Speaker 1: Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here
Speaker 1: and we here at breaking points, are already thinking of
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Speaker 3: But enough with that, let's get to the show.
Speaker 4: Welcome to Counterpoints.
Speaker 5: I'm Emily Dashinski here with Ryan Grimm and there's big
Speaker 5: news today. Actually it feels like there's big news every day, Ryan,
Speaker 5: But the House Speaker carousel has a new member, and
Speaker 5: we're going to talk all about Mike john Mike Johnson,
Speaker 5: who by the end of today may actually be the
Speaker 5: Speaker of the House.
Speaker 4: So we'll bring you that information.
Speaker 5: We are going to start with updates on the war
Speaker 5: in the Middle East. We're going to take you through
Speaker 5: how the White House handled that situation yesterday. We're going
Speaker 5: to take you to questions about the American presence in
Speaker 5: Lebanon and attacks that have happened on American troops according
Speaker 5: to our government over the.
Speaker 4: Last couple of days.
Speaker 5: We are going to talk about the Plea deal that
Speaker 5: both Jenna Ellis struck, and also news that Mark Meadows
Speaker 5: was given immunity former chief of staff at the White House.
Speaker 4: And then we're going to do some really interesting.
Speaker 5: Stuff here about Bernie Sanders, John Fetterman, and censorship of
Speaker 5: people with kind heterodox takes on Palestine. So Ryan, we
Speaker 5: also have a guest here who's going to talk about
Speaker 5: one of your pet subjects, and that psychedelics.
Speaker 4: So I'm looking forward to that too.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and this is two guests here.
Speaker 6: One is a general, a retired general who was advocating
Speaker 6: on behalf of psychedelics for.
Speaker 3: Veterans.
Speaker 6: And it's interesting timing because if you guys watched yesterday,
Speaker 6: Sagar and I covered that wild situation where the Alaska
Speaker 6: air plane almost went down and it turned out the
Speaker 6: guy is saying that he was on shrooms and thought
Speaker 6: he was kind of getting out he was going to
Speaker 6: wake himself up by shutting the plane off. That's a
Speaker 6: nightmare for everybody on board, but also for people who
Speaker 6: are urging psychedelics be brought out of the shadows. I
Speaker 6: would argue it means we need better education and regulation
Speaker 6: around them because we have prohibition and what happened happened,
Speaker 6: But we're going to talk to our guests about that
Speaker 6: at the end of the show.
Speaker 3: Quick plug.
Speaker 6: Remember, if you go to Breakingpoints dot com become a
Speaker 6: premium subscriber, you can get the whole uncut show right
Speaker 6: into your inbox. You can get that early second plug,
Speaker 6: as you'll see up here. I got a second book
Speaker 6: back here now. It's out in late November, early December.
Speaker 6: It's called The Squad. It's about kind of the American
Speaker 6: American left over the last couple of years. We'll be
Speaker 6: talking about that more, but I'm just a little little
Speaker 6: subtle reminder in the background there.
Speaker 3: For the next couple of weeks.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that's great, good cover, good cover, we'll take it.
Speaker 6: So let's talk about the spiraling war in the Middle East,
Speaker 6: and let's put up a one here because this is
Speaker 6: the most kind of bellicost language that we've heard from
Speaker 6: the United States yet, where they're saying that they will
Speaker 6: hold Iran responsible for attacks by what it considers to
Speaker 6: be its proxies, its clients around the region. Because you know,
Speaker 6: Iran has clients in Yemen, obviously, in Gaza, in Lebanon,
Speaker 6: in Syria, in Iraq, and previously the Pentagon and the
Speaker 6: White House's line had been, Look, we don't want to
Speaker 6: get ahead of ourselves here. If there is evidence that
Speaker 6: Iran directed a particular attack, then we will hold Iran
Speaker 6: responsible for that, But in general, we're not trying to
Speaker 6: ratchet things up here. This is removing some of those
Speaker 6: qualifications there. What did you make of the White House
Speaker 6: coming out through the Pentagon saying that from here forward,
Speaker 6: attacks on US troops by proxy by Iran proxies will
Speaker 6: be blamed on Iran.
Speaker 5: Well, let's put two up actually, because I think this
Speaker 5: gives us some indication of exactly how we should take it.
Speaker 4: So this is saying correctly.
Speaker 5: The Pentagon says US troops have been attacked ten times
Speaker 5: in Iraq and three times in Syria over the past week.
Speaker 4: Now, Ryan, if we go to A three.
Speaker 5: This is a story from the intercept that basically gets
Speaker 5: to exactly how many stories, how many people are on
Speaker 5: the ground in Lebanon, which the government is actually kind
Speaker 5: of cagy about. Here's the quote from the story over
Speaker 5: at the over at the intercept, It's that the White House,
Speaker 5: in a June quote War Powers letter to Congress President
Speaker 5: Joe Biden noted that quote, approximately eighty nine United States
Speaker 5: military personnel are deployed to Lebanon to enhance the government's
Speaker 5: counter terrorism capabilities and to support the counter terrorism operations
Speaker 5: of Lebanese security forces.
Speaker 6: And this is operating under what's known as two seventy e.
Speaker 6: It's the provision of law to seventy echo they call it,
Speaker 6: that allows the United States to operate through proxies, through
Speaker 6: basically unvetted proxies. And so, in other words, you might
Speaker 6: only have eighty nine we don't know, Like this is
Speaker 6: what they say. You might only have eighty nine personnel,
Speaker 6: But how many proxies are those eighty nine American personnel,
Speaker 6: you know, equipping, recruiting, training, and operating. And what effect
Speaker 6: does that create? And in creating let's say targets for
Speaker 6: Hesbela and Lebanon, what vulnerabilities does it create and what
Speaker 6: assets does it gives the United States in that region?
Speaker 6: It shows that there's been this kind of war build
Speaker 6: up across the entire region. People might be wondering, wait
Speaker 6: a minute, we're getting attacked in Syria. How are we
Speaker 6: getting intact in Syria? That doesn't make sense. We're not
Speaker 6: at war with Syria. We're not in Syria. Well, yes,
Speaker 6: turns out we are in Syria, We're in Iraq, We're
Speaker 6: in Syria, every place we are. That's an opportunity for
Speaker 6: some group, some iron back group to lob shells at us.
Speaker 5: Well, yeah, exactly when we can put the next element
Speaker 5: up on the screen too, because this gets to it.
Speaker 5: This is from meium Bremer, who says, eighty six thousand
Speaker 5: approximately Americans live in Lebanon, six hundred thousand Americans live
Speaker 5: in Israel, and to just pause for a moment, and
Speaker 5: I think acknowledge that it's from my perspective, entirely likely
Speaker 5: Iran is behind some of this. There are obvious questions,
Speaker 5: and I think there's good reason for skepticism about what
Speaker 5: our government is telling us as it pertains to Iran's involvement.
Speaker 5: That said, given the kinetic conflict now in Israel, given
Speaker 5: the fact that this is a very hot war now
Speaker 5: in Israel, I think, of course it's possible that Iran
Speaker 5: is behind some of this. And I think that actually
Speaker 5: gets to the threats we had. How many Americans killed
Speaker 5: in the attacks, upwards of thirty at this point in
Speaker 5: the original October seventh attack, Americans that were held as hostages.
Speaker 5: That puts responsibility on the American government, and that puts
Speaker 5: responsibility on the American military, and they are straining ourselves,
Speaker 5: They're straining the country. They are putting us in a
Speaker 5: position where it makes the escalation of the conflict more
Speaker 5: and more dangerous and more and more likely by this
Speaker 5: sort of cavalier spreading out of troops across the world
Speaker 5: and particularly across the Middle East, that in times of
Speaker 5: peace we sort of look the other way, we don't
Speaker 5: think about it very much, but it's happening, especially because
Speaker 5: of things like one twenty seven Echo that we don't
Speaker 5: even think about or talk about on a normal day,
Speaker 5: And now when a conflict spills over into something serious,
Speaker 5: it's an incredibly fragile ecosystem that is really teetering on
Speaker 5: the precipice of something a massive escalation.
Speaker 6: And to me, that's why one of the most important
Speaker 6: things that I think Barack Obama did was successfully negotiate
Speaker 6: the Iran Deal with Russia and with five European countries.
Speaker 6: The argument that he was making at the time, and
Speaker 6: he ran over Israel to do it. It was Israel's
Speaker 6: number one objection to Obama was that he wanted to
Speaker 6: that he was inking this Iran deal. His argument was,
Speaker 6: this conflict isn't working. Constantly ratcheting up tensions is only
Speaker 6: going to lead to dangerous places, and it's also not
Speaker 6: preventing them from getting a nuclear weapon. So if we
Speaker 6: bring Iran into the fold, that they show good behavior,
Speaker 6: reduce support for their proxies, roll back their military nuclear program,
Speaker 6: and instead, you know, AEI, let in the inspectors to
Speaker 6: follow their progress of their domestic kind of industrial nuclear capacity.
Speaker 6: Have Russia involved, have Us involved. It brings them into
Speaker 6: the fold so that they're less likely than to see
Speaker 6: benefit in some global or regional conflagration. It's the same
Speaker 6: reason that getting a ceasefire in Ukraine, getting to a truce,
Speaker 6: Getting to a truce there is so important because every
Speaker 6: day that wars go on, every day that tensions are
Speaker 6: ratcheted up, unpredictable things can happen. I think Iran, there's
Speaker 6: no evidence that Iron directed the Hamas attack, but the
Speaker 6: fact that Iran and Hamas are connected then just spirals
Speaker 6: this into the place we are now. And I think
Speaker 6: that it is it isn't often reflected upon enough in
Speaker 6: Washington that people who advocate for a position, like a
Speaker 6: hard line approach to Iran, like you know, Israel successfully
Speaker 6: lobbied Trump to withdraw the US from the Iran Deal.
Speaker 3: So those hardliners got what they wanted.
Speaker 4: Oh though it wasn't very hard.
Speaker 5: I mean basically every Republican was opposed to the Iran
Speaker 5: Nuclear Deal.
Speaker 4: So it wasn't as though Israel had to push very hard.
Speaker 6: Oh absolutely, And and Trump wanted to do it because
Speaker 6: it had Obama's name on it. He hated it was
Speaker 6: the Obama you know, Iran Nuclear Deal, so he Obama.
Speaker 6: So he's like, it has it's Obama's thing, I'm going
Speaker 6: to undo it like that, Like, yes, but it was
Speaker 6: Israel's number one priority. But yes, it was very easy
Speaker 6: to convince them to do it. And so he does that.
Speaker 6: So he got his wish. And then Biden, to his
Speaker 6: great discredit, did not get the United States back into
Speaker 6: the Iran Deal. And so I feel like people who
Speaker 6: got their wish there argued that this was going to
Speaker 6: be a better step forward, and look where we are.
Speaker 3: That's what I'm saying.
Speaker 6: There needs to be some accountability for if you get
Speaker 6: to implement and execute your preferred strategy and it blows up,
Speaker 6: literally blows up, then there should be some.
Speaker 3: Reflection on that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, I may disagree on the point about
Speaker 5: the deal, but I think you're raising a really important
Speaker 5: point about how the parallel with Ukraine that like when
Speaker 5: you have actually other nuclear powers that are attached to
Speaker 5: proxy wars or attached to conflicts that have become hot wars.
Speaker 5: We look at just Sheijin Ping and we talked about
Speaker 5: this personally.
Speaker 4: I talked about this last week.
Speaker 5: Chijin Ping and Vladimir Putin were in Beijing last week
Speaker 5: peacocking and talking about how they're old friends and whatever
Speaker 5: you think of those two countries, they are allied against
Speaker 5: the United States and definitely against Israel. They try to
Speaker 5: sort of say that they're going to be the new
Speaker 5: peace brokers of the world and they're going to step
Speaker 5: in and try to mediate these conflicts. They haven't done
Speaker 5: a great job of that so far. Putin started one
Speaker 5: of them and invaded Ukraine, and Chijinping has not condemned that. So,
Speaker 5: you know, the prospects for peace in a world order
Speaker 5: led by those two I don't think should give anyone
Speaker 5: much optimism. That said, this is a coalescing of like
Speaker 5: this is a real coalescing of countries against United States hegemony,
Speaker 5: and that means that this is even more fragile. That
Speaker 5: means that you have nuclear powers, you have North Korea, China, Russia, Iran,
Speaker 5: and the more people you have fanned out across the
Speaker 5: world on what the authority of one twenty seven echo.
Speaker 5: It's terrifying and it is so so much more fragile,
Speaker 5: I think than we realize. I feel like people are
Speaker 5: recognizing it now. But if something were, if China were
Speaker 5: to take this opportunity to move on Taiwan and had
Speaker 5: we saw them in a conflict with the Philippines naval
Speaker 5: conflict with the Philippines last week. This is These are dominoes,
Speaker 5: and you don't always know that a domino is the
Speaker 5: first domino has fallen it until years later when.
Speaker 4: You look back.
Speaker 6: And I think it's one of the few good things
Speaker 6: Obama did on foreign policy. But his argument was this
Speaker 6: unconditional support for Saudi Arabia, for the United Air members,
Speaker 6: both of now which want nuclear programs right and Israel,
Speaker 6: which has a nuclear program, and isolation of Iran is
Speaker 6: not useful long term for the United States. That it's
Speaker 6: going that it's just going to lead to conflict. It
Speaker 6: obviously was working, Yeah, and so they tried to unwind
Speaker 6: that the Washington Swamp is so dominated by Saudi Arabia
Speaker 6: UEE Israel and the Republican Party is kind of lockstep
Speaker 6: with Israel, Saudi Arabia UAE, and so it reverted back
Speaker 6: to the mean.
Speaker 3: And here we are what the world about to blow up?
Speaker 5: Speaking of the world being about to blow up, let's
Speaker 5: actually pivot here and take a look to look at
Speaker 5: what John Kirby told White House reporters in a briefing yesterday.
Speaker 5: He was pushed by one reporter who actually asked him
Speaker 5: about Barack Obama's medium post saying that the Israeli government
Speaker 5: had basically not done enough to mitigate the harms to
Speaker 5: civilians in Gaza. And then she also pushed him on
Speaker 5: Obama saying that cutting off food, water and electricity in
Speaker 5: Gaza risked Israel losing global support. Let's take a walk
Speaker 5: take a look at how John Kirby reacted.
