Speaker 1: Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here,
Speaker 1: and we here at breaking points, are already thinking of
Speaker 1: ways we can up our game for this critical election.
Speaker 2: We rely on our premium subs to expand coverage, upgrade
Speaker 2: the studio ad staff give you, guys, the best independent.
Speaker 3: Coverage that is possible.
Speaker 2: If you like what we're all about, it just means
Speaker 2: the absolute world to have your support. But enough with that,
Speaker 2: let's get to the show.
Speaker 3: Good morning, and welcome to Counterpoints. Emilindri Shinski joined today
Speaker 3: from the West Coast at a very early hour. But
Speaker 3: my co host Ryan Grimm, who's in the middle of
Speaker 3: a book tour for his fantastic new book, which is
Speaker 3: out this week. Ryan, how's it going.
Speaker 1: It's funny being out here in Los Angeles is such
Speaker 1: a failed experiment. But the cars just don't move. It's
Speaker 1: hilarious in just everything. I mean, the weather is absolutely wonderful,
Speaker 1: But I think I spent more time just sitting in
Speaker 1: bumper to bumper traffic yesterday than doing anything else. One
Speaker 1: story house.
Speaker 3: It was a failed experiment in democratic socialism. I thought
Speaker 3: we had you for just a moment.
Speaker 4: Let's go with that.
Speaker 3: H Okay, Well, you have been busy on, for example, CNN,
Speaker 3: we're going to play a clip of that, and your
Speaker 3: book has made news across the media. There's a lot
Speaker 3: to talk about, and actually, as we have been discussing,
Speaker 3: there's a lot to talk about when it comes to
Speaker 3: our first story today, which is Israel. So we're going
Speaker 3: to get to some of the reports from your book
Speaker 3: as we discuss the news out of Israel this morning.
Speaker 3: We're going to talk about Vladimir Putin meeting with the
Speaker 3: Saudis and the UAE today. That's huge news, obviously has
Speaker 3: big implications. You'll notice that we're almost in an American
Speaker 3: election year, so there's probably some important details to get
Speaker 3: to when it comes to those negotiations, which are supposed
Speaker 3: to be about oil, they're going to be about Israel
Speaker 3: and you as well. According to spokesman for Putin, we're
Speaker 3: going to talk about what Ryan has dubbed a shallow fake,
Speaker 3: not a deep fake, but a shallow fake as it
Speaker 3: relates to his reporting on Imran Khan with his colleague
Speaker 3: Martaza Hussein over at the Intercept. Tommy Tuberville, senator from Alabama,
Speaker 3: has officially dropped his hold on military nominations so that's
Speaker 3: been going since March. Huge news on the Hill and
Speaker 3: there's a lot to talk about there too. We're going
Speaker 3: to be talking about the news that came out just
Speaker 3: yesterday that House Republicans they don't really have much going on,
Speaker 3: of course, you know, there's nothing to do. They don't
Speaker 3: have to fund the government. But they will be starting
Speaker 3: their impeachment inquiry formally next week. We'll talk about what
Speaker 3: it means that it's going to be formally open. There's
Speaker 3: certainly a lot to deal with when it comes to
Speaker 3: Hunter Biden. There's no shortage of potential avenues for investigation.
Speaker 3: We're also excited to talk to Stuart Reid, who's the
Speaker 3: author of a new book called The La Mumba Plot
Speaker 3: about the CIA's role in the assassination of Lamumba. If
Speaker 3: you don't know the story, please stick around and watch
Speaker 3: the interview because Stewart Read's book is so interesting and
Speaker 3: important and relevant. Now, Ryan, we should get to the news.
Speaker 4: Let's do it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So since these hostages, since some of the hostages
Speaker 1: have been released, they've been pressing hard to meet with
Speaker 1: net Yah who's War Cabinet, and finally agreed to meet
Speaker 1: with them.
Speaker 4: Yesterday, and it sounds like there were fireworks.
Speaker 3: Yeah, let's put the first element up on the screen.
Speaker 3: I've actually in my notes bolded some of the key
Speaker 3: quotes from these meetings. This is an article that we're
Speaker 3: reading from from the Times of Israel yesterday. Just the
Speaker 3: headline says, so much chaos and yelling. Freed hostages family
Speaker 3: members clash with Netan Yahoo in meeting. So a marketly
Speaker 3: tense meeting, the Time says, was held Tuesday between a
Speaker 3: group of recently released hostages as well as family members
Speaker 3: of those still in Gaza and Prime Minister Benjamin and Yahoo,
Speaker 3: as well as other members of the war cabinet. Now,
Speaker 3: one interesting detail that the Times of Israel's reporting is
Speaker 3: Netanyaho showed up late for the meeting. So they were
Speaker 3: supposed to start at three pm, and Netanyahu and people
Speaker 3: showed up at three forty five pm. And the quote
Speaker 3: is they let us get mad from a source and
Speaker 3: fight amongst ourselves. I left in the middle. It's not acceptable.
Speaker 3: As Ryan said, they have been demanding this for a
Speaker 3: long time. This came after on the heels of all
Speaker 3: of those demands. Some of the audio from the meeting leaked.
Speaker 3: Net and Yahoo could be heard telling the families as
Speaker 3: the time says, quote, there's no possibility right now to
Speaker 3: bring everyone home. Can anyone really imagine that if that
Speaker 3: was an option, anyone would refuse it? He also said
Speaker 3: that they are He said something to the extent of
Speaker 3: these are demands that even you wouldn't take. That's a
Speaker 3: net and yah, who I'm paraphrasing him there, but that's yeah.
Speaker 3: He said. Basically, you know, even you, the people who
Speaker 3: are former hostages or whose family is still held hostage
Speaker 3: or recently released hostages, even you wouldn't take this deal.
Speaker 3: The numbers, by the way of hostages are also I
Speaker 3: mean were now how many have been released? About one
Speaker 3: hundred and five I think have been released. One hundred
Speaker 3: and five civilians released from lost captivity. That's eighty three Israelis,
Speaker 3: twenty three Thai nationals, and one Filipino. So they think
Speaker 3: right now about one hundred and thirty eight hostages remain
Speaker 3: in Gaza, including around twenty women. One other statement I
Speaker 3: want to read before I get your thoughts on this, Ryan.
Speaker 3: This is from more of the leak to audio and
Speaker 3: it was a recording actually aired by Channel twelve. Quote,
Speaker 3: I was there I know how hard it is. It's
Speaker 3: hard in captivity. Every day you don't know. She says,
Speaker 3: you have no idea what you're doing there, and I
Speaker 3: know the conditions they're holding the men in are worse
Speaker 3: worse for the women. Another one went and talked about
Speaker 3: sexual abuse, and then another said, quote, you have no
Speaker 3: idea what's even going on there at all. You claim
Speaker 3: that you have intelligent but intelligence, but the fact is
Speaker 3: we were bombed huge, hugely consequential meeting for net and Yahoo,
Speaker 3: don't you think, Ryan, Yeah.
Speaker 1: I thought that in particular was quite striking because as
Speaker 1: this ceasefire went on, you know, every day there would
Speaker 1: be you know, a trickle of hostages released, and you
Speaker 1: can only imagine from the Israeli families perspective, how you
Speaker 1: know what that must be like. You're just holding your breath,
Speaker 1: hoping that you know in the next release will be
Speaker 1: your your love, some of your loved ones, or all
Speaker 1: of your loved ones. And as a day goes by
Speaker 1: and you know your family members are not in that,
Speaker 1: then you're praying that the ceasefire goes so that there's
Speaker 1: another day so this kind of cruel lottery can continue
Speaker 1: to unfold where you're you're hoping that, hoping against hope
Speaker 1: that eventually they will be released. And those Israeli families
Speaker 1: are some of the people that I thought about first
Speaker 1: when Israel resumed the bombing, because that much must have
Speaker 1: been just such a crushing blow, because you know that
Speaker 1: that hope that the next day their family might come
Speaker 1: home is is dashed by the resumption of the bombing
Speaker 1: and the and the end of these talks. And then
Speaker 1: to find out from these hostages that they were getting
Speaker 1: pounded by bombs the entire time or a significant amount
Speaker 1: of time as well, is that much more poignant. And
Speaker 1: one of the hostages told Yaho, Hamas slept through your
Speaker 1: airstrikes like they kept us awake at night. They rattled us,
Speaker 1: but they just slept through it. They mean nothing to you,
Speaker 1: which gets in then to this question of negotiations. Nen
Speaker 1: Yah hasn't said what Hamas is demanding, you know, in
Speaker 1: exchange for this Hamas has floated, you know, a permanent
Speaker 1: ceasefire in exchange for release of the hostages. I suspect
Speaker 1: that he's wrong and that the families would actually agree
Speaker 1: to that.
Speaker 4: What's your what was your read on it?
Speaker 3: Yeah? I mean especially because the Biden administration is now
Speaker 3: pressuring Yahoo, reportedly saying that their target for the end
Speaker 3: of the sort of assault on Gaza is the beginning
Speaker 3: of the new year. So that's a matter of weeks.
Speaker 3: And as these numbers show, there's still a lot of
Speaker 3: hostages in Gaza. So if net and Yaho's saying that
Speaker 3: his primary goal here is, you know, to eradicate Hamas
Speaker 3: and get back all of these hostages, and Israeli media
Speaker 3: is blanketing the airwaves with these quotes and in leaked audio,
Speaker 3: I mean something as visceral as the leaked audio of
Speaker 3: people being unhappy with Net Nyah who questioning the strategy
Speaker 3: of their own government. Again, it gets to something. This
Speaker 3: is a point I think it's excellent that you make
Speaker 3: all of the time. It's it's actually criticism of net
Speaker 3: and Yaho and of the Israeli government is often much
Speaker 3: more pitched in Israel from either the right or from
Speaker 3: the left. Then you're sort of allowed to operate within
Speaker 3: the kind of boundaries in the United States, and that's
Speaker 3: important for Net and Yahoo as the US. If the
Speaker 3: US we talked about this last week President Biden, at
Speaker 3: least from his his statements says that he's been sort
Speaker 3: of taking public stances that allow him to negotiate with
Speaker 3: Netanyahu privately. So if he is trying to end the
Speaker 3: conflict earlier than the Israeli government would like to, and
Speaker 3: you have hostages questioning the strategy and that being blanketed
Speaker 3: on Israeli media, that's a huge, I mean, obviously a
Speaker 3: huge problem for Netanya, who is already under a huge
Speaker 3: amount of pressure to answer questions about how the attack,
Speaker 3: how the security was breached on October seventh in the first.
Speaker 1: Place, and he's crossed pressured, like you say, and there
Speaker 1: might be apparently there is kind of more pressure coming
Speaker 1: from the wing of the Israeli public that that wants
Speaker 1: vengeance and net Ya, who seems to be just exploiting
Speaker 1: that anger in order to not save his political career
Speaker 1: because he might be finished but just extended.
Speaker 4: He's just living to fight another day.
Speaker 1: He also, making the situation that much or bizarre, has
Speaker 1: these corruption charges hanging over his head, so that if
Speaker 1: he when he if and when he ever does leave office,
Speaker 1: he has to confront those corruption charges, and so he
Speaker 1: has this extra incentive to just do whatever he can
Speaker 1: kind of take us a step forward day by day
Speaker 1: and the number one song, and this is just an
Speaker 1: indication into how much kind of thirst there is for
Speaker 1: vengeance right now among the Israeli public and.
Speaker 4: The number ones. Have you seen this the number one
Speaker 4: rap song?
Speaker 1: Is this like insane, like genocidal hip hip hop song
Speaker 1: that even by the end of the song is like
Speaker 1: calling for like Bella hadid to get wiped out.
Speaker 4: It's like people can kind of google it and find
Speaker 4: this song. I would.
Speaker 1: You can find like a rough translation of it, but
Speaker 1: it's just wild and it's but it's a it's a
Speaker 1: real window into kind of the politics on the ground
Speaker 1: and what I was dealing with as the ceasefire.
Speaker 4: Was going on.
Speaker 1: If you remember ben Vere, I mean I believe Church
Speaker 1: as well. We're both hinting like if this war doesn't
Speaker 1: resume soon that you know, we're going to bring the
Speaker 1: government down. You had some of his right wing cabinet
Speaker 1: members the very beginning saying we have to not what
Speaker 1: did he say, We'd have to to not consider over
Speaker 1: much the life of the hostages. We have to be
Speaker 1: very brutal in our calculations here. It's unfortunate, but we're
Speaker 1: just going to have to you know, they will also
Speaker 1: be kind of collateral damage in this, in this bombing
Speaker 1: campaign against the mass which has now picked up with
Speaker 1: a renewed ferocity.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I don't think anybody would make the argument,
Speaker 3: of course, that Yahoo was in some sort of like
Speaker 3: easy position either before October seventh or after politically practically,
Speaker 3: I mean, no matter what difficult situation, but nobody is
Speaker 3: happy with him, and for very good reason. This has
Speaker 3: basically lost public support, and that's in so many ways
Speaker 3: his own fault. And when you're losing public support, I mean,
Speaker 3: even the Israeli left was a set some parts of
Speaker 3: the Israeli left were upset with talk that there was
Speaker 3: going to be an indefinite cease fire. And we're interested
Speaker 3: in what Bengavir had been saying about bringing down the
Speaker 3: government because they're so outraged by the way NETANYAHUO has
Speaker 3: handled the war and by how negotiations have gone. And
Speaker 3: public opinion is just so crucial. Public support in Israel
Speaker 3: and in the West is so crucial, and this is
Speaker 3: not helpful obviously, right.
Speaker 1: And nat Yah, who's been in power, you know, basically
Speaker 1: since the nineteen nineties, with a couple of breaks, and
Speaker 1: he's been able to basically enact his idea about how
Speaker 1: to handle the occupation, and he has consistently said, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm the guy who can prevent a Palestinian state from forming,
Speaker 1: and what I will do instead is divide the Palestinians,
Speaker 1: and I will manage the conflict and we will kind
Speaker 1: of very slowly to facto and then eventually legally well
Speaker 1: quote unquote legally a next more and more Palestinian land.
Speaker 1: That you can do that and be secure at the
Speaker 1: same time. That was his promise to the Israeli public.
