutely think
Speaker 2: he is correct. There is no more bipartisan consensus than
Speaker 2: funding the war machine. And just to underscore what you
Speaker 2: said as well about media and linking back to our
Speaker 2: segment about where people get it, if as long as
Speaker 2: we live in a country where forty five to fifty
Speaker 2: five year olds are the ones who are vastly going
Speaker 2: to vote and have stakes in the political system than
Speaker 2: the media that they consume and their interpretation of events,
Speaker 2: it's all that is going to matter. And unfortunately, that
Speaker 2: is the reality you know, that we currently live in,
Speaker 2: and it just explains so much about the way that
Speaker 2: all of our politics works. I mean, you can look
Speaker 2: at a poll and you can see the vast majority
Speaker 2: of Republicans are against more A to Ukraine, but then
Speaker 2: if you isolate it to sixty five plus, you'll see
Speaker 2: that it's like fifty to fifty.
Speaker 3: And then you see that.
Speaker 2: Over eighty to ninety percent of the Republicans in the
Speaker 2: Senate ended up voting for it.
Speaker 3: You're like, well, how does this work?
Speaker 2: Same on Democrats yeah, you may have a bunch eighteen
Speaker 2: twenty years nine year olds screaming on a college campus.
Speaker 2: It doesn't matter when the boomers are watching MSNBC and
Speaker 2: they love Bbie and they love Israel because they don't
Speaker 2: see some of the stuff that we show you here
Speaker 2: on this show. And it's like, as long as that's reality,
Speaker 2: we're all locked in. You know, I'm thirty two years old,
Speaker 2: and until these people are gone, it's going to be
Speaker 2: I'll be I'll be their age by the time we
Speaker 2: even get to have any say in this country. And
Speaker 2: by that time, I'll be screaming at the young ends.
Speaker 3: So who don't even know.
Speaker 2: But I like to think that we'll have more humility though,
Speaker 2: as people who had to go through this, to look
Speaker 2: at the people who are coming up and say, I
Speaker 2: know what it was like to be you and to
Speaker 2: be totally powerless in your own country.
Speaker 4: I one of alls.
Speaker 1: So make sure to highlight that Michael Tracy tweet just
Speaker 1: because he's been such a resource.
Speaker 3: Yes, that's right.
Speaker 1: He's done such a great job, you know, really covering
Speaker 1: the ins and outs of this legislative process, and we've
Speaker 1: really relied on him and his analysis as well. Since
Speaker 1: he's reading through the bills and he's very good at
Speaker 1: picking out some of the critical pieces. So just want
Speaker 1: to make sure to give him a shout out as
Speaker 1: well for doing great coverage.
Speaker 2: So subscribe to a substack if we can, we'll put
Speaker 2: a link there in the description.
Speaker 3: He's a great guy, even when I disagree.
Speaker 2: I think he's very very I think he's very very
Speaker 2: good faith and principal in the way that he approaches thing,
Speaker 2: is very upfront about the way he is, and that's
Speaker 2: actually quite rare in this business.
Speaker 3: So shops shout outstand.
Speaker 1: So, as we've been covering all week, there has been
Speaker 1: a nationwide moral panic freak count and attendant authoritarian state
Speaker 1: crackdown on peaceful college protesters who are upset about the
Speaker 1: atrocities they witness in Gazan who specifically want their schools
Speaker 1: to divest from any related investments. Prime Minister of Israel
Speaker 1: bb Natan Yahoo has joined the fray, issuing this statement
Speaker 1: and calling American college students effectively Nazis.
Speaker 4: Take a listen.
Speaker 8: What's happening in America's college campuses is horrific. Antisemitic mobs
Speaker 8: have taken over leading universities they call for the annihilation
Speaker 8: of Israel. They attack Jewish students, they attack Jewish faculty.
Speaker 8: This is reminiscent of what happened in German universities in
Speaker 8: nineteen thirties. It's unconsidable. It has to be stopped. It
Speaker 8: has to be condemned and condemned unequivocally. But that's not
Speaker 8: what happened. The response of several university presidents was shameful.
Speaker 8: Now fortunately, state, local, federal officials, many of them have
Speaker 8: responded differently, But there has to be more. More has
Speaker 8: to be done. It has to be done. Not only
Speaker 8: because they attack Israel. That's bad enough. Not only because
Speaker 8: they want to kill Jews wherever they are that's bad enough.
Speaker 8: It's also when you listen to them. It's also because
Speaker 8: they say not only death to Israel, death to the Jews,
Speaker 8: but death to America. And this tells us that there
Speaker 8: is an anti Semitic surge here that has terrible consequences.
Speaker 8: We see this exponential rise of anti Semitism throughout America
Speaker 8: and throughout Western societies as Israel tries to defend itself
Speaker 8: against genocidal terrorists, genocidal terrorists who hide behind civilians. Yet
Speaker 8: it is Israel that is falsely accused of genocide, Israel
Speaker 8: that is falsely accused of starvation and all sundry war crimes.
Speaker 8: It's all one big libel. But that's not you.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, Zaga, I'm going to lose my mind.
Speaker 1: I mean, this has it, has it all? We're going
Speaker 1: to just let a foreign government leader smear our college
Speaker 1: kids as Nazis.
Speaker 4: In addition, I mean, I have a million things I
Speaker 4: want to say about this.
Speaker 1: I'm like sort of sputtering with anger at every piece
Speaker 1: of that. How much have the Jewish students who are
Speaker 1: at the heart of these protests been completely erased the
Speaker 1: idea that they're calling for death to all Jews? What
Speaker 1: they want their themselves to be killed? They want themselves
Speaker 1: to be genocided? Like this isn't It's so insane. Ryan
Speaker 1: and Emily did a great interview yesterday with one of
Speaker 1: the student organizers on Columbia.
Speaker 4: She was out buying.
Speaker 1: Ingredients for their satyr, which they had very peacefully interfaith. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's what we're talking about here. And are there some
Speaker 1: rally chants that I wouldn't necessarily choose?
Speaker 4: Sure?
Speaker 1: Are there some genuinely anti Semitic comments that are made
Speaker 1: in the context of especially not even the college campus
Speaker 1: but outside. Sure, Okay, there are assholes and racists exist,
Speaker 1: no doubt about it, But you're going to use that
Speaker 1: to smear everyone who is sick to death watching these
Speaker 1: babies being starved and slaughtered as an anti Semite. It's disgusting,
Speaker 1: it's despicable, and nothing will make actual anti Semitism rise,
Speaker 1: by the way, farther and faster than forcing every Jew
Speaker 1: in America around the world to be conflated.
Speaker 4: With the state of Israel. Okay, because we can.
Speaker 1: All see what you're doing on TikTok and YouTube and
Speaker 1: lots of other places. Your soldiers, your idf soldiers, are
Speaker 1: out there tiktoking their war crimes.
Speaker 4: We're not idiots. We can see. And it's not just
Speaker 4: college kids.
Speaker 1: It's the un special rabbertur, It's the ICJ saying plausible genocide.
Speaker 1: It's the body count, it's the relentless, complete siege. It's
Speaker 1: the fact that you're about to imminently invade Rafa, where
Speaker 1: more than a million Palestitians are currently sheltering like ugh, sickening, sickening,
Speaker 1: And the fact that politicians in America are letting this
Speaker 1: foreign leader smear our kids as racist and Nazis, and
Speaker 1: they just let this go and they freaking support it.
Speaker 3: Oh.
Speaker 2: See, that latter part is where I wouldn't even bother
Speaker 2: pointing out hypocrisy. I would just say, hey, man, you
Speaker 2: worry about your country and we'll worry about ours.
Speaker 3: And in fact, you especially shouldn't be worrying about ours.
Speaker 2: And talking about ours when you are actively telling us
Speaker 2: not to sanction your units based upon our you know,
Speaker 2: US laws like the Leahy law, when you're actively your
Speaker 2: president just put out a police saying please stay out
Speaker 2: of Israeli politics whenever they attack Chuck Schumer or others
Speaker 2: for calling for an end to the Netan Yahu government
Speaker 2: by saying, hey, you shouldn't be calling for interference in
Speaker 2: our domestic politics. I mean, this man is in English
Speaker 2: talking about a domestic political issue that we as Americans
Speaker 2: can resolve together as to what constitutes anti Semitism, what
Speaker 2: proper use of force looks like, etc. That is a
Speaker 2: debate for us to have and for them to have
Speaker 2: no play or parted, especially whenever they are a client
Speaker 2: state who receives more foreign aid than any other nation
Speaker 2: in the world. That is particularly why it's so galling
Speaker 2: is because their ego and the goal and their impunity
Speaker 2: is such that they can keep their handout and then
Speaker 2: smack our populace at the very state time. So to them,
Speaker 2: I say, keep your mouth, keep your face completely out.
Speaker 3: Of our politics, and you worry about your own business.
Speaker 1: And the impunity is cultivated by Joe Biden. He knows
Speaker 1: he can say that he can smear whoever he wants
Speaker 1: is a Nazi. I mean, he's actually comparing the whole
Speaker 1: country to Nazi Germany because he says, oh, this, we
Speaker 1: haven't seen this since that time period. We haven't seen
Speaker 1: you know, Jews unsafe on college campuses or whatever. He
Speaker 1: said again, no, this is not about Jewish student safety,
Speaker 1: because if it was, there might be a few words
Speaker 1: of Karen concern for the Jewish students who were being
Speaker 1: cracked down on by a you know, aggressive police state
Speaker 1: and being threatened with the freaking National Guard people courting
Speaker 1: another Kent state. Maybe you'd have a little concern for
Speaker 1: those Jewish students if that was really truly your concern.