Speaker 7: President former President Obama shared some of his views about
Speaker 7: the conflict yesterday. One of the things he said is
Speaker 7: that the Israelis haven't done enough to avoid killing or
Speaker 7: injuring civilians as they seek to take out a mosque
Speaker 7: in Gaza? Does President Biden share that deep?
Speaker 8: President Biden has since the very beginning of this conversation
Speaker 8: been talking to the Prime Minister, and we have been
Speaker 8: talking to Israelis at various levels at the cabinet level
Speaker 8: and below about what separates us from hamas as two democracies,
Speaker 8: and that's respect for human life, that's abiding by the
Speaker 8: law of war, that's by doing everything you can to
Speaker 8: try to prevent civilian casualties and collateral damage. And that's
Speaker 8: an active conversation we continue to have with them.
Speaker 7: President former President Obama shared some of his views about
Speaker 7: the conflict yesterday. One of the things he said is
Speaker 7: that the Israelis haven't done enough to avoid killing or
Speaker 7: injuring civilians as they seek to take out hamasque in Gaza.
Speaker 4: Does President Biden share that view?
Speaker 8: President Biden has, since the very beginning of this conversation
Speaker 8: been talking to the Prime Minister, and we have been
Speaker 8: talking to Israelis at various levels at the cabinet level
Speaker 8: and below about what separates us from mos As two democracies,
Speaker 8: and that's.
Speaker 4: Respect for human life. That's abiding by the law of war.
Speaker 8: That's by doing everything you can to try to prevent
Speaker 8: civilian casualties and collateral damage. And that's an active conversation
Speaker 8: we continue to have with them.
Speaker 6: And speaking of those casually numbers, we have those, if
Speaker 6: we could put up a five, of course, it is
Speaker 6: rarely casually. Is after most of them civilians from October
Speaker 6: most and most of them on October seventh, one thousand,
Speaker 6: four hundred, roughly two hundred hostages still held on the
Speaker 6: Gaza side of Palestinian authorities saying that seven hundred civilians
Speaker 6: killed over the last twenty four hours and at least
Speaker 6: five thousand, seven hundred killed. We don't have a breakdown
Speaker 6: between civilians and militants there overwhelmingly. If you look at
Speaker 6: the destruction of the of the of Gaza north to south,
Speaker 6: you're going to see massive numbers of civilian casualties. The
Speaker 6: scenes that are coming, the scenes that have come out
Speaker 6: of October seventh are boggle the mind, and the images
Speaker 6: that we're seeing out of Gaza boggle the mind.
Speaker 3: Just absolute hell on earth.
Speaker 5: Those numbers boggle the boggle the mind. What has happened
Speaker 5: in such a short period of time.
Speaker 6: And I think they're undercounting significantly. I hope I'm wrong
Speaker 6: about that.
Speaker 5: So you can see where John Kirby is going to
Speaker 5: increasingly be pressed about this. And I want to read
Speaker 5: actually from Axios, which is I think kind of reacting
Speaker 5: to the back and forth yesterday. They don't say they are,
Speaker 5: but they're reporting this morning, President Biden, despite full throated
Speaker 5: support for Israel and it's right to strike Amas, has
Speaker 5: methodically and meticulously delayed the expected invasion of Gaza. US
Speaker 5: officials tell us that's Axios. Biden dangled high level visits,
Speaker 5: military support, and public backing to buy time in Gaza.
Speaker 5: He also made plain that America doesn't want Israel to
Speaker 5: act impulsively or without considering usque concerns. That's an interesting
Speaker 5: thing to be leading off Axios's newsletter with Ryan the
Speaker 5: morning after John Kirby is pressed in such a public
Speaker 5: way on the fate of so many civilians in Gaza.
Speaker 6: Right, And if you watch that clip and you understand
Speaker 6: the dilemma that Kirby and Biden administration and Israel in
Speaker 6: when it comes to the siege of Gaza, there is yeah,
Speaker 6: nobody out there who's going to say, you know, what, Yes,
Speaker 6: it does sound reasonable to cut off food, energy, and
Speaker 6: water from a population that was two million at the start.
Speaker 6: Like sure, that's sure, we understand that. From a military perspective. Nobody,
Speaker 6: it's it's utterly in defensible Israel's argument that they've come
Speaker 6: up with so far. As well, Hamas has some energy,
Speaker 6: they have some fuel, and they're using it for rockets. Okay,
Speaker 6: that's terrible, bad for Hamas, but that's a tiny amount
Speaker 6: of fuel like that.
Speaker 3: That is not what we're talking about here.
Speaker 6: We're talking about the entire enclave being blocked off. We're
Speaker 6: talking about people because the salination plants are down drinking salty,
Speaker 6: dirty water. You know, the UN says you need roughly
Speaker 6: fifteen liters minimal them of water for all purposes hygiene, drinking,
Speaker 6: et cetera, just for basic survival. The average gusin is
Speaker 6: down to less than one liter of water a day
Speaker 6: like one like that, that's that's for everything, start to
Speaker 6: finish for twenty four hours.
Speaker 3: You can't survive on that.
Speaker 6: And there's nobody out there who thinks that there's any
Speaker 6: kind of military justification for that.
Speaker 3: It's also just straight up illegal.
Speaker 6: It's like against international laws of war and so, and
Speaker 6: it's why I think Obama was you know, Obama didn't
Speaker 6: talk about apartheid, didn't talk about you know, he just
Speaker 6: he laid out that that. I think that's why he
Speaker 6: zeroed in on that, because it's there's just no counter
Speaker 6: argument to it. That's and that's where Obama likes to
Speaker 6: go is a place that is kind of comfortable but
Speaker 6: also critical.
Speaker 5: Let's actually, I know that we don't like to skip around,
Speaker 5: but if we could, because it fits so perfectly with
Speaker 5: what Ryan just said, go to a eight. This is
Speaker 5: another John Kirby quote that has drawn a lot of
Speaker 5: criticism from the briefing yesterday.
Speaker 4: A role AA that would be great war.
Speaker 8: It is combat, it is bloody, it is ugly, and
Speaker 8: it's going to be messy and innocent civilians are going
Speaker 8: to be hurt going forward. I wish I could tell
Speaker 8: you something different. I wish that that wasn't going to happen.
Speaker 9: But it is.
Speaker 8: It is going to happen, and that doesn't make it right,
Speaker 8: It doesn't make it dismissable. It doesn't mean that we
Speaker 8: aren't going to still express concerns about that and do
Speaker 8: everything we can to help the Israelis do everything they
Speaker 8: can to minimize it. But that's unfortunately the nature of conflict.
Speaker 6: I don't think we've ever heard comments like that from
Speaker 6: a White House podium ever in American history. At the
Speaker 6: very end, he says, obviously, we're going to do what
Speaker 6: we can to help Israel do what it can to
Speaker 6: minimize civilian casualties. But if the preceding thirty seconds it's
Speaker 6: all about how, look, civilian casualties are inevitable. This is war,
Speaker 6: It's going to happen. And then to say we're going
Speaker 6: to continue to express concerns about civilian deaths that have
Speaker 6: not happened yet that we are going to be complicit in,
Speaker 6: really undermines how concerned you actually are, Like you just
Speaker 6: can't plausibly and authentically express concerns for something that you're
Speaker 6: about to do, because if you're really concerned, you could
Speaker 6: not do it.
Speaker 3: You could just not.
Speaker 5: The That's interesting because my reaction to that clip was
Speaker 5: his honesty.
Speaker 4: Which I agree with you as unusual.
Speaker 5: Yeah, is something that especially as journalists, but even as
Speaker 5: people who are critical of the kind of political establishment
Speaker 5: we often demand. That's exactly the sort of honesty.
Speaker 3: I just want different honesty, right, but.
Speaker 5: I mean, like, I think that's almost commendably honest, because
Speaker 5: that is at its sort of most basic level, are
Speaker 5: approached to this, and I mean, he's not wrong about it,
Speaker 5: like he's reflecting US policy accurately there.
Speaker 6: And what I've been surprised, I guess, to learn is
Speaker 6: that some of the pretense that was articulated in past
Speaker 6: bombing campaigns was more than just pretense. So let's say
Speaker 6: take May twenty twenty one, when Israel's last bombing Gaza.
Speaker 6: You know there actually there was, I think there was
Speaker 6: a bombing the three day bombing campaign in twenty twenty two,
Speaker 6: but the longer bombing campaign twenty twenty one was accompanied
Speaker 6: by claims that civilian casualties were being minimized. And the
Speaker 6: number of civilian casualties then compared to now is a
Speaker 6: fraction of what we're seeing. And so when you remove
Speaker 6: even the pretense you had, an Israeli top is very
Speaker 6: defense official said. He said, the goal is damage, not precision.
Speaker 6: So when you're explicitly on the record saying that you're
Speaker 6: going you're going for damage and not position that and
Speaker 6: you're explicitly minimizing your ability to reduce civilian casualties. It
Speaker 6: turns out that in real life, many real, many more
Speaker 6: real lives do get snuffed out. Like there is actually
Speaker 6: a link between the rhetoric. It's not just rhetoric. In
Speaker 6: other words, like there were some gloves on, we now realize,
Speaker 6: you know, in hindsight.
Speaker 3: And we can see that by what we see with
Speaker 3: the gloves.
Speaker 5: Off, hamas Is I mean makes it virtually impossible for
Speaker 5: Israel to exist on a day to day basis with
Speaker 5: any semblance of peace and security without having obviously, as
Speaker 5: you know, we find like a fifth of their military
Speaker 5: budget and an annual basis, although it pales in comparison, and.
Speaker 6: Speaking of mos this is something I want to ask
Speaker 6: the general when he gets here. Yea, they have They
Speaker 6: clearly have invested heavily in missile technology. They yesterday they
Speaker 6: spent more missiles it feels like than the last couple
Speaker 6: of weeks to very little effect other than striking fear.
Speaker 6: They're not killing people that don't and they know something
Speaker 6: about a lot of the landing in the airfield. Yet
Speaker 6: they have zero anti aircraft capacity. These F sixteens are
Speaker 6: flying over Gaza, it's unmolested. Drones are flying over unmolested.
Speaker 4: It's a great point.
Speaker 3: How is that possible? To me?
Speaker 6: It feels like everyone's incentives line up to have gods
Speaker 6: and civilians suffer. But I want to i'd I'd love
Speaker 6: to hear the general's take on this. Why has Hamas
Speaker 6: been unable to develop.
Speaker 3: Even rudimentary any aircraft?
Speaker 6: Now, presumably it's a more fixed structure, and so it
Speaker 6: would be easier to take out immediately like whenever you know,
Speaker 6: you see, whenever you see wars break out, any aircraft
Speaker 6: weaponry lasts like a couple of days.
Speaker 3: So maybe that's what it is.
Speaker 6: But we'll ask him see what his take is, because
Speaker 6: obviously I have no idea what I'm talking about.
Speaker 5: Well, I think that's actually a really important point, and
Speaker 5: I think actually the point about Hamas is really important too,
Speaker 5: because there's no Israel has to If Israel wants to
Speaker 5: sort of stamp out Hamas, that goal in Gaza, that
Speaker 5: goal is I mean without because of the way people
Speaker 5: live in Gaza, without harming civilians to the degree that
Speaker 5: we're seeing right now, when we have the death counter
Speaker 5: up over fifty seven hundred as of right now, that
Speaker 5: number is sure to climb because the ground in vision
Speaker 5: hasn't even started yet. When you see numbers like that,
Speaker 5: and when you look at the reality, I mean, it's
Speaker 5: if the United States is saying that we're going to
Speaker 5: help Israel minimize the casualties, and Israel is saying that
Speaker 5: we are doing We're not about precision, We're about maximizing damage.
Speaker 5: That's a really difficult thing for the White House, especially
Speaker 5: because as we started this block, we were talking about
Speaker 5: how the US has a presence fanned out across the
Speaker 5: Middle East, hundreds of thousands of civilians in Israel, plenty
Speaker 5: of civilians, well actually just people stationed in Lebanon.
Speaker 4: I forget what the numbers are.
Speaker 5: We have it right here from the intercept, eighty nine
Speaker 5: US military personnel deployed to Lebanon. All of these different
Speaker 5: I mean, this ecosystem is very, very fragile, and it
Speaker 5: is you know, when Access is saying Biden is trying
Speaker 5: to remind yahoo that US interests need to be sort
Speaker 5: of front of his mind when he's making these decisions,
Speaker 5: which is also just a strange position for the Israeli government.
Speaker 5: There was a great tablet piece over the summer about
Speaker 5: how US AID actually harms the Israeli cause because it
Speaker 5: puts one hand behind their back, essentially, because now they
Speaker 5: have to keep the interest of the US, which has
Speaker 5: six hundred thousand people in Israel front of mind and
Speaker 5: presence fanned out throughout the Middle East top of mind.
Speaker 5: That is, I mean the task of minimizing civilian casualties
Speaker 5: in that situation, but also allowing Israel to stamp out
Speaker 5: an existential threat.
Speaker 4: Good luck and.
Speaker 6: The scale of the slaughter is turning the world against
Speaker 6: the Israeli assault, and we saw that yesterday with UN
Speaker 6: Secretary General Antonio Guterres. We can place some of his
Speaker 6: comments that were taken in Israel deeply offensive. Let's roll
Speaker 6: Guterras seven.
Speaker 10: The relentless bombardment of Gaza by Israeli forces. The level
Speaker 10: of civilian casualties and all sale destruction of neighborhoods continue
Speaker 10: to mount and are deeply alarming. I mourn and honored
Speaker 10: dozen of UN colleagues working for UNDUA, Sadly at least
Speaker 10: serty five and counting killed in the bombardment of Gaza.
Speaker 9: Over the last two weeks.
Speaker 10: I owe to their families my condemnation of these and
Speaker 10: many other similar killings. The protection of civilians is paramount
Speaker 10: in any armed conflict. Protecting civilians can never mean using
Speaker 10: them as human shields. Protection civilians, Protecting civilians does not
Speaker 10: mean ordering more than one million people to evacuate to
Speaker 10: the suce where there is no shelter, no food, no water,
Speaker 10: no medicine, and no fool and then continuing to bomb
Speaker 10: the solves itself. I'm deeply concerned about the clear violations
Speaker 10: of international humanitarian law that we are witnessing in Gaza.
Speaker 6: The Israeli Foreign Ministry reacted extremely harshly to that statement.