Speaker 1: He's had an opportunity to kind of enact that vision,
Speaker 1: and you know, we've seen it, you know, blow up,
Speaker 1: blow up in his face, which is why you're seeing
Speaker 1: so much blowback from him, and now you're seeing so
Speaker 1: much of it and kind of blowback at the Palestinian population.
Speaker 1: Should we talk about the way that it's kind of
Speaker 1: unfolding in the Western press with this kind of fascinating
Speaker 1: Jake Tapper interview.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we should definitely move on to this clip from CNN.
Speaker 3: You see Jake Tapper pressing a representative from Israel actually
Speaker 3: on tragedy that happened to a CNN producer. Let's roll this.
Speaker 5: Side, the idea of really has done everything that is
Speaker 5: humanly possible to try to safeguard innocent civilians.
Speaker 6: It's very hard to believe that, especially on a day
Speaker 6: when one of our producers lost nine members of his family.
Speaker 4: Nine members of his family who were.
Speaker 6: Not members of Commas, not members of the Palestinian Islamics
Speaker 6: you hide, not members of any group, just nine people
Speaker 6: just trying to live their lives.
Speaker 5: First of all, I extend my sorrow to him and
Speaker 5: my sympathies. But if I saw your report correctly, and
Speaker 5: please correct me if I says something wrong that happened
Speaker 5: in northern Gaza, in Gaza City where a month ago
Speaker 5: we already asked all the civilians to leave and most
Speaker 5: of them did. If there was like one million, two
Speaker 5: hundred thousand people there, there was only a couple of
Speaker 5: tens of thousands left, And one has to ask, yes,
Speaker 5: they had an ample opportunity to leave. I don't know
Speaker 5: what happened. I don't have the specific circumstances. I know
Speaker 5: there's deadly combat going on now in the north still
Speaker 5: between these IDF and CAMAS Terrists, yes, and we don't
Speaker 5: want to see anyone caught up in the crossfire. But
Speaker 5: why didn't they heed the advice?
Speaker 6: And are they can't blame them, there's nown't blame them,
Speaker 6: But you can't just fighting in the south now where
Speaker 6: I mean, I've been asking this since October seventh. Where
Speaker 6: these people supposed to go?
Speaker 3: Well, the point about fighting in the south is absolutely
Speaker 3: critical there.
Speaker 1: Ryan, Yeah, And I think you know, let's assume, let's
Speaker 1: imagine a world in which the IDF had given you
Speaker 1: ample warning, had provided genuine safe corridors for for passage.
Speaker 1: I had had had provided places for people to go
Speaker 1: where they could guarantee that they would be safe and
Speaker 1: that you know, you know, humanitarian and that their humanitarian
Speaker 1: needs would be met, and that they guaranteed that once
Speaker 1: this was over. Uh, there they would have the right
Speaker 1: to return to their homes. In that situation, you could
Speaker 1: you could say, look, people who didn't take that warning
Speaker 1: were taking on some serious risk. But none of those
Speaker 1: conditions were met.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 1: They you know, Israeli, the Serraelis did not offer a
Speaker 1: safe corridors.
Speaker 4: So those corridors often struck themselves.
Speaker 1: Uh, they did not offer kind of safe places where
Speaker 1: they could go. They they've bombed kind of un places
Speaker 1: they've they've been bombing communis in and the Rafa crossing,
Speaker 1: you know, since the very beginning. These are the places
Speaker 1: in the south where they've told people to go. Everyone
Speaker 1: in Goz that knows somebody who evacuated the north went
Speaker 1: to the south and was either killed on the way
Speaker 1: or or killed in the south. And they also have
Speaker 1: are not provided, you know, providing for the humanitarian needs
Speaker 1: of people in these places. They are instead making sure
Speaker 1: that the civilian infrastructure has been basically, you know, eradicated,
Speaker 1: so that you know, sewage treatment uh is non existent,
Speaker 1: disease is you know, just just is rampant, uh. You know,
Speaker 1: if they're lucky one hundred trucks with humanitarian supplies or
Speaker 1: getting in on a on a daily basis for two
Speaker 1: for two million people, cutting off water, you know, taking
Speaker 1: the already low calorie counts, you know, significantly down. And
Speaker 1: so you can imagine why in that situation people might say,
Speaker 1: if those are all of the options, we're just going
Speaker 1: to try to hunker down right here. And I thought
Speaker 1: it was interesting, I'm curious for your take on this
Speaker 1: that he didn't he the IDF spokesperson there sort of
Speaker 1: seemed to forget that he's talking to a Western audience.
Speaker 1: Like his original answer, my condolence is I'm deeply sorry
Speaker 1: for this good The second answer might be better for
Speaker 1: a in Israeli audience, but not for an American Always
Speaker 1: the second answer of well why were they there? It
Speaker 1: kind of sounds like their fart, their fault, and it lands.
Speaker 1: You can see how poorly it lands with Jake Tapper there.
Speaker 3: You know, it's interesting because there is truth that you know,
Speaker 3: Israel provides warnings, has provided warnings in the in the past,
Speaker 3: but there's also in this conflict been proof that that's
Speaker 3: not happened. And in fact, we've seen the Israeli government
Speaker 3: concede at certain points that it hasn't happened, and you
Speaker 3: know that and actually defend that it has happened. We've
Speaker 3: seen obviously bombings in the South. So it's you know,
Speaker 3: to your point, Ryan, even if you're you're not in
Speaker 3: front of a Western audience. I mean, I don't know
Speaker 3: what else he could have said there. To be honest,
Speaker 3: I don't know what else there is other than saying,
Speaker 3: you know what we've heard from Yahoo and others that
Speaker 3: this is the terrible cost. You know, when we heard
Speaker 3: early in the conflict that this is. They were invoking
Speaker 3: Dresden and other just awful things. That's it seems to
Speaker 3: me like the only honest defense that you can offer,
Speaker 3: because nothing else is especially persuasive in light of that evidence.
Speaker 3: You know, we're what two months in now, these answers
Speaker 3: are not quite cutting it in the West, that's for
Speaker 3: sure to your point. And you know, maybe it's even
Speaker 3: more effective for them, sadly to make the argument that
Speaker 3: they were making earlier. Maybe that's maybe people will believe
Speaker 3: that they actually believe it, because I don't think it's
Speaker 3: believable when you say things like you know it was
Speaker 3: in the North, right, I mean that just it doesn't
Speaker 3: cut it anymore. So no, I agree with you, and
Speaker 3: I think we should let's throw this. This is the
Speaker 3: first of two Aaron Burnett clips will play from CNN
Speaker 3: in the segment. One will actually feature Ryan himself. But
Speaker 3: this is with of course, Israeli Army spokesman Jonathan Conricus
Speaker 3: on CNN talking about the ratio of civilian casualties, So.
Speaker 4: That's two civilians for every terrorist.
Speaker 7: Can you confirm that, I can confirm the report and
Speaker 7: I can say that if that is true, and I
Speaker 7: think that our numbers will be corroborated. If you compare
Speaker 7: that ratio to any other conflict in urban terrain between
Speaker 7: a military and a terrorist organization using civilians as their
Speaker 7: human shield and embedded in the civilian population, you will
Speaker 7: find that that ratio is tremendous, tremendously positive, and perhaps
Speaker 7: unique in the world. I understand that there are civilian casualties,
Speaker 7: and I understand that footage and coverage goes towards emotions
Speaker 7: and to cover those civilian casualties. But what I want
Speaker 7: to say is that we will get those figures out
Speaker 7: and they will be official and on record by the
Speaker 7: IDEAF with the name behind it, and then we will
Speaker 7: be able to say and to back up afterwards with
Speaker 7: names and numbers that we are indeed targeting the terrorists,
Speaker 7: we are not after the civilians.
Speaker 3: Okay, So what he just said was important because if
Speaker 3: you look at the New York Times, and we talked
Speaker 3: about this last week, tabulated recently the ratio and this
Speaker 3: is from hamas numbers and they're using like they're using
Speaker 3: un numbers as well. And I understand people have concerns
Speaker 3: about the numbers, but women and children make up sixty
Speaker 3: nine percent of the deads in the twenty twenty three war,
Speaker 3: but forty one percent of twenty twenty one fighting, thirty
Speaker 3: eight percent of the twenty fourteen war, and thirty nine
Speaker 3: percent of the eight nine war. So by these numbers,
Speaker 3: and again, you know, I look forward to the IDF's
Speaker 3: numbers because I think it is helpful to be able
Speaker 3: to compare the data. But Ryan, to your point, these
Speaker 3: numbers could even be underestimating. You know, there's an argument
Speaker 3: that Israel seems to imply repeatedly implies that they're overestimating
Speaker 3: the level of death, but in some cases there's been
Speaker 3: an argument they're actually underestimating it. So we should have
Speaker 3: numbers to compare if we're not supposed to trust the
Speaker 3: Hamas numbers. And I understand the reasons for that argument,
Speaker 3: But then we need numbers to compare that too, because
Speaker 3: these numbers are really really bad. These ratios, even compared
Speaker 3: with Israel's previous handling, are bad even by their own measures.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and the Ministry of Health numbers have proven to
Speaker 1: be accurate in the past, and even Israel in past conflicts,
Speaker 1: when they've put out their numbers after a conflict, they've
Speaker 1: mostly made at what the the what the Ministry of
Speaker 1: Health has put out, And what I would add to
Speaker 1: those is that there's also like if you throw in
Speaker 1: the elderly, you get you push that number, you know,
Speaker 1: well into the seventy percentages.
Speaker 4: And also as a.
Speaker 1: Non combatant male, I'd like to you know, put in
Speaker 1: a good word for non combatant males, like we we
Speaker 1: always kind of get tossed into this bucket of potential combatants.
Speaker 1: You know, you'll say, well, I guess we're left with
Speaker 1: thirty percent of people who are Hamas. And it's like,
Speaker 1: what we know for a fact that so far they've
Speaker 1: killed seventy three journalists. A significant number of them were men,
Speaker 1: not all of them, but a significant number were I
Speaker 1: know of, you know, through people I've interviewed, significant, signicant,
Speaker 1: significant numbers of men, even fighting age, men who had
Speaker 1: absolutely nothing to do with Hamas. And so once you
Speaker 1: once you throw them and you're getting you know, even
Speaker 1: further down. We can just talk about this based on
Speaker 1: kind of the Israeli figures. You heard the spokesperson there
Speaker 1: say that they're they're killing two civilians for every you know,
Speaker 1: one Hamas fighter that they that they kill Now that's
Speaker 1: take I would take that with a grain of salt
Speaker 1: as well. If that's what they're saying publicly, Now I suspect, well,
Speaker 1: we'll find the ratio to be significantly higher. But what's
Speaker 1: so disturbing about that is that he says that, well,
Speaker 1: if you look at previous combat, you know we should.
Speaker 1: You know, if you compare us to perfection, well of
Speaker 1: course we fall short. But if you compare us to
Speaker 1: previous combat, then actually, you know, we're doing quite well.
Speaker 1: If you compare that to October seventh, they're not doing well.
Speaker 1: And October seventh is a useful comparison because all of
Speaker 1: us recognize that as a horrific atrocity and as something
Speaker 1: that you should be condemned, kind of top to bottom.
Speaker 1: But if you look at the military to civilian casualty rates,
Speaker 1: you're looking at a roughly two to one civilian to
Speaker 1: military personnel military or police personnel. And so if we
Speaker 1: all agree and we do that that was a horrific
Speaker 1: atrocity and a war crime that should be prosecuted, how
Speaker 1: can the IDF then say, with roughly the same proportion
Speaker 1: that they are actually conducting themselves in an ethical fashion.
Speaker 1: Doesn't that put them in a pretty tough mind and
Speaker 1: expose what's going on.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it does, and you know, as somebody who probably
Speaker 3: disagrees with you on a lot of different aspects of
Speaker 3: this conflict. So on the more foundational level, my position
Speaker 3: is Hamas should release the hostages if Israel's goal is
Speaker 3: the eradication of Hamas, and that's what's justifying the sort
Speaker 3: of continued conflict. I mean, I'm not seeing evidence that
Speaker 3: there's concrete steps that are going to be taken seriously
Speaker 3: towards that end goal. That that is a kind of
Speaker 3: in some ways, you can have a similar conversation about Ukraine.
Speaker 3: Ukraine is going to reclaim every inch of the DNBAS
Speaker 3: and until that, all of the blood will continue to
Speaker 3: be spilled. And you know, the eradication of Hamas is
Speaker 3: just an impossible goal, an understandable, an important goal, but
Speaker 3: I think you know that it's just not good enough
Speaker 3: two months into the conflict as a sort of end
Speaker 3: while these numbers continue to stack up, and let's put
Speaker 3: the next element up on the screen. This is an
Speaker 3: estimate of the a number of Hamas fighters that have
Speaker 3: been killed so far, according to a report Israel Intelligence.
Speaker 3: Their latest estiment is that they've killed around fifty three
Speaker 3: hundred Hamas terrorists. The New York Times reports that the
Speaker 3: estimate is there are about thirty thousand Hamas terrorists embedded
Speaker 3: in the two point something million about two point two
Speaker 3: million person population of Gaza, So fifty three hundred Hamas
Speaker 3: terrorists we don't know's that's almost impossible to confirm. At
Speaker 3: the same time, that's a you know, that will factor
Speaker 3: into those calculations. Ryan, where does that sound to you
Speaker 3: like a plausible number?
Speaker 1: I mean, who knows, you know, there's been so much
Speaker 1: killing in Amaz that I mean, in uh in Gaza,
Speaker 1: that's certainly you know, even even just by chance, you're
Speaker 1: going to hit you know, a number of Hamas fighters.
Speaker 8: So uh.
Speaker 1: And even if the IDF spokesperson is saying, look, we're
Speaker 1: we think we have a two to one civilian ratio,
Speaker 1: the fact that that makes them look so bad suggest
Speaker 1: that there's probably a little bit of truth to it,
Speaker 1: even if they're even if they're counting you know a
Speaker 1: number of people who you know, they suspect were Hamas
Speaker 1: fighters who who actually actually were not.
Speaker 3: We have another CNN clip here talking about one particularly
Speaker 3: troubling case we can roll that now.
Speaker 9: What happened to Oxoba seventh was an absolute atrocity. It
Speaker 9: was a thousand atrocities. I think at the same time
Speaker 9: we condemned those atrocities, we have to condemn the atrocities
Speaker 9: that happen every day to Palestinians in the West Bank.