Speaker 1: So it's disgusting. Additional disgusting situations unfolded. You had Mike
Speaker 1: Johnson and a bunch who's of course speaking of the House,
Speaker 1: a bunch of other Republicans who went to tour Columbia
Speaker 1: give a press conference and wasn't received particularly well by
Speaker 1: the student body there. First of all, apparently he didn't
Speaker 1: have like a microphone to product his voice. He was
Speaker 1: just speaking into like the press microphones, so no one
Speaker 1: could even hear him. So there are a lot of people,
Speaker 1: a lot of the students were yelling like grandstand louder
Speaker 1: and like speak up, you piece of grab and stuff
Speaker 1: like that. Anyway, and the press around really couldn't hear
Speaker 1: what he had to say either. But anyway, here is
Speaker 1: a little bit of Mike Johnson attend to speak and
Speaker 1: getting hackled by the crowd ticklism.
Speaker 3: After meeting with Jewish students.
Speaker 9: Let's listen live in the Columbia campus.
Speaker 10: So thank you all for being here today. We have
Speaker 10: several members of Congress here, and we're here today at
Speaker 10: one of America's pre eminent academic institutions on a very
Speaker 10: important day and a very important time throughout history Columbia here.
Speaker 1: So anyway, receiving a warm welcome there, and you know
Speaker 1: it's notable. I believe they had a few Jewish members
Speaker 1: along with them. They managed to remain safe in spite
Speaker 1: of the fact that this is apparently you know, Nazi
Speaker 1: Germany and Manhattan at this point and you were talking
Speaker 1: about this, I think you should lay this out. But like,
Speaker 1: there's a very clear political benefit here for Mike Johnson,
Speaker 1: who has some problems with parts of his coalition because
Speaker 1: of the Ukraine Aid stuff. This is this crackdown on
Speaker 1: free speech. Minutes ago, these people were oh, we love
Speaker 1: free and now suddenly it's like bringing the police, bringing
Speaker 1: the National Guard. Very unifying for the Republicans and divisive
Speaker 1: for the Democrats, so it's a smart wedge issue for
Speaker 1: them politically.
Speaker 2: This is very useful to Mike Johnson because he was
Speaker 2: facing that motion motion to vacate revolt that was on
Speaker 2: his right flank from Freedom Caucus types and others. So
Speaker 2: by going to Columbia, even with all of the Republican
Speaker 2: leadership that he had behind him, including a few others
Speaker 2: that were willing to make the track, he actually is
Speaker 2: solidifying some of his support within the caucus and then
Speaker 2: turning the tables, like you said, in terms of a
Speaker 2: division against the Democrat. So this is kind of a
Speaker 2: political jiu jitsu move on his part to move the
Speaker 2: attention away from the Ukraine, AID and all of that
Speaker 2: to an area where he's very, very safe within his
Speaker 2: own caucus, and that's where he finds himself right now.
Speaker 2: It's directly why he immediately was like, I'm going to
Speaker 2: Columbia and this is the reason.
Speaker 1: Yeah, police day crackdowns on peaceful protesters apparently unifying issue
Speaker 1: for the Republican caucus and frankly for much of the
Speaker 1: Democratic cacus. Are a number of Democratic members of Congress
Speaker 1: who went and toured Colombia too, and amazingly, thank goodness,
Speaker 1: they were able to remain safe. What an incredible miracle. Obviously,
Speaker 1: this is not just Colombia at this point. Also an
Speaker 1: update there. The president has been, you know, in some
Speaker 1: sort of negotiations with the students. There were initial threats
Speaker 1: that they were going to bring the NYPD back in.
Speaker 1: You recall they crackdown before and arrested a bunch of students,
Speaker 1: suspended a bunch of students. There was a threat that
Speaker 1: they were going to bring them in again. There were
Speaker 1: other people who were threatening, oh, we might bring in
Speaker 1: the National Guard. She's now in these discussions with student protesters.
Speaker 1: I believe the deadline for those talks is something like
Speaker 1: four am on Friday morning. So we'll see what happens there.
Speaker 1: But that story certainly is not concluded. And now we've
Speaker 1: got some extraordinary scenes unfolding truly coast to coast. At
Speaker 1: this point, we can put this up on the screen.
Speaker 1: This is from University of Texas Austin. Now they sent
Speaker 1: in an overwhelming police force. By the way, this is DPS.
Speaker 1: These are some of the that's the agency. There were
Speaker 1: some of the cowards that would not go in when
Speaker 1: it was UVALDI children who were at risk, but you
Speaker 1: know they could show up here and they're all suited
Speaker 1: up and crack some college kids' heads. So these were
Speaker 1: some extraordinary scenes that were happening here. I would just
Speaker 1: want to be clear there aren't even any reports of
Speaker 1: anything even colorably anti semitic at ut Austin, nor any
Speaker 1: violence no quote unquote I stabbing incidents, And we'll get
Speaker 1: to that in a minute and how that was a
Speaker 1: complete hoax. But you can see this is happening around
Speaker 1: the country. You've got Brown, You've got University of Southern California,
Speaker 1: you've got University of Minnesota, You've got Columbia, of course,
Speaker 1: you've got NYU. This is just a sampling of the
Speaker 1: type of scenes that are truly unfolding at Elite and
Speaker 1: you know, normal state institutions around the country and the
Speaker 1: type of crackdown that they have been met with. In
Speaker 1: particular at U t Austin, there was a local press
Speaker 1: cameraman with the local Fox news affiliate who was tackled
Speaker 1: and arrested by these police for just being there to
Speaker 1: document the protest and what was going on. Just take
Speaker 1: a look at this, can narrate this, and then there's
Speaker 1: actually an interview with him that I can show you.
Speaker 4: So you see him.
Speaker 1: There with his camera like he's got his pressed credentials on,
Speaker 1: He's just doing his job, and you can see him
Speaker 1: grabbed by the police, thrown to the ground, okay, and
Speaker 1: then he is zip tied and arrested.
Speaker 4: Here, let's go ahead and switch out throw to He.
Speaker 1: Was interviewed by someone else who was on the scene
Speaker 1: there and explains like, I'm just here trying to do
Speaker 1: my job.
Speaker 4: Let's take a listen to what he had to say.
Speaker 3: Were you RINOs?
Speaker 5: I think it's uh. They were pushing me and I
Speaker 5: they say that I had an officer.
Speaker 3: I think again an officer where you're pushing you know
Speaker 3: what I mean? They're pushing me. Everyone. What's your name
Speaker 3: in naming data birth.
Speaker 11: We're gonna send attorney to you.
Speaker 3: Has this happened.
Speaker 4: To me before? What is going on?
Speaker 2: I mean, he's literally doing his job. You can see
Speaker 2: very clearly on camera. He didn't push anybody. He has
Speaker 2: his press credentials that are around his neck. He had
Speaker 2: the live view backpack, so he's broadcasting live.
Speaker 1: They've charged him with criminal trustpassing, which also tells you that, oh,
Speaker 1: he hit an officer is bullshit because if he hit
Speaker 1: an all officer, he'd be charged with assault exactly, even
Speaker 1: if it was like colorable. But that was a complete lie.
Speaker 1: So he's this American journalist, local news journalist being charged
Speaker 1: with criminal treuspassing for.
Speaker 4: Doing his job.
Speaker 2: Governor Abbott has almost certainly violated Texas law here and
Speaker 2: we can show you some of the evidence.
Speaker 3: Just go and put this up there on the screen.
Speaker 2: Governor Abbot tweeted, quote, arrests are being made now, right
Speaker 2: now and will continue until the crowd disperses.
Speaker 3: These protesters belong in jail.
Speaker 2: Listen to this very clearly, he says anti Semitism will
Speaker 2: not be tolerated in Texas period. Students joining in hate
Speaker 2: field anti Semitic protests at any public college or university
Speaker 2: in Texas should be expelled. So he is explicitly saying
Speaker 2: that the pro test is being broken up because of ideology.
Speaker 2: This again is very clearly a violation of Texas law,
Speaker 2: which clearly lays out that at a public university the
Speaker 2: only way that you are allowed to break up protests
Speaker 2: is in violation of time, place, and manner. Stuff that
Speaker 2: is on the books. The organization, the free speech organization
Speaker 2: fire put this out. Let's put this up there on
Speaker 2: the screen. They say that the chilling show of force
Speaker 2: the UT is a disproportionate response to an apparently peaceful protest,
Speaker 2: sending it in feinlanks of law enforcement threatens protect and
Speaker 2: speech where it should be at its most free. A
Speaker 2: public university like UT Austin. Governor Abbott's public commentary clearly
Speaker 2: makes it a disregard for the firstman's protection of political speech.
Speaker 2: Clear we encourage those with Firstmendment rights who are threatened
Speaker 2: at UT Austin or elsewhere to contact fire. This is
Speaker 2: specifically a law called SB eighteen, which is a Texas
Speaker 2: free speech legislature, a law that passed several years ago.