Speaker 6: But the numbers and the stories that we're seeing out
Speaker 6: of there, you know, tell a brutal picture.
Speaker 3: If we can put up was it a nine here?
Speaker 3: Starting to get something?
Speaker 6: You know, the UN reporting forty two percent of Godz's
Speaker 6: housing units are damaged or destroyed and one point four
Speaker 6: million gozzins, well more than half the population has been
Speaker 6: has been displaced. This is that's a statistic that justifies
Speaker 6: the entire idea of statistics.
Speaker 3: That's just a monstrous number.
Speaker 6: If we can put up a ten from my health post,
Speaker 6: colleague Phil Lewis, quoting the AP, the World Health Organization
Speaker 6: says nearly two thirds of Gaz's health facilities have ceased functioning,
Speaker 6: and I just think that those numbers are difficult for
Speaker 6: us to absorb. Over here, look what that looks and
Speaker 6: feels like. And I think it helps to explain why
Speaker 6: somebody like Antonio Guterrez would be willing to go out
Speaker 6: on what seems to us like a limb and be
Speaker 6: so heavily critical despite the politics over at the UN.
Speaker 4: I'm sure it didn't surprise.
Speaker 5: There's really delegation too much, But I will say I
Speaker 5: also think it's hard for us to understand, to overhear
Speaker 5: the task of I mean, virtually everyone in the United
Speaker 5: States after October seventh said and worldwide said, Israel has
Speaker 5: a right to respond because there cannot be any type
Speaker 5: of incentive for people, no matter what you actually think
Speaker 5: of what's happening in Gaza, for the humanitarian or the
Speaker 5: crimes against humanity that occurred in Israel on October seventh,
Speaker 5: there cannot be an incentive for that, and so Israel
Speaker 5: has a right to respond. Now, how Israel responds is
Speaker 5: obviously where there's disagreement, massive disagreement that spans the full spectrum,
Speaker 5: but also just about everybody in the world stage looks
Speaker 5: and says Israel's response should minimize civilian casualties. Well, what
Speaker 5: does that mean? Does that mean you stop at fifty
Speaker 5: seven hundred? I mean, it's just such a gross thing
Speaker 5: to even have to talk or think about. But there
Speaker 5: is a I mean, there is a real challenge at
Speaker 5: a being able to respond and be doing it in
Speaker 5: you know, a tiny, tiny area like Gaza that is
Speaker 5: so densely packed with civilians, where you have a group
Speaker 5: like AMAS that, even if it's overstated, does sometimes even
Speaker 5: just for space reasons, whether it's for space reasons or
Speaker 5: much worse reasons, which I tend to side with. The
Speaker 5: latter has military facilities and planning places and puts missiles
Speaker 5: in civilian areas. That just makes it incredibly difficult to
Speaker 5: have any kind of response that also minimizes civilian deaths.
Speaker 5: So all that is to say this is and the
Speaker 5: Israeli government put out video yesterday of some of the
Speaker 5: people who are implicated in those crimes against humanity in
Speaker 5: Israel talking about how mad they are at Hamas leadership
Speaker 5: for putting the people of Gaza in the situation that
Speaker 5: they're in. And I don't take very seriously what they're saying,
Speaker 5: but I do think there's truth to the fact that
Speaker 5: Hamas put the people of Gaza in just an ugly
Speaker 5: and unbelievable situation, because from Israel's perspective, there does have
Speaker 5: to be some kind of response. That does not mean
Speaker 5: that Israel should not be prosecuted prosecuting this war. In
Speaker 5: the scope of history, would be very unusual to supply
Speaker 5: your enemies with food and water, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 5: But it is morally what Israel should be doing this situation,
Speaker 5: and they should be. They absolutely should be minimizing the
Speaker 5: harm and the suffering of all of these civilians, all
Speaker 5: of the children in Gaza.
Speaker 4: It's not easy, though, and.
Speaker 6: It makes our own political problems pale in comparison. Let's
Speaker 6: take a look at the journey of Tom Emmer. Anyway, yesterday,
Speaker 6: if we can put up B one, we're going to
Speaker 6: talk about the speaker fight, which might resolve itself today.
Speaker 6: So yesterday morning, and this is Jake Sherman, you know,
Speaker 6: reporting that Tom Emmer had dropped out of the race
Speaker 6: for speaker yesterday morning. As we reported here, tom Emmer
Speaker 6: was the speaker designate. If you took a long nap
Speaker 6: by the time you woke up.
Speaker 3: He was done. He put up put up B two here.
Speaker 3: He had, you know what, more than twenty no votes.
Speaker 6: He didn't crack. He didn't crack two hundred. He needed
Speaker 6: two seventeen on the floor. It was clear he wasn't
Speaker 6: going to get there if you can put up B three.
Speaker 6: The reason it became clear that he wasn't going to
Speaker 6: get there was that Donald J.
Speaker 3: Trump, despite a slobberry.
Speaker 6: Phone call from Tom Emmer, put out just an utterly
Speaker 6: brutal I have many wonderful friends wanting to be Speaker
Speaker 6: of the House, and some are truly great warriors. Rhino
Speaker 6: Tom Emmer, who I do not know well, is not
Speaker 6: one of them.
Speaker 3: You never respected the power of a Trump endorsement. Anyway.
Speaker 6: It's a delightful truth social from Trump as always, and
Speaker 6: his operation texted it out to everybody in the house,
Speaker 6: and within moments dom Emmer said, all right, forget this,
Speaker 6: I'm out of here.
Speaker 3: He was the whip.
Speaker 6: Maybe he still is technically the whip, and so he
Speaker 6: knows how to count votes.
Speaker 3: He knows he didn't have it.
Speaker 6: So they went back to the drawing board and they
Speaker 6: emerge with Mike Johnson.
Speaker 4: It sounds fake right.
Speaker 6: I know we're going to take their word for the
Speaker 6: fact that Mike Johnson is a Republican member.
Speaker 5: Of Congress, is a is a human American man.
Speaker 6: But you don't have to be a Republican member of
Speaker 6: Congress to be Speak of the House. So whatever, So
Speaker 6: they picked Mike Johnson, so gates himself. You know who
Speaker 6: lit this fire is saying that Mike Johnson is good
Speaker 6: enough to doubt and so tell us. So it looks
Speaker 6: like looks like we might get a speaker Mike Johnson. So, Emily,
Speaker 6: what do you tell us about Speaker John's Speaker designate Johnson?
Speaker 5: You know, it's I can confirm that he is a
Speaker 5: Republican member of Congress and a human American man. Great
Speaker 5: start for Mike Johnson. He's from Louisiana. I think he
Speaker 5: was actually just selected in twenty seventeen. He's the vice
Speaker 5: chair of the House GOP Conference. So he's in kind
Speaker 5: of a leadership position, although sort of a to the
Speaker 5: extent you can say back bench leadership position.
Speaker 4: That's kind of where he is.
Speaker 5: He's a very like he's actually as kind of archetypical
Speaker 5: as he sounds, right, like a boring Republican middle aged
Speaker 5: white guy to you know, use the cartoon.
Speaker 6: Well, Emmer ran an insurance company. Could it be better
Speaker 6: than that?
Speaker 4: Let's see, could it be better than Emmer?
Speaker 5: Because Emma actually, and I'm going to like, you guys
Speaker 5: are gonna get funny.
Speaker 3: He was almost an astronaut or something.
Speaker 4: You guys are gonna get annoyed today.
Speaker 5: But I really I'm gonna skip ahead while we're talking
Speaker 5: about archetypical Republicans. If we could go to B six,
Speaker 5: this is actually how Emmer could maybe out run Mike
Speaker 5: Johnson and the sort of cartoonishly republican, middle aged white
Speaker 5: guy race. He got stuck on upside down on a
Speaker 5: zoom call.
Speaker 11: Today's gig economy sprung out from the last recession. It
Speaker 11: offers a job to anyone who wants. During COVID nineteen,
Speaker 11: we must make sure that our nation's sole proprietors and
Speaker 11: the smallest of small businesses received timely.
Speaker 4: Gentlemen, suspend. I'm sorry, mister Emmer, Yes, are you okay?
Speaker 9: I am you're upside down, Tom.
Speaker 11: I don't know how to fix that.
Speaker 4: And get it right side up?
Speaker 9: What's that cat? Yeah, Madam charritt? At is this a metaphor.
Speaker 9: I don't know, but he's.
Speaker 5: They couldn't even figure out why he was upside down,
Speaker 5: what it meant that he was upside down, let alone
Speaker 5: him figuring out how to not be upside down. Mike Johnson,
Speaker 5: I believe, is slightly younger than Tom Emmer. I don't
Speaker 5: know exactly how much younger. I think he is younger,
Speaker 5: but all that is to say he's a very let's
Speaker 5: say he's a well respected kind of social conservative. He's
Speaker 5: the type of guy who'd speak at sea pack, which
Speaker 5: is sort of unusual.
Speaker 6: What we mean by that hardcore like pro life guy. Yep,
Speaker 6: anti gay marriage guy. Yeah, like that whole thing.
Speaker 3: So you.
Speaker 6: Scratch the Republican Conference, you're going to get a lot
Speaker 6: of those people. You know, they've done a decent job
Speaker 6: of kind of just having the Supreme Court take the
Speaker 6: lead on that stuff. But it looks like with the
Speaker 6: elevation of Mike Johnson, some of that is coming to
Speaker 6: the fore.
Speaker 5: And again, this is where Tom Emmor yesterday, I think
Speaker 5: you were following some of this. I think some of
Speaker 5: it was overstated, but there was a storyline that Tom
Speaker 5: Emmer's support for same sex marriage was a sticking point
Speaker 5: for some of the hardcore of Republicans that wouldn't give me.
Speaker 6: There was one guy who told them that, or something
Speaker 6: right who told him. I forget who somebody told them
Speaker 6: that's why I'm not voting for you.
Speaker 5: Yes, it became like a minor subplot. And when you
Speaker 5: have one or two people in a situation like this
Speaker 5: with the math, for Republicans, that's like an issue, even
Speaker 5: though it wouldn't be if they had a bigger margin,
Speaker 5: it's a real issue. And so actually, I think what's happened,
Speaker 5: what we're seeing happen here, is that they have exhausted
Speaker 5: the time they're comfortable with. They already did not have
Speaker 5: enough time to do what they need to do to
Speaker 5: fund the government going into December. Because they don't want
Speaker 5: to do omnibuses, they want to do single subject bills.
Speaker 5: They want to fund the government that way, they can't
Speaker 5: really agree on any of those funding levels they actually have.
Speaker 5: You know, as kind of funny as I think it
Speaker 5: is to see the House that doesn't do anything good,
Speaker 5: hasn't done anything good in a while, and chaos, they
Speaker 5: actually do have things to do.
Speaker 4: By the end of the year.
Speaker 5: If we want to avoid a government shutdown if they
Speaker 5: want to avoid a government shutdown. There are some serious
Speaker 5: things that do need funding, and I think they realized
Speaker 5: that they had exhausted all their options. It actually looked
Speaker 5: for about twenty four hours, like Byron Donalds, who got
Speaker 5: the backing of Freedom Coccus people, and we're suddenly really
Speaker 5: excited about Byron Donalds. I like Byron Donald's. They got
Speaker 5: behind him briefly the conservative movement started aligning behind Byron Donalds.
Speaker 5: But I would say Mike Johnson is maybe like a
Speaker 5: more like milk toast, kind of boring version of some
Speaker 5: of those flamethrowers in that he's not like on CNN
Speaker 5: like Byron Donald's always on the CNN yelling at people
Speaker 5: and it's relatively funny. But Mike Johnson isn't going to
Speaker 5: be that guy. He might decide to be that guy.
Speaker 5: But Republicans also sort of realized that being Speaker of
Speaker 5: the House kind of ruins your career. They don't necessarily
Speaker 5: want to put their rising stars in the Speaker of
Speaker 5: the House position because you end up having to compromise
Speaker 5: in ways that are going to really piss off the
Speaker 5: and denigrate your fund raising ability, under cut your fundraising ability,
Speaker 5: I should say so he's sort of a run of
Speaker 5: the mill, hardcore Republican, which is.
Speaker 6: A share of the Republican Study Group, which is the
Speaker 6: kind of big block of conservative Republicans. And speaker I
Speaker 6: think is cool to have on your Wikipedia, especially if
Speaker 6: your name is Mike Johnson Mike j because it's going
Speaker 6: to be in a parenthesis the speaker speak.
Speaker 3: How much a portrait, right, It's got to.
Speaker 6: Be hundreds of Mike Johnson's Wikipedia, so it's hard to
Speaker 6: hard to distinguish yourself just as a member of Congress. Yes,
Speaker 6: so if you're speaker, that helps. It got so bad
Speaker 6: if we put up before. Kevin McCarthy thought he briefly
Speaker 6: had a path back in he was floating an idea
Speaker 6: where he would be a speaker and Jim Jordan would
Speaker 6: be assistant speaker, which is funny because like there's already
Speaker 6: that title already exists. It's called Majority leader. Although they
Speaker 6: did actually create an assistant speaker ship for Jim Clyburn
Speaker 6: in the House back in I think twenty nineteen. No, no,
Speaker 6: it would be when they got bumped out of the
Speaker 6: majority because you get fewer leadership posts in the minority.
Speaker 3: Than you do in the majority twenty fifth.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and so nobody wanted to nobody wanted to bump
Speaker 6: cly burn out, so they kind of made a new
Speaker 6: position that allowed.
Speaker 3: Him to stay in.
Speaker 6: But that would be weird, like doeses Jordan go to
Speaker 6: every White House meeting when the speaker's called over?
Speaker 4: Yeap?
Speaker 6: Like would have been funny, but looks like, you know,
Speaker 6: Mike Johnson might have it.
Speaker 4: I think, yeah, So that's the thing.
Speaker 5: It feels like what's happened is they've they think they've
Speaker 5: exhausted the clock.
Speaker 4: They've run out the clock to.
Speaker 5: The point where, uh, they are kind of itching to
Speaker 5: get back to business to do what they want to do,
Speaker 5: and they're also realizing the public is looking at them
Speaker 5: and laughing. I think there was a brief moment where
Speaker 5: you know, nobody on a regular basis, like your average
Speaker 5: American doesn't know who or really care that much who's
Speaker 5: the Speaker of the House. And I don't think they
Speaker 5: necessarily should. But at a certain point, when you're going
Speaker 5: through what he's like the fourth guy to get votes
Speaker 5: in the conference, like, it's starting to just look completely
Speaker 5: ridiculous that they have they're getting the votes in the conference,
Speaker 5: private votes, and then when you go to the floor,
Speaker 5: they can't hit the two seventeen mark.
