Speaker 1: Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here,
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Speaker 2: Good morning, everybody, Happy Monday. We have an amazing show
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Speaker 3: That's what we got going on today. Chrysal.
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Speaker 5: Tomorrow though, so don't and she'll be here Wednesday.
Speaker 3: That's right, she'll be in on Wednesday.
Speaker 2: So we're swapping things around or making things a lot
Speaker 2: more fun over here at Breaking Points, the most ambitious
Speaker 2: crossover show of all time. But we've got some great
Speaker 2: topics for everybody today. Let's go ahead and come up
Speaker 2: on me. Let's see what we got.
Speaker 3: Iran.
Speaker 2: Okay, so we're going to start obviously with the Iranian
Speaker 2: attack on Israel. Some of the fallout watching the Israeli war,
Speaker 2: Cabinet what their response will be. President Biden issuing a
Speaker 2: warning to Israel, saying don't widen the war, but we
Speaker 2: will remain and we will see what happens, as Trump
Speaker 2: often used to say.
Speaker 3: We will also have doctor Tree Deparsi in the show.
Speaker 2: He's going to analyze some of the attack, the ramifications.
Speaker 2: He accurately predicted last week on our show that an
Speaker 2: attack would be forthcoming and that the fallout from the
Speaker 2: embassy was much bigger than much of the media was
Speaker 2: letting on.
Speaker 3: We're going to talk about Donald Trump.
Speaker 2: Who had a very interesting moment at his Allentown, Pennsylvania
Speaker 2: rally where he seemed to concur with genocide Joe as
Speaker 2: the nickname. He's trying to foster some dissension in the
Speaker 2: Democratic ranks. And then we're also going to take a
Speaker 2: look at some new interesting poling both good for Trump,
Speaker 2: bad for Trump, and some public oswele signals about how
Speaker 2: abortion is going to play out in the race. Ukraine,
Speaker 2: some fascinating stuff going on there. Trump's seemed flip flop
Speaker 2: and endorsing some sort of lend Lease style program for
Speaker 2: Ukraine aid, while Senator jd Vance, part of the MAGA
Speaker 2: contingent speaking out against the idea of at Ukraine entirely.
Speaker 3: We're going to dig into that.
Speaker 2: Cornell West, one of the third party candidates, has picked
Speaker 2: his vice president. It's a BLM activist who's had some
Speaker 2: interesting takes in the past. And then Bill Maher of
Speaker 2: course making just some interesting, let's just say interesting again
Speaker 2: comments on abortion. Ryan and I are going to break
Speaker 2: that down, and I'm doing a monologue on the OJ
Speaker 2: Simpson trial and its lasting effects and how it manifested
Speaker 2: itself even upon his death here in the media. But Ryan,
Speaker 2: before we get to that, as you and I were
Speaker 2: just discussing, we've got some interesting plans in the works.
Speaker 2: So people need to subscribe so you can hear a
Speaker 2: little bit more about that Breakingpoints dot com. So I
Speaker 2: think people will enjoy that. Let's go ahead and start
Speaker 2: with those attacks on Iran. Guys, Let's go and play
Speaker 2: this and put it up on the screen so I
Speaker 2: can talk a little bit over it. We've got some
Speaker 2: video here. This was released by Channel fourteen News in Israel.
Speaker 2: It appears to be pulling from Iranian media, which actually
Speaker 2: shows the launch of some of those ballistic missiles that
Speaker 2: were launched towards Israel. It took several hours to go.
Speaker 2: What you've see in front of you was also released
Speaker 2: by the Israelis. This shows some of the drones that
Speaker 2: we're heading into Israeli skies. The flashes that everybody can
Speaker 2: see are those actually being shot down by Iron Dome.
Speaker 2: In some cases you can see that they did make
Speaker 2: contact and they were attacking largely military installations. It appears
Speaker 2: in Israel, but still I mean stunning. Nonetheless, that image
Speaker 2: in particular right over Jerusalem you can see the Temple
Speaker 2: mount and you can just see hundreds of drones that
Speaker 2: are there in the sky with the Iron Dome program that.
Speaker 3: Was engaging it. I mean, what did you make of this? Ryan?
Speaker 2: I did a breaking news segment, but this is the
Speaker 2: first of the audience will get to hear from you
Speaker 2: on it.
Speaker 5: So the reporting that we have from this is that
Speaker 5: the United States told Iran that if they were going
Speaker 5: to respond, they had to do it within certain parameters.