Speaker 2: It allows university to create disciplinary actions for students who
Speaker 2: quote interfere with speech activities, but it does put into
Speaker 2: place very clearly restrictions on the time, place, and manner
Speaker 2: of such activities, and specifically areas of the public university remembered.
Speaker 2: You know, Texas taxpayers and the federal government are the
Speaker 2: ones who fund this university race is not Columbia. Colombia's
Speaker 2: private land. It's private university and they can technically do
Speaker 2: whatever they want. But in public universities it's a whole
Speaker 2: other ballgame. And this reminds us very much of a
Speaker 2: lot of the stuff that happened during the Vietnam War.
Speaker 1: Yeah, listen, I'm not a legal expert on this, but
Speaker 1: I can tell you the Supreme Court has upheld numerous
Speaker 1: times that First Amendment rights apply on public university campuses.
Speaker 1: So when you're talking about this kind of crackdown at
Speaker 1: UT Austin, it is a very different The moral landscape
Speaker 1: is the same, but the legal landscape is very different.
Speaker 1: And then you also have to talk about just the
Speaker 1: incredible hypocrisy here. I mean, this man was how long
Speaker 1: ago growing about free speech on college campus, and then
Speaker 1: he doesn't even in his old tweet, he doesn't even
Speaker 1: claim there's violence. As I said, I haven't seen a
Speaker 1: single report of either violence, anything even colorable as violence,
Speaker 1: or anything any anti Semitic incidents, none of that. He
Speaker 1: just doesn't like the cause that they stand for, and
Speaker 1: so we sent in a bunch of cops to arrest
Speaker 1: I believe dozens of students and including this journalist who's
Speaker 1: just there trying to do his job. There is no
Speaker 1: excuse for this. There's no excuse for it. I don't
Speaker 1: care where you are on this issue. I defended many
Speaker 1: people who were saying a lot of crap that I
Speaker 1: find offensive. I don't agree with, I don't like, but
Speaker 1: I'm like, you have the right to say you're offensive bullshit, Okay,
Speaker 1: this is America and this. Situations like this are exactly
Speaker 1: why I made sure that I in particular defended the
Speaker 1: speech that I personally disagreed with and found offensive, because
Speaker 1: that's when it's tough, that's when it matters. I don't
Speaker 1: want to hear a single person who is supporting any
Speaker 1: of this ever say another.
Speaker 4: Word about free speech.
Speaker 1: It was always naked and very selective, but it has
Speaker 1: never been more naked and selective than right now. I mean,
Speaker 1: some of these like billionaire Republican donors who three minutes
Speaker 1: ago were funding all of these free speech efforts and
Speaker 1: pressuring to allow you know, Ben Shapiro or whoever to
Speaker 1: appear on college milo Unapolis or whoever to appear on
Speaker 1: college campuses.
Speaker 4: Suddenly, oh, oh, I'm offended, this speech is violence.
Speaker 1: They sound like the greatest caricature the liberals could have
Speaker 1: never in their wildest dreams imagine this kind of nationwide
Speaker 1: crackdown from New York to Texas to la It is
Speaker 1: so despicable and enraging I can't even begin to comment,
Speaker 1: and so disconnected from what is actually happening on these campuses.
Speaker 4: If you go to the protest, if you speak.
Speaker 1: To the students who are involved in engaging in it,
Speaker 1: they will come right out and say, we are totally
Speaker 1: opposed to violence. We completely condemn that, we completely condemn
Speaker 1: anti semitism.
Speaker 4: By the way, many of.
Speaker 1: Us are ourselves Jewish, insane, insane situation.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, and this is where I even have
Speaker 2: to move past it and say even if they were
Speaker 2: anti Semitic, they are still US citizens who have the
Speaker 2: right to do what they want. So that was a
Speaker 2: white nationalist group, I would say the exact same thing,
Speaker 2: And they probably hate my guts because I'm from Texas
Speaker 2: and apparent according them, I shouldn't have even been there
Speaker 2: in the first place. I don't mind if that's what
Speaker 2: they want to say. You know, we are all Americans.
Speaker 2: We have our citizenship, and that's the issue that we
Speaker 2: find this. Texas in particular has had the BDS law
Speaker 2: now on the books and even enforced it in the
Speaker 2: past firing state employees. So they've always had a Israel
Speaker 2: exception to their free speech law. And yeah, it's one
Speaker 2: of those where this is very clear. Yeah, the optics
Speaker 2: again of the Texas DPS, which was involved in the
Speaker 2: horrific response of Vivalde to this. Actually some of the
Speaker 2: students on campus were openly chanting this. And this is
Speaker 2: a likely only a preview of what is to come,
Speaker 2: especially with the deadline at Columbia expiring sometime in the
Speaker 2: next twenty four to forty eight hours.
Speaker 3: We don't know what's going to.
Speaker 1: Happen there, and I want to say too, Like obviously
Speaker 1: with the Columbia example, this isn't a red state phenomenon.
Speaker 1: This is like a you know, elite bipartisan instances in
Speaker 1: California and Blue California, LA. They also sent in the
Speaker 1: cops to arrest I believe, somewhere around one hundred students
Speaker 1: to keep you know, an encampment from growing in size there,
Speaker 1: and they've poured gasoline on the fire. I mean, these encampments.
Speaker 1: I just saw a message from our front Motaz, who
Speaker 1: we had on the show before, who's a palestin, the
Speaker 1: American activist who's lost more than a hundred of family
Speaker 1: members in Israel's assault on Gaza. They one just sprung
Speaker 1: up at GW. So this is truly a nationwide phenomenon here.
Speaker 1: I saw someone pointing out on Twitter too, like the
Speaker 1: school years was almost over.
Speaker 3: I was going to say, it's over in about like
Speaker 3: two weeks.
Speaker 1: If you had just allowed these things to go and
Speaker 1: do their thing and like peacefully fizzle out, you probably
Speaker 1: wouldn't have had I mean, you wouldn't have had this
Speaker 1: big momentum here at the end of the school year
Speaker 1: and all of this fraud situation at Columbia university cancel
Speaker 1: classes for the rest of the year, Like you wouldn't
Speaker 1: have had this insanity if the Columbia University president hadn't
Speaker 1: sent in the police to you know, crack down on
Speaker 1: these student protesters and really spark this whole conflagration. So
Speaker 1: it's completely contrary to you know, their desires for all
Speaker 1: these people to just go away, and the polar opposite
Speaker 1: thing obviously is happening. And then this is a little
Speaker 1: bit of a tease for your monologue, Soccer, but you know,
Speaker 1: some of the echoes of sixty eight here are particularly
Speaker 1: profound at Columbia University. You can put this up on
Speaker 1: the screen. So Columbia's own website, this person points out
Speaker 1: on Twitter, actually literally has a page about how the
Speaker 1: last time that they had student protesters mass arrested, that
Speaker 1: they now realized they were completely wrong and that it
Speaker 1: screwed up their reputation for decades. So let me read
Speaker 1: this from the Columbia University web page. It says Columbia
Speaker 1: is a far different place today than it was in
Speaker 1: the spring of sixty eight when protesters took over university
Speaker 1: buildings IMiD discontent about the Vietnam War, racism and the
Speaker 1: university's proposed expansion into Morningside Park. After a week long standoff,
Speaker 1: New York City police stormed in the campus, rust of
Speaker 1: more than seven hundred people.
Speaker 4: The fallout dogged Columbia for years.
Speaker 1: It took decades for the university to recover from those
Speaker 1: turbulent times. They go on to say Columbia's commemorating the
Speaker 1: fiftieth anniversary of those long ago events with a deep
Speaker 1: dive of scholarship and exhibits chronicling what happened then in
Speaker 1: its effects today. So apparently they need to do a
Speaker 1: little deeper dive into that scholarship to realize that guess
Speaker 1: what those lessons you learn back in nineteen sixty eight,
Speaker 1: they apply right now today. And I know you're going
Speaker 1: to draw out some more of those historic parallels from
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty eight.
Speaker 3: Stay tuned.
Speaker 2: It is exactly fifty six years ago to the day,
Speaker 2: which is wild like to the day of where all
Speaker 2: of this was going down. And if we listened to
Speaker 2: the lessons of sixty eight, there's a lot more chaos toic.
Speaker 8: Come.
Speaker 4: Let's talk about a hoax, shall we? Let's talk about us.
Speaker 3: There's nothing I love more than hoaxes.
Speaker 1: So are you covering you will recall I joined Piers
Speaker 1: Morgan's Piers Morgan Uncensored this week and one of the
Speaker 1: individuals that I was on with was a Jewish student
Speaker 1: at Yale who claimed she had been and these were
Speaker 1: her words.
Speaker 4: Stabbed in the eye with a flag. Okay.
Speaker 1: Now, I noted in the segment her eye seemed okay, okay,
Speaker 1: and this happened only I believe two days prior, so
Speaker 1: you typically, I believe if you're stabbed in the eye,
Speaker 1: the recovery time is a little bit lengthier.
Speaker 4: But okay, I'm gonna.
Speaker 3: Yeah, taking the word for it, taking your word, right, what.
Speaker 4: Am I gonna do? I'm gon take you out your
Speaker 4: Word'm glad you're okay.
Speaker 1: Well, now video has emerged of the I stabbing, and
Speaker 1: go ahead and put this up on the screen. So, okay,
Speaker 1: you can see she's in the middle of protest, she's recording.