Speaker 4: Like it's just and I think stupid.
Speaker 6: I think all the talk of Democrats being willing to
Speaker 6: help and some Republicans beginning to entertain that prospect took
Speaker 6: away some of the leverage of the Crazy eights.
Speaker 3: As McCarthy calls the Gates.
Speaker 6: Crewe said like, okay, because if we keep holding the
Speaker 6: line here, we can keep holding the line, but we're
Speaker 6: not going to get Mike Johnson. You know, we're going
Speaker 6: to get whatever you know, whoever gottheimer wants to pluck
Speaker 6: out of yes, like the no labels problem solvers thing.
Speaker 5: Right, they realized it was giving ammunition to the Centrists,
Speaker 5: and the more ammunition they give the Centrists in the
Speaker 5: court of public opinion, it was more like more and
Speaker 5: more likely that there was going to be a deal
Speaker 5: struck with Democrats that was really bad for them, which
Speaker 5: was always a possibility. And you know, Gates knew that.
Speaker 5: And if Gates like this is actually kind of a
Speaker 5: win for Gates because he's you know, when he did this,
Speaker 5: the likelihood that they were going to get someone much
Speaker 5: worse than Kevin McCarthy from a Freedom Caucus perspective, was
Speaker 5: really high because who could step into that role. Steve Scalise,
Speaker 5: Tom Emmer, those were the big names. Like Emmer was
Speaker 5: one of the biggest names, because people in the Freedom
Speaker 5: Caucus thought that he had brokeered some compromises that were
Speaker 5: good for them and some deals that were good for
Speaker 5: them kind of behind the scenes over the course of
Speaker 5: this last Congress. That said, he still is very business friendly,
Speaker 5: very establishment friendly, in a way that wouldn't always go
Speaker 5: well for them.
Speaker 4: And so when Gates got rid.
Speaker 5: Of McCarthy, McCarthy was one of the few people, as
Speaker 5: we've talked about many times, that was willing and had
Speaker 5: good relationships with the Freedom Caucus and was willing to
Speaker 5: listen to them. Mike Johnson is someone who the Freedom
Speaker 5: Caucus should be pretty happy with a Speaker of the House.
Speaker 5: I think it's unusual that you have somebody that is
Speaker 5: on such good terms with the conservative movement that's in
Speaker 5: a position of Republican leadership. So that's kind of a
Speaker 5: win for Matt Gates, even though you know, do I
Speaker 5: care that much that he threw Congress into chaos for
Speaker 5: the last couple of weeks.
Speaker 4: Honestly, not really.
Speaker 3: Nobody really does.
Speaker 6: I mean, so, all of this is still at the
Speaker 6: stage of maneuvering because it hasn't resulted.
Speaker 3: In policy yet.
Speaker 6: But would you say that this power play ended up
Speaker 6: being ultimately to the power benefit of the right in
Speaker 6: the House or not so much?
Speaker 3: Or is it too early to tell.
Speaker 5: I think it'll depend on how the Johnson speakership goes,
Speaker 5: and I am assuming I think it might take them
Speaker 5: a couple of votes today. I'm assuming that they have,
Speaker 5: you know, run to the end of their line here.
Speaker 5: I don't know that for sure. It could still go
Speaker 5: either way. They don't really know, But I do think
Speaker 5: this is the most likely that they will have a
Speaker 5: speaker by the end of the day of any of
Speaker 5: the previous people who've made it out of conference. So again,
Speaker 5: could take a couple of votes today. They don't know
Speaker 5: at this point, and that's very clear. So but I
Speaker 5: would I would say it's more likely than it has
Speaker 5: been in the other situations that they leave today with
Speaker 5: the Speaker of the House.
Speaker 6: All right, let's move on to one of the other
Speaker 6: circuses down in Georgia. Another one of President Donald Trump's
Speaker 6: alleged co conspirators in the Rico case down in Georgia,
Speaker 6: where Trump is accused of trying to go out and
Speaker 6: find me eleven thousand votes and flip the election, and
Speaker 6: we'll create some fake electors. His attorney, Jenna Ellis, pleaded
Speaker 6: guilty in rather dramatic fashion to a much lesser charge,
Speaker 6: which suggests that she's ready to cooperate at a trial.
Speaker 3: Let's play.
Speaker 6: Jenna ellis here speaking to the judge.
Speaker 12: Thank your honor for the opportunity to address the court.
Speaker 12: As an attorney who is also a Christian. I take
Speaker 12: my responsibilities as a lawyer very seriously, and I endeavored
Speaker 12: to be a person of sound, moral and ethical character
Speaker 12: in all of my dealings. In the wake of the
Speaker 12: twenty twenty presidential election, I believed that challenging the results
Speaker 12: on behalf of President Trump should be pursued in a
Speaker 12: just and legal way. I endeavored to represent my client
Speaker 12: to the best of my ability. I relied on others,
Speaker 12: including lawyers with many more years of experience than I,
Speaker 12: to provide me with true and reliable information, especially since
Speaker 12: my role involved a speaking to the media and to
Speaker 12: legislators in various states. What I did not do but
Speaker 12: should have done. Your honor was to make sure that
Speaker 12: the facts the other lawyers alleged to be true were
Speaker 12: in fact true. In the frenetic pace of attempting to
Speaker 12: raise challenges to the election in several states, including Georgia,
Speaker 12: I failed to do my due diligence. I believe in
Speaker 12: and I value election integrity. If I knew then what
Speaker 12: I know now, I would have declined to represent Donald
Speaker 12: Trump in these post election challenges. I look back on
Speaker 12: this whole experience with deep remorse.
Speaker 6: Can and put up the next element. She's basically charged
Speaker 6: with aiding and abetting false statements and writings. Conditions of
Speaker 6: the plea agreement NBC News include the requirements she served
Speaker 6: five years of probation. I hope that's supervised for her sake.
Speaker 6: I've been on supervised probation.
Speaker 3: It sucks.
Speaker 6: Pay five thousand dollars of restitution to the Georgia Secretary
Speaker 6: of State, and testify at hearings or trials in the case.
Speaker 4: I'm trying to move past that. You were on supervised previation.
Speaker 3: It sucked.
Speaker 6: I don't recommend it. They treat you like total garbage.
Speaker 6: To take drug tests, cost you money for the privilege
Speaker 6: it's unpleasant.
Speaker 5: That sounds unpleasant sometimes I just learned so much of
Speaker 5: your unexpected times. But you know, Jenna Ellis, so to
Speaker 5: Ryan's point, also required to complete one hundred hours of
Speaker 5: community service and write an apology letter to the citizens
Speaker 5: of Georgia. She also agreed to provide any request of
Speaker 5: documents or evidence, not post about the case central social media,
Speaker 5: and not have any communication with any witnesses or the
Speaker 5: media until the case has been closed. Now, we do
Speaker 5: have another element that sort of looks back on it,
Speaker 5: sort of puts together. This is from I think the
Speaker 5: Republican Accountability Project or Accountable GOP something like that.
Speaker 4: It's the Twitter handle.
Speaker 5: They spliced together videos of Jenna Ellis from twenty twenty
Speaker 5: with Jenna Ellis just yesterday.
Speaker 4: Let's take a look at.
Speaker 1: That strikeforce team that is working on behalf of the
Speaker 1: president and the campaign to make sure that our constitution
Speaker 1: is protected. We are a nation of rules. All of
Speaker 1: your fake news headlines are dancing around the merits of
Speaker 1: this case and are trying to delegitimize what we are
Speaker 1: doing here. Let me be very clear that our objective
Speaker 1: is to make sure to preserve and protect election integrity.
Speaker 9: What is the point of all this.
Speaker 1: Well, the point of this, of course, is to get
Speaker 1: to fair and accurate results. Because the election was stolen
Speaker 1: in President Trump won by a landslide. We knew already
Speaker 1: that the election results in at least five of the
Speaker 1: swing states were irredeemably compromised. So we already have sufficient
Speaker 1: evidence for these states to decertify their electoral result. Your
Speaker 1: question and is fundamentally flawed. When you're asking where is
Speaker 1: the evidence? You clearly don't understand the legal process. What
Speaker 1: we have asked for in the court is to not
Speaker 1: have the certification of false results.
Speaker 5: I think it's actually easy to watch the clip of
Speaker 5: her yesterday and have sympathy, and I'm not saying that's
Speaker 5: entirely unwarranted.
Speaker 4: When I see that, I think good for Jenna Allis.
Speaker 5: I actually wish a lot of people that have sort
Speaker 5: of come into Trump's orbit and been poisoned or just
Speaker 5: compromised in the frenzy of Republican politics in the last
Speaker 5: few years would come out and kind of explain how
Speaker 5: they got sucked into all of this and how seemingly
Speaker 5: reasonable people, I mean a lot of folks who lived
Speaker 5: in New York City under Rudy Giuliani do not recognize
Speaker 5: I mean, whatever people originally thought about him, they don't
Speaker 5: recognize the Rudy Giuliani that's become a close Trump ally
Speaker 5: from the Rudy Giuliani is when he was mayor of
Speaker 5: New York City. And wonder, you know, how is it
Speaker 5: that people who are seemingly intelli, reasonable, normal successful people
Speaker 5: come out and say things like in that last clip,
Speaker 5: one that stuck out to me was Jenna Alis saying
Speaker 5: President Trump won in a landslide.
Speaker 4: That I think it is.
Speaker 5: Almost impossible to understate to emphasize how seriously it changed
Speaker 5: the country in twenty twenty and will have an effect
Speaker 5: on the country for years and years to come. Because
Speaker 5: the trust deficit there, people like Jenna Ellis were being
Speaker 5: told and she played a huge role in this because
Speaker 5: she was on TV saying Donald Trump won in a landslide,
Speaker 5: and people around the country look at that and say,
Speaker 5: this is an attorney for the President of the United
Speaker 5: States who has information that must.
Speaker 4: Be pretty good because she's.
Speaker 5: An attorney for the President of the United States that
Speaker 5: is telling her that he won in a landslide. That's
Speaker 5: exactly how you get people sacking the Capitol because they
Speaker 5: think that the election is being stolen, a landslide election
Speaker 5: is being stolen out from under their noses. And honestly,
Speaker 5: when they're being told that by an attorney for the
Speaker 5: president who is so confident she's saying it on television,
Speaker 5: that responsibility. I mean, she she should be crying when
Speaker 5: she reflects on it, because it is so tragic the
Speaker 5: way that people were misled by. And she's passing the
Speaker 5: buck to other attorneys right now, and I think that's,
Speaker 5: you know, again, I don't know what the truth is
Speaker 5: to that, but she's she obviously feels badly for doing it,
Speaker 5: I guess. I mean, maybe those are crocodile tears, but.
Speaker 3: Man seem pretty real.
Speaker 5: And maybe she was getting bad information from I don't
Speaker 5: doubt that someone was getting bad information from Sidney Powell
Speaker 5: or Rudy Giuliani in twenty twenty. But even she is
Speaker 5: saying that she failed to do her due diligence, and
Speaker 5: that is for damn.
Speaker 3: Sure, right.
Speaker 6: And some of it is a little bit of hubris
Speaker 6: and youth in the sense that I think it's true
Speaker 6: that Trump had run through so many attorneys on dred
Speaker 6: percent that he's got an inexperienced young woman who's who's
Speaker 6: kind of easy to bully and push around by some
Speaker 6: of the more senior attorneys. And maybe it's youth and
Speaker 6: hubris that doesn't allow her to ask the question of
Speaker 6: I have so little experience, what on earth am I
Speaker 6: doing in this incredibly pivotal role advising a president of
Speaker 6: the United States who's trying to overturn an election, Like
Speaker 6: it's not my skills, background genius that got me here,
Speaker 6: nobody else would do this. And then to ask yourself, well,
Speaker 6: why will know why would nobody.
Speaker 3: Else do this?
Speaker 6: Eggs He doesn't pay them be because they looked at
Speaker 6: it and they're like, the facts are not on your
Speaker 6: side here. And you know, one of the most wonderful
Speaker 6: things that the United States kind of has given to
Speaker 6: the world is the peaceful transfer of power. We've we've
Speaker 6: delivered a lot of pain to the world, but that
Speaker 6: the transfer of power over thousands of years has been
Speaker 6: a place where so many people have died just for
Speaker 6: the pursuit of vanity and power by different factions, and
Speaker 6: to have developed for hundreds of years away to transfer
Speaker 6: that power from one side to another, from one faction
Speaker 6: to another without people dying.
Speaker 13: Is is.
Speaker 6: An innovation that we just can't kind of allow to
Speaker 6: just slide away because one guy didn't like the results
Speaker 6: of the of the election that leads to that transfer
Speaker 6: of power, and so you try to undermine that, you
Speaker 6: come for the king and you miss, You're going to
Speaker 6: get a five thousand dollars fine to the Georgia Secretary
Speaker 6: of State.
Speaker 5: And what she's doing there is not quibbling with the
Speaker 5: constitutionality of Pennsylvania's mail in voting laws. Right she's saying
Speaker 5: Donald Trump won a landslide, and Sydney Powell was out
Speaker 5: talking about dominion voting machines. And by the way, while
Speaker 5: all of this is happening, Mark Zuckerberg is steering millions
Speaker 5: of dollars into a part of an electioneering project that
Speaker 5: people behind it actually told Time Magazine was like they
Speaker 5: essentially Molly Ball wrote a piece basically being like, this
Speaker 5: was a conspiracy, but it was a good one.
Speaker 4: To quote rig the election.
Speaker 5: So while you're talking about dominion voting machines and Donald
Speaker 5: Trump winning in a landslide, there are actually serious questions
Speaker 5: about money and politics and money and elections being raised,
Speaker 5: and nobody is talking about them. Anymore, because Jenna Ellis
Speaker 5: was saying Donald Trump won in a landslide. Just really quickly,
Speaker 5: before we get to Mark Baddles, I'll read Jonathan Turley.