Speaker 9: You mentioned sexual violence. I was part of the human
Speaker 9: rights vetting process for arms going to Israel, and a
Speaker 9: charity called Defensive Children International Palestine drew our attention at
Speaker 9: the State Department to the sexual assault, actually the rape
Speaker 9: of a thirteen year old boy that occurred in an
Speaker 9: Israeli prison in the Moscow Bea in Jerusalem. We examined
Speaker 9: these allegations. We believe they were credible. We put them
Speaker 9: to the government of Israel, and you know what happened.
Speaker 9: The next day, the IDF went into the DCIP offices
Speaker 9: and removed all their computers and declared them a terrorist entity.
Speaker 9: I think it is vital that atrostees not happened to anyone,
Speaker 9: not sexual atrocity, not sexual violations, not any kind of
Speaker 9: gross violation of human rights. We are looking at a
Speaker 9: situation where there is so much dehumanification, where people are
Speaker 9: not seen for the value that they have, and I
Speaker 9: think that's true whether you're talking about those who are
Speaker 9: attacked on their kibbutz or those who are attacked in
Speaker 9: their homes and go or in the West Bank. What
Speaker 9: we really need is to center the human beings who
Speaker 9: are at the core and who are suffering so much
Speaker 9: in this conflict.
Speaker 3: So that was Josh Paul. He's a State Department official
Speaker 3: that resigned over the sending of weapons to Israel. If
Speaker 3: you were listening to that and didn't see it on
Speaker 3: the screen, that's who he was. He was talking to Christian.
Speaker 3: I'mpor let's put this next element up on the screen
Speaker 3: screen as well. This is a headline from a monitor
Speaker 3: that says the growing US Israel rift over Gaza war
Speaker 3: timeline will net and Yaho budget. That's basically what we've
Speaker 3: been talking about in this entire segment is how are
Speaker 3: the mounting pressures from the mounting tragedies in Gaza ultimately
Speaker 3: going to influence Netnyahu himself? The decision makers behind Israel
Speaker 3: is really military, as the US has reportedly again this
Speaker 3: timeline of their target date for an end of the
Speaker 3: invasion being sometime around everywhere one. What do you make
Speaker 3: of that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so our monitors' sources are saying, yeah, basically telling
Speaker 1: Israel that they have through the end of this month,
Speaker 1: you know, to to wrap up this this military campaign.
Speaker 1: But then they report, you know, quote this is not
Speaker 1: a deadline, but a target.
Speaker 4: During the war. Target dates can shift.
Speaker 1: And so you have this combination of kind of American
Speaker 1: you know, either public or private rhetoric pushing in one
Speaker 1: direction with then the the immediate kind of implication that.
Speaker 4: You can consider this justice suggestion.
Speaker 1: It's reminiscent a little bit of Tony blink their reports
Speaker 1: of Tony Blinken meeting, you know about a week ago
Speaker 1: with Israeli military officials and you know, the war cabinet
Speaker 1: and they were laying out their war plans that lasted
Speaker 1: several months, and he told them, you know, you don't
Speaker 1: have that much credit, and that was that was a
Speaker 1: quote that made it into the press, you know, telling them,
Speaker 1: you know, this needs to be wrapped up. At the
Speaker 1: same time, you you you see this kind of loosening
Speaker 1: of it at the very end. And the reason that
Speaker 1: you see them, you know, saying that you're running out
Speaker 1: of credit, I think is the people like Josh Paul
Speaker 1: kind of breaking through in the in the global media
Speaker 1: and bringing attention to not just what's going on in Gaza,
Speaker 1: but what's happening, you know, more generally with with the occupation.
Speaker 1: That that story he told was I think controversial on
Speaker 1: an American television show because he's equating, you know, Palestinian
Speaker 1: lives with Israeli lives, and that's just you're just not
Speaker 1: supposed to do that. You know, you're not You're not
Speaker 1: supposed to you know what, when Permilla Gaiapol called for
Speaker 1: quote unquote balance and how we talk about this, she
Speaker 1: was pillaried, you know, for the for a couple of
Speaker 1: days over that. But for Josh Paul to say, look,
Speaker 1: I was involved in a specific case of an allegation,
Speaker 1: a credible allegation of the rape of a thirteen year
Speaker 1: old boy, which should make a lot of people pause
Speaker 1: and me like, wait a minute, why was there a
Speaker 1: thirteen year old boy in prison to begin with? And
Speaker 1: then he follows up with, you know, when they alerted
Speaker 1: Israel authority, they you know, thank you for the tip,
Speaker 1: We appreciate that, and they raid the offices of the
Speaker 1: Human Rights Organization, sees their computers and designate them as
Speaker 1: as a terrorist organization like that. That's the kind of
Speaker 1: thing I think that is drying up Israeli credit. On
Speaker 1: the other hand, it doesn't seem like Israel cares that
Speaker 1: much at this moment, you know what the White House says,
Speaker 1: as long as what the White House says doesn't translate
Speaker 1: into them actually doing anything.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, just the amount of representatives that they
Speaker 3: send into American media every day, in Western media in general,
Speaker 3: every day tells me that they are conscious of how
Speaker 3: important American public opinion is to their continued support. Although
Speaker 3: at the same time, you're right, Ryan, American public opinion
Speaker 3: could you know, go and under direction and the Biden
Speaker 3: administration could still be doing a lot to help behind
Speaker 3: the scenes while saying something maybe that is more appealing
Speaker 3: to the American public in public forums. So, I mean,
Speaker 3: I do think that's interesting. And I think Israeli civilians
Speaker 3: aren't going to be served and protected by an extended
Speaker 3: conflict either. I think that's really important. Again, from the
Speaker 3: perspective of somebody maybe on the other side, is that
Speaker 3: like the is really civilians before October seventh and after
Speaker 3: October seventh. I think we all agree the security situation
Speaker 3: is not ideal. It's more for ideal, it is there
Speaker 3: was no resolution to it before October seventh. On October sixth,
Speaker 3: and that's the security situation has only worsened. And so
Speaker 3: with the end goal of eradicating Hamas and no, I
Speaker 3: would say plausible, viable plan as to what would fill
Speaker 3: that vacuum if this impossible end was actually achieved, and
Speaker 3: what will fill the vacuum, you know, after it is
Speaker 3: partially likely partially achieved. I don't think we have confidence
Speaker 3: or can have confidence that Israeli civilians are going to
Speaker 3: be much safer after than let's say that January one
Speaker 3: target is hit. Well, Ryan, you were talking about a
Speaker 3: lot of this because your book is out this week
Speaker 3: on CNN. So you joined Aaron Burnett and we have
Speaker 3: a clip of your appearance on Aaron Burnett Show on
Speaker 3: CNN last night.
Speaker 4: Years too.
Speaker 3: They caught me reading your texts. I was actually reading
Speaker 3: your notes because you were reading from quotes. But I
Speaker 3: did joke on Twitter that I was reading Ryan's text
Speaker 3: from the CIA. Here is Ryan's appearance on CNN.
Speaker 10: Here is part of his exchange with journalist Ryan Grimm.
Speaker 11: Members of the squad have tweeted out from the river
Speaker 11: to the sea. But the answer, I'd allow him to
Speaker 11: say it, but I wouldn't sit there quietly. I'd point
Speaker 11: out that you were calling for once again the extermination
Speaker 11: of millions.
Speaker 4: Of views, as I'm sure you know.
Speaker 1: Though in Leakun's platform it says, you know, from the
Speaker 1: river to the sea, there will only be Israeli sovereignty.
Speaker 1: Are they suggesting genocide of all Palestinians?
Speaker 3: Of course not exactly.
Speaker 1: So if they're not, why is the other suggesting genocide?
Speaker 4: Because that's what Hamas support.
Speaker 1: We've had a defense Minister Galant. We will eliminate everything,
Speaker 1: an IDF spokesperson. Our focus is on damage, not on precision.
Speaker 1: Another former Kennestment member, there is one and only solution,
Speaker 1: which is to completely destroy Gaza before invading it. I
Speaker 1: mean destruction like what happened in Dresden and Hiroshima without
Speaker 1: nuclear weapons.
Speaker 4: Would you join us in condemning that as well? So
Speaker 4: I condemn nothing that the Israeli government is doing.
Speaker 3: I stand with the people of Israel.
Speaker 10: Talk to me about that moment.
Speaker 1: What did that say to you when you were sitting
Speaker 1: there having that exchange with him?
Speaker 12: I thought at least he would condemn some of the
Speaker 12: things that the Israeli government had already condemned, like you
Speaker 12: don't have to get in front of them, like, for instance,
Speaker 12: the minister who floated the idea of nuking Gaza was
Speaker 12: roundly like rebuked by other members of the net Nyahu cabinet.
Speaker 12: So it was striking to me that Cruz couldn't even
Speaker 12: go as far as members of the very far right
Speaker 12: net Yahoo cabinet. I was just trying to in that
Speaker 12: interview find some common moral plane, because you know, anytime
Speaker 12: you have anybody on who's remotely critical of Israel, the
Speaker 12: interview starts with, you know, will you condemn at what
Speaker 12: Hamas did on October seventh. Today is December fifth, We're
Speaker 12: still having news cycles organized around that question from two
Speaker 12: months ago. So then it follows that, well, let's also
Speaker 12: get on the same moral level and condemn the kind
Speaker 12: of collective punishment of Palestinians as well, and then we
Speaker 12: can talk about a way forward. But he wouldn't go there,
Speaker 12: and that was kind of Once he didn't, You're like, okay,
Speaker 12: well I've got If you condemn nothing, then there's nothing
Speaker 12: I can tell you that's.
Speaker 1: Gonna I mean, it really was.
Speaker 3: I hope everyone will watch. It was a fascinating exchange.
Speaker 4: We take back all the things we said about CNN.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, I actually think that's it's fairly interesting
Speaker 3: to me that they ran the I mean a huge
Speaker 3: chunk of the clip in that exchange, because I think
Speaker 3: one of the benefits of that exchange, as we talked
Speaker 3: about last week, was having some time to a you know,
Speaker 3: have let these discussions breathe a little bit, and and
Speaker 3: having on the other hand, so point B is that
Speaker 3: you know, Ted CRE's sitting down with somebody who's sort
Speaker 3: of openly an ideological opponent, not not a lawmaker, not
Speaker 3: an elected official, and you know, not a hack, but
Speaker 3: like somebody who's actually going to engage on the issue.
Speaker 3: And so I think it's actually really heartening that people
Speaker 3: watch that and it came away with this was really
Speaker 3: sort of insightful.
Speaker 1: It's the advantage of a longer interview, too, right, Cable
Speaker 1: is you know, so they do it to themselves like that.
Speaker 1: There's no there's no federal law that says they have
Speaker 1: to keep every segment to like two and a half
Speaker 1: or three minutes, but they are, you know, have conditioned
Speaker 1: themselves to believe that the public you know, won't won't
Speaker 1: be able to kind of keep up with anything with
Speaker 1: anything more than that. But if you do that, then right,
Speaker 1: you can't, you can't kind of draw out the more
Speaker 1: the more interesting takeaways from UH, from conversations like uh,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna I condemn absolutely nothing and you know, up
Speaker 1: to and including things that even that Yahoo's cab that
Speaker 1: would condemn. And that goes to what we were talking
Speaker 1: about earlier. This stark difference between how this conversation unfolds,
Speaker 1: you know, here in the United States and how it
Speaker 1: how it unfolds over in the Israeli media, where because
Speaker 1: there is you know, so much more kind of lust
Speaker 1: for revenge after October seventh, there that the is Israel
Speaker 1: the government is much more open about what it's doing.
Speaker 1: They don't they don't want to sugarcoat anything that they're
Speaker 1: doing in Gaza, because if they sugarcoat it, then the
Speaker 1: public and some of the kind of the cabinet will
Speaker 1: demand no, no, no, we want more than that.
Speaker 3: And there's enormous sensitivity obviously, you know, as there's an
Speaker 3: Israel but in the United States about anti Semitism and
Speaker 3: about there's this sort of Western anti Semitism as opposed
Speaker 3: to sort of radical Islamic anti semitism, and so we
Speaker 3: have these standards that create sort of an impossible condition
Speaker 3: for discourse on this particular issue. And I do think
Speaker 3: it's unfortunate the extent of which people are afraid. For example,
Speaker 3: when you read what you read as we just watched
Speaker 3: again that people feel as though they have no flexibility
Speaker 3: to kind of honestly reckon with some serious points there
Speaker 3: and there are. We could have gone much longer in
Speaker 3: that interview, and I think we both wanted to, but yeah,
Speaker 3: I thought that was the best part of the interview,
Speaker 3: that the most helpful part of the exchange. I want
Speaker 3: to also put this element on the screen from huff
Speaker 3: Post because it's more reporting from your book, and the
Speaker 3: book you've mentioned this before is so timely. It turned
Speaker 3: out to be so timely because it ended up as
Speaker 3: you were digging into kind of the evolution of the squad.
Speaker 3: So much of it is sort of revolving around a
Speaker 3: pack and around the question of Israel. So this is
Speaker 3: the headline. Top Pro Israel group offered a Kazio Cortez
Speaker 3: one hundred thousand dollars of campaign cash per new book ran.
Speaker 3: You also reported this week that the I think you said,
Speaker 3: like the Murdoch Empire, it just utterly twisted parts of
Speaker 3: the book in an effort to make Alexandro A Kazu
Speaker 3: Cortes and the squad in general and sort of the
Speaker 3: Green Agenda look foolish. I was really like, I mean
Speaker 3: not I shouldn't stay surprised, but taken it back by
Speaker 3: I think how egregious. The coverage of things from your
Speaker 3: book has been Daniel Mary articles not among them. He
Speaker 3: is reporting, based on your report that APEC actually reached
Speaker 3: out to Okazio Cortes with quote a whole lot more
Speaker 3: than an olive branch.
Speaker 8: Right.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So if we've talked earlier about that, that twenty eighteen
Speaker 1: interview that she did with Margaret Carlson on the Firing
Speaker 1: Line is like three weeks after she won her primary.