Speaker 1: There's people who are all around her. You know, they're
Speaker 1: wearing their cafeas they're doing their thing.
Speaker 4: They're moving by.
Speaker 1: Okay, I don't know, you know exactly what's happening here,
Speaker 1: but there's just a lot of people moving around. Right,
Speaker 1: Someone comes close. Okay, oh there's the flag, and and okay,
Speaker 1: that was it. That was the I stabbing. Someone walked
Speaker 1: by with a flag. It's not even clear that she
Speaker 1: was hit with the flag at all. I'll give her
Speaker 1: the benefit of the doubt. I guess, even though it's
Speaker 1: clearly not deserved, that maybe the flag accidentally, you know,
Speaker 1: grazed her somewhere in the eye vicinity.
Speaker 4: But put the next piece up on the screen.
Speaker 1: This is how this was reported in Barry Wise's The
Speaker 1: Free Press. Here's literally the headline, I was stabbed in
Speaker 1: the eye at Yale. The school has allowed anti Israel
Speaker 1: students to run roughshod for their most basic policies. Yesterday,
Speaker 1: I paid the price for their inaction. And the first
Speaker 1: line of this piece, by the way, is also I
Speaker 1: was stabbed in the eye last night on Yale University's
Speaker 1: campus because I am a Jew.
Speaker 4: There was no eye stabbing. There was no eye stabbing.
Speaker 1: You were, like, maybe potentially grazed unintentionally with a flag.
Speaker 4: That is clearly what happened in the video.
Speaker 1: It's no wonder even though she took this video, she
Speaker 1: did not circulate this video when she was doing her
Speaker 1: whole I was stabbed in the I pressed her. And
Speaker 1: by the way, it wasn't just Barry Weiss's outlet that
Speaker 1: they were the ones that initially ran that.
Speaker 4: This got picked up everywhere and.
Speaker 1: Obviously you know Peers Moorgan featured her testimony here as well.
Speaker 3: Well.
Speaker 2: Was she on her way to subway? Is that what
Speaker 2: was going on? Was she on her way to subway
Speaker 2: sandwiches two in the morning? Were there any maga hats
Speaker 2: involved over here?
Speaker 1: I see what you're doing the ice, so I forgot
Speaker 1: about the sub maga mullet.
Speaker 9: Where there were there's some where? Was that guy a
Speaker 9: personal trainer or something? Was what was going on there
Speaker 9: with all of this? Listen, this is all complete bullshit.
Speaker 2: And as my I urge everyone in this rule, if
Speaker 2: there is any claim of assault, of racism, of any
Speaker 2: attack of which you stand to benefit or which benefits
Speaker 2: a political cause, my rule is it didn't happen. It
Speaker 2: didn't happen. The burden of proof is on you. And
Speaker 2: even then, if it's on camera, it's probably exaggerated, which
Speaker 2: is the evidence that we all have here. I often
Speaker 2: tell the story, but Rolling Stone is what really made
Speaker 2: me create that rule.
Speaker 3: But where I went to school.
Speaker 2: George Washington University was the site of one of the
Speaker 2: original panics over Swastika's, where a student kept calling the
Speaker 2: police saying that someone was drawing a swastika on her
Speaker 2: dorm room and America freaked out. This was a nationwide story.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, Swastka's being done on.
Speaker 3: The dorm room.
Speaker 2: So GW put a camera in the dorm to make
Speaker 2: sure that they could catch the swastika drawer. Who do
Speaker 2: we all think it was who was drawing the swastika?
Speaker 6: It was her.
Speaker 3: It was her the whole time.
Speaker 2: These people are victims, and I'm talking about you know,
Speaker 2: but what's that guy's name, Nascar Bubba, whatever his name is,
Speaker 2: and the news how did that work out? The NASCAR
Speaker 2: nows Rolling Stone. I mean, there's if you want to
Speaker 2: get controversial, Christine blasi Ford.
Speaker 3: I mean, in every case, several years later.
Speaker 2: We can look back and just be like, yeah, this
Speaker 2: was some straight up bs that completely was used for
Speaker 2: political benefits.
Speaker 3: So I urge everyone to use that rule. Whenever you're
Speaker 3: looking through this.
Speaker 2: Be deeply, deeply, deeply, deeply skeptical. And I mean I
Speaker 2: was privately cracking jokes in our group chat and all this,
Speaker 2: but like, yeah, where's your eyepatch? You know, making all
Speaker 2: of this because I didn't believe it from the beginning.
Speaker 2: I'm not going to say that in public, but now
Speaker 2: that the video has come out, I feel very very
Speaker 2: comfortable ridiculing and making fun of this lady.
Speaker 1: Well, and here's the thing is, it wasn't without consequence.
Speaker 1: Like I'm personally extra irritated because I had to like,
Speaker 1: you know, be yea, let's be sympathetically to this person.
Speaker 1: And it was so emotionally manipulative, and not to me,
Speaker 1: who cares me, but to the whole audience. This was
Speaker 1: a big part of what sparked now this total freak
Speaker 1: out and crackdown. And you know, the people who initially
Speaker 1: read the like, oh someone was stabbed an eye nonsense
Speaker 1: from a variety of news outlets, They're never going to
Speaker 1: see this video. They're never going to see a action
Speaker 1: because probably none of these outlets are even gonna make
Speaker 1: a correction. And so not only did you trigger this
Speaker 1: freak out, you also made a lot of Jewish students
Speaker 1: feel genuine fear, like, oh my god, maybe there's something
Speaker 1: is really going on that I need to fear for
Speaker 1: my safety. All based on nonsense, and you know it
Speaker 1: is true. This is not This is like across ages
Speaker 1: demographic groups, there are some number of people who are
Speaker 1: just so desperate to be like the center of some
Speaker 1: victimhood story.
Speaker 4: It's like it is like a sickness.
Speaker 1: This shy DIVIDI guys definitely fits that mold as well,
Speaker 1: where it's like they're so desperate to be a victim
Speaker 1: that you'll go in and just invent some of you'll
Speaker 1: go into the situation hoping that something happens that you
Speaker 1: can even colorably pretend was, you know, a hate crime,
Speaker 1: a grave victimization of you versus someone like accidentally bumping
Speaker 1: into with like insane. By the way, just to show
Speaker 1: you like this isn't our first trip to this rodeo.
Speaker 1: But the last element c eight up on the screen,
Speaker 1: So I don't know if you guys remember this.
Speaker 4: This was a minor blip.
Speaker 1: Back in December, the same woman had tweeted out imagine
Speaker 1: returning to your dining hall to find that salad labels
Speaker 1: were renamed to remove mention of the salads being Israeli.
Speaker 1: That happened at Yale. This it's the subtle changes and
Speaker 1: reactions that are the most pernicious.
Speaker 4: So apparently there.
Speaker 1: Was some Israeli couscous salad that she claimed the sign
Speaker 1: verbiage had been changed. Literally the next day, some other
Speaker 1: student at Yale was like, here's the sign.
Speaker 4: It still says Israeli couscouse like relaxed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, it was a complete hoax as well. So
Speaker 2: you know, hoax me once, Shame on me. I hoaxed
Speaker 2: me twice, shame on you.
Speaker 4: Yes.
Speaker 1: Indeed, all right, let's move on to some additional domestic
Speaker 1: situations that are onfolio.
Speaker 4: This is really important.
Speaker 1: Yesterday the Supreme Court heard oral arguments about the Idaho
Speaker 1: state almost complete abortion ban and whether it is in
Speaker 1: conflict with a federal law that mandates and this is
Speaker 1: for any hospital that takes medic air funds, which is
Speaker 1: basically every hospital that mandates that they perform emergency care
Speaker 1: and stabilize patients.
Speaker 4: So let's take a listen.
Speaker 1: This was a very interesting exchange from liberal Justice Sonia
Speaker 1: Soda Mayor and then backed up by conservative Justice Amy
Speaker 1: Cony Barrett, very concerned about the implications of this Idaho
Speaker 1: abortion band for women.
Speaker 4: Let's take a listen.
Speaker 11: Imagine a patient who goes to the ar with pre
Speaker 11: prompt fourteen weeks. Again abortion is accepted. She's up. She
Speaker 11: was in and out of the hospital up to twenty
Speaker 11: seven weeks. This particular patient they tried had to deliver
Speaker 11: her baby. The baby died, she had a hysterectomy, and
Speaker 11: she can no longer have children. All right, you're telling
Speaker 11: me the doctor there couldn't have done the abortion earlier.
Speaker 6: It goes back to whether a doctor can in good
Speaker 6: faith medical judgment.
Speaker 11: That's a lot for the doctor to risk.
Speaker 6: Well, I think it's protection of doctor judgment.
Speaker 11: When id the whole law changed to make the issue
Speaker 11: whether she's going to die or not, or whether she's
Speaker 11: going to have a serious medical condition. There's a big
Speaker 11: day life by your standards, correct.
Speaker 6: It is very case by case. The example that I'm kind.
Speaker 12: Of shocked actually because I thought your own expert had
Speaker 12: said below that these kinds of cases were covered, and
Speaker 12: you're now saying they're not.
Speaker 6: No, I'm not saying that, that's just my point, your
Speaker 6: honor is that.
Speaker 3: Well, you're hedging.