Speaker 5: He said Ellis is the type of plead that tends
Speaker 5: to concentrate the mind, and Turtley has been generally favorable
Speaker 5: to Trump. He's George Washing University law professor, hardly like
Speaker 5: a creature of the conservative movement, but somebody who has
Speaker 5: kind of come to Trump's defense in some of these
Speaker 5: cases and talking about how their lawfair. Powell pleaded to
Speaker 5: relatively minor charges. So she pleaded, as people remember last week,
Speaker 5: involving unauthorized access to voting machines and areas. Those charges
Speaker 5: tend to be easy to prove. It is not clear
Speaker 5: if she would tie Trump to a conspiracy or racketeering.
Speaker 5: Ellis pleaded guilty to false statements that could conceivably implicate
Speaker 5: the president if she claims that he was aware of
Speaker 5: the falsity and facilitated the crime. Moreover, Ellis recently broke
Speaker 5: with Trump. She called him a malignant narcissist who cannot
Speaker 5: admit mistakes and said she would never vote for him again. Meanwhile,
Speaker 5: we can put elm of four. He four up on
Speaker 5: the screen. Just yesterday, ABC News reported that Donald Trump's
Speaker 5: ex chief of staff, as all of this was going down,
Speaker 5: Mark Meadows, was granted immunity and told the Special Council
Speaker 5: that he warned Donald Trump about twenty twenty election claims. Now,
Speaker 5: this report says Meadows quote repeatedly told Trump in the
Speaker 5: weeks after the twenty twenty election that allegations of significant
Speaker 5: voting fraud were baseless and that Trump had been quote
Speaker 5: dishonest with his quick claim of victory right after the
Speaker 5: polls closed. So to Turley's point about Ellis potentially implicating
Speaker 5: Donald Trump in this conspiracy that Fanny Willis has charged
Speaker 5: him with. Fannie Willis has charged him with. That is
Speaker 5: now a position Mark Meadows reportedly is in. I think
Speaker 5: the story has been questioned by people close to Meadows.
Speaker 5: I think they're saying that it's not necessarily true.
Speaker 4: But we'll see.
Speaker 3: He's going to testify to it anyway.
Speaker 4: That's the thing.
Speaker 3: What are people saying is true?
Speaker 6: How do you mean so you said that people close
Speaker 6: to Trump don't think Meadows his claim is true.
Speaker 5: I think it's people close to Meadows have said this
Speaker 5: story is not necessarily accurate, and that could mean different
Speaker 5: than interesting.
Speaker 3: I see, I see.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and again I remember when we were going through
Speaker 5: the Rico indictment out of Georgia. They're one of the
Speaker 5: unfortunate things about it is that a lot of the
Speaker 5: conspiracy charges against people like Jenna Ellis was obviously law
Speaker 5: her and was obviously ridiculous. But then there were kernels
Speaker 5: in that lawsuit. There were just like, it was like
Speaker 5: two or three of them where Willis shows that people
Speaker 5: like Ellis, I don't remember if she was specifically one
Speaker 5: of them, but people in Trump's legal circle, in Trump himself,
Speaker 5: there were a couple of instances where they were obviously
Speaker 5: spreading things they knew that were not true. Right, And
Speaker 5: if that had just been like the tight indictment instead
Speaker 5: of like conspiracy because they booked a conference room and
Speaker 5: whatever else, man, that would be really devastating. But maybe
Speaker 5: it's actually maybe that's how they maybe they did that
Speaker 5: intentionally to get people like Ellis to flip by just
Speaker 5: flooding the zone with different charges and medals too.
Speaker 6: So moving over to the Senate side, Progressive senators and
Speaker 6: House members have been under a lot of pres sure from
Speaker 6: supporters of Palestinian rights lately to back a ceasefire in Gaza.
Speaker 3: If we can put up this first element here.
Speaker 6: It began with nearly three hundred Bernie Sanders alumni calling
Speaker 6: on the Center to back a ceasefire in Gaz. It
Speaker 6: is now well over three hundred and thirty former staff
Speaker 6: members for Bernie Sanders congressional offices and his presidential campaign.
Speaker 6: So in the letter sent Tuesday, which is provided to
Speaker 6: the Intercept, former staffers ask Sanders to introduce a Senate
Speaker 6: side companion to the ceasefire now resolution in the House
Speaker 6: to support an end to US funding quote for war
Speaker 6: crimes against the Palestinian people, the expansion of settlements and
Speaker 6: the occupation of Palestinian lands unquote, and to support an
Speaker 6: end to the blockade of Gaza. That the letter rights,
Speaker 6: President Biden clearly values your council, as is shown by
Speaker 6: the way as you've managed to shape the outcomes of
Speaker 6: this presidency, The staffers wrote, we urge you to make
Speaker 6: it clear what is at stake in this crisis politically, morally,
Speaker 6: and strategically. They also released a video it's up on
Speaker 6: my Twitter feed. I don't know if we I don't
Speaker 6: think we have the video here, is that right that
Speaker 6: has a bunch of the staffers directing comments directly to
Speaker 6: Bernie Sanders, who has called for kind of the bombs
Speaker 6: to stop. On all side, which is a lot of
Speaker 6: people like that's close enough to a cease fire, and
Speaker 6: it does that is that is saying stop firing, would
Speaker 6: stop and see the same thing. What they're saying is
Speaker 6: introduce a Senate resolution so that there's something to organize
Speaker 6: around the House has a resolution that people can you know,
Speaker 6: the members of the House can sign on to. The
Speaker 6: Senate does not have one, saying Bernie Sanders could be
Speaker 6: the one to put that in. On the other side
Speaker 6: of the progressive wing of the in the Senate, you've
Speaker 6: got John Fetterman, who has been one of the kind
Speaker 6: of most outspoken, unconditional supporters of Israel's war, Israel's war
Speaker 6: on Gaza since since it began here. He is on
Speaker 6: at a pod Save America event recently.
Speaker 14: You know. So it's to remember that Hamas doesn't want peace,
Speaker 14: he doesn't want to be negotiated with or I mean,
Speaker 14: and you know they massacred you know, you innocent children, women,
Speaker 14: and now they have over two hundred hostages with him
Speaker 14: right now as well too. So I really believe that
Speaker 14: I'm always going to decide to stand on the side
Speaker 14: of Israel, you know, in this place.
Speaker 6: So one of the things that Vetterman's critics have pointed
Speaker 6: out is that it's so and we can go back
Speaker 6: to the primary that he had that he had last cycle.
Speaker 6: He worked very closely with DMFI Democratic Majority for Israel
Speaker 6: on his Israel position paper, Like he reached out to them,
Speaker 6: like the Jewish Insider has reported this, I've done some
Speaker 6: reporting on this.
Speaker 3: Reached out to them, said he here's you know, we'd
Speaker 3: like to hear from you.
Speaker 6: They so they had a meeting, then they constructed an
Speaker 6: Israel Palestine policy platform. Send it back to DMFI. DMFI
Speaker 6: said this is pretty good. And they've said this all right,
Speaker 6: said this is pretty good. Here are the changes we'd
Speaker 6: like to see. Kicked it back to Fetterman campaign. He's like,
Speaker 6: we're good to go. And the politics underlying all that
Speaker 6: were that Connor Lamb was a conservative Democrat also running
Speaker 6: for Senate, had been very publicly pleading for super Pac support.
Speaker 6: His brother was out there like explicitly saying like we
Speaker 6: can beat Fetterman. But we don't have the money. We
Speaker 6: need a super pac to come in. Here are the
Speaker 6: messages that you could run, we can win. And APAC
Speaker 6: and DMFI looked at the Fetterment interaction regarding Israel Palace
Speaker 6: and payment said we're not going to back Connor Lamb.
Speaker 6: We're not backing Fetterman, but we're not going to back
Speaker 6: Connor Lamb. So that's the previous context. The future context
Speaker 6: is that Pennsylvania's swing state, and so if APAC decided
Speaker 6: that it wanted to get in in a general election,
Speaker 6: you know, they could certainly do that. And so, according
Speaker 6: to people close to him, this has never been an issue.
Speaker 6: This is not one that's like coming from the heart.
Speaker 6: Like for a lot of people.
Speaker 4: That's interesting because he's a creature of.
Speaker 3: The left right.
Speaker 6: But for a lot of people, including Summer Lee, AOC others,
Speaker 6: they've said publicly growing up Israel Palstin was on an
Speaker 6: issue that we talked about, like in a lot of
Speaker 6: working class communities, Right, you don't think it just doesn't
Speaker 6: it just doesn't come up.
Speaker 3: It doesn't mean that you don't you know, it's just a.
Speaker 5: Foreign policy in general, unless there's unless your community is
Speaker 5: being shipped to war, which is very true in the
Speaker 5: two thousands.
Speaker 3: But yeah, and it's in a little bit of it
Speaker 3: comes through in that video.
Speaker 6: It sounded like for a second he was he was
Speaker 6: referring to Hamas as the like a person, like a
Speaker 6: leader of an organization, rather than the organization itself.
Speaker 3: He said, he and then he said they right, and
Speaker 3: so the people.
Speaker 6: But so the politics of this are if I get
Speaker 6: on the wrong side of it, I could face you know,
Speaker 6: millions and millions of dollars now. Lots of his former
Speaker 6: staff and the Intercept reported this too. If we can
Speaker 6: put up this next element, have have sent a letter
Speaker 6: to Fetterman as well, urging him to support in Israel
Speaker 6: Hamas cease fire. This is kind of part of this
Speaker 6: very unusual bubbling up of dissent from from kind of
Speaker 6: staff members and young people around around the country. You
Speaker 6: also had if we can put up this this next element,
Speaker 6: the political director for Rocanna, He's started on a Monday,
Speaker 6: and it was really how it's started, how it's going.
Speaker 3: It's like professional news.
Speaker 6: I'm joining Rocanna's office two weeks later and puts up
Speaker 6: he tried to get represented Rocanna to sponsor Rashida Talib
Speaker 6: ceesfire now resolution he refused. Personal note, I resigned from
Speaker 6: my job on Monday because of a refusal to call
Speaker 6: for a ceasefire. I'll be doing everything in my power
Speaker 6: to standing against war. Rocanna gave me a statement saying,
Speaker 6: you know that he's still They're still tight. He's he's
Speaker 6: a passionate support, passionate voice for human rights for Palestine.
Speaker 6: I will continue to call for protecting civilian life, humanitarian aid,
Speaker 6: Conna said, and living up to the standards of the
Speaker 6: Geneva Convention, but would not be signing on to to leave.
Speaker 6: So this is Adam Ramer residing within two weeks of
Speaker 6: starting over at the over in Conna's office.
Speaker 3: So a real kind of would you call it grass roots?
Speaker 6: I don't know, because it's a little higher level than grassroots.
Speaker 6: You've seen some of it over in the State Department.
Speaker 6: There's so much kind of hostility to the State Department policy.
Speaker 6: Blincoln had to have a listening session with dozens of members.
Speaker 6: Josh Paul, a veteran employee as we have up here,
Speaker 6: resigned in protest, putting up a letter explaining that he
Speaker 6: felt like the unconditional support for Israel was trending in
Speaker 6: such a dangerous direction that he couldn't stand by it.
Speaker 6: So it'll be interesting to see how this kind of
Speaker 6: almost generational divide.
Speaker 3: Continues to influence American policy.
Speaker 5: So this is one of the reasons this issue is,
Speaker 5: I think politically one of the toughest and most interesting
Speaker 5: issues from political perspective is that elite opinion on Israel
Speaker 5: and Palestine is in and of itself divided, as opposed to,
Speaker 5: you know, elite opinion on medicare for all or elite
Speaker 5: opinion on.
Speaker 4: You know, same sex marriage.
Speaker 5: Like, there's a legitimate divide among elites when it comes
Speaker 5: to Israel and Palestine. And so you see some people
Speaker 5: in positions of power saying, you know, the media is
Speaker 5: pro Israel. We have seen really bad media coverage from
Speaker 5: people who are pro Israel, and we have seen really
Speaker 5: bad media coverage from people who are pro Palestine. We
Speaker 5: have seen really bad arguments from people who are pro Israel,
Speaker 5: and we've seen really bad arguments from powerful people who
Speaker 5: are pro Palestine. And what you just said about the
Speaker 5: generational divide is really interesting because I wonder if that
Speaker 5: actually is where the split and elite opinion comes in,
Speaker 5: because both sides are right that the media is in
Speaker 5: some ways pro Israel and the media is in some
Speaker 5: ways pro Palestine. Because there are people all sides of
Speaker 5: that divide in elite circles, which is super unusual for
Speaker 5: any of these issues. Like you just don't see that happening,
Speaker 5: Like there are no elites that, for instance, support Donald Trump,
Speaker 5: Like it's so rare. I mean, there are a couple
Speaker 5: billionaires and people in like conservative media that are supportive
Speaker 5: of Donald Trump. But it's we're talking it's like, you know,
Speaker 5: nine oh one ratio, but.
Speaker 4: It's it's more split.
Speaker 5: And it's not wrong to say that there are positions
Speaker 5: in power that are disproportionately pro Israel. But it's also
Speaker 5: not wrong to say there are people in positions of power,
Speaker 5: for instance, the State Department all the way up the
Speaker 5: chain in Rocanna's office, lots of to the point where
Speaker 5: there's enough staffers to put these letters together and to
Speaker 5: really challenge Bernie Sanders. The Biden administration itself is kind
Speaker 5: of split. You had Karine Jean Pierre pivoting. This was
Speaker 5: a super interesting clip from Tuesday. I'm sorry from Monday.
Speaker 5: When she pivoted, she was asked about anti Semitism and
Speaker 5: immediately pivoted to xenophobia against Muslims, and then the White
Speaker 5: House tried to backtrack that. I think that reflects the
Speaker 5: internal kind of ideological tug of war that is in
Speaker 5: all elite circles, not so much on the right, but
Speaker 5: it's especially acute on the left that you have people
Speaker 5: who are very vehemently supportive of Israel and people who
Speaker 5: are arebemently supportive of Palestine, and that is I just
Speaker 5: find that to be very unusual on almost any other issue.
Speaker 6: And I think also when you get these kind of
Speaker 6: less elite communications operations, like with a Caribbean Korean Jean Pierre,
Speaker 6: you end up accidentally getting more honest stuff.
Speaker 3: Out of them.
Speaker 6: Interesting because a good communicator would not have made that
Speaker 6: mistake that KGP made, A good communicator would not have
Speaker 6: made the mistakes that Kirby has been making lately. And
Speaker 6: being honest and just yeah, a little bit too much
Speaker 6: honesty coming through and then you're like, oh, WHOA, your
Speaker 6: job is not to be honest.