Speaker 5: And you know Iran can you know, Iran is not
Speaker 5: a client state of the US, right, it can do
Speaker 5: what it wants to do. However, it understands that if
Speaker 5: we draw a line and they go outside of that line,
Speaker 5: then the cost that they're going to pay is going
Speaker 5: to be higher, whether it's it might not necessarily be
Speaker 5: immediately kinetic, but we have lots of ways that we
Speaker 5: can make life difficult for them. And the assault that
Speaker 5: they eventually launched was referred to was compared by a
Speaker 5: friend of mine to you know that scene in Austin
Speaker 5: Powers where Austin Powers are driving the steamroller. Yes, and
Speaker 5: there's the security guard is he has like an hour
Speaker 5: to get away from the steamroller. And that's kind of
Speaker 5: what they did with these drums. Okay, what they did
Speaker 5: is they created an international spectacle. So the entire world
Speaker 5: is watching, and the domestic audience sees the entire world watching.
Speaker 5: So just by virtue of that, the Iranian regimes then satisfied.
Speaker 5: Kind of it's the domestic demand that there'd be some
Speaker 5: type of a response to this attack on the on
Speaker 5: the consulate in Damascus. But what it also does is
Speaker 5: it gives this entire armada from Jordan to Egypt to
Speaker 5: the US to the UK to Israel hours to intercept everything.
Speaker 5: And you saw a lot of kind of Israeli pundit
Speaker 5: saying how embarrassing for Iran they sent all of these missiles,
Speaker 5: and yet Tel Aviv still stands. Look at our beach
Speaker 5: chat how Christine it remains. That was probably Iron's hope
Speaker 5: that they want to launch an attack. May it look
Speaker 5: like they're launching an attack, but not actually do the
Speaker 5: kind of thing that requires Israel to then response.
Speaker 2: We got to spend a lot of time on this
Speaker 2: because this is going to be a huge matter of
Speaker 2: debate now. Currently, that was the way that the White
Speaker 2: House interpreted the attack. However, that is not the way
Speaker 2: that the Israeli right wing is. Oh absolutely, In fact,
Speaker 2: the Israeli right wing is like, no, this was just
Speaker 2: a victory of Iron Dome without Iron Dome, without the US,
Speaker 2: the UK military, the Jordanian military, the Saudi military all
Speaker 2: allowing our jets.
Speaker 3: I mean, that's another big question.
Speaker 2: How many of these things were shot down by the
Speaker 2: United States and how many were shot down by Israel.
Speaker 3: They ain't telling us that number.
Speaker 2: I can tell you that they claim ninety nine percent interception.
Speaker 2: I would love to know what the actual Israeli interception rate,
Speaker 2: and then what the US assistants rate Sentcom. The United
Speaker 2: States military has not released that. We do know that
Speaker 2: all of our Western militaries were engaged actually in shooting
Speaker 2: down some of these drones. Now, the reason why I'm
Speaker 2: sticking to this is because the way that you look
Speaker 2: at the attack matters a lot.
Speaker 3: If you think that it.
Speaker 2: Was intended to have a mass casualty incident and was
Speaker 2: not designed, as you said, to telegraph for an hour's
Speaker 2: long approach and attack, well then that colors one way
Speaker 2: you're going to respond. If you think it was an
Speaker 2: intended mass casualty incident and it was good design to
Speaker 2: kill a lot of people, well then obviously you want
Speaker 2: to hit them back ten times as hard and it's
Speaker 2: not your fault that the defense worked.
Speaker 5: Go ahead, I would flip it around, Okay, I'd say
Speaker 5: people start from their desired response, right, So like Ben
Speaker 5: Gavier American Smocher's like these guys they want a massive
Speaker 5: war with Iran, and so then they're going to retcon
Speaker 5: onto the attack whatever they need to justify that response.
Speaker 5: So they were always going to say that this was
Speaker 5: before you know, just as soon as it started, you
Speaker 5: started seeing from the Israeli right, this is a strategic
Speaker 5: victory for US. We now have the international legitimacy to
Speaker 5: launch a full scale attack on Iran and not to
Speaker 5: pick on them. Everybody else is the same way, Like
Speaker 5: people like me that don't want to see World War
Speaker 5: III A are biased in how they see it and say, like, look,
Speaker 5: it's it's obvious why Iran didn't cause more damage, because
Speaker 5: causing more damage would have led to World War three.
Speaker 5: It's a rational actor. They don't want to lead to that.
Speaker 5: So we all do have to put our bias.
Speaker 2: It's important, the important to note that because this is
Speaker 2: here what we have from the War Cabinet Minister Benny Gantz,
Speaker 2: let's go ahead and put this on play on the screen.
Speaker 2: I'm going to read some of what he said in
Speaker 2: terms of a translation. He says, yesterday Iran launched an
Speaker 2: attack on Israel and met the strength of the Israeli
Speaker 2: security system. Iran is a global problem, it is a
Speaker 2: regional challenge, and it is also a danger to Israel. Yesterday,
Speaker 2: the world clearly stood together with Israel in the face
Speaker 2: of the danger for Israel against Iran, the world against Iran.