Speaker 1: She's been nailing every single interview and then she gets
Speaker 1: hit with questions about Israel Palestine, and I think I
Speaker 1: actually rewatched it with Hasan Piker on his stream yesterday.
Speaker 4: We kind of, you know, went down memory lane on that.
Speaker 1: Interview, and her answers are actually fine for the most part.
Speaker 1: Her problem is she starts to visibly betray a kind
Speaker 1: of lack of confidence that she's getting these questions right,
Speaker 1: and by the end she just taps out and says, look,
Speaker 1: I'm not an expert on this. We didn't talk about
Speaker 1: this much at my Bronx you know, dinner table. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm going to talk to more people about this. Let me,
Speaker 1: you know, let me, let me step away from this
Speaker 1: question because you know, I'm dying inside here. That's basically
Speaker 1: what you can you can see on her face as
Speaker 1: she's getting asked about her use of the phrase quote
Speaker 1: occupation of Palestine or or equating of Palestinian lives being
Speaker 1: taken by the IDF with you know, protesters getting shot
Speaker 1: in Puerto Rico or protesters getting shot in Fergus in Missouri.
Speaker 1: Like the Carlson seems to like really object to this,
Speaker 1: this equating of Palestinian lives and American and American live
Speaker 1: lives because of the Middle Eastern dynamics are so so different,
Speaker 1: and and so she just kind of taps out at
Speaker 1: the very end. And so what what I reord in
Speaker 1: the book is that about a week later, when she
Speaker 1: and Bernie are in Kansas campaigning for a candidate out
Speaker 1: there or Corbyn. Trent communications director gets a call and says, hey,
Speaker 1: you know, we saw that, we saw the interview. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm with Apex. I've already bundled together you know, a
Speaker 1: good one hundred thousand dollars to start the conversation with AOC.
Speaker 1: We can you know, we can help to educate her,
Speaker 1: you know, to make sure that you know, she doesn't
Speaker 1: have another, uh, you know, another face plan interview like
Speaker 1: this again. And it was it was for her team,
Speaker 1: her and her team a real window into kind of
Speaker 1: how Washington works, and that if you were a normal
Speaker 1: member of Congress who had just won a primary and
Speaker 1: had not instantly become, you know, bizarrely and uniquely this
Speaker 1: kind of global celebrity which comes with it all this
Speaker 1: campaign cash, he'd be like, all one hundred thousand dollars,
Speaker 1: I desperately need one hundred thousand dollars. And also I
Speaker 1: need I need talking points on this issue because you know,
Speaker 1: I didn't run on this question.
Speaker 4: I don't want it to become a huge political liability.
Speaker 1: She was in a position where she you know, could
Speaker 1: could and did say, you know, thanks, but no thanks.
Speaker 1: She she was happy to meet with you know, groups
Speaker 1: on all sides, but didn't but didn't want to kind
Speaker 1: of get hooked in with with this first offer of
Speaker 1: one hundred thousand dollars, with the pledge that there was lots,
Speaker 1: you know, lots more behind it.
Speaker 13: You know.
Speaker 1: Instead you're now seeing you know, tens of millions and
Speaker 1: potentially up to one hundred million dollars you know, being
Speaker 1: spent against the squad in the in the next cycle
Speaker 1: to you know, wipe them out as a political.
Speaker 3: Entity and tell us about how your book was covered
Speaker 3: by I believe it's the Daily Mail in the New
Speaker 3: York Post.
Speaker 1: Which yeah, and Daily Daily Mail I had forgotten for
Speaker 1: someone in Daily Mail is not murderck onus, but it's
Speaker 1: part of that, like you know, right way ecosystem. It
Speaker 1: It was, it's been kind of surreal to to watch, Uh. Basically,
Speaker 1: they you know, they got some early copies of the
Speaker 1: book and took you know, quotes by people who were
Speaker 1: quoted in the book, attributed them, attributed them to me,
Speaker 1: and then kind of elevated Like for instance, there was
Speaker 1: one where one person for Sunrise said that one element
Speaker 1: of the Green New Deal rollout was a you know,
Speaker 1: a cluster uh. And instead of quoting that person, they
Speaker 1: attribute to me and they and they say that I
Speaker 1: report in the book that the entire Green New.
Speaker 4: Deal was a giant cluster.
Speaker 1: Uh and and that and and that the whole the
Speaker 1: whole thing was just wild to what you know, it's
Speaker 1: it's because you know, like that, No, none of these,
Speaker 1: none of these things are in the book.
Speaker 4: I didn't. I didn't say these things at all.
Speaker 1: There are some criticisms in the book, but they come from,
Speaker 1: you know, in earnest places like what what lessons can
Speaker 1: be learned? One of the other funny and it's funny
Speaker 1: isn't the right word, but funny examples was you know
Speaker 1: that I say that, you know, she became a like
Speaker 1: a pariah and closed off to all these donors without
Speaker 1: setting close off these big donors, without without adding the
Speaker 1: context that her decision to be closed off to these
Speaker 1: major donors is a good thing and is a function
Speaker 1: of the squad's ability in the Bernie Standers Wings ability
Speaker 1: to kind of raise so many small done dollars, and
Speaker 1: that that then appears to be a threat to the
Speaker 1: rest of the caucus, and they kind of flip that
Speaker 1: on its head into into you know, whatever weird cynical
Speaker 1: kind of framing they put on top of it. It's
Speaker 1: you know, I've obviously seen that the kind of Murdoch
Speaker 1: empire do that for years, but it was kind of
Speaker 1: surreal to like be in the middle of it, and
Speaker 1: probably for you too, since you actually had read the
Speaker 1: book and you read these pieces and you're like, h no,
Speaker 1: that's not that's not right.
Speaker 3: I mean yeah, I think someone probably read it really
Speaker 3: quickly and just kind of ran with the vibe.
Speaker 4: Yeah, like this will click. Yeah, let's just slap this up.
Speaker 1: And then next thing, you know, it's like just absolutely
Speaker 1: everywhere in conservative media, it's like bizarre, just utterly bizarre.
Speaker 3: Ryan Graham, Conservative media, darkling. Yeah, all right, let's move
Speaker 3: on to the Middle East and Vadimir Putin's trips to
Speaker 3: the Middle East. Vladimir Putin actually just landed in the
Speaker 3: UAE a couple of hours ago as we're speaking here.
Speaker 6: Now.
Speaker 3: Remember the Sheikh of the UAE, Schik Mohammad Benzeed, actually
Speaker 3: was the one who sort of positioned himself to negotiate
Speaker 3: the release of Brittany Griner. So there's so many interesting
Speaker 3: dynamics Putin is going later today to Saudi Arabia. According
Speaker 3: to Russian government spokesman, they're going to be talking about
Speaker 3: the war in Ukraine, They're going to be talking about
Speaker 3: the war in Gaza, and of course they're going to
Speaker 3: be talking about oil productions. So in Saudi Arabia in particular,
Speaker 3: we can put the element up on the screen. While
Speaker 3: the kingdom has made a voluntary oil production cut of
Speaker 3: one million barrels a day, The New York Times reports,
Speaker 3: Russia has contributed smaller cuts to its exports, but not
Speaker 3: its production, despite Saudi attempts to convince Russian officials to
Speaker 3: take more action. Another important thing here, Putin is actually
Speaker 3: on Thursday in Moscow hosting the ARRAY president, and he
Speaker 3: hasn't Putin himself has not traveled beyond China, Iran and
Speaker 3: some former Soviet states actually since he first invaded Ukraine
Speaker 3: back in February twenty twenty two. So he's doing UAE
Speaker 3: Saudi Arabia in one day and then hosting Iran in
Speaker 3: Moscow the next day and set to negotiate over oil.
Speaker 3: Actually a pro to Russia government daily paper, as The
Speaker 3: New York Times notes reported on Tuesday that Russia would
Speaker 3: not oppose conducting talks with Ukraine in a European country
Speaker 3: like Hungary. So with these sort of three front talking
Speaker 3: about Ukraine, talking about Israel and Gaza, and talking about oil. Ryan,
Speaker 3: You've made some really interesting points about a Trump Biden
Speaker 3: matchup in twenty twenty four and oil in particular. When
Speaker 3: you have the Saudi royal family very close to Jared
Speaker 3: Kushner and very close to the Trumps, what could potentially
Speaker 3: happen on that front when you talk about the American election,
Speaker 3: could potentially affect the conflicts and US support military support
Speaker 3: for the Ukrainian military and Ukrainian government, and for the
Speaker 3: Israeli military and the Israeli government. That's all on the
Speaker 3: line in the next year, which we're rapidly careening towards.
Speaker 3: So pretty interesting timing for this trip.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly when Trump was president, you know, he twice publicly,
Speaker 1: you know, browbeat Mohammad and Salmon of Saudi Arabia to
Speaker 1: manipulate gas prices for electoral purposes. In first in twenty eighteen,
Speaker 1: you wanted gas prices down for those midterms, and then
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty the collapse of gas prices was threatened
Speaker 1: to create its own economic crisis.
Speaker 4: By triggering all kinds of weird defaults.
Speaker 1: If you remember, there was a time where oil was
Speaker 1: selling it like below zero dollars a barrel, and that
Speaker 1: can like just call that can cause like mayhem in markets.
Speaker 1: And so he urged you know, MBS to kind of
Speaker 1: you know, pull back on production, to kind of rescue
Speaker 1: and did it every time. When as Biden has you know,
Speaker 1: pushed n BS, he's had much less success. The reporting
Speaker 1: and the analysis that I've seen is is pretty strongly
Speaker 1: indicative of the fact that you know, n b S
Speaker 1: would love to see Republicans, you know, come come back
Speaker 1: and off as Saudi Arabia has become more aligned with
Speaker 1: with Republicans, There's been some reporting that you know, Putin
Speaker 1: thinks that you know, he might be able to get
Speaker 1: a better deal with Trump, uh than that with Biden.
Speaker 1: So you do have this interesting situation where, you know,
Speaker 1: the elections are so organized around gas prices sometimes that
Speaker 1: you end up kind of outsourcing uh power over moving
Speaker 1: the needle of our electoral dial to two people like uh,
Speaker 1: you know, uh nb Z, n B S, Putin, et cetera.
Speaker 1: And also I can confirm out here with Los Angeles,
Speaker 1: they want like six dollars a gallon for guests. I
Speaker 1: thought that I thought they were making that up there.
Speaker 1: I'm like, there's no way, no. Gavin Newsom incredible.
Speaker 3: Blame Ryan Grimm's Green agenda, the Grim Green agenda.
Speaker 4: That's true. We have failed state out here, tell you what.
Speaker 3: But actually, in the vacuum of what's perceived as US leadership,
Speaker 3: other countries have started trying to negotiate sort of peace
Speaker 3: deals in Ukraine and in the Middle East, which has
Speaker 3: been kind of fascinating to watch because we really haven't
Speaker 3: seen that seriously in a matter of years, perhaps a
Speaker 3: matter of decades really, and business insiders headline about the
Speaker 3: Putin trip is that he seeks to humiliate Biden by
Speaker 3: showing him that attempts to isolate Russia have failed. I mean,
Speaker 3: I don't know that that's his primary goal, but that
Speaker 3: is definitely, I think probably an intended outcome from Vladimir
Speaker 3: put In this case that he hasn't traveled outside of
Speaker 3: Russia ran China since the invasion, and now that there's
Speaker 3: another hot conflict, two hot conflicts that the US is
Speaker 3: waging almost as proxy wars, obviously as a proxy war
Speaker 3: in Ukraine and arguably is a proxy war in Israel
Speaker 3: and Gaza. And precisely, by the way, with this Axis
Speaker 3: of Evil formulation. We've heard this from Netanyahu, We've heard
Speaker 3: this from other people about the alliance between Russia, Iran
Speaker 3: and China, and then Iran's relationship with Hamas and Hezbollah.
Speaker 3: That's sort of been precisely the justification for US involvement
Speaker 3: and for a broad Western a sort of brick of
Speaker 3: support in this region. And this is in some ways
Speaker 3: bolstering those sort of claims. But on the other hand,
Speaker 3: if you have the Saudis squeezed between Trump and Biden
Speaker 3: and Putin, I mean, these dynamics are just so it's
Speaker 3: a very fragile ecosystem. I'm a very fragile ecosystem.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and congratulations, I guess to Iran for making it
Speaker 1: being the only country to make it into both Access
Speaker 1: of Evils over the last twenty years, North or North
Speaker 1: Korea in Iraq you know, didn't didn't make the finals
Speaker 1: this time, replaced, I guess, part of Russia and China
Speaker 1: and this.
Speaker 4: But the US, you know, has everything.
Speaker 1: It seems like everything the US has done over the
Speaker 1: last several years has just you know, hurt the US's
Speaker 1: own standing, you know, via the va A lot of
Speaker 1: these a lot of these countries. The Abraham Accords, you know,
Speaker 1: were intended to kind of lock down US alliances with
Speaker 1: with Israel, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, buring you know, the
Speaker 1: rest of the Middle East by basically you know, cutting
Speaker 1: piece deals, ignoring the fact of the Palestinians.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 1: That hasn't that hasn't worked, and now it threatens UH
Speaker 1: to kind of drive a wedge in between Israel, Saudi Arabia,
Speaker 1: u A and and others, which you know, it seems
Speaker 1: like Uten is happy to kind of you know, waltz
Speaker 1: into and see if he can capitalize on that. The
Speaker 1: other US strategy was to rip up the Iran deal
Speaker 1: and then Biden failed to get back into it, which
Speaker 1: has then you know, for you know, for further isolated Iran,
Speaker 1: and you know, it has done nothing obviously to reduce
Speaker 1: its support for its proxies around the world. You know,
Speaker 1: amash Uh it's you know, it's climbed and you know
Speaker 1: the Randak Boothy's whether the Syrian or Iraqi militias or
Speaker 1: Hezbola Uh and so and then that that then you
Speaker 1: know further kind of pushes them closer to uh, to
Speaker 1: China and to Russia. And so you just constantly see
Speaker 1: a receding of American influence through decisions that we continue
Speaker 1: to make. And then you throw on top of that
Speaker 1: our our belief that by you know, financing the Ukrainian
Speaker 1: kind of resistance to the Russian invasion that we were
Speaker 1: going to you know, dramatically weaken Russia's military capacity. You know,
Speaker 1: it appears like, you know, Russia's military capacity in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty two was actually pretty weak.