Speaker 3: Yes, your job is propaganda.
Speaker 4: Our job is to be as honest as possible.
Speaker 6: Your job, you're supposed to be the propaganda's you're supposed
Speaker 6: to make the sift through this to get to the truth,
Speaker 6: not just kind of accidentally drop it out here.
Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 6: Another phenomenon developing on the left has been kind of
Speaker 6: cancel culture coming home to roost on a lot of
Speaker 6: the people who have been pushing for support for Palestinian
Speaker 6: rights over the past several weeks.
Speaker 3: That biggest, not.
Speaker 6: The biggest, but I think the moment that got the
Speaker 6: most attention was from man named Michael Eisen If we
Speaker 6: can put this first one up, he posted, I've been
Speaker 6: informed that I'm being replaced as the editor in chief
Speaker 6: of eLife for retweeting an onion piece that calls out
Speaker 6: indifference to the lives of Palestinian civilians.
Speaker 3: What is eLife does not matter? Nobody knows. It's a thing.
Speaker 6: It's apparently a big enough thing that has a lot
Speaker 6: of other employees, because you had other you know, since then,
Speaker 6: you have had, i'm looking at it now, seventeen point
Speaker 6: six million views on this tweet. Even if you believe,
Speaker 6: even if you think Elon Musk is inflating that by
Speaker 6: ten x, it's still been you know, passed around rapidly,
Speaker 6: rapidly and significantly, and you've had a number of other
Speaker 6: E life managers and employees coming out and saying I'm
Speaker 6: stepping down or I reject this, this notion that our
Speaker 6: editor in chief should be fired for posting an onion clip.
Speaker 6: But it's it's not just that you're seeing it all
Speaker 6: over the place. A writer was a sports writer was
Speaker 6: fired for actually you know this one.
Speaker 3: I don't know about that one.
Speaker 4: So good.
Speaker 6: Yeah, there's a there's a guy who he said that
Speaker 6: this post sucks slidary with palis sign always because it
Speaker 6: was seventy six ers on top of a seventy six
Speaker 6: ers thing, just saying that, you know, warning the hundreds
Speaker 6: of innocent lives lost there are There are a lot
Speaker 6: of people who kind of cross lines of decency and
Speaker 6: ended up losing jobs over that. And I think that's different, yes,
Speaker 6: than expressing a political opinion and losing your job over
Speaker 6: because everyone says you you don't have a right to
Speaker 6: a job, and okay, you don't. You don't have a
Speaker 6: right to a job, but also we have a right
Speaker 6: to defend you for losing your job over a political statement.
Speaker 6: But if you cross lines of decency, then that's a
Speaker 6: slightly different situation.
Speaker 3: But a lot of these are not that case.
Speaker 6: You had the ninety second Street Why canceled Vietnam win
Speaker 6: event because he signed an open letter supporting palessign That
Speaker 6: was but it was there was nothing offensive in that.
Speaker 6: Michelle Goldberg in The New York Times is a great
Speaker 6: column that picks up on on.
Speaker 3: Wins kind of cancelation. Literally his event was canceled.
Speaker 6: She writes about how Nathan Thrall had a bunch of
Speaker 6: events canceled. He wrote he had written a great book
Speaker 6: called A Day in the Life of Abed Saloma, which
Speaker 6: is about a kind of father who's searching for a
Speaker 6: lost Palestinian boy in the West Bank and uses that
Speaker 6: narrative to write about daily life for Palestinians in the
Speaker 6: West Bank. A bunch of organizations said, we cannot do
Speaker 6: anything that humanized as Palestinians in this moment. So canceled
Speaker 6: a bunch of canceled a bunch of those events. You
Speaker 6: had somebody who was chanting free Palestine.
Speaker 4: Yeah, this is the next element from here.
Speaker 6: On the London Tube. Who is then like suspended from work.
Speaker 6: You had a Canadian member of I don't know if
Speaker 6: it's Parliament, I don't I don't know. All of the
Speaker 6: Canadis like legal system. But you know, she said she
Speaker 6: stood with Palestine and was centered and kicked out of
Speaker 6: her left wing party, the NDP kicked her out of
Speaker 6: the out of the party, the Kanesset. I think we
Speaker 6: have this next one here, Kanesse suspended a lawmaker this
Speaker 6: israelis for over Casis for criticizing Israel's war on Gaza
Speaker 6: in a in a way that everybody I think would
Speaker 6: ackowledge it within valves. Well obviously not everybody, because the
Speaker 6: Knesset kind of run him out of here. And so
Speaker 6: one of the things that Michelle Goldberg touched on in
Speaker 6: her piece was that for years, people like her on
Speaker 6: the left have been saying, be careful with this cancel
Speaker 6: culture because it's going to be used against you. Yes,
Speaker 6: she would, and she and she and other people like
Speaker 6: her would say, just in principle, you should not you
Speaker 6: should be supportive of free speech. It shouldn't need to
Speaker 6: be utilitarian and pragmatic for you. But if it needs
Speaker 6: to be, guess what the shoe will be on the
Speaker 6: other foot. And also if you're on the left, the
Speaker 6: shoe is always on the other foot.
Speaker 3: Like you're you're always going to get kicked with this, and.
Speaker 6: So you're shunding whether you're really on the left right exactly.
Speaker 6: So now there are people saying, where where is the
Speaker 6: where are the people on the left to stand up
Speaker 6: for free expression? And it turns out there aren't. That
Speaker 6: that has been so polarized and an element of the
Speaker 6: right that it's that there's now nobody to stand for them.
Speaker 5: And I think they've muddied the waters and real unfortunate
Speaker 5: way too. Because let's put this next and up on
Speaker 5: the screen. This is five I saw this and this
Speaker 5: is reported for the Daily Signals. Governor Desants just ordered
Speaker 5: the University of Florida and the University of South Florida
Speaker 5: to deactivate their quote Students for Justice in Palestine groups
Speaker 5: for violating Florida's laws against anti Semitism and also for
Speaker 5: you can see in this letter here based on the
Speaker 5: national s JP support of terrorism and consults consultation with
Speaker 5: Governor DeSantis, the student chapter must be deactivated.
Speaker 4: So they're making this argument that s JP had.
Speaker 5: Offered material support to a foreign enemy, essentially essentially because
Speaker 5: they had claimed that operational acts of flood was you know,
Speaker 5: they needed to mobilize and support of the quote operation
Speaker 5: because they had used that word that this was material
Speaker 5: support to like a terrorist organization essentially, and thereby under
Speaker 5: Florida law, they needed to be unrecognized. And we talked
Speaker 5: a lot about the Stop Woke Act and run DeSantis
Speaker 5: came out with it, and there was some really overly
Speaker 5: broad language in it that I really didn't like, especially
Speaker 5: as a conservative who kind of saw the free speech
Speaker 5: problem for what it was and over the last decade,
Speaker 5: I wasn't super happy with everything in that. And so
Speaker 5: I saw that tweet and I was like, what the like,
Speaker 5: what is going on? Like this sounds ridiculous, And I
Speaker 5: still think the justification that they came up with was ridiculous,
Speaker 5: precisely because of a point that you just made. I
Speaker 5: want to actually read from the SJP toolkit that DeSantis
Speaker 5: is referencing, because I took a look at it and
Speaker 5: I was like, my god. They wrote today we witnessed
Speaker 5: a historic win for the Palestinian resistance across land, air,
Speaker 5: and sea. Our people have broken down the artificial barriers
Speaker 5: of the Zionist entity, taking with it the facade of
Speaker 5: an impenetrable settler colony, and reminding each of us that
Speaker 5: total return and liberation of Palestine is near, they say,
Speaker 5: national liberations near. Glory to our resistance, to our martyrs,
Speaker 5: and to our steadfast people. They also stay when people
Speaker 5: are occupied. Resistance is just normalize the resistance. These events
Speaker 5: are the natural and justified response to decades of oppression
Speaker 5: and dehumanization. And that is in reference to this, says
Speaker 5: the Palaestindian people have the right to return to their
Speaker 5: homeland and free themselves from the complete land air and
Speaker 5: see siege they've been subjected to.
Speaker 4: Then here's another one.
Speaker 5: Rather, liberating colonized land is a real process that requires
Speaker 5: confrontation by any means necessary. In essence, decolonization is a
Speaker 5: call to action, a commitment to the restoration of indigenous sovereignty.
Speaker 5: It calls upon us to engage in meaningful acts that
Speaker 5: go beyond symbolism and rhetoric. Resistance comes in all forms,
Speaker 5: armed struggle, general strikes, and popular demonstration. All of it
Speaker 5: is legitimate, and all of it is necessary. And of
Speaker 5: course this is in reference to an attack that was
Speaker 5: targeting civilians. And it's parroting, by the way, some of
Speaker 5: the language from Israel when they say by any means necessary,
Speaker 5: that's actually what a lot of people on the left
Speaker 5: are criticizing from Israel right now by any means necessary. Okay,
Speaker 5: so that means shutting down the water, the electricity to Gaza.
Speaker 5: That means bombing civilian spaces, hospitals, etc.
Speaker 4: Etc.
Speaker 5: And that's exactly what people who support Palestine right now
Speaker 5: are objecting to from Israel. And this template or this
Speaker 5: toolkit includes templates with paragliders in them, and we all
Speaker 5: know what that means. That means supporting the paragliders who
Speaker 5: just mauled civilians down in Israel. And so it's completely
Speaker 5: reasonable that the University of Florida would have in its
Speaker 5: code of conduct something that prevents that, because there's political disagreements,
Speaker 5: and then there's decency disagreements. And where our problem comes
Speaker 5: in is when people on the right and some people
Speaker 5: on the left inflate the definitions of terms like anti
Speaker 5: semitism to implicate reasonable political disagreements and say that because
Speaker 5: Ilhan Omar said something in favor of Palestine, she is
Speaker 5: anti Semitic. I don't know whether Ilhan Omar is anti Semitic,
Speaker 5: but I do know that supporting Palestine is not necessarily
Speaker 5: definitially anti semitic the left. That's one of the ways
Speaker 5: we see language creep on the right. I think we
Speaker 5: see it, have seen it, as Michelle Goldbler points out,
Speaker 5: much more from the last left. In the last ten years,
Speaker 5: terms like bigotry, terms like white supremacy have been inflated
Speaker 5: to include reasonable disagreements. But this is the problem with that.
Speaker 5: This is precisely the problem with that is it makes
Speaker 5: it impossible. It becomes a free speech conflict. When you
Speaker 5: have people that are justifying the slaughter of civilians and
Speaker 5: mobilizing to support it, not just making abstract, esoteric arguments
Speaker 5: in favor of it, but doing activism to support that,
Speaker 5: it becomes a free speech conflict instead of this is
Speaker 5: just a normal student code of conflict conflict.
Speaker 6: Yeah, well, I think I think we have to distinguish
Speaker 6: between kind of private companies and public institutions here and so.
Speaker 6: And when I say that there's a distinction between kind
Speaker 6: of political disagreements and decency on the private sector side,
Speaker 6: what I mean by that is if because you really
Speaker 6: just like somebody doesn't have a right to a job,
Speaker 6: somebody doesn't have a right to other people defending them
Speaker 6: if they get fired the way you earn that right
Speaker 6: is you stay within bounds of decency.
Speaker 3: But if you but if.
Speaker 6: You're within those bounds of decency, but your politics are off,
Speaker 6: people don't like what your politics say, then I think
Speaker 6: everybody should defend your right to not be fired, even
Speaker 6: from even from the private even from the private sector,
Speaker 6: because that's what you know, McCarthyism ultimately, you know, hit
Speaker 6: a lot of people in the private sector. But I
Speaker 6: think the public sector protections have to be even much
Speaker 6: more expansive than that. And I think, you know, as
Speaker 6: deplorable as what Jewish Voices for Peace chapter is saying here,
Speaker 6: I think it still falls all within the.
Speaker 3: Realm of speech, reasonable boundaries. Well, and even if you
Speaker 3: don't think it's decent, it doesn't matter if it's decent
Speaker 3: or not. It's still speech.
Speaker 6: And so this Daily Signal claim that they violated laws
Speaker 6: against anti Semitism is nonsense because there are no laws
Speaker 6: against anti Semitism or the claim yeah, well, the Daily Signal.
Speaker 4: Is supportive of it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, right, that the.
Speaker 6: Tweet from the Daily Signal there there aren't laws against
Speaker 6: anti Simensons.
Speaker 3: Anti Simonsons should be condemned.
Speaker 6: It's deplorable, but it's not illegal, nor should it be speech.
Speaker 6: We have First Amendment protections, yes, in this in this country.
Speaker 6: What they're leaning on, as you said, is the word
Speaker 6: material material support for a terrorist organization HAMASA terrorist organization.
Speaker 6: Material has always been understood to mean material like money
Speaker 6: or other like tangible material support. Speech support has never
Speaker 6: been that. Even if you said on September eleventh, two
Speaker 6: thousand and one, that you were happy that al Qaeda
Speaker 6: had done what it did, like that would be protected speech.
Speaker 6: And it's important to protect the most deplorable speech because
Speaker 6: that's where that's where they restricted. The things that you
Speaker 6: disagree with the most are the things you have to
Speaker 6: defend the right to make. Now people have zeroed in
Speaker 6: on what we're going to have a mass mobilization. That's
Speaker 6: a rally. They're just having a rally. They're going to
Speaker 6: have twenty people chanting somewhere.
Speaker 5: The SGP people were giving templates for like social media,
Speaker 5: and yeah.
Speaker 3: That's all speech. It's all to me, that's all speech.
Speaker 6: It's all just standard organizing, its rallies, it's speeches.
Speaker 3: It's posting on social media.
Speaker 6: And we don't want to get to a place where
Speaker 6: you're criminalizing posting on social media or holding rallies.
Speaker 4: No, I mean I agree with that.
Speaker 5: I think there's a much better rationale than material support
Speaker 5: for a terrorist organization that they could have found, which
Speaker 5: would have been like in the student code of Conduct
Speaker 5: about being respectful.
Speaker 3: And you know what those I got charged with one
Speaker 3: of those in college.
Speaker 5: They are dangerous and they have to They've been used
Speaker 5: against conservatives at private and public.
Speaker 3: They dropped it.