Speaker 12: I mean, Jessice Sodomower's asking you would this be covered
Speaker 12: or not? And it was my understanding that the legislature's
Speaker 12: witnesses said that these would be covered.
Speaker 6: And those doctors said, if they were exercising their medical judgment,
Speaker 6: they could in good faith determine that life saving care
Speaker 6: was necessary. And that's my point is is a subjection
Speaker 6: some doctors couldn't.
Speaker 12: Some doctors might reach a contrary conclusion. I think as
Speaker 12: well as Sodomowa is asking you.
Speaker 4: Just think about this.
Speaker 1: So at issue here is the fact that the law
Speaker 1: has an exception in place for the life of the mother,
Speaker 1: but not for the health of the mother. So the
Speaker 1: scenario that jess as Sonya Soda Mayor is laying out
Speaker 1: here is, let's say a woman comes to you. She's
Speaker 1: in crisis, her health is failing, but she's not dying.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 1: If you perform the abortion now, and this is not
Speaker 1: hypothet there are genuine instances where this is the case.
Speaker 1: If you perform the abortion now, she's going to be okay,
Speaker 1: She's going to maintain she's.
Speaker 4: Not going to have to have an emergency hysterectomy.
Speaker 1: She's going to be able to maintain her ability to
Speaker 1: conceive a child and have a child in the future.
Speaker 1: You know, this is presumably a woman who is pregnant,
Speaker 1: who wants to be a mother. If you don't act,
Speaker 1: if you wait for her to get to the point
Speaker 1: where she is about to die, then not only is
Speaker 1: the baby still going to die, but she's going to
Speaker 1: have to go through this emergency hysterectomy. But because her
Speaker 1: life was not literally at stake right now, there would
Speaker 1: be plenty of doctors who would look at the law
Speaker 1: and say, my hands are tied here. And you're also
Speaker 1: putting doctors in this impossible situation of having to make
Speaker 1: these legal judgments themselves in fear huge consequences for them. Directly,
Speaker 1: if some court finds down the line that, oh, no,
Speaker 1: her life wasn't really at stake, and you perform this abortion,
Speaker 1: you're in violation of the law. I don't know if
Speaker 1: Idaho has criminal penalties, but some of these states do.
Speaker 1: So you're also putting doctors in this horrific situation. We
Speaker 1: can put this up on the screen The New York Times.
Speaker 4: Right up, they said.
Speaker 1: The abortion case before the Supreme Court on Wednesday featured
Speaker 1: vigorous question comments, particularly by the three liberal justices.
Speaker 4: At issue is.
Speaker 1: Whether Idaho's near total ban on abortion is so strict
Speaker 1: that it violates a federal law requiring emergency care for
Speaker 1: any patient, including providing abortions for pregnant women in dire situations,
Speaker 1: could reverberate Beyond Idaho, there are at least a half
Speaker 1: a dozen other states that have similar, very restrictive bands. So, again,
Speaker 1: as I was saying, it allows abortion to save the
Speaker 1: life of a pregnant woman, but not.
Speaker 4: To prevent her health from deteriorating.
Speaker 1: The Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act from nearly forty
Speaker 1: years ago says when a patient goes to emergency room
Speaker 1: with an urgent medical issue, hospitals must either provide treatment
Speaker 1: to stabilize the patient or transfer the patient to a
Speaker 1: medical facility that can stabilize the patient, regardless of the
Speaker 1: patient's ability to pay. And so they're saying, this state
Speaker 1: law conflicts with that federal law, you know, in terms
Speaker 1: of the arguments that and ful, we just showed you
Speaker 1: a liberal and a conservative justice kind of appearing to
Speaker 1: be on the same side. But I don't know which
Speaker 1: way this one is going to go. You had a
Speaker 1: LEDO in particular, arguing in the other direction and raising
Speaker 1: all sorts of you know, questions about he For one thing,
Speaker 1: he asserted that some of these concerns were hypothetical.
Speaker 4: They're actually no, I'll get to that in a minute.
Speaker 1: He was also using this emergency medical law to assert
Speaker 1: that it should apply not only to the woman but
Speaker 1: to the fetus, so asserting some sort of like national
Speaker 1: heartbeat personhood rights to the fetus, which would open up
Speaker 1: a whole other can of worm. So I genuinely have
Speaker 1: no idea which direction this one's.
Speaker 4: Going to go in.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, it is crazy.
Speaker 2: And this is actually a real preview into post stops
Speaker 2: politics based on how that all goes, because it does
Speaker 2: show you that you can try and leave it to
Speaker 2: the states, but it's going to escalate to a federal level,
Speaker 2: like about fatal fetal personhood. What sort of ruling like
Speaker 2: that would mean. I mean, imagine for all of the
Speaker 2: states that currently have legal abortion. Conversely, in terms of
Speaker 2: the bands themselves, this is just going to insert even
Speaker 2: more pressure into the democratic process.
Speaker 3: We can put this up there on the screen.
Speaker 2: I found this actually an astounding statistic, So apparently that
Speaker 2: was noted. In the short time that Idaho has been
Speaker 2: allowed to enforce the abortion BAM for people who need
Speaker 2: emergency terminations, six women have actually had to be airlifted
Speaker 2: to other states for care that is illegal in Idaho,
Speaker 2: which just demonstrates also how stupid the whole policy is,
Speaker 2: because if you're just going to be airlifted to another
Speaker 2: state for the same policy, then what exactly is the
Speaker 2: point right the law on the books?
Speaker 3: You're just freaking idam.
Speaker 4: You're just torturing these ways.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's and do you know how much an airlift costs?
Speaker 3: Does anyone want to know?
Speaker 2: Even with insurance, it's gonna what two hundred grand something
Speaker 2: like that. I mean, you're saddling these people. If they're
Speaker 2: not if they're uninsured, you're saddled with debt for life.
Speaker 3: You're done. If a single event like this happens.
Speaker 1: It's incredibly dangerous for these women to have to wait.
Speaker 1: They are in severe pain and suffering while they're having
Speaker 1: to be airlifted out of state to wherever to actually
Speaker 1: get the care that they need. That means that wherever
Speaker 1: that hospital is, they're not going to have their friends
Speaker 1: and family and support network around them while they're recovering,
Speaker 1: and they may have to undergo things like hysterectomies that
Speaker 1: they wouldn't have if they could have gotten immediate emergency
Speaker 1: medical care. And by the way, they're still getting an abortion.
Speaker 1: The number of abortions is precisely the same. You're just
Speaker 1: ending up with vastly more cost and human suffering. I
Speaker 1: mean again, you're you're torturing these women for this band.
Speaker 1: So that's the reality there was, Like I said, in
Speaker 1: terms of the legal arguments, no idea which way this
Speaker 1: is going to go, and it could have extraordinary repercussions.
Speaker 1: This is one to watch really carefully. It certainly is
Speaker 1: going to have extraordinary repercussions for the women that live
Speaker 1: in it's like twelve to fourteen states that have these
Speaker 1: sorts of complete bands in place. I just there's no
Speaker 1: doubt in my mind that at some point a woman
Speaker 1: will die because she's not given an abortion, even though
Speaker 1: you know, a doctor thought, oh maybe your life isn't
Speaker 1: at risk and in the process of being airlifted, like
Speaker 1: at some point that's going to happen if these laws
Speaker 1: remain on the books. This is extraordinary too in terms
Speaker 1: of the way that women are processing the DOBS decision.
Speaker 4: Put this up on the screen.
Speaker 1: The number of young adults, young women who have decided
Speaker 1: to get their tubes tied post DOBS. I mean, huge,
Speaker 1: huge spike, which just shows you. I mean, they're basically like, listen,
Speaker 1: if I'm not going to be able to have, you know,
Speaker 1: all these options on the table, like I'm just out,
Speaker 1: I'm just not going to have kids. I'm going to
Speaker 1: take that off the table. Like, no matter what I
Speaker 1: think about in the future, this is done for me.
Speaker 1: And I think that's pretty extraordinary too. And you know,
Speaker 1: also contrary to a lot of conservatives who want women
Speaker 1: to have children and families and have that be a
Speaker 1: core part of American life, this is exactly the opposite direction.
Speaker 2: That's exactly why what I think, and I think this
Speaker 2: is really sad also because it's a permanent procedure, also
Speaker 2: not without risks, and also not without a cost that
Speaker 2: costs a lot of money, you know, to get.
Speaker 3: Any of these things done.
Speaker 2: So regardless, we're just been posing like a huge amount
Speaker 2: of costs, uncertainty, and chaos into the system all for
Speaker 2: a policy which, if we leave to the democratic process,
Speaker 2: is going to get reversed. Let's go to the next one, please,
Speaker 2: just very clearly so everyone can see. Already, despite you know,
Speaker 2: several tries by the Republicans to block it, they caved
Speaker 2: and the Arizona House is now advanced to repeal of
Speaker 2: the state's near total abortion man in the Senate.
Speaker 3: And if you think that Arizona.
Speaker 2: Voters aren't going to remember that it took three separate
Speaker 2: tries to get this through the Arizona houseverbal Presentatives that
Speaker 2: is controlled by the Republicans, then you're an idiot.
Speaker 3: What they currently are.