Speaker 4: You know, they collapsed, you know, pretty pretty quickly.
Speaker 1: But you know, two years later they see, you know,
Speaker 1: under the strain of this of actual combat, it seems
Speaker 1: like in some ways we have actually kind of you know,
Speaker 1: strengthened them as well as you know, tightened their relationships
Speaker 1: with other global South.
Speaker 4: Countries as well.
Speaker 1: So, you know, even on its own terms, it doesn't
Speaker 1: seem like any of the belligerents that the US is
Speaker 1: engaged with is actually even benefiting the United States, let
Speaker 1: alone all of the colladal damage that it's doing.
Speaker 3: That is such an important point because even on the
Speaker 3: sort of hawkish terms, when you're looking at what the
Speaker 3: war in Ukraine and now the war in Gaza have
Speaker 3: done to a public support for militarism abroad, but b
Speaker 3: and most importantly from Putin's perspective, to our military industrial base.
Speaker 3: So a whole lot of people are arguing that the
Speaker 3: war in Ukraine, a whole lot of I guess neo
Speaker 3: conservative warhawks are arguing that the war in Ukraine has
Speaker 3: just re emboldened the US industrial base that we are
Speaker 3: getting back to nineteen forty five and the thriving military
Speaker 3: industrial complex that we so badly need, and it's just
Speaker 3: bringing the American economy into full bloom. And actually that's
Speaker 3: not what's happening. If you look at people who are
Speaker 3: particularly concerned, even hawkish people that are particularly concerned about Taiwan,
Speaker 3: that are particularly concerned about how long it's going to
Speaker 3: take to onshore chips manufacturing in the United States even
Speaker 3: with the Chips Act, all this has done has depleted
Speaker 3: our capacity to again, even by sort of hawkish terms,
Speaker 3: support Taiwan in the case of an invasion. And we
Speaker 3: have her Shei Jinpang, who's allied with Ladibir Putin, talking
Speaker 3: very clearly about the sort of he usually says, like
Speaker 3: the peaceful, the peaceful unification process as it relates to
Speaker 3: Taiwan and everything like that. But the reality is the
Speaker 3: United States relies on Taiwan for national security, for a huge,
Speaker 3: huge chunk of our economy and our ability to sort
Speaker 3: of function with the technological necessities that we've come to
Speaker 3: depend on. And so if these two conflicts are affecting
Speaker 3: public support for militarism, and if they're affecting our actual
Speaker 3: ability to engage in a military conflict elsewhere, you can
Speaker 3: see very clearly how Putin would be finding allies in
Speaker 3: places like Iran and China and how those relations would
Speaker 3: be short up because there's a sort of mutually beneficial
Speaker 3: outcome of you know, pushing the US to burn more
Speaker 3: and more resources in Ukraine. And Putting obviously has his
Speaker 3: own problems. He's lost tens of thousands of people in battle,
Speaker 3: and you know, lost was not initially as successful as
Speaker 3: you know, they sort of expected to be in Ukraine.
Speaker 3: But this is, you know, even by I think it's
Speaker 3: such an important point, Even by the standards that the
Speaker 3: Hawks purport to be seeking, they're falling wildly short, and
Speaker 3: the Biden administration is falling falling wildly short, and just
Speaker 3: I'm reminded of what Jake Sullivan said before October seventh,
Speaker 3: and about the Biden administration sort of perpetuation of the
Speaker 3: Abraham Accords, although some conservatives would argue that its relationship
Speaker 3: with Iran had undercut its approval for the Abraham Accords.
Speaker 3: Jake Sullivan said, you've never seen such peace in the
Speaker 3: Middle East. They just keep getting sort of smacked left
Speaker 3: and right by reality.
Speaker 1: Speaking of the global South, a bizarre little development we
Speaker 1: can talk about for for a minute here over and
Speaker 1: over in South Asia. So you know, if you know,
Speaker 1: people who've been watching the show know that over at
Speaker 1: the intercept and here we've been doing a bunch of
Speaker 1: reporting both about UH, the the US role in UH,
Speaker 1: the ouster of in Ran Khan in Pakistan, and also
Speaker 1: about India's now sprawling kind of global assassination program.
Speaker 8: UH.
Speaker 1: And these stories are not exactly related, but one thing
Speaker 1: that they have in common is that you know, we've
Speaker 1: we've been reporting on them, and we've drawn kind of
Speaker 1: on documents that we've gotten from sources and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: let's say, uh, let's just leave it at sources from
Speaker 1: over there, which has drawn the attention now of what
Speaker 1: appears to be uh the the either Pakistani intelligence apparatus
Speaker 1: or military apparatus is one of the most bizarre and
Speaker 1: you know, kind of pitiful attempts to counteract reporting that
Speaker 1: I've seen. But we can play this little clip from
Speaker 1: this kind of account, this called I think it's called
Speaker 1: PTI Insider, which is broadly understood in Pakistan to be
Speaker 1: kind of a front for the kind of Pakistan military establishment.
Speaker 1: And what what we're not to play for you is
Speaker 1: is alleged and this is not a parody, Like as
Speaker 1: you're listening to it, you're going to think this is
Speaker 1: a parody. It's it's alleged to be a leaked conversation
Speaker 1: between my intercept colleague Martaza Hussein and his alleged uh
Speaker 1: Irani not Iranian Indian basically c I a handler the CIA.
Speaker 1: The Indian CIA is called the r A w uh
Speaker 1: So and they call him something absurd, almost like mister
Speaker 1: Shwarma uh so. But let's let's play a little clip
Speaker 1: of so this was this was leaked and basically in
Speaker 1: Pakistani social media.
Speaker 10: Hello, mister Shama, how are you?
Speaker 4: I'm fine? Thank you, I hope it is safe to talk. Yes, yes,
Speaker 4: please go on right.
Speaker 10: Well, I already can read my wordes on how people
Speaker 10: have started to question the sources of my information and stories.
Speaker 10: You know now even my clothes aides have stid to
Speaker 10: question the authenticity of my information. Yeah, fine, by me.
Speaker 10: I just wanted to run it by you.
Speaker 4: It's good. If you have taken the stalk of the
Speaker 4: whole picture. I'll keep you bothting.
Speaker 10: Yes, sure, sure, thank you, thank you, all right, all right,
Speaker 10: take care.
Speaker 1: Just utterly incredible, And just for fun, let's play a
Speaker 1: very brief clip of parts himself. He appeared on Counterpoints,
Speaker 1: appeared on Breaking Points. Just let's do some voice analysis here.
Speaker 1: Let's see how effective they were at creating this fake. Well,
Speaker 1: it's a very curious relationship because in many ways Rabia
Speaker 1: is dependent on US security guarantees.
Speaker 4: Either're dependent on political guarantees from the US. They're very
Speaker 4: close times with US.
Speaker 3: I like that that clip was before Sager went full beard.
Speaker 4: It's such a different era with a thrill throwback.
Speaker 3: Sounds pretty close to me.
Speaker 4: What's so wild is that.
Speaker 1: In the era of AI you know you, I think
Speaker 1: you could probably do a pretty convincing one if you
Speaker 1: even tried, Because you know, he hosts the podcast intercepted.
Speaker 1: There's there's no shortage of his voice out there on
Speaker 1: the Internet that they could input into some AI and
Speaker 1: then spit out. It just seems like they don't even care.
Speaker 1: That they don't even care.
Speaker 3: I think that's what I was going to ask you,
Speaker 3: do they even care? I mean, it's it's just so
Speaker 3: flagrantly bad.
Speaker 1: Right, I think it And with with bots like amplifying it,
Speaker 1: they'll still you know, it's still it's going to get
Speaker 1: you know, hundreds of thousands of uh, you know, of
Speaker 1: views on throughout social media, and and it's the aim
Speaker 1: of some of that propaganda is just to give kind
Speaker 1: of critics something to kind of point to, so you
Speaker 1: can muddy the water and say, oh yeah, there was
Speaker 1: this rememory, there was this thing. You can't trust the
Speaker 1: reporting because it's actually you know, coming from the kind
Speaker 1: of Indian intelligence agency. So therefore, you know, these these
Speaker 1: reporters are actually just just agents of India, so you
Speaker 1: shouldn't shouldn't trust them out.
Speaker 13: It was just.
Speaker 1: So that that that experience coupled with the kind of
Speaker 1: Murdoch empire to you know, reading and distorting the book.
Speaker 1: It's like this, this is a weird this's a weird
Speaker 1: world that we're kind of stepping into in this kind
Speaker 1: of post whatever truth environment we're in.
Speaker 3: Can you give us the thirty thousand foot view on
Speaker 3: why sort of strategically this shallow fake as it's been dubbed,
Speaker 3: is something that you can kind of from the raw
Speaker 3: strategic tactical standpoint, if people are, you know, behind on
Speaker 3: the reporting that units have done about Imran Khan, what's
Speaker 3: from their perspective, the strategic value of getting Murtaza to
Speaker 3: sound like this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So, first of all, people have to understand that,
Speaker 1: you know, the you know, Pakistan, Pakistan and India, you know,
Speaker 1: have this absolutely intense rivalry. Uh that uh in Pakistani
Speaker 1: internal documents they refer to r a W constantly as
Speaker 1: hostile nation Intelligence agency. They like they won't even kind
Speaker 1: of name the country, they just call it, just call
Speaker 1: it hostile nation. That's kind of how much hostility there
Speaker 1: are there is. And so if anything that you can
Speaker 1: kind of taint in the public with Indian influence, they hope,
Speaker 1: then the public is going to dismiss there's a there's
Speaker 1: an election that's going to be happening in Pakistan, which
Speaker 1: which in Imran Khan so far is not being able
Speaker 1: to UH participate in he's in prison facing you know,
Speaker 1: completely you know, trumped up charges UH. And so the
Speaker 1: US has been saying out loud that you know, Pakistan
Speaker 1: needs to allow free and fair elections and that everybody
Speaker 1: should be able to participate, but they don't act, they
Speaker 1: don't they aren't pressuring Pakistan to to require the most
Speaker 1: popular politician in Pakistan, who is in ran Kan UH,
Speaker 1: to be on the ballot. And I think that there's
Speaker 1: some and there's a lot of concern in Pakistan about
Speaker 1: the reporting that we've done because it has it has
Speaker 1: exposed the role of the Pakistani UH military and in
Speaker 1: the Maaccini military establishment in collusion with the United States
Speaker 1: and in helping to push him out of UH, having
Speaker 1: to push him out of office related to you know,
Speaker 1: his refusal to give full throat and support to Ukraine
Speaker 1: and to US's you know, the US's effort to arm
Speaker 1: the Ukrainians in the wake of his ouster. Pakistan has
Speaker 1: become a critical supplier of artillery shells for for Ukraine.
Speaker 1: And you've also seen and now Israel ramping up it's
Speaker 1: demand for artillery shells. And so you know, there aren't.
Speaker 1: There aren't a whole lot of places where all of
Speaker 1: you know, this kind of low these low grade munitions
Speaker 1: can be made. And so you know, the pack Pakistan's
Speaker 1: kind of democracy became something that could be sacrificed for
Speaker 1: the the altar of the production of these this art
Speaker 1: to these artillery shells.
Speaker 3: Another good reason to stick around for the last block
Speaker 3: of the show today, which is an interview with the
Speaker 3: author Stuart Reid on the plot his new book, because
Speaker 3: these things continue to be relevant, yes.
Speaker 4: Right, And it's a very good point. Is La Mumba
Speaker 4: was you know in the sale.
Speaker 1: We'll talk to Stuart about this in the CIA crosshairs
Speaker 1: for basically being neutral, same as im Ron Khan, not
Speaker 1: necessarily for signing against the United States, but not being
Speaker 1: full throated in support.
Speaker 4: Yes, interesting, how little changes any such cases.
Speaker 3: Absolutely. Let's move back to the United States here to
Speaker 3: talk about very big development yesterday, which is that since March,
Speaker 3: Alabama Republican Senator Tommy Tuberbill has been holding up hundreds
Speaker 3: of military nominations because the Pentagon insists on a policy,
Speaker 3: a post Dobbs Decision policy that pays for employees, mostly
Speaker 3: in blue states, to travel to get abortions. Republicans, I
Speaker 3: think have a pretty good case arguing that that's illegal
Speaker 3: because there's obviously a ban on taxpayer funding of abortions.
Speaker 3: But the Pentagon can say it's not funding for abortions,
Speaker 3: it's funding for the travel. So you sort of get
Speaker 3: into the legal weeds on that question. But Tommy Tuberville,
Speaker 3: as negotiations for funding the government and end of year,
Speaker 3: at the end of your scramble to meet all of
Speaker 3: these deadlines is coming up. Tabar Towberville agreed yesterday to
Speaker 3: drop most of the holds, but not all of the holds.
Speaker 3: Let's put this up on the screen. This is from
Speaker 3: the Hill. You see right there the headline Tuberville releasing
Speaker 3: holds on hundreds of military promotions. If I were writing
Speaker 3: this headline for even for a sort of centrist or
Speaker 3: purportedly neutral publication, I think it's really really important to note,
Speaker 3: and I would probably put it in the headline as
Speaker 3: the Hill writes, quote, A hold will remain in place
Speaker 3: for the roughly ten nominations for four star generals and officers.
Speaker 3: So yes, it's true that hundreds of other promotions are
Speaker 3: now going to move really quickly through the Senate. But
Speaker 3: to have ten four star nominations continue to be held
Speaker 3: up actually is still a very big deal because that
Speaker 3: continues to put pressure in some of the highest stake
Speaker 3: decisions and approvals over this Pentagon policy. And I want
Speaker 3: to put the next element up on the screen. This
Speaker 3: is a story from one of my colleagues at the Federalist.
Speaker 3: This is our headline, don't blame Taberville for dropping his
Speaker 3: Pentagon abortion protest, blame his feckless GPE colleagues. And why
Speaker 3: this is interesting is my colleague Sean Fleetwood has some
Speaker 3: more reporting on the intraparty dynamics that never really showed
Speaker 3: up in the kind of neutral corporate media. As Sean mentions,
Speaker 3: Tuberville actually had enough votes to include a provision nuking
Speaker 3: the Pentagon's illegal abortion policy, as Sean puts it in
Speaker 3: the twenty twenty four NDAA. Chuck Schumer, however, gutted that
Speaker 3: provision before the measure could be considered by the Upper Chamber.