Speaker 5: See that's it, And so yes, although that's what I'm
Speaker 5: saying though exactly, is that the left has muddy the
Speaker 5: waters over the last ten years to the point where
Speaker 5: those are rendered completely meaningless. Even when you have people
Speaker 5: saying what this toolkit said, it is rendered completely meaningless.
Speaker 5: Like if there's that like point zero zero one percent
Speaker 5: of cases that are brought have legitimacy, and maybe this
Speaker 5: is one of those cases, and like we can't even
Speaker 5: have that conversation because it all just gets muddied into
Speaker 5: a speech conversation instead of just like at some point
Speaker 5: we have to be able. Nobody in this country, for
Speaker 5: the most part, believes that there should be zero limits
Speaker 5: on speech, Like the material support for a terrorist group
Speaker 5: is a great example, Like we do have limits on
Speaker 5: some of this stuff, and as I feel like I'm
Speaker 5: as close to the boundary as you can possibly get
Speaker 5: on that, like a free speech absoluteist, to the point
Speaker 5: that it's possible. And so I don't really want to
Speaker 5: see anybody criminalized or punished for speech. And that's why
Speaker 5: I think it's stupid to do this. At the same time,
Speaker 5: I do think it's unfortunate the waters have been muddied
Speaker 5: to the point where you can say stuff like this,
Speaker 5: and we have to have this conversation about like cancelation.
Speaker 5: It's not cancel culture. If you all the other examples
Speaker 5: I agree with you are cancel culture, this one is not.
Speaker 6: I think a lot of this stuff, by the way,
Speaker 6: I think, is not okay.
Speaker 3: Anyway, we got to rapid move on to the to
Speaker 3: the guests. We got the We got the guests in here.
Speaker 6: We're going to talk about the movement to bring you know,
Speaker 6: psychedelics out of the out of the shadows.
Speaker 3: Stick around for that, all right.
Speaker 6: Joining us now is Jesse Gold, former Army ranger and
Speaker 6: a founder of the Heroic Hearts Project, going to talk
Speaker 6: about the kind of growing, kind of movement to bring
Speaker 6: psychedelics kind of out of the shadows and.
Speaker 3: Into the into public.
Speaker 6: Were also joined by General Martin Steele, who is with
Speaker 6: Reason for Hope. General Steele, thank you so much for
Speaker 6: joining us.
Speaker 9: Thank you for having me. Honored to be with.
Speaker 3: You, got It and Jesse.
Speaker 6: This is our first time having one guest live and
Speaker 6: one guest remote, So we appreciate you guys doing this.
Speaker 6: You're here at either fortuitous or unfortuitous time because your
Speaker 6: issue is in the news. Yesterday we covered this Alaska
Speaker 6: Air bizarre situation where it looked like a pilot might
Speaker 6: have been trying to do some type of crash by suicide.
Speaker 6: Turns out the pilot has said that it was his
Speaker 6: first time ever taking psilocybin mushrooms and thought he was
Speaker 6: dreaming and tried to pull tried to basically shut the
Speaker 6: plane down to wake up. And speaking of waking up,
Speaker 6: as soon as I heard that was like, this sounds
Speaker 6: like a nightmare for Jesse. So when you saw this
Speaker 6: news report, what did it mean you think about the
Speaker 6: way that this issue has kind of been playing politically
Speaker 6: around the country, Because I want to get into it's
Speaker 6: so alive, so in so many states around the country.
Speaker 15: Absolutely, and thank you so much for having me, and
Speaker 15: I'm glad we can test your guys' system to set rolls,
Speaker 15: and so honored to be joined with by the general
Speaker 15: who's also doing some amazing stuff. For me, it's more
Speaker 15: fortuitous because these conversations are coming in terms of America's
Speaker 15: perception of psychedelics.
Speaker 9: And what we immediately jump to.
Speaker 15: And for me, this news story there's a lot more
Speaker 15: to unfold if you read it. It just kind of
Speaker 15: lumps into different pieces, and it's that media association that
Speaker 15: media does of this thing bad happened psychedelics. Uh oh,
Speaker 15: this guy went crazy? Right, it's very read for madness esque.
Speaker 15: You could take this article one hundred years ago and
Speaker 15: they could say the same thing with cannabis and everybody like,
Speaker 15: oh yeah, that makes sense, whereas now that seem ridiculous. Right,
Speaker 15: So I'm not saying saying psilocybin had nothing to do
Speaker 15: with it, But there's also many other factors that they
Speaker 15: noted in there, including forty hours of no sleep right,
Speaker 15: including one article I read that this gentleman was going
Speaker 15: to San Francisco to go onto a flight. So that's
Speaker 15: kind of basic adult rules. Don't do psilocybin for the
Speaker 15: first time if you're going to do some sort of flight.
Speaker 6: Don't do it on a plane, and don't do it
Speaker 6: if you haven't slept for forty hours.
Speaker 15: Yeah, and so this is no matter what psychedelics are coming.
Speaker 15: Soil Simon itself has been declared to break through therapy
Speaker 15: by the FDA for depression. These are starting to be
Speaker 15: a main staple mental health as we pass laws, but
Speaker 15: we still have the stigma hurdles that we have to overcome,
Speaker 15: and lazy media like this does not help because it
Speaker 15: doesn't delve into it. It's just that clickbaity. Hey, this
Speaker 15: is a crazy story. Let's throw in psychedelics in there.
Speaker 15: Let's not explain anything further, let's not get any more
Speaker 15: information about it. But people are immediately going to do
Speaker 15: that association you could do anything else. For instance, they
Speaker 15: always do this when there's some sort of tragedy. Oh,
Speaker 15: this guy visited a mosque a week ago. Is there
Speaker 15: some sort of correlation? Never dive into the actual facts
Speaker 15: around it. The other issue, and this is a much
Speaker 15: longer issue, is the mental health issue. It's known that
Speaker 15: pilots are afraid of addressing mental health concerns because they
Speaker 15: could lose their job. A friend who runs a similar
Speaker 15: nonprofit no fallen Heroes. He comes from a top gun
Speaker 15: fighter pilot and actually works with pilots through psychedelics because
Speaker 15: when they retire, they have been dealing with their mental
Speaker 15: health issues and their only resort is to turn to alcohol.
Speaker 15: So sorry to shock people who are flying, but there
Speaker 15: is a crisis of many veterans who become pilots, many
Speaker 15: others who have mental health issues, and these are the
Speaker 15: people who are flying our planes because they have unaddressed
Speaker 15: mental health issues. And to just lump it in of
Speaker 15: psychedelics are going to CAU as crazy people. There's no
Speaker 15: fact evidence to support that. In fact, if we had
Speaker 15: an honest conversation, ssrise and other mental health medication actually
Speaker 15: have a strong correlation at least eight percent caused psychosis.
Speaker 15: There's never been similar research showing that association with psychedelics.
Speaker 5: And that's the big pharma advertising you just don't hear.
Speaker 5: Ryan General Steele, I want to bring you in here
Speaker 5: to ask basically what your path was to advocacy in
Speaker 5: this space, because as we were just talking about their
Speaker 5: decades of stigma to overcome essentially, so for you, how
Speaker 5: did you come to this point advocating on behalf of
Speaker 5: these important medications.
Speaker 13: Well, I want to thank you for having me again.
Speaker 13: I think that if I had to summarize it in
Speaker 13: one word or at my age, it's frustration, a little
Speaker 13: bit in line what Jesse said and his answer to
Speaker 13: your previous question. It's frustration with a lack of urgency
Speaker 13: from our government for bold initiatives to improve the mental
Speaker 13: health situation in our country, which we are in a crisis.
Speaker 9: And so.
Speaker 13: I have been involved in this in the form of
Speaker 13: research since I retired from the Marine Corps in nineteen
Speaker 13: ninety nine and have worked with scientists looking at comorbidities
Speaker 13: with traumatic brain injury and post traumatic stress military sexual
Speaker 13: trauma across the spectrum and looking at viable alternatives to ssriyes,
Speaker 13: and the frustration with the treatment protocols in the Veterans
Speaker 13: Administration health system, which have been lack of confidence for veterans,
Speaker 13: and so people like Jesse who are inspirational to me
Speaker 13: and part of the Veteran Mental Health Leadership Coalition, which
Speaker 13: I have the privilege to be the co founder and
Speaker 13: leader of. There are over forty five organizations. Were all
Speaker 13: of the same built from coming from an experience and
Speaker 13: a frustration that we're not doing the things that need
Speaker 13: to be done, the initiatives like research into psychedelic assisted
Speaker 13: therapy to be able to improve the mental health situation
Speaker 13: in our country. This is not about decriminalization from our
Speaker 13: perspective or social use. It's about research that needs to
Speaker 13: be done in these medications, just like what was mentioned
Speaker 13: here MDMA and psilocybin, and that's what we're doing with
Speaker 13: the Breakthrough Therapies Act HR thirteen ninety three and S
Speaker 13: six's eighty nine with co sponsors on both sides of
Speaker 13: the Aisle.
Speaker 9: Bi cameral support.
Speaker 13: Of getting legislation passed which would reschedule these medicines to
Speaker 13: be able to do much more research in the space,
Speaker 13: moving them from Schedule one, which is an illegal medicine
Speaker 13: to Schedule two because they have been granted that condition
Speaker 13: from the FDA, and getting research done and expanding access
Speaker 13: to all Americans who are experiencing these traumas in the
Speaker 13: mental health arena. It doesn't matter whether they're veterans or
Speaker 13: civilians or first responders the medical field of pilots. Just
Speaker 13: like what Jesse brought out, we just have to do
Speaker 13: a better job. So what brought me here was the
Speaker 13: frustration that it's not moving, it's not moving fast enough,
Speaker 13: and that far too many veterans have gone outside our country.
Speaker 13: And Jesse can speak to this because he's a living
Speaker 13: example of helping those veterans but go outside our country
Speaker 13: to get treatment using these medicines that save their lives
Speaker 13: that they can't get in the United States legally. It's
Speaker 13: either underground or taking a risk of being arrested. So
Speaker 13: for me, it's changing the law to do.
Speaker 6: That, and not just our veterans, but also our president's son.
Speaker 6: So I wanted to We talk a lot about m
Speaker 6: d m A and mushrooms, but I Begain is one
Speaker 6: that doesn't get enough attention relative to the amount the
Speaker 6: ability it has demonstrated to help people battle with addiction.
Speaker 6: And so Hunter Biden is known to have gone. I
Speaker 6: think was it Mexico?
Speaker 9: More likely?
Speaker 6: Yeah, for an e for an ibagain treatment and his
Speaker 6: sobriety I think is understood by people close to him,
Speaker 6: including his father, to be connected to I Be Again.
Speaker 6: And so what are we seeing when it comes to
Speaker 6: the VA and to federal legislation or state legislation to
Speaker 6: open that up either to either to veterans others and
Speaker 6: what can you tell us about ibogain in general?
Speaker 15: Absolutely, we're getting all the good poster child for psychedelics today.
Speaker 9: Yeah.
Speaker 6: Also, if it moves Hunter from that Hunter to you
Speaker 6: know one is just you know, doing paintings for donors.
Speaker 12: No.
Speaker 15: Absolutely, and you know on our side, everybody deserves some
Speaker 15: sort of form of healing. And what we're seeing from
Speaker 15: the statistics coming from the VA and other organizations is
Speaker 15: that modern Western accepted medicine is just not doing it.
Speaker 15: The rates within the VA are abysmal, and we see
Speaker 15: with the suicide rates, I think the VA just came
Speaker 15: out and they're always revising it, which just shows that
Speaker 15: they don't even have a base of handle on it.
Speaker 15: Anywhere from twenty two to forty four veterans commit suicide
Speaker 15: a day, right, and that this is over twenty years
Speaker 15: of war, which is even more shocking now that people
Speaker 15: are talking about getting into another war without even addressing
Speaker 15: this underlying issue that's affecting hundreds of thousands of veterans.
Speaker 15: So there's across the board of many of these different
Speaker 15: psychedelics are almost being rediscovered by the Western world of
Speaker 15: how effective they are, only because the research has been
Speaker 15: squashed by you know, these sort of media articles, the
Speaker 15: war on drug uggs, government propaganda, which has been very effective.
Speaker 15: I Began has been particularly effective with addiction. So they've
Speaker 15: they've established clinics in Mexico, there's a couple in Canada,
Speaker 15: and where addiction rates generally have abysmal sort of you know,
Speaker 15: these these malab resorts. More than often people go into recidivism.
Speaker 15: But I Began has actually shown very effective results where
Speaker 15: people go in with opioid addiction and they go out
Speaker 15: of it not having that addiction at least for a
Speaker 15: time being. And then there's also the same sort of
Speaker 15: psychological benefit where they can understand the root trauma that
Speaker 15: caused them that addiction in the first place. So it
Speaker 15: gives them this window of opportunity to really change their
Speaker 15: life in an effective way. And we're seeing this across
Speaker 15: the boarders different psychedelics in different ways, and so there
Speaker 15: is research going on, but it's all been private funded
Speaker 15: through organizations like ours and not and sort of shoulders
Speaker 15: turned from governments. And so for instance, General Steel's working
Speaker 15: on a bill with Kentucky to find get in government
Speaker 15: funding for I begained research from settlements from the sack
Speaker 15: from the opioid crisis that the funds from that.
Speaker 6: Ye, General Steele, can you tell us about that that
Speaker 6: Kentucky bill does it doesn't have serious prospects.
Speaker 13: We believe it does. There have been three hearings. We've
Speaker 13: been involved in the Bettermental Health Leadership Coalition assisting the
Speaker 13: Opioid Abatement Advisory Commission in the State of Kentucky, which
Speaker 13: has been meeting in regards specifically to using a proposed
Speaker 13: forty two million dollars toward I Be Again research and
Speaker 13: development out of this fund that Jesse just said. Our
Speaker 13: position is that we think that this has great promise
Speaker 13: by researching it. We're thrilled to be working with the
Speaker 13: State of Kentucky, who's out front on this because of
Speaker 13: the opioid crisis and the deaths that they have due
Speaker 13: to overdose and addiction and the success that I Be
Speaker 13: Again has proven to be so effective against It's clear
Speaker 13: that the treatments as we've set up to this point
Speaker 13: aren't working, and I Be Again isn't the answer for everyone,
Speaker 13: but from our perspective, it has tremendous great promise. There
Speaker 13: was a hearing just last week, a third I've testified
Speaker 13: there before that Commission, but a hearing last week we
Speaker 13: had a member of the FDA who clearly is talking
Speaker 13: about the need to balance the potential risk and benefit
Speaker 13: of I BE again through proper testing and research, and
Speaker 13: is absolutely that they'll be considering the condition that we're
Speaker 13: in in this crisis and that I Begained is a
Speaker 13: viable next step alternative and Jesse.