Speaker 2: Moving is an abortion law that would allow up to
Speaker 2: fifteen weeks in the state. But again, we are talking
Speaker 2: about a issue which had to be forced through the
Speaker 2: Congress multiple times and which Terrie Lake is on record
Speaker 2: endorsing and then flip flopping on. So even if we
Speaker 2: get to some fifteen week thing, which that was the
Speaker 2: previous iteration of the law, and in the previous iteration,
Speaker 2: there was already a campaign to move it to a
Speaker 2: statewide referendum. Because this fifteen weeks is still very unpopular.
Speaker 2: Good luck to the Republicans who are running on this.
Speaker 1: Well, and you know how many Republicans joined with Democrats.
Speaker 3: I know, yeah, three, Yeah.
Speaker 1: That's it, and many of them are still opposed to this,
Speaker 1: which listen, in fairness to them, this law is consistent
Speaker 1: with what they've claimed they support for many many years,
Speaker 1: so you know, I mean true, I do think the
Speaker 1: state starts thing really is such a cop out because
Speaker 1: I'm not okay with like, oh, sure, it's fine if
Speaker 1: Idaho decides they want to torture women, Like, no, I'm
Speaker 1: not okay with that. This should be at the federal
Speaker 1: leg there should be rights for women. So I mean
Speaker 1: the Legila Like, I'm glad that they're getting this repeal through,
Speaker 1: and I'm sure Arizonas at the ballot box were going
Speaker 1: to have their say anyway, but you know, it's it
Speaker 1: is clear that they have been faced with the political
Speaker 1: consequences of their long held positions that they worked so
Speaker 1: hard to get enacted into law, and then when actually
Speaker 1: faced with the political consequences of that, they are just
Speaker 1: running as fast as they can in the other direction.
Speaker 1: And I just wonder, like, what is this going to
Speaker 1: look like? Is the Republican Party going to shift? Because
Speaker 1: Arizona is a swing state, the legislature was not overwhelmingly
Speaker 1: dominated by Republicans, They had a narrow majority, so you
Speaker 1: only needed three to join with the Democrats.
Speaker 4: To get this ultimately through.
Speaker 1: But a lot of other states where even though the
Speaker 1: public may be wildly opposed to these things. You've got
Speaker 1: a very Republican dominated legislature who won't year of it.
Speaker 1: Because the pro life movement is still so powerful and
Speaker 1: so influential within the Republican caucus, and also because they
Speaker 1: have stick down this position for so many years, it's
Speaker 1: hard to just then explain why no, no, no, I didn't
Speaker 1: actually mean any of that.
Speaker 4: Let's get rid of this band now.
Speaker 2: National pro life is too powerful and it will never change,
Speaker 2: even if it does on a state wide level. There
Speaker 2: was a Republican governor who actually always wanted to run
Speaker 2: for president and he never did.
Speaker 3: You may remember him, Brian Sandival. He was the governor
Speaker 3: of Nevada.
Speaker 2: He was one of the most popular Republicans in the
Speaker 2: entire country. But he was a non starter for what
Speaker 2: reason he was pro choice and being pro choice, that
Speaker 2: was it not going to happen. There's no way even
Speaker 2: look at what happened with John McCain. John McCain was
Speaker 2: like relatively moderated on abortion by two thousand and what
Speaker 2: was he partial? He was like pro partial birth or
Speaker 2: something pro whatever. My point is that he was out
Speaker 2: of step with the national parl That caused no big
Speaker 2: consternation back in two thousand and eight with the pro
Speaker 2: life standoffs, so their power, I don't think it's going
Speaker 2: to go down.
Speaker 3: Look at Trump even, yeah, I mean.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's the perfect example. He was pro choice
Speaker 1: for most of it. He was given planned parent and
Speaker 1: then he but and there were so many issues where
Speaker 1: he was happy to steamroll rhetorically over the Republican establih.
Speaker 1: I mean, the Iraq war is a perfect example. He's
Speaker 1: just like, no, this is what I think, trade with China, whatever, Like,
Speaker 1: there were a bunch of issues or the TPP trade
Speaker 1: deal that was huge with the Republican establishment, and he
Speaker 1: was willing to steamroll over that. But he knew he
Speaker 1: could not. He could not be out of step with
Speaker 1: the Republican base when it came to abortion. Let's move
Speaker 1: on to the very latest out of Israel. We have
Speaker 1: some grim news to report this morning. Let's put this
Speaker 1: up on the screen. There are increasing signs that that
Speaker 1: RAFA invasion is all but inevitable. In what some analysts
Speaker 1: they write in this piece of the New York Times
Speaker 1: and residents of the city saw as a preparation for
Speaker 1: an invasion in Israeli military official on Tuesday, gave some
Speaker 1: details that include relocating civilians to a.
Speaker 4: Quote safe zone. There are none of those, by the way.
Speaker 1: A few miles away along the Mediterranean coast that would
Speaker 1: be I believe it's called Mawasseie.
Speaker 4: We've talked about this before.
Speaker 1: Where there's there are no there is nothing set up
Speaker 1: there that would ename sewage, water, shelter, any of the
Speaker 1: basics of life there is wildly inadequate.
Speaker 4: In any case, They go on to.
Speaker 1: Say, just a day earlier, Israeli warplanes bombed Rafa. We
Speaker 1: covered that here, increasing fears among some of the civilians
Speaker 1: sheltering there that a ground assault would soon follow. They
Speaker 1: interview a fifty seven year old resident of Rafa who
Speaker 1: said that these indicators are quote terrifying, mean they may
Speaker 1: really be close to starting an operation. He says, our
Speaker 1: bags have been packed for months now at for the
Speaker 1: time of evacuation, and you know, to give you a
Speaker 1: sense of how much this is being cheerleaded within Israel
Speaker 1: and how many preparations are being made, an influential think
Speaker 1: tank called the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel
Speaker 1: Aviv called on Israel to make quote brave decisions and
Speaker 1: to develop a plan for the hermetic clothesure of the
Speaker 1: Philadelphi Corridor in close cooperation with Egypt and the US.
Speaker 1: That would be a violation of the agreement between Egypt
Speaker 1: and Israel from I believe it was two thousand and
Speaker 1: five that assigned you know, authority to Egypt to secure
Speaker 1: that border. And then obviously the I can't even tell
Speaker 1: you how many, how many deaths we're looking at, how
Speaker 1: much of an exacerbation of the humanitarian crisis. You know,
Speaker 1: many of the people in Rafa, they're either from Gaza
Speaker 1: City or they're from Communis.
Speaker 4: Both of those cities have been wiped off the map.
Speaker 4: Gone yes, So there's nothing to go back to there.
Speaker 1: There is no real plan that is credibile at all
Speaker 1: to protect people whatsoever. And so it's going to there's
Speaker 1: just it's going to be continued horror, like escalated horror.
Speaker 1: The death toll is going to be massive, the humanitarian
Speaker 1: toll is going to be gigantic. The diplomatic fallout with Egypt,
Speaker 1: god knows what's going to happen. There very upset about
Speaker 1: this direction. So it looks more and more like that
Speaker 1: report of Biden said, Hey, if you do a more
Speaker 1: limited strike on Iran.
Speaker 4: Fine, you can go into Rafa. I mean that's looking
Speaker 4: very possible.
Speaker 2: Like that actually unfolded, absolutely, and if we stick with
Speaker 2: the US political system and where things are, let's go
Speaker 2: and put this up there on the screen, because this
Speaker 2: is extraordinary. Mike Johnson says that he is admitted to
Speaker 2: this by this is not even reporting. Said he had
Speaker 2: called White House, specifically Jake Sullivan to intervene and on
Speaker 2: behalf of the Israeli military if President Biden was considering
Speaker 2: slapping sanctions on that Israeli military battalion which was charged
Speaker 2: with violating human rights in the West Bank.
Speaker 3: Again, keep in mind this is in the West Bank.
Speaker 2: These are allegations that actually stem both before October seventh
Speaker 2: than others. That is a violation of the State Department's
Speaker 2: Leahy Law, which says that we will sanction any individual
Speaker 2: will not provide any US support to military battalions or
Speaker 2: forces which are engaged in what the US State Department
Speaker 2: determines as an ongoing human rights abuse. And independent report
Speaker 2: which we covered here had previously identified human rights abuses
Speaker 2: by this idea of battalion inside of the occupied West Bank,
Speaker 2: and that with that policy was a violation of law,
Speaker 2: and our speaker actually called and it appears Crystal he
Speaker 2: was successful, and it does not look like these sanctions
Speaker 2: are going through.
Speaker 1: The White House is pushing back on that, but you're
Speaker 1: right that there was hid reports and it hasn't happened yet,
Speaker 1: and there were multiple reports that the White House was
Speaker 1: backing off of this. And there's a lot of things
Speaker 1: to say about this. Number one, just one. There are
Speaker 1: many incidents of you know, documented torture, allegations and all
Speaker 1: sorts of horrifying things from this unit, which is this
Speaker 1: unit that's set up specifically for the ultra orthodox, has
Speaker 1: a bunch of these quote unquote hill top youth sort
Speaker 1: of like radical often violent settlers that are in this unit.
Speaker 1: So surprise, surprise, lots of human rights violations in one
Speaker 1: of them include it was a Palestinian American who was
Speaker 1: an elderly man, I think around eighty years old who
Speaker 1: was tortured, handcuffed and left in the cold to die.
Speaker 1: That's one of the allegations and incidents here that we're
Speaker 1: talking about.