Speaker 3: So word got to Schumer. If you talk to sources
Speaker 3: with knowledge of the situation, word gets to Schumer is
Speaker 3: the assumption, and he says, we're not voting on this.
Speaker 3: So Tuberville does everything to get the votes to say,
Speaker 3: if Joe Biden and the Pentagon are not going to
Speaker 3: withdraw this policy on their own, we're actually going to
Speaker 3: pass it through Congress, and we're going to get Democrats
Speaker 3: support for it because there is this provision against prohibition
Speaker 3: on tax fair funding for abortion. And he did he
Speaker 3: had that, but Chuck Schumer outmaneuvered him, because obviously Democrats
Speaker 3: control the Senate and the White House and they wanted
Speaker 3: to actually move something through the Rules Committee. He had
Speaker 3: a resolution he is going to pass the Rules Committee
Speaker 3: that if it was approved by sixty senators would have,
Speaker 3: as Sean puts it, effectively allowed their parties to circumvent
Speaker 3: Tuberville's protest and permit the Pentagon's policy to go unchallenged.
Speaker 3: And the worry there from even the staunchest pro life
Speaker 3: anti abortion senators was that is setting a terrifying precedent
Speaker 3: for how the Senate would operate in the future. So,
Speaker 3: as Sean puts it again, this left Turberville with no
Speaker 3: good options. This is on everyone who sold them out,
Speaker 3: a Hill staffer, senior Hill staffer told the Federalist, and
Speaker 3: not on Tuberville himself. This was a huge rallying moment
Speaker 3: for the conservative movement over the course of the last year.
Speaker 3: But as the attack on Israel on October seventh happened,
Speaker 3: and then as actually you started to see, like for example, Ohio,
Speaker 3: the results come in from Issue one in Ohio, more
Speaker 3: and more pressure hit Tommy Tuberville, who basically shocked his
Speaker 3: Republican colleagues. Nobody expected him to have a strong ideological
Speaker 3: position on abortion, Nobody expected him to be so hostile
Speaker 3: to leadership and to become sort of a conservative stallwart.
Speaker 3: Who knows where this goes on other issues. But again
Speaker 3: from my read of the situation of talking to people
Speaker 3: in these circles is Tuberville was furious by the way
Speaker 3: he was treated by the Republican establishment, and this is
Speaker 3: all of their attacks on him made him handle this,
Speaker 3: or it made him continue this from March until now
Speaker 3: instead of caving at any given point because of the
Speaker 3: way Republican leadership treated him. And it's interesting because he
Speaker 3: got a taste of how Republican leadership has treated people
Speaker 3: who take serious conservative positions in line with their voters' positions,
Speaker 3: but not in line was sort of the Beltway Publican
Speaker 3: lobbying circles positions, and we've talked about this many times.
Speaker 3: You know, parallels between the Freedom Caucus and the Squad,
Speaker 3: Parallels between how dem leadership Schumer operates compared to McConnell
Speaker 3: operates compared to McCarthy. There's all kinds of interesting dynamics
Speaker 3: about how both parties have handled populism. But Ryan, I
Speaker 3: just want to ask you about that question of how
Speaker 3: this coverage has been handled, because again, my headline wouldn't
Speaker 3: have been Tuberville caves. It would have been Tuverville blackmailed
Speaker 3: by Republicans into dropping popular conservative position. I just I
Speaker 3: think the media got the story really wrong since March.
Speaker 1: Basically and so and so people understand the the Senate
Speaker 1: kind of dynamics and rules here. If what an individual
Speaker 1: senator can do is you put a hold on a
Speaker 1: nominee and the Senate can override that. If you have
Speaker 1: sixty votes, you can override a whole But that takes
Speaker 1: almost a week of Florida time to do that. And so,
Speaker 1: as you said, there were hundreds of eventually thousands kind
Speaker 1: of a nomination. The guy you know wants to become
Speaker 1: a captain or a court appointed colonel. That promotion, you know,
Speaker 1: bizarrely to me, kind of has to go through the
Speaker 1: Senate for approval, and so there just isn't enough floor
Speaker 1: time to handle each each individual one. And so you had,
Speaker 1: you know, all, you know, all of these promotions just
Speaker 1: hanging in limbo. People you know, couldn't move and you know,
Speaker 1: to deploy. That was causing you know all, you know,
Speaker 1: it's causing a lot of organizational you know, problems throughout
Speaker 1: throughout the military, across the board. Uh And and so
Speaker 1: finally there was so much frustration that Schumer was saying,
Speaker 1: all right, we're going to change the rules and we're
Speaker 1: going to take away this power to do this, hold
Speaker 1: in this in this circumstance, and the Senate is becoming
Speaker 1: so much like the House that they saw, like a
Speaker 1: senator saw like, if we lose this one privilege remaining
Speaker 1: that we have, than what is our role here other
Speaker 1: than just to support leadership? And so just so I understand,
Speaker 1: So your reporting is that Tuberville had sixty votes to
Speaker 1: kind of overturn the Pentagon's abortion policy, so that you
Speaker 1: would have had almost ten or more Democrats willing to
Speaker 1: go along. And why, you know, the Democratic Caucus is
Speaker 1: pretty pro choice at this point. Why do you think
Speaker 1: that they were willing to go along with it just
Speaker 1: to end end the blockade of all of these nominations.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it's exactly that. It gives them a
Speaker 3: talking point to say that they worked to end the
Speaker 3: blockade and to you know, bolster national security and then
Speaker 3: on the other hand, a textpayer funding of abortion is
Speaker 3: I mean, A, I think there's a pretty good argument
Speaker 3: that the policy was illegal to begin with, but b
Speaker 3: not super popular across the board, so their constituents, I mean,
Speaker 3: I think that's a pretty easy sell for their constituents,
Speaker 3: especially if they can wrap it in the packaging that
Speaker 3: they helped, you know, secure military readiness, which is another
Speaker 3: really point, by the way, because the corporate media has
Speaker 3: unsurprisingly run with the Pentagon's narrative and the Biden administration's narrative,
Speaker 3: and it's been interesting to see the confluence of the
Speaker 3: sort of pro choice left and Defense Department. Pentagon talking
Speaker 3: point here, which is that it is absolutely essential to
Speaker 3: national security. They won't tell you how many times the
Speaker 3: policy has been used over the course of the last
Speaker 3: couple of years, but they do say that it's absolutely
Speaker 3: essential to national security. To have this policy and that
Speaker 3: Tommy Tuberville has his hold has severely damaged military readiness,
Speaker 3: and the corporate press has really run with that line
Speaker 3: in a way to kind of make Tommy Taberville look
Speaker 3: like a rube. Like this, you know, Alabama redneck cares
Speaker 3: more about his r religious fanaticism than he does about
Speaker 3: the military. So there are all kinds of like interesting
Speaker 3: cross sections here. But why that's interesting is if this,
Speaker 3: if military readiness was on the line, this is a
Speaker 3: policy that probably affects maybe at most like a couple
Speaker 3: dozen people a year, you would you know that the
Speaker 3: Pentsagon would have dropped the policy immediately if military readiness
Speaker 3: were actually like really a big concern here. What this
Speaker 3: is about is them not wanting to get smacked around
Speaker 3: by Republicans. They have had that relationship on lock for
Speaker 3: decades and what they don't want is to give into
Speaker 3: what they think of as the crazy wing of the
Speaker 3: Republican Party. It's just as simple as that, and from
Speaker 3: their perspective, understandable strategy because they thought if they gave
Speaker 3: in that they would be vulnerable to cuts to Ukraine,
Speaker 3: to cuts to all kinds of different things. Their powers
Speaker 3: surveillance powers, et cetera, et cetera. I think right at
Speaker 3: least that's what ultimately their fear was.
Speaker 1: There's also an interesting political realignment going on within the
Speaker 1: officer class of the military, which I don't know if
Speaker 1: it played into this or not, but I think it's
Speaker 1: useful context. Just as the parties have become polarized around
Speaker 1: around education, if you have, if you have a college
Speaker 1: degree or higher, you're more likely at this point to
Speaker 1: vote Democratic.
Speaker 4: If you don't, you're more likely to vote Republican.
Speaker 1: Officer class, you know, those are those are also those
Speaker 1: are basically college graduates, like almost across the board, and
Speaker 1: as a result, they have they have been driven by
Speaker 1: the same kind of polarization around education. And you you know,
Speaker 1: you you kind of think in a vulgar way, military
Speaker 1: they must be they must be conservative, they must support Republicans.
Speaker 1: But the officer class leans pretty heavily at this point
Speaker 1: democratic in their in their preferences. Now they're very you know,
Speaker 1: staunchly kind of a political as you know, uh as
Speaker 1: as military men and women. They don't they're not burning people, no, no,
Speaker 1: but and they're also not you know, they're not they're
Speaker 1: not actively like lobbying in the way they like, or
Speaker 1: or running the country the way that Pakistans uh military
Speaker 1: is that there is a very strong culture of separating,
Speaker 1: you know, the military and civilian, but personally a lot
Speaker 1: of them are becoming voters for Democrats.
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely, post Trump because you know, again, like Trump
Speaker 3: was campaigned basically on the problems with the military industrial
Speaker 3: complex of the Pentagon, and that's again, I think ultimately
Speaker 3: what this is about. They were at loggerheads. They feel
Speaker 3: very threatened by a Republican party. And of course Joni
Speaker 3: Ernst and Dan Sullivan and Mitch mcconnald. Mitch McConnell criticized
Speaker 3: Tubberville immediately, like basically right out of the gate, within
Speaker 3: the first couple of months of the hold because what
Speaker 3: is more sacred to We talked about this when the
Speaker 3: Dobbs decision was announced. It's I think, again a big
Speaker 3: misconception in the media. What is more sacred to elite
Speaker 3: Republicans who run the GOP than abortion, oh, the military
Speaker 3: and low taxes. And I could keep going a million
Speaker 3: other priorities other than like social conservatism, and so I
Speaker 3: think this was a real test of that, and I
Speaker 3: think the McConnell's and Sullivan's of the world are genuinely
Speaker 3: afraid of the post Trump cracks in that consensus about
Speaker 3: the mic and all of that. So ultimately, I think
Speaker 3: that's what this was about, and I'm glad we got
Speaker 3: a chance to talk about it because I think the
Speaker 3: rest of the media missed the story.
Speaker 4: Is fascinating to watch this unfold, that's for sure.
Speaker 3: House Republicans announced this week that they're actually going to
Speaker 3: be moving forward on the impeachment of Joe Biden next week.
Speaker 3: That's their plan. Atista ss at the beginning of the
Speaker 3: show saying that basically they have nothing to do, which
Speaker 3: was a little glib, but it is actually true that
Speaker 3: in addition to now an open impeachment inquiry, that they
Speaker 3: say they have the votes for Speaker. Mike Johnson actually
Speaker 3: mentioned that on the Sunday shows this week. He says
Speaker 3: he has enough votes now that George Santis is gone.
Speaker 3: They have a three vote majority, so that means basically
Speaker 3: every Republican is going to have to vote to open
Speaker 3: an impeachment inquiry. Formally, it's something that Kevin McCarthy didn't have.
Speaker 3: Just a couple of months ago, he said that they
Speaker 3: were going to start opening this impeachment inquiry, but whether
Speaker 3: they had enough votes to formally do that was a
Speaker 3: different question. So Jim Jordan has come out, we can
Speaker 3: put this first element up on the screen and said
Speaker 3: he hopes that the vote would the House would vote
Speaker 3: quote as soon as possible, and as early possibly as
Speaker 3: this week. It looks like it's going to be next
Speaker 3: week now. He says, we think it's helpful to have
Speaker 3: that vote because we do think that someone will take
Speaker 3: us to court. Constitutionally, it's not required. I think another
Speaker 3: important part of that is he says Republicans have not
Speaker 3: yet made a decision on what the charges against President
Speaker 3: Biden would be. As NPR puts it, Jordan said he
Speaker 3: still wants to talk to roughly ten people over the
Speaker 3: course of six to seven weeks, and those witnesses would
Speaker 3: include Hunter Biden, James Biden, Frank Biden, and some of
Speaker 3: their business associates, probably just James Biden. And also, following
Speaker 3: up on the whistleblower claims that there was slow walking
Speaker 3: of this at the DOJ and potentially at the IRS
Speaker 3: as well. Ryan, this comes as the amount of time
Speaker 3: versus the amount of work that has to be done
Speaker 3: to fund the government by different deadlines at the end
Speaker 3: of the year. You Republicans, I don't think. I don't
Speaker 3: think Republican leadership is super eager to have to deal
Speaker 3: with this. But also maybe they also think, like McCarthy
Speaker 3: did just a couple of months ago, this will make
Speaker 3: it easier for their voters to sort of swallow the
Speaker 3: pill of potentially bad deals on end of your funding.
Speaker 4: I don't know, right, it's like kind of short term stability.
Speaker 1: Trading and trading for kind of long term stability, which
Speaker 1: you were going to talk about later with Stuart Reed
Speaker 1: and the La Mumba plot. The way that the kind
Speaker 1: of us would think about some of this stuff abroad,
Speaker 1: It's like the House Republicans are creating all sorts of
Speaker 1: future problems for themselves so that they can, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: just get through the next day or the next week.
Speaker 1: But this comes after Kevin McCarthy I've just announced that
Speaker 1: he was going to do an impeachment inquiry. Uh, didn't
Speaker 1: put it onto the floor in the way that you're
Speaker 1: you know that you're opposed to just it's an impeachment inquiry.
Speaker 4: So therefore we have the official powers of impeachment.
Speaker 1: And this is sort of an acknowledgment by Johnson that, Okay,
Speaker 1: actually that didn't work because you know that their their
Speaker 1: ability to kind of get some of the records and
Speaker 1: documents and interviews that they wanted, you know, has not
Speaker 1: has not met with the kind of impeachment level. But
Speaker 1: at the same time, they don't have, like you said,
Speaker 1: they don't have charges. They don't have they're just kind
Speaker 1: of vaguely saying we're going to launch an inquiry. In
Speaker 1: the past, in order to vote to impeach, you actually
Speaker 1: had to have some pretty significant evidence.