Speaker 6: In early October, Gavin Newsom veto to psychedelic piece of
Speaker 6: legislation out in California. He in his veto message he
Speaker 6: said he wanted something more orderly.
Speaker 3: It seemed like, sent back to him.
Speaker 6: You tell us what happened there and what's next in
Speaker 6: California potentially.
Speaker 15: Yeah, And this is very indicative of the frustration that
Speaker 15: General Steel mentioned earlier. This has been an over three
Speaker 15: year process, many iterations. By the time we actually got
Speaker 15: it through both the houses in California by Parson support,
Speaker 15: wide popular support, it would have been an easy bill
Speaker 15: for Governor Newsom to sign. And what everybody speculates is
Speaker 15: it's because of his looking forward to what's next in
Speaker 15: his sort of career and using the veto, which in
Speaker 15: my opinion in this case is very undemocratic. When it
Speaker 15: gets to that level of passing all this with a
Speaker 15: lot of work, and everybody agreed it was a good
Speaker 15: bill sort of baseline and just a very basic People
Speaker 15: should not be criminalized for having personal possession of just
Speaker 15: grown psychedelics, an LSD that's synthetic, so just mushrooms, just
Speaker 15: all this other kind of stuff. As we can see,
Speaker 15: people are already using it illegally, but because we criminalize it,
Speaker 15: we put this sort of blockade of any other people
Speaker 15: talking about it. There's there's a stigma around it. So
Speaker 15: any other organizations that can help out that can bring
Speaker 15: much value education, like you should not take mushrooms for
Speaker 15: the first time before possibly piloting a baseline education. It
Speaker 15: has been prevented because of this criminality, and people are
Speaker 15: we're seeing this seeking their own mental health relief because
Speaker 15: of the failure of this system. This all of this
Speaker 15: news is showing how much the system is failing. And
Speaker 15: so very disappointed in Governor Newsom. And you know it's
Speaker 15: a very politician thing where he had this. Hey, if
Speaker 15: you had just done this, it would have been great.
Speaker 15: He had more than three years to tell us. And
Speaker 15: it's for the veteran population. A lot of us are
Speaker 15: disappointed because this is what we come to expect. These
Speaker 15: politicians will say, Hey, I support the troops, Hey I
Speaker 15: have these veteran friends over here next time around. But
Speaker 15: what they do is they kick the can. They utilize
Speaker 15: our name, our voice to get what they need. But
Speaker 15: when we ask them the very basic to help us,
Speaker 15: they do not. And again, I want to circle back.
Speaker 15: This is so important right now because we just got
Speaker 15: out of twenty years of war. There's over six hundred
Speaker 15: thousand just from the past twenty years of war veterans
Speaker 15: with PTSD. There has not been effective legislation on a
Speaker 15: federal level to resolve this, or address this, or even
Speaker 15: talk about this. We haven't even looked at why we
Speaker 15: had twenty years of failed war and there's already people
Speaker 15: salvating about getting into the next war. The contractors get
Speaker 15: paid up front, we're still their hat in hand. My
Speaker 15: friends have to go to Capitol Hill and beg politicians
Speaker 15: to pay attention to the suicide rate. There's no reason,
Speaker 15: with that many veterans dying from suicide that this should
Speaker 15: not be a national crisis. We show how fast the
Speaker 15: government can work when it wants to, but there has
Speaker 15: not been the same sort of urgency around veterans and
Speaker 15: mental health issues, which is very tragic and in my opinion,
Speaker 15: Governor Newsom's decision with self serving and falls right in
Speaker 15: line with what we come to expect from politicians.
Speaker 3: And General Steele.
Speaker 6: I'm curious what the reaction has been from your kind
Speaker 6: of former comrades and colleagues in the military too. You
Speaker 6: coming out and taking a position on this, do you
Speaker 6: do do you hear? Do you hear more good for you?
Speaker 6: This is desperately needed, or do you hear more? There
Speaker 6: goes you know, crazy hippie General Steel out?
Speaker 13: You know with what we'll hear the latter, uh not
Speaker 13: to my faith, I would say my generation. I'm a
Speaker 13: Vietnam era military member, two tours of combat in Vietnam,
Speaker 13: my father stepfather I never knew my real father was
Speaker 13: a prisoner of war in World War Two, and my
Speaker 13: son had three tours of combat in Afghanistan.
Speaker 9: So we spanned the whole gamut.
Speaker 13: But the support that I've received from my peers, once
Speaker 13: they are educated in regards to what and why, they
Speaker 13: clearly understand the crisis and the mental health situation, I
Speaker 13: would say my generation of warrior is saying to me,
Speaker 13: thank you for what you're doing, and all of the
Speaker 13: people of the coalition, these veteran service organizations and groups
Speaker 13: like Jesse. I wish we would have had that for
Speaker 13: us because as Jesse said early on, I mean, alcohol
Speaker 13: was the drug of choice. It's a problem for all
Speaker 13: of my peers and excessive use of alcohol and we
Speaker 13: never got our arms around this, and the situation now
Speaker 13: with SSRIs and the VA is just making it worse
Speaker 13: getting any better. So tremendous amount of support. A lot
Speaker 13: of them want to know more, they are studying what
Speaker 13: we're doing and why, but on the whole they are
Speaker 13: firm believers. I've had no pushback to summarize the answer
Speaker 13: from any of my peers or even the leaders that
Speaker 13: I had that were ahead of me.
Speaker 9: I mean I was a.
Speaker 13: Three star general, my four star people that I'm very
Speaker 13: very close to that are also retired. Now all of
Speaker 13: them very much support what we're doing because, as Jesse indicated,
Speaker 13: six hundred thousand out of the Global War on Terror
Speaker 13: a twenty year war, and we haven't touched the surface
Speaker 13: yet of them coming to the forefront with their issues,
Speaker 13: and we're still not wrapping our arms around the needs
Speaker 13: for viable alternative therapies, which we believe psychedelic assistant therapy
Speaker 13: will be a major player in changing the mental health
Speaker 13: crisis in our country.
Speaker 3: You're both optimistic and general steel.
Speaker 6: I also promised our viewers earlier in the show that
Speaker 6: I picked your brain on some basic military questions, and Jesse,
Speaker 6: if you and he takes on these two and we
Speaker 6: love him.
Speaker 3: Got two questions.
Speaker 6: One and since you were a veteran of Vietnam, I'm
Speaker 6: curious for your take on what the role the tunnels
Speaker 6: that that Hamas has built over the years in Gods
Speaker 6: and might play in a land invasion, given that in
Speaker 6: Vietnam that the tunnel system was so effective for a
Speaker 6: guerrilla warfare, and that we had a there was a
Speaker 6: tunnel system in Afghanistan that was also problematic, and you
Speaker 6: know for American troops that got that got less attention.
Speaker 3: And the second, and maybe this is an ignorant.
Speaker 6: Question, why is Hamas so able to build missiles and
Speaker 6: rockets that they constantly are able to fire into Israel
Speaker 6: but apparently has zero anti aircraft capacity that that I
Speaker 6: just can't understand.
Speaker 3: Either one of you want to take either one of those.
Speaker 13: I'll be glad to start sure the opening with the
Speaker 13: tunnel situation. It's obviously very complex. They've spent years doing it,
Speaker 13: and I believe that just as in the case in Vietnam,
Speaker 13: they were problematic, as you said, they're going to be
Speaker 13: much more problematic if there's a ground if and when
Speaker 13: the ground invasion takes place, So there's significant obstacles to
Speaker 13: overcome a lot of challenges like we had in Vietnam.
Speaker 13: Some of my high school classmates were of the size,
Speaker 13: if you will, physical size that they were known affectionately
Speaker 13: as tunnel rats, and they were traumatized by their experience
Speaker 13: going into the tunnels. Tremendous warriors did the job, but
Speaker 13: traumatized by that experience. So in the case of your
Speaker 13: second question, I would say they're being more supplied with
Speaker 13: these weapons of rockets than manufacturing them.
Speaker 9: I watched your program the other day.
Speaker 13: I thought it was very thoughtful as you were looking
Speaker 13: in these kinds of areas and questions. But I think
Speaker 13: it's more external supplies that are providing them with those capabilities.
Speaker 13: And the third question regarding why don't they have anti
Speaker 13: air capabilities, I'm not qualified to answer that right now.
Speaker 15: Yeah, from the from the tunnel. It's just it's it
Speaker 15: would be a nightmare. I mean, if you you remember,
Speaker 15: I mean you were.
Speaker 3: Not in your head at the Afghanistan tunnels.
Speaker 15: Afghanistan tunnels, I mean, but I was also thinking, like
Speaker 15: World War two, Japan had notorious for the tunnels, and
Speaker 15: that factored into our decision of how in trench they were,
Speaker 15: and especially without our understanding it's a completely different warfare.
Speaker 9: Uh.
Speaker 15: And it's it's it's would be unlike what we've seen
Speaker 15: in Afghanistan generally is pretty open, pretty flat, so that
Speaker 15: allowed a lot more air support, all sorts of other
Speaker 15: intelligence that we just want to have. But then we're
Speaker 15: factoring not only the urban warfare and the tunnels, which
Speaker 15: we really just haven't seen for quite a while, and
Speaker 15: just the density of the population. It factors into all
Speaker 15: these other dynamics because if you're going into there and
Speaker 15: you're going against a the Hummas that's not going to
Speaker 15: wear uniforms, and you're in this very dense population, it's
Speaker 15: gonna be chaos and a lot of factors. And then
Speaker 15: you're bringing in other serious military potentially like Iran as
Speaker 15: well as what happened in Afghanistan. When I was over there.
Speaker 15: There was an estimation that this was a little bit
Speaker 15: deeper into the war that the majority of the people
Speaker 15: we fight were fighting weren't even Taliban or from Afghanistan.
Speaker 15: The vast majority we're from other countries, other networks surrounding
Speaker 15: countries that were just there because that's where the fight was.
Speaker 15: And I feel like this is even more that case
Speaker 15: where it's gonna be sort of that ideological not only
Speaker 15: fighting US fighting Israel in this centered spot that's just
Speaker 15: going to be a hotbed. And again we have not
Speaker 15: even done an after actions review on the last wars.
Speaker 15: Why were we there for twenty years? And neither the
Speaker 15: general are our piecenicks, you know, like I would reenlist
Speaker 15: again if I was at that age. And there's an
Speaker 15: unspoken agreement where there should be in any culture or
Speaker 15: any country between the serving veterans and the politicians. We
Speaker 15: will risk our lives, but we expect them to have
Speaker 15: intelligent analysis of the wars we get into, right, and
Speaker 15: we did not have that analysis with the previous wars.
Speaker 15: And I'm not saying one way or the other of that,
Speaker 15: but we need to actually factor in the real cost,
Speaker 15: not just a cost to the war. Contractors, but the
Speaker 15: lives as well as the mental health issues that we
Speaker 15: have not even factored in with these past few wars.
Speaker 3: The very least we can do is at least research.
Speaker 6: Therapies that could be beneficial to people coming home with
Speaker 6: the moral wounds and the emotional and psychological wounds as
Speaker 6: well as the physical ones. And so the organizations are
Speaker 6: Reason for Hope, Heroic Hearts Project.
Speaker 3: Where can people find more information on this?
Speaker 15: So Heroicartsproject dot org is our website and as the
Speaker 15: General said, our main goal is that we help connect
Speaker 15: veterans to countries where this is legal. As tragic as
Speaker 15: that sounds, veterans are going to other countries to get
Speaker 15: life saving support. That's where we come into place.
Speaker 3: And make sure they do it as safely as possible.
Speaker 15: As safely with support, so these sort of stories don't happen.
Speaker 15: If the General I think it's Reason for Hope dot org,
Speaker 15: he can correct me if that's wrong.
Speaker 9: No, that's correct.
Speaker 13: And the Veteran Mental Health Leadership Coalition also, which is
Speaker 13: the comprised of these over forty five veteran service organizations
Speaker 13: that we have all part of doing the same thing
Speaker 13: that Jesse just said efficacy in this space.
Speaker 3: We're really appreciate you.
Speaker 6: We really appreciate you guys joining us and for the
Speaker 6: fight you're waging.
Speaker 9: Thank you so much.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, I want.
Speaker 3: To tell you go ahead.
Speaker 13: Well, I just want to say thank you for what
Speaker 13: you're doing too. Having had the opportunity to look at
Speaker 13: some of your work. It's thoughtful, thought provoking, but very
Speaker 13: necessary right now and so affording us the opportunity to
Speaker 13: come on to talk about this specific issue. We hope
Speaker 13: we have an opportunity to come back, but this is
Speaker 13: the space if we're going to do something differently, because
Speaker 13: what we've done and what we are currently doing is
Speaker 13: the true definition of insanity, providing the same treatment protocols
Speaker 13: that do not work for this population as it comes forward.
Speaker 13: We're not there yet with the six hundred thousand. As
Speaker 13: they come forward. It's like a tip of the iceberg
Speaker 13: right now. And it's the perculean work that Jesse Gould
Speaker 13: is doing his organizations and others. But to have to
Speaker 13: go outside our country to get treatment to save your
Speaker 13: life is unconscionable and it is the definition of suicide
Speaker 13: to think that you can do the same thing over
Speaker 13: and over that we have been doing now and get
Speaker 13: a different result. So thank you for what you're doing
Speaker 13: in this space to help us get the message out.
Speaker 3: All right, thank you for saying so.
Speaker 6: I think we have a new Breaking Points premium subscriber there, hope.
Speaker 3: So I think I think General steeals hooked.
Speaker 5: It's good you say that, Ryan, because you can now
Speaker 5: go to Breakingpoints dot com to subscribe, as our producers
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Speaker 3: Spotify and all those other corporate platforms.
Speaker 5: Right yeah, So you get to support our work and
Speaker 5: continue coverage of issues that mainstream media, so called mainstrea
Speaker 5: media doesn't want to touch, like psychedelics for veterans super important.
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Speaker 9: Just like that.
Speaker 6: All right, Chryslsaga be here tomorrow. We'll be back here
Speaker 6: next week. Thanks for joining us,