Speaker 4: So our own speaker.
Speaker 1: Is supposedly American Speaker of the House begging this administration
Speaker 1: to violate US law. To let this unit off the
Speaker 1: hook for killing an American citizen like it's insane. And
Speaker 1: you know, I'm critical of the very limited nature of
Speaker 1: this to begin with, because the whole conceit from the
Speaker 1: Biden administration is, oh, it's just a few bad apples
Speaker 1: that it isn't the direct result of overwhelming government policy.
Speaker 1: But it's at least something, and clearly the net Nyahoo
Speaker 1: administration doesn't like it. So in any case, extraordinary. He
Speaker 1: revealed this, by the way, to Hugh Hewitt. He said, quote,
Speaker 1: we heard a rumor of this before our aid bill
Speaker 1: was actually brought for a vote in the House, I
Speaker 1: mean hours before. I'll tell you what I did, Hugh,
Speaker 1: and I don't. I guess I'm breaking news here. No
Speaker 1: one knows this, but I called the White House immediately
Speaker 1: and talked with Jake Sullivan and Tony Blinken was overseas
Speaker 1: at the moment.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there you go.
Speaker 2: So that's one where it's very very clear I think
Speaker 2: where things are going, and also the defense that they
Speaker 2: have with the political system as we grapple with what
Speaker 2: a potential invasion of RAPA would look like. We'd also
Speaker 2: be remiss if we didn't get everybody an update on
Speaker 2: the Gaza floating pier.
Speaker 4: Yeah, tell me how is construction going?
Speaker 3: In?
Speaker 2: The US military was to We're putting our servicemen in
Speaker 2: danger building this peer.
Speaker 3: All of that.
Speaker 2: We recently got an update from the US military Pentagon spokesperson.
Speaker 2: Turns out not a single thing is actually close to
Speaker 2: being operational.
Speaker 3: Here's what you have to say.
Speaker 13: You have the temporary peer, which is of course several
Speaker 13: miles offshore, which can receive both military and civilian vessels.
Speaker 13: There has been no physical construction of the temporary peer
Speaker 13: or the causeway. We are positioned to begin construction very soon,
Speaker 13: in the very near future.
Speaker 2: So very soon in the near future. It has now
Speaker 2: been forty eight days since bri Joe. I can't believe
Speaker 2: state of the units forty eight days ago. I feel
Speaker 2: like I'm living in a time vacuum. I feel like
Speaker 2: this yere covering it. But okay, put that aside. It
Speaker 2: feels like just yesterday we were covering it, we were
Speaker 2: talking about it, we were doing segments about it. It's
Speaker 2: been fifty days now and nothing is happening. In the
Speaker 2: near future. It may be operational, they put out all
Speaker 2: those diagrams. It's like, is this even going to happen
Speaker 2: at this point? Doesn't look like it. And in the interim,
Speaker 2: the whole reason that it was the bust happened was
Speaker 2: that more aid was supposed to go into the Gaza
Speaker 2: strip and then that hasn't happened either, So what has
Speaker 2: the damage rot been in the meantime?
Speaker 3: So more fecklessness on the part of.
Speaker 1: The USUS just they think we're so stupid, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, well most people are hard like we honestly
Speaker 1: called this from the beginning that it was a total
Speaker 1: pr stunt, skeptical if it was even going to happen.
Speaker 1: We knew it was going to say they were claiming
Speaker 1: sixty days at most, at most they were.
Speaker 4: Weren't they saying thirty to sixty days?
Speaker 3: And that what they were saying, Yes, that's right, that's
Speaker 3: what they said.
Speaker 4: Here we are.
Speaker 1: Forty eight days later and they have not even started
Speaker 1: and cannot even give us a date for when it
Speaker 1: would start, Like this was just a lie, something for
Speaker 1: Joe Biden to say the State of the Union, to
Speaker 1: pretend like he cares about Palestinian civilians starving to death
Speaker 1: and dying on mass They haven't even started.
Speaker 4: They haven't even started. Just incredible.
Speaker 1: Meanwhile, so you've got the imminent invasion of Rafa, you
Speaker 1: already have anted up strikes which are killing Palestine civilians
Speaker 1: and many children. Now you also have Gaza basically coming
Speaker 1: to the West Bank.
Speaker 4: Let's put this up on the screen.
Speaker 1: There's been very little reporting on this apparently, even though
Speaker 1: there's been this has been ongoing for a while. Their
Speaker 1: headline here is Israel's hut for one elusive militant brings
Speaker 1: Gaza tactics to the West Bank. Airstrikes, drones and ground
Speaker 1: troops targeting militants turned Palestinian territory into another war front.
Speaker 1: So you know, we have already had the war expanded
Speaker 1: into Lebanon and Syria and Iran and now ramping up
Speaker 1: also in the West Bank. And you know, make no
Speaker 1: mistake about it, they've killed more than four hundred thirty
Speaker 1: five Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem since
Speaker 1: October seventh. About forty nine hundred Palestinians have been injured
Speaker 1: in the West Bank specifically since then, either by Israeli
Speaker 1: forces or by settlers. We brought you that news previously
Speaker 1: of that Israeli settler pogram that unfolded with the IDF
Speaker 1: just standing by and watching. So, you know, West Bank
Speaker 1: increasingly looking more like the Gaza strip in terms of
Speaker 1: Israeli tactics. And then the last thing we wanted to
Speaker 1: share with you is this little nugget from the New
Speaker 1: York Times.
Speaker 4: Put this up on the screen.
Speaker 1: This went sort of unremarked upon, but seems pretty significant.
Speaker 1: The headline here is the stark reality of Israel's fight
Speaker 1: in Gaza, and they're saying basically, you know, it's similar
Speaker 1: to like what Haratz had written before about if you
Speaker 1: look at their stated goals, it's not going too well.
Speaker 1: You know, they aren't really accomplishing their mission. We saw
Speaker 1: those reports that Shinwar is sort of still openly operating.
Speaker 1: The Israelis of Clay always just hunkered down in this
Speaker 1: tunnel and can't do anything. There were some reports at
Speaker 1: least that were very contrary to that, but specific. What
Speaker 1: I wanted to point to in this piece is they say,
Speaker 1: quote in an annual intelligence assessment released in March, American
Speaker 1: spy agencies express doubts about Israel's ability to truly destroy.
Speaker 4: Hamas, which the US IS doesneyed as.
Speaker 1: A terrorist group, Israel probably will face a lingering armed
Speaker 1: resistance from Hamas for years to come, the report said,
Speaker 1: and the military will struggle to neutralize Hamas's underground infrastructure,
Speaker 1: which allows insurgents to hide, regain strength, and surprise Israeli forces.
Speaker 4: So even the US intel.
Speaker 1: Community is saying, like, you're not going to defeat Hamas,
Speaker 1: and I mean that's the conceit with Rafa is like, oh,
Speaker 1: once we do that, it's the final boss, right, once
Speaker 1: we go into Rafa, then finally Hamas will be defeated.
Speaker 1: And this is just it's just bullshit. It's just going
Speaker 1: to cause more misery and suffering. I've come back to
Speaker 1: what someone on Twitter, some wise person on Twitter said,
Speaker 1: which is like they've managed to destroy everything in Gaza
Speaker 1: except for Hamas.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is an astounding that, according to this that
Speaker 2: Sinwar still maintains command and control of the organization. It's
Speaker 2: like a glaring failure. It's a lot like the Bin
Speaker 2: Laden thing. Actually, Afghanistan is the perfect example. So we
Speaker 2: had a couple of options. In Afghanistan. We could have
Speaker 2: gone in, thrown everything at the Battle of Torbora, actually
Speaker 2: killed Bin Laden, and then we could have gotten the
Speaker 2: hell out of there.
Speaker 3: Instead we get distracted.
Speaker 2: We want to oh, now we're propping up the freedom
Speaker 2: forces and now we're going to build a democracy. In
Speaker 2: the Israeli case, they're just wiping out basically every building
Speaker 2: that exists for any future operation. But the actual people
Speaker 2: responsible for our October seven, they don't seem to have
Speaker 2: any actually been punished in the way that they allegedly
Speaker 2: could have been. And you could have just had a
Speaker 2: dedicated to counter terrorism operation from the beginning which would
Speaker 2: have done this. You could have avoided all this carnage
Speaker 2: and all this nonsense. And very much like us, they
Speaker 2: will likely reap the reward of that which is an
Speaker 2: ongoing mass terrorist blob inside of Gaza that is ungovernable,
Speaker 2: inside of a chaos that will bother them now.
Speaker 3: For years and years and years to come.
Speaker 2: So good luck to them, and they are solely responsible
Speaker 2: now at this point and for what they're going to reap.
Speaker 1: And also like it's nice that the media is now
Speaker 1: like actually waking up to this fact or actually admitting
Speaker 1: this fact. But we've been saying this. We played that
Speaker 1: Jocko will it clip how early on when he was.
Speaker 3: Like it does not rocket sign.
Speaker 1: If you actually, okay, if they're serious about counter and tagency,
Speaker 1: here's how you do it. You're actually really nice to
Speaker 1: the civilian population. You fled them with aid because you
Speaker 1: want to create a wedge between.
Speaker 4: Them and Hummus.