Speaker 4: Now they're saying we're going to vote to I'll launch
Speaker 4: this impeachment. Where to go find the evidence?
Speaker 1: And that's a that's a new thing and probably undermines
Speaker 1: kind of the potency in general of impeachment, which is
Speaker 1: mostly it seems like at this point drained of any
Speaker 1: of its power. Just it's just a partisan tool at
Speaker 1: this time to feed to uh, you know, whichever whichever
Speaker 1: base is upset that it's an agenda is not being enacted,
Speaker 1: so at least we can impeach the guy.
Speaker 3: And you know, you you've actually covered the pretty serious
Speaker 3: evidence of corruption against the Biden family in the past,
Speaker 3: so it's not you know, we both I mean, I
Speaker 3: think we both see that as a very serious thing.
Speaker 3: And I don't begrudge Republicans for doing this at all,
Speaker 3: to be perfectly honest, because the former president has been
Speaker 3: indicted four times, and some of those are much stronger
Speaker 3: cases than others. Maybe one of them is a much
Speaker 3: stronger case than the other three. There's clearly political law
Speaker 3: fare going on, and the Biden family is clearly corrupt,
Speaker 3: and now the degree of that corruption is a different question,
Speaker 3: and that's what Republicans are right now trying to prove.
Speaker 3: Jim Comer came out on Monday what I saw referred
Speaker 3: to in some corners of the Conservative precess quote a
Speaker 3: smoking gun, and that's the kind of rub is that
Speaker 3: the evidence was regular payments were coming from And I
Speaker 3: actually have how NPR put it because I found it
Speaker 3: very amusing. House Chairman House over Chairman Jim Comber posted
Speaker 3: a video on social media on Monday laying out allegations,
Speaker 3: including reporting that bank records a panel has indicate that
Speaker 3: Hunter Biden set up an account that sent monthly payments
Speaker 3: to his father in twenty eighteen, and then NPR goes
Speaker 3: on to say, but press reports indicate that the payments
Speaker 3: were related to repaying personal loans from his father. It
Speaker 3: looks like it was a truck that these were payments about,
Speaker 3: like a forward raptor an NPR saying, oh, but it
Speaker 3: was just a personal loan, when we know at the
Speaker 3: time from records that Hunter Biden is flush with cash
Speaker 3: from business deals in China, specifically China at that time
Speaker 3: and around the world, and saying that none of this
Speaker 3: could have anything to do but it's just personal. I
Speaker 3: thought that sort of hand waving from NPR was like
Speaker 3: incredibly unhelpful and sort of exactly why Republicans are saying,
Speaker 3: screw it. If the media is going to dismiss all
Speaker 3: of this and just going to, you know, sort of
Speaker 3: do the Biden family's bidding by being dismissive of what
Speaker 3: does appear to be serious influence pedaling all well, saying
Speaker 3: that Donald Trump was an influence peddling on behalf of
Speaker 3: the Russians for years in daily news cycles. You can understand,
Speaker 3: you know, on both levels, A the level of like
Speaker 3: the probably corruption here, there was definitely corruption here, and
Speaker 3: B the media is not talking about it. I don't
Speaker 3: think the sort of democrats do themselves if they want to,
Speaker 3: you know, kind of get the country back to some
Speaker 3: semblance of normalcy and defeat the scourge of right populism.
Speaker 3: They're not doing any favors by pretending none of this
Speaker 3: is serious.
Speaker 4: And so to try to keep up with this stuff.
Speaker 4: So whose truck was it?
Speaker 8: Is it?
Speaker 4: Like? Who is driving the truck? Is this Hunter's truck?
Speaker 3: Hunter's?
Speaker 4: Yeah, it was Hunter's truck, and he's paying.
Speaker 1: But if Hunter's paying for the truck and Hunter's driving
Speaker 1: the truck, well, why is I must be missing something?
Speaker 4: Because why is that a payment to buy Joe Biden?
Speaker 1: Or so it's about reas that they arranged, like a
Speaker 1: payoff through a fake loan, or like is that the Well, yes,
Speaker 1: I trying to keep up with the Yeah.
Speaker 3: The problem is that Hunter at the time is he
Speaker 3: sets up this account that has the monthly payments to
Speaker 3: Joe Biden, and Joe Biden purchased the car. But Hunter
Speaker 3: is setting up this account, likely with money that's coming
Speaker 3: in from his Chinese influence peddling or his other foreign
Speaker 3: influence peddling. Therefore, the account that he's using to pay
Speaker 3: his dad back is the money he's using to pay
Speaker 3: his dad back is coming from the influence peddling is
Speaker 3: the So the smoking gun.
Speaker 4: If it's just right, but if it's just a loan,
Speaker 4: Biden is not, actually Joe Biden is.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's getting dirty money because it's from overseas, but
Speaker 1: he's only getting paid back his own money, which he
Speaker 1: got in a dirty way through like the University of
Speaker 1: Dell or University of Pennsylvania whatever. But that we can
Speaker 1: put that aside with his like weird, you know, no
Speaker 1: show job that he had up there. But that's the
Speaker 1: more normal kind of soft corruption that we do, you know,
Speaker 1: post political life for politicians.
Speaker 4: So yeah, I think they've got to have a higher
Speaker 4: bar for their smoking.
Speaker 3: Guns, exactly. Yeah, I think that's exactly right. And that's
Speaker 3: where like again, that's the rub. The media is doing
Speaker 3: a terrible job. I think Democrats are ignoring some of
Speaker 3: this at their peril. But then there is a serious
Speaker 3: there's a serious risk for overreach and obviously impeachment. Opening
Speaker 3: a formal impeachment inquiry at a very very busy time
Speaker 3: in Congress when government funding is on the line and
Speaker 3: Republicans always get blamed for that. It's an easy political
Speaker 3: football for sure. For Democrats, there's no question about it.
Speaker 3: They claim that witnesses aren't cooperating, and that's what Jim
Speaker 3: Jordan is saying. If the witnesses aren't cooperating, you need
Speaker 3: to have a formal impeachment inquiry open in order to
Speaker 3: force legally cooperation or to have a stronger hand at
Speaker 3: forcing cooperation legally. And I think there's some real merit
Speaker 3: to that, but just an interesting an interesting development to
Speaker 3: add an interesting part of the negotiations for funding the
Speaker 3: government too, because I do really think Republicans know if
Speaker 3: they don't do this, and they, you know, take they
Speaker 3: give their constituents a hard pill to swallow going into
Speaker 3: twenty twenty four with a potential government funding deal that
Speaker 3: relates to Ukraine, that relates to maybe the Pentagon and
Speaker 3: all of that. At least they'll have this to cling to,
Speaker 3: I guess.
Speaker 4: Yeah. At the same time, if they shut the government
Speaker 4: down while they're also seen to be focusing on this,
Speaker 4: it's going to make them look pretty look pretty silly.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: But so up next, though, we've got Stuart Reid talking
Speaker 1: about his new book, The Lamb Plot. Excellent book, Emily,
Speaker 1: Thank you for suggesting we have him on, let's move
Speaker 1: to Stewart next.
Speaker 3: Ryan and I both are excited to be joined this
Speaker 3: morning by author Stuart Reid, who's out with a new
Speaker 3: book called The Lamumba Plot. We can put it up
Speaker 3: on the screen here, The Secret History of the CIA
Speaker 3: and a Cold War assassination. Fantastic book. Stuart, Thank you
Speaker 3: so much for joining us this morning on Counterpoints.
Speaker 8: Thanks for having me.
Speaker 3: Of course, we actually teased this segment a little bit
Speaker 3: in a block that we did about Ryan's reporting on
Speaker 3: Imran Khan and how US has manipulated situations in other
Speaker 3: countries for our preferred outcomes in a kind of proxy sense.
Speaker 3: But maybe if we could just stay at thirty thousand
Speaker 3: feet as we start this conversation. Before we began, you
Speaker 3: answered a question to Ryan from Ryan that you spent
Speaker 3: about six years of your life on this book, so
Speaker 3: you're very intimately familiar with the La Mumba plot, obviously,
Speaker 3: but for those who aren't, could you just give a
Speaker 3: brief overview of what the La Mumba plot is, what
Speaker 3: happened to Lamumba, and what you're reporting tells us about
Speaker 3: how the US sanctioned the operation.
Speaker 13: Sure, so, Patrice Lamumba was the first prime minister of
Speaker 13: the country now known as the Democratic Republic of the
Speaker 13: Congo when it became independent from Belgium in nineteen sixty.
Speaker 13: He was that the helm as prime minister and immediately
Speaker 13: there was a crisis in the country where there was
Speaker 13: a mutiny a province seceeded total chaos, and so Lamumba eventually,
Speaker 13: after knocking on the door of the Americans for help,
Speaker 13: turns to the Soviets and asks for a military aid
Speaker 13: to help put his country back together. And in the
Speaker 13: context of the Cold War, this was seen as an
Speaker 13: unforgivable sin, and so that's when the CIA set in
Speaker 13: motion this bizarre assassination plot involving poisons that were flown
Speaker 13: to the Congo that the CIA station chief was supposed
Speaker 13: to put in the food or toothpaste of Lamumba. That
Speaker 13: poisoning plot ended up not coming to fruition, but the
Speaker 13: CIA was involved in a different way. It helped overthrow Lamumba.
Speaker 13: It helped support the man Joseph Mobutu later known as
Speaker 13: Mobutu ses Seku, who took power in a military coup
Speaker 13: and replaced Lamumba. And then crucially when La Mumba was
Speaker 13: sent to his death in January nineteen sixty one. The
Speaker 13: CIA station chief on the ground essentially gave a green
Speaker 13: light for that operation, and on January seventeenth, nineteen sixty one,
Speaker 13: La Mumba was shot dead in the breakaway province of Katonga,
Speaker 13: executed by a Congolese firing squad commanded by Belgian officers
Speaker 13: who are answering to the secessionist leaders of that province.
Speaker 13: But the CIA played a key role in green lighting
Speaker 13: La Mumba's transferred to a place where everyone knew he
Speaker 13: was going to die, Yeah, and.
Speaker 1: It came after excruciating torture that you detail in. One
Speaker 1: of the things that struck me about the book was
Speaker 1: just kind of how little I knew about the patres
Speaker 1: lammbook going into it up until practically just before he
Speaker 1: becomes prime minister.
Speaker 4: Almost he's been a political guy.
Speaker 1: He is a beer salesman, like one of the most
Speaker 1: popular spear sales was in the city, who then kind
Speaker 1: of actually recruits Mobuto into the push for independence. Mabuto
Speaker 1: was just kind of was a journalist who didn't want
Speaker 1: to become involved in in politics, and obviously that you know,
Speaker 1: that's that's it's such a you know, poignant detail that
Speaker 1: he would have recruited his friend into politics, then his
Speaker 1: friend you know, eventually helps usher usher in usher his
Speaker 1: own assassination.
Speaker 4: Can you talk a little bit.
Speaker 1: About you know, who La Mumba was and why Congo
Speaker 1: would be in a situation where where so many people
Speaker 1: who were you know, not that involved in politics would
Speaker 1: come to the forefront as soon as kind of this
Speaker 1: rapid independence on the folds.
Speaker 13: Yeah, so rapid is the key word there. The Belgians
Speaker 13: did basically no preparation for independence at all. In nineteen
Speaker 13: fifty five, there was a Belgian academic who released a
Speaker 13: plan called the thirty year Plan for the Independent of
Speaker 13: the Belgian and Congo, the idea being that by nineteen
Speaker 13: eighty five Congo would finally be ready for independence. He
Speaker 13: almost lost his job because this was seen as way
Speaker 13: too fast and aggressive a plan. Events intervened and then
Speaker 13: suddenly in the beginning of nineteen sixty the Belgians realized
Speaker 13: they had had to offload their colony, that this was
Speaker 13: not a sustainable enterprise. So what that meant is that
Speaker 13: you got the politicians in power after independence had no
Speaker 13: experience being politicians because political behavior political activity was outlawed
Speaker 13: before independence. So La Mumba is, as you mentioned, a
Speaker 13: beer salesman. He had been a postal clerk working for
Speaker 13: the colonial administration, and it was in Laopoldville, the capital
Speaker 13: of the Congo, as a beer salesman, that he really
Speaker 13: dove into politics. Had first and co founded a political party,
Speaker 13: the National Congolese Movement, and then in elections parliamentary elections
Speaker 13: held in the spring in nineteen sixty, his party won
Speaker 13: the most votes and that's why he was asked to
Speaker 13: form a government and become Prime minister. And I mean,
Speaker 13: the key thing about the moment that distinguished him was
Speaker 13: that he was incredibly charismatic. Even his bitterest foes recognized
Speaker 13: that that he really had a way with words. He
Speaker 13: was also a skilled political organizer, and he was peddling
Speaker 13: a message that was appealing, which is that the Congo
Speaker 13: had to be strong, united and independent, truly independent after independence.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and this is a key point because you know,
Speaker 3: as we saw with our bonds and Guatemala or Sukarno
Speaker 3: in Indonesia, there's this argument, especially coming from the dullist
Speaker 3: kind of faction of US foreign policy makers that these
Speaker 3: were Soviet satellite states that you know, you can't distinguish
Speaker 3: between a La Mumba and a cash shrow do it
Speaker 3: at your own peril essentially, but ideologically, Stewart, there are
Speaker 3: huge distinctions, and in fact the hostility from the US
Speaker 3: may have pushed people kind of closer to the arms
Speaker 3: of the Soviets where they may not have ever wanted
Speaker 3: to go, and in fact definitely didn't want to go.
Speaker 3: Was the kind of ideological approach that Lamimba was taking
Speaker 3: to a that kind of broader world conflict that certainly
Speaker 3: wasn't on the minds of his constituents in DRC on
Speaker 3: a kind of daily basis, but also the sort of
Speaker 3: question of global communism or what in an industrial society
Speaker 3: the right way to run a government is.
Speaker 13: One of the things that struck me in my research
Speaker 13: was how pro American Lamimba was. So for instance, he
Speaker 13: spoke of sending Congole's children to American schools, not Russian schools.
Speaker 13: He signed a multi billion dollar deal with an American
Speaker 13: entrepreneur to hand over his country's mineral and hydroelectric resources
Speaker 13: to an American and when he traveled.