Speaker 3: This is the result.
Speaker 2: This is the strategic achievement which we must leverage for
Speaker 2: Israel's security.
Speaker 3: This incident is not over.
Speaker 2: The strategic alliance and the regional cooperation system that we
Speaker 2: built and stood is a significant test. It needs to
Speaker 2: be strengthened.
Speaker 3: Right now.
Speaker 2: Israel proved yesterday that it is an anchor of military
Speaker 2: and technological power and an anchor of security in the
Speaker 2: Middle East. Faced with the threat of Iran, we will
Speaker 2: build a regional coalition and collect the price from Iran
Speaker 2: in a way and at a time that suits us.
Speaker 2: So that is the line that I'm zeroing in on,
Speaker 2: in a way that in a way and in a
Speaker 2: manner at.
Speaker 3: A time that we choose.
Speaker 2: This is after an Israeli war cabinet meeting occurred. Now,
Speaker 2: this war cabinet meeting allegedly took a very interesting turn
Speaker 2: from what we know in the inside. We're going to
Speaker 2: put this up there on the screen here. President Biden
Speaker 2: allegedly told Netta Prime Minister Netanyahu during a call immediately
Speaker 2: after the attack on Saturday. He says, listen, United States
Speaker 2: is not going to support any Israeli counter attack against Iran.
Speaker 2: Inside of the war cabinet, allegedly Benny Gantz and also
Speaker 2: the Defense Minister both supported an immediate strike retaliatory strike
Speaker 2: on Iran. Netsonyahu appears to have backed away from that,
Speaker 2: at least allegedly because Biden told him not to.
Speaker 3: But and this is where I want to hear you
Speaker 3: make big butts. At the very.
Speaker 2: Same time, the Wall Street Journal and others are reporting
Speaker 2: that there's still a significant contingent in the Israeli military cabinet,
Speaker 2: within the Israeli right and domestic populace that is clamoring
Speaker 2: for a response to the Iranian regime. So just because
Speaker 2: Biden said, hey, you guys had your strategic victory, don't
Speaker 2: do it and we won't join you, that doesn't mean
Speaker 2: that they won't do it. I mean, Israel almost advanced
Speaker 2: military technology in the world.
Speaker 5: So if we're going to give Biden credit, we can
Speaker 5: say that there was a moment amid the attack and
Speaker 5: in its immediate aftermath where the Israeli right was promising,
Speaker 5: not just demanding, but they were promising that there was
Speaker 5: going to be an unprecedented response, an immediate and unprecedented response.
Speaker 5: People were saying things like, you know, April twelfth or
Speaker 5: April fourteenth, or whatever, this attack was going to happen
Speaker 5: is a day that we'll live on in history, and
Speaker 5: that could have happened, like if certain people had their
Speaker 5: fingers on certain buttons. You know, those attacks could have
Speaker 5: been launched. Biden did say, look, if you do that,
Speaker 5: you're on your own. Take the win, like take the
Speaker 5: w was the line he gave to Yahoo. And so
Speaker 5: we'll give them credit that the world has not ended yet.
Speaker 5: Here we are. The sun has risen again, so here
Speaker 5: we are. But like you said, there is still an
Speaker 5: intense pressure from the Israeli right. What we're going to
Speaker 5: find out is who is really guiding Israeli foreign policy here?
Speaker 5: Is it the far right or is it the kind
Speaker 5: of left of net and Yahoo? Which is a kind
Speaker 5: of hilarious concept to think about. But Ronald Bergman, Israeli journalist,
Speaker 5: I got it in a pretty mind blowing quote from
Speaker 5: this Israeli situation room, where the person said something like
Speaker 5: if these talks in the war room war cabinet were
Speaker 5: aired live on YouTube, there would be four million people
Speaker 5: at Ben gury In Airport rushing to get out of
Speaker 5: this country.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that is such an important point, because that is
Speaker 2: exactly the question is. Inside they're trying to telegraph restraint.
Speaker 2: They're saying that the US won't back them, and all this.
Speaker 2: We want to believe rational actor theory. But one of
Speaker 2: the things that I was honestly annoying the crap out
Speaker 2: of me is that I continue to see US politicians
Speaker 2: be like, this is an unprovoked, unprecedented attack, and I'm like, Okay, listen,
Speaker 2: I'm not saying that the Iranians are good people or
Speaker 2: the Irgc are our friends or our enemy. But you
Speaker 2: blew up their embassy in Damascus, And what they're like
Speaker 2: is they're saying, They're like, well, it wasn't a real embassy,
Speaker 2: it was a military outpost.
Speaker 3: You're probably right, but guess.
Speaker 2: What, guys, c I a bases inside every embassy in
Speaker 2: the world. I mean, under this logic, yeah, the Russians
Speaker 2: would be well within their rights under this logic to
Speaker 2: blow up the US embassy in Kiev, or the US
Speaker 2: outpost in levav in Poland, which is like the major
Speaker 2: thoroughfare of all the weapons then, or the US embassy
Speaker 2: and warsaw its Like, what do you think is happening there?
Speaker 3: These are all military outposts.
Speaker 5: Time didn't they let the New York Times in there
Speaker 5: to show them how they were? Like war gaming? The
Speaker 5: entire thing? It is a what do we call it?
Speaker 5: When Hamas has a head go to command and control
Speaker 5: center like it is like we have we have command
Speaker 5: and control center right and we would absolutely not tolerate it.
Speaker 5: And it doesn't mean you're justifying the attack to acknowledge
Speaker 5: that it was provoked, like it's it's okay to say,
Speaker 5: it's okay to say that I saw some of those
Speaker 5: posts too from I think maybe it was Steve Danes
Speaker 5: and some others. These are like the US senators, the
Speaker 5: US centators like this unprovoke, just absolutely out of nowhere.
Speaker 5: Except in response to the thing they said, they're going
Speaker 5: to respond to it.
Speaker 3: And that's why I want to put that in contact.
Speaker 3: By the way, Lavov is in Ukraine.
Speaker 2: I apologize it used to be part of Poland, but
Speaker 2: I do know that that's it's right on the border
Speaker 2: with Poland, and that is where the weapons are coming across.
Speaker 2: My point is only being that you know, we have
Speaker 2: embassy outposts and other people all across the warhol that
Speaker 2: are engaged in this type of activity. What do you guys,
Speaker 2: what you like, who wants to guess what's going on
Speaker 2: in the US embassy in Moscow? Like, what do you
Speaker 2: think is going on in the US embassy of riot
Speaker 2: or the US embassy in Kabble or I guess we
Speaker 2: don't have that one anymore.
Speaker 3: US embassy in Baghdad. They're all military outposts.
Speaker 5: And they did kill a top general and many of
Speaker 5: his staff, right, So like, even if you say that
Speaker 5: that was completely fine and hey, they're all fair game,
Speaker 5: they still did kill them. Yes, so it's not unprovoked.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, I mean exactly right. And you know, let's
Speaker 2: think back to the solar money killing. Whenever Trump green
Speaker 2: lit the Souli money killing, we got lucky. Trump actually
Speaker 2: called off an imminent attack.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: That was response after the Iranians shot down some US
Speaker 2: Navy spy plane. I think he was unmanned at the time,
Speaker 2: but it would have killed like several hundred Iranians. And
Speaker 2: Trump found that out and he's like, forget this, We're
Speaker 2: not doing this. But then you also have you know,
Speaker 2: there were several US soldiers who were wounded actually in
Speaker 2: retaliatory attacks in Iraq as a result of that. So
Speaker 2: we can't say that it didn't have no response. All
Speaker 2: things are going to have a response, whether you view
Speaker 2: it as legitimate or not. But it was very certainly
Speaker 2: not quote unquote unprovoked it didn't happen inside of a vacuum.
Speaker 2: You could defend it, you know, if you want to.
Speaker 2: But let's just all be honest. There's also a big
Speaker 2: question here about the matter of Iron Dome and the
Speaker 2: amount of money that the defense of this one attack
Speaker 2: actually costs. Let's put this up there on the screen.
Speaker 2: The current estimate according to the IDF is who was
Speaker 2: an economic advisor of the IDF Chief of Staff, says
Speaker 2: that the overnight defense against the Iranian attack costs between
Speaker 2: four to five billion Israeli shekels, which is equivalent to
Speaker 2: one to one point three billion dollars. Now, what was
Speaker 2: also noted by your colleague Mortaza is that because the
Speaker 2: vast majority of this took place within the Iron Dome system,
Speaker 2: those interceptors are all manufactured and paid for by the
Speaker 2: United States, which means all of us are the ones
Speaker 2: who just paid for that missions.
Speaker 5: Plus we shot a lot of mississes.
Speaker 2: I will say, that's another question here, which is the
Speaker 2: type of aircraft that we're used to shoot down some
Speaker 2: of these ballistic missiles that shoot down some of these drones.
Speaker 2: The current estimate on how much these drones cost is
Speaker 2: anywhere from like a couple hundred to tens of thousands
Speaker 2: of dollars, not that much money, so asymmetrically, I mean,
Speaker 2: it was a huge economic cost to the US. The
Speaker 2: iron dome system also has been significantly strained ever since
Speaker 2: the war with Hamas has gone on, and of course
Speaker 2: we're the ones who are replenishing all of that technology
Speaker 2: and bearing the brunt and the costs of that.
Speaker 3: It just what I always like to.
Speaker 2: Highlight with these