Speaker 1: They haven't had any other option than Hamas as their government,
Speaker 1: so you have to give them some other alternative that's
Speaker 1: going to satisfy their aspiration. So whether that's you know,
Speaker 1: it talks towards peace, some sort of negotiation. We know
Speaker 1: throughout history with the Gaza strip, when negotiations and possibility
Speaker 1: of peace we're ongoing, support for militant groups like Humas
Speaker 1: were much lower.
Speaker 4: So you do that.
Speaker 1: You also need the civilian population to collaborate with you
Speaker 1: and tell you where Sinoar is hiding or whatever, and
Speaker 1: then you do count targeted counter insurgency strikes. That's the
Speaker 1: way you do that. It was never approached that way. Instead,
Speaker 1: the first thing they do it was bomb the hell
Speaker 1: out a gaza and kill a bunch of kids and
Speaker 1: civilians bury them under rubble and drop two thousand pounds
Speaker 1: bombs on refugee camps and raid hospitals, etc. That was
Speaker 1: the first approach. So we always knew this was not
Speaker 1: some intelligent, strategic, targeted attempt to get The batties who
Speaker 1: fomented October seven are genuine bad guys, like I'm not
Speaker 1: denying that, but we always knew that. And now here
Speaker 1: we are, what are we seven months? And now at
Speaker 1: this point they're finally like, oh, by the way, this
Speaker 1: may not work. It's like, no shit. And how many
Speaker 1: of these people who you've kids, who you've orphaned and
Speaker 1: murdered their brother and sister, left them amputees for life whatever,
Speaker 1: How peace loving do you think that they're going to
Speaker 1: be in the future. How many new comas recruits do
Speaker 1: you think that you have created while you've been doing this,
Speaker 1: And there's no end in sight, no end.
Speaker 4: In sight whatsoever? Absolutely all right, soccer, what are you
Speaker 4: looking at?
Speaker 3: Well?
Speaker 2: Oftentimes in American politics, historical analogies are stretched too thin.
Speaker 3: They don't even mean anything.
Speaker 2: How every time that we need to fund a foreign war,
Speaker 2: it's Munich in nineteen thirty eight, or every time a
Speaker 2: new election is the most important election of our lifetime,
Speaker 2: it's recapturing the spirit of seventeen seventy six.
Speaker 3: Most of the time it doesn't have any relation.
Speaker 2: And if it does, it's far less related than those
Speaker 2: people lead you to believe. But with all my cynicism,
Speaker 2: even I am struck by this recent observation from historian
Speaker 2: Keith Rahel, who notes, quote, I just can't believe the
Speaker 2: parallels of nineteen sixty eight. I mean, okay, Columbia has
Speaker 2: widespread unrest, there's widespread anti war activism.
Speaker 3: That might be the confidence but coincidence.
Speaker 2: But there's a guy named Robert Kennedy running for president,
Speaker 2: and the DNC is Chicago. Like this is even a
Speaker 2: bit to make it even more eerie, As he notes
Speaker 2: later on, the original Planet of the Apes movie was
Speaker 2: released in nineteen sixty eight, and we are, of course
Speaker 2: due for our latest in the modern series to be
Speaker 2: released in this year, twenty twenty four. Hype for Planet
Speaker 2: of the Apes aside, there is something actually very eerie
Speaker 2: about all of this. Even though it's obviously not a
Speaker 2: one to one situation with nineteen sixty eight, there's a
Speaker 2: lot of lessons we can still learn from one of
Speaker 2: the most important years in modern American history.
Speaker 3: Start with the campus parallel.
Speaker 2: Exactly fifty six years ago to the day of this monologue,
Speaker 2: Columbia University was a washed with protests over the Vietnam
Speaker 2: War and what students said were racist policies at the university.
Speaker 2: Students seized five buildings, they took the Dean hostage, they
Speaker 2: refused to vacate, and this led to a week long
Speaker 2: standoff until April thirtieth, nineteen sixty eight, when nearly one
Speaker 2: thousand officers from the New York City Tactical Patrol Office
Speaker 2: poured onto campus used force to arrest students. More than
Speaker 2: one hundred ended up being injured in those arrests, and
Speaker 2: photos went viral in their.
Speaker 3: Own nineteen sixty eight way.
Speaker 2: The Columbia protests, like today, were a flashpoint because it
Speaker 2: all happened in New York City and it got massive
Speaker 2: media attention. That March April to nineteen sixty eight period,
Speaker 2: exactly fifty six years ago, was a massive turning point
Speaker 2: in American history. It was days before the Columbia University
Speaker 2: protests that Robert Kennedy decided to enter the Democratic race
Speaker 2: against Lyndon Johnson. Here, too, the parallels are striking. LBJ
Speaker 2: was an unpopular incumbent Democratic president. He had ripped his
Speaker 2: coalition in half with the Vietnam War and his pursuit
Speaker 2: of the Civil Rights Act. He was, however, a masterful
Speaker 2: politician who had seemed would be able to hold on
Speaker 2: to his nomination until someone with the golden last name
Speaker 2: of Kennedy enters the race. Kennedy's entry into the race
Speaker 2: was done largely out of opposition to lbj's Vietnam war policy,
Speaker 2: in the same way that the current RFK is against
Speaker 2: Biden's Ukraine policy and his fundamental belief that both Nixon
Speaker 2: and LBJ would divide rather than unite the country. Now
Speaker 2: sadly for us all, of course, Kennedy was assassinated in
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty eight in questionable circumstances, tying Democrats' hands and
Speaker 2: leading to the nomination of Hubert H. Humphrey, which was
Speaker 2: the vice president of LBJ. It leads to the final
Speaker 2: eerie parallel of nineteen sixty eight the upcoming Democratic convention
Speaker 2: in Icago, reminding us of the past. Many people know
Speaker 2: that the nineteen sixty eight Chicago Convention was violent, but
Speaker 2: very few actually know the details. The Democratic Coalition at
Speaker 2: that time was a lot like today, completely split on
Speaker 2: how to handle Vietnam. Their approach to politics was generally
Speaker 2: that older voters were much more likely to support the
Speaker 2: Vietnam War and to put their trust in the president.
Speaker 2: While radical politics had completely overtaken the youth vote. Democratic
Speaker 2: leaders they knew this going into the convention, and they
Speaker 2: had a mission, just like Biden has today, cover up
Speaker 2: all their differences, squashing protests and especially against the Johnson
Speaker 2: faction of the DNC. Now the president at the United
Speaker 2: Today wanted to present this united Front against Nixon. But
Speaker 2: these heavy handed tactics backfired massively. Major Mayor Richard Daly
Speaker 2: of Chicago took extreme security measures at that convention to
Speaker 2: keep protesters out, including putting own restrictions on media coverage.
Speaker 2: Protesters knew this, and then they sought to get their
Speaker 2: attention anyways, so they began a march to the convention grounds.
Speaker 2: From there, the torch is led police protesters are clashing
Speaker 2: in the streets, tear gas, beatings, violence. It dominated the
Speaker 2: airwaves in the age when a vast majority of the
Speaker 2: population was watching television and it didn't have alternative entertainment options.
Speaker 2: What few also remember is this the nineteen sixty eight
Speaker 2: was not just an election between two candidates. It was
Speaker 2: between three candidates. Here, again, the parallels are very eerie.
Speaker 2: Third party candidate George Wallace ran on a platform of
Speaker 2: preserving the Jim Crow regime in the South. It split
Speaker 2: a critical part of the Democratic coalition from Hubert Humphrey.
Speaker 2: The subsequent vote results show us that Richard Nixon won
Speaker 2: three hundred and one electoral votes, but with just forty
Speaker 2: three percent of the popular vote. Hubert Humphrey got one
Speaker 2: hundred and ninety one electoral votes, but he got forty
Speaker 2: two point seven George Wallace carried forty six electoral votes
Speaker 2: thirteen percent of the overall vote. Take a look here
Speaker 2: at the most recent poll of RFK Junior in a
Speaker 2: lineup against Biden and Trump, and you see RFK Junior
Speaker 2: is projected to get exactly thirteen percent of the vote
Speaker 2: right now, much like that Wallace campaign in nineteen sixty eight. Now,
Speaker 2: have I shoehorned a few things in here to fit
Speaker 2: my story? Yes, absolutely, our things as bad today as
Speaker 2: they were in nineteen sixty eight. No, thank god, at
Speaker 2: least for now, thousands of American servicemen remain safe and
Speaker 2: not on the front line in an.
Speaker 3: Active and unwinnable war.
Speaker 2: But the electoral parallels teach us one lesson that the
Speaker 2: chaos of sixty eight has left a lasting impression upon
Speaker 2: all of us, and that the chaos at the time
Speaker 2: itself was not inevitable. It was a choice of the
Speaker 2: elites at that time who lied and they cheated, and
Speaker 2: they hid vital facts from the American public, and then
Speaker 2: they refuse to grapple with the righteous outrage at being deceived.
Speaker 2: So it's actually pretty fascinating to think.
Speaker 1: And if you want to hear my reaction to Sager's monologue,
Speaker 1: become a premium subscriber today at Breakingpoints dot com.
Speaker 3: All right, guys, thank you so much for watching. We
Speaker 3: deeply appreciate you.
Speaker 2: Thank you for supporting us with the poll with Counterpoints Friday,
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Speaker 3: Lemon interview tonight.
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Speaker 2: on front to day.
Speaker 3: So we love you and we'll see you all later