Speaker 8: To Washington, d C. In July nineteen sixty.
Speaker 13: He even called on the US government to send American
Speaker 13: troops to the Congos. So none of that would suggest
Speaker 13: any sort of pro Soviet orientation. It was only after
Speaker 13: he got rebuffed by the Americans for help that he,
Speaker 13: as you said, was driven into the arms of the Soviets.
Speaker 8: And asked asked for military help.
Speaker 13: The irony here is that if you read the American
Speaker 13: cables at the time, the State Department cables, it's full
Speaker 13: of talk about what the Soviets are up to in
Speaker 13: the Congo. After the Cold War, when the archives, the
Speaker 13: Soviet archives were opened, it turned out there wasn't that
Speaker 13: much on the Congo in them at all, because the
Speaker 13: Soviets didn't really care about the country. They viewed it
Speaker 13: as a far away place where Moscow was never going
Speaker 13: to have much influence as a heavily Catholic country not
Speaker 13: amenable to communism, and in nineteen sixty the Soviet Union
Speaker 13: was not particularly powerful and didn't have a great ability
Speaker 13: to project power far abroad. Yet from the American perspective,
Speaker 13: they saw Soviet ghosts everywhere. And this is the one
Speaker 13: of the great tragedies of the story, I think, is
Speaker 13: that La Mumba was fundamentally misread by Washington, and they
Speaker 13: couldn't understand that he in fact wanted to stay neutral
Speaker 13: in the Cold War and simply wanted help putting his
Speaker 13: country back together and having his government and country survive.
Speaker 1: You see so many cases of that around the world,
Speaker 1: where the US you firmly believed that the Soviets were
Speaker 1: you know, orchestrating you know, gigantic you know, insurgencies or
Speaker 1: political plots within a country, acted on those suspicions by
Speaker 1: assassinating people or otherwise taking action, and then only to
Speaker 1: find out later that either the Soviets were actually you know,
Speaker 1: encouraging people, like in Indonesia not to engage in any
Speaker 1: type of uh you know, violence or revolutions, saying the
Speaker 1: conditions weren't right for it, or like you said, just
Speaker 1: just completely ignoring it, like with with you know, no
Speaker 1: sense from the Soviets that they had any entry into Congo.
Speaker 1: Uh you right, at one point that Kasavubu, who is
Speaker 1: kind of the more radical revolutionary, was at least a
Speaker 1: little bit more interesting to the Soviets. But even in
Speaker 1: that case, there wasn't much they could do that. It's
Speaker 1: like and La Mumba winds up as this such a
Speaker 1: tragic figure because he seemed to really believe the rhetoric
Speaker 1: that was coming, you know, from the United States it's
Speaker 1: about democracy and self determination and from the United Nations,
Speaker 1: and you've got these moments where kind of he's reaching
Speaker 1: out to the United Nations saying, you know, it's basically
Speaker 1: like calling the manager, like, hey, you know, here are
Speaker 1: the values that the world says it upholds. I share
Speaker 1: those values. I'm trying to implement those values here in Congo.
Speaker 4: What's going on? Why am I being ousted? Son? You
Speaker 4: talk a little bit about the role of the of
Speaker 4: the U n and how this unfolded.
Speaker 13: Yeah, so, so in the at the height of the crisis,
Speaker 13: Lamumba death calls on the United Nations for help, and
Speaker 13: the UN orchestrates this massive peacekeeping operation the Congo really
Speaker 13: remarkably fast operation. In a matter of days, there are
Speaker 13: thousands of troops on the ground in Congo and the
Speaker 13: UN has never done anything like this before. It's supervised,
Speaker 13: sees fires and truces, but not been responsible for restoring.
Speaker 4: Order to an entire country.
Speaker 13: Dog Hammerschuld is the Secretary General of the UN at
Speaker 13: the time, he responds with alacrity and sets up this
Speaker 13: peacekeeping mission. But then very quickly, the UN peacekeeping mission
Speaker 13: doesn't do what La Mumba wants it to do, namely
Speaker 13: to reintegrate that breakaway province, the province of Katongo, which
Speaker 13: had announced its secession. So the UN goes into Congo,
Speaker 13: imagining it can be a neutral mediator, but what it
Speaker 13: discovers pretty quickly is that they're actually important political choices
Speaker 13: that have to be made where it's going to anger
Speaker 13: one side or the other. So the UN refuses to
Speaker 13: go into Katonga at first, and Lamumba is extremely frustrated
Speaker 13: with this effecklessness on its part, and it's then that
Speaker 13: he tries the Americans, gets rebuffed, and only after that
Speaker 13: does he goes to the Soviet Union.
Speaker 4: Can you can you talk?
Speaker 1: Can you talk real quickly about how the US viewed
Speaker 1: this as a success and what the implications were for
Speaker 1: its kind of regime change policy over the next half
Speaker 1: century or more.
Speaker 13: Yeah, So, in narrow Cold War terms, the anti La
Speaker 13: Mumba operations that the CIA was undertaking, funding his enemies,
Speaker 13: bribing Mbutu to take power, organizing fake street protests against him,
Speaker 13: and so on. In narrow Cold War terms, this was
Speaker 13: a success because you got rid of a potentially pro
Speaker 13: Soviet leader in Lamumba, never mind that that's an exaggeration,
Speaker 13: and you installed in his place a supposedly pliant American
Speaker 13: pro American dictator in Joseph Mogutu, never mind that he
Speaker 13: took ANDed out to be far less pro American than
Speaker 13: American officials hoped so in that by that sense it worked.
Speaker 13: If you broad in the scope even just a little bit,
Speaker 13: to include, for instance, the plight of the Congolese people,
Speaker 13: it becomes a failure. You have Mobutu in power for
Speaker 13: thirty plus years, nourished by American aid, nearly to the
Speaker 13: very end, ran the country into the ground, extraordinary, extraordinarily kleptocratic, repressive,
Speaker 13: and so on, and his regime's implosion kicked off a
Speaker 13: massive civil war that killed millions. And also, I would
Speaker 13: argue you didn't even need to get rid of La
Speaker 13: Mumba to have a country that was not communists and
Speaker 13: not pro Soviet. There's no world in which Lamuba was
Speaker 13: about to, after having thrown off the Belgian colonial yolk,
Speaker 13: was going to turn around and allow his country to
Speaker 13: be dominated by the Soviets, yet within the CIA this
Speaker 13: was viewed as a success. Larry Devil in the CIA
Speaker 13: Station chief got promoted for his work in the Congo,
Speaker 13: he won at least won an award for it, and
Speaker 13: then throughout the rest of the Cold War, as you know,
Speaker 13: there's this pattern of yet more instances where the CIA
Speaker 13: is intervening on behalf of a friendly tyrant and against
Speaker 13: the wishes of the democratic impulse of the broader population.
Speaker 13: So this was not something that was invented in Congo,
Speaker 13: but I would argue was really perfected and most shown
Speaker 13: as a success quote unquote in Congo in nineteen sixty
Speaker 13: in nineteen sixty one, and would be a pattern that
Speaker 13: would continue throughout the rest of the Cold War and arguably.
Speaker 8: To this day.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and if people are watching the show out of order,
Speaker 3: they should go check out the block we did on
Speaker 3: Immron Khan because to that point, to this day, there
Speaker 3: are still sort of strategic approaches that in some ways
Speaker 3: mirror this, Maybe not exactly, but in some ways, Stuart,
Speaker 3: do you actually have thoughts on that before we wrap
Speaker 3: as to how this you do see that creeping that
Speaker 3: mentality continue to sort of privately as we get reporting,
Speaker 3: but also in some ways it's almost a public stance
Speaker 3: of the US government in certain cases that this is
Speaker 3: a mentality that makes sense.
Speaker 8: I mean, take the case of Africa today.
Speaker 13: If you look at US policy on the continent, it's
Speaker 13: very much security, have a counter terrorism focused there's still
Speaker 13: this idea that the goal should be stability above all else,
Speaker 13: and short term stability above long term stability. So you
Speaker 13: see across the Sahel, for instance, America having sort of
Speaker 13: supported building up the military institutions in various countries at
Speaker 13: the expense of civil institutions. So there's that tendency that continues.
Speaker 13: I think the broader lesson of nineteen sixty nineteen sixty
Speaker 13: one into Congo is the danger of paranoia, and that
Speaker 13: Americans were obsessed with what the Soviets were seemingly up
Speaker 13: to and invented all sorts of apparitions in their And
Speaker 13: so the lesson is that your geopolitical rival is often
Speaker 13: not ten feet tall, perfectly competent. And today you see
Speaker 13: a lot of hyperventilation about what China and Russia are
Speaker 13: up to in Africa, But if you actually sort of
Speaker 13: look at the.
Speaker 8: Facts and what's really happening, it becomes less alarming.
Speaker 3: If you like books like Devil's Chess Board and Chaos,
Speaker 3: you will like the La Mumbo Plot. Make sure to
Speaker 3: pick up a copy of Sure Stewart. It makes a
Speaker 3: great holiday gift as well as Stuart Read, author of
Speaker 3: the La Mumba Plot.
Speaker 8: Thank you so much for joining us, Thanks for having me.
Speaker 8: This is fun.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, we'll be back with more right after this. Well, Ryan, Actually,
Speaker 3: there are a couple of developments that happened as we
Speaker 3: were taping the show this morning. One would be that
Speaker 3: Norman Lear passed away, and I wanted to acknowledge that
Speaker 3: because it's a huge cultural development and he had so
Speaker 3: much influence and did so much to shape American political culture,
Speaker 3: American family culture. So it's very very sad to hear
Speaker 3: the news that Norman Lear passed. Did you big all
Speaker 3: in the Family fan? Yeah?
Speaker 4: That was great? Yes, ye are me r P that's right? Yeah,
Speaker 4: our r I P R I P Norman Lear.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Incredible show and the way that like Archie Bunker, was
Speaker 1: supposed to be designed to be like a parody of
Speaker 1: the worst of the impulses of kind of America's white
Speaker 1: working class and ended up becoming kind of a hero
Speaker 1: rather than an.
Speaker 4: Antihero for so many people.
Speaker 1: Very kind of foreshadowed the Nixon kind of resentment and
Speaker 1: the rise of the Reagan Revolution.
Speaker 3: You have, yeah, sort of a hero, but also you
Speaker 3: know what, people still laughed at his politics, and people
Speaker 3: still laughed at his ignorance, but found the empathy. You've
Speaker 3: found that the capacity to sort of empathize with him
Speaker 3: in the sort of changing world and understand where he
Speaker 3: was coming from, while at the same time laughing at
Speaker 3: the ignorance and sort of a way that was like, whoa,
Speaker 3: this is not okay? Which is which is sort of interesting?
Speaker 1: That might that might be one that our younger viewers
Speaker 1: are just not familiar with. And I would encourage him
Speaker 1: just dive into YouTube. I'm sure you can find a
Speaker 1: bunch of those clips. Search all of the family.
Speaker 3: If you have.
Speaker 4: It's a real window into the time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was gonna say, if you haven't seen it
Speaker 3: an you're younger, it's gonna be one of those things
Speaker 3: if you watch a clip on YouTube and be like,
Speaker 3: this was on network television in prime time, Like people
Speaker 3: said this stuff.
Speaker 4: People know what primetime is even anymore?
Speaker 1: So primetime was a thing you know, so there were
Speaker 1: only a couple of channels that you could watch, and
Speaker 1: those channels would produce television shows, and the entire country,
Speaker 1: tens of millions of people would sit down and at
Speaker 1: a particular time, sit there and every week watch this
Speaker 1: show at a designated time, not when they wanted to,
Speaker 1: and not one after the other.
Speaker 8: Just that. One.
Speaker 3: Another thing that broke while we were taping is that
Speaker 3: The Federalist and the Daily Wire are actually being joined
Speaker 3: by the State of Texas in suing the State Department
Speaker 3: sort of a kind of a similar to Missouri Biden thing,
Speaker 3: but suing the state Department for censorship for its funding
Speaker 3: of through different initiatives, groups that seek censorship, so using
Speaker 3: taxpayer dollars basically to censor you know, news sites that
Speaker 3: are critical journalism that's critical of, uh, the administration, not
Speaker 3: just the Biden administration. This was happening during the Trump
Speaker 3: administration as well. So we'll obviously follow that story because
Speaker 3: my full time job is at The Federalist, but I
Speaker 3: wanted to mention that as well, Ryan, because Missouri v.
Speaker 3: Biden has gone all the way up. This is going
Speaker 3: to be a landmark. The Missouri Biden v. Biden is
Speaker 3: already in you know, clearly going to be a landmark
Speaker 3: case about how the government is able to sort of
Speaker 3: exercise its powers over speech, over social media, over journalism,
Speaker 3: and this case is actually really testing that as well.
Speaker 1: It'll be interesting to watch and so less people think
Speaker 1: by the way that I was foisting my kind of
Speaker 1: left wing agenda on Emily. Emily is the one that
Speaker 1: suggested that we have Stuart Read to talk about the
Speaker 1: Lamova blat.
Speaker 4: Glad that you did.
Speaker 1: And I'll be back and I'll be back in Washington
Speaker 1: next week, looking forward to seeing everybody.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we're looking forward to that, Ryan. And if you're
Speaker 3: watching the debate tonight, remember there is a debate tonight.
Speaker 3: I will be carrying the coverage right afterwards on Serious
Speaker 3: XM between Megan Kelly getting off the stage and getting
Speaker 3: back to her microphone on Serious XM, so you can
Speaker 3: tune in for that. I'll be on the Full Spin
Speaker 3: Room show with her after that as well. But if
Speaker 3: you're looking for a debate coverage between the debate, I'll
Speaker 3: be over on Serious XM Channel one eleven. Ryan. Any
Speaker 3: appearances for the book that people should be on the.
Speaker 4: Lookout for, well, if you're in LA. You can come
Speaker 4: to love it or leave it tonight.
Speaker 1: I think that's like a pod Save in the pod
Speaker 1: Save universe that'll be tonight in Los Angeles, and a
Speaker 1: bunch of other stuff.
Speaker 4: Yeah, looking forward to getting back to regular work.
Speaker 3: Sounds great. We will see you all back here with
Speaker 3: Ryan in the studio next week. Have a great one
Speaker 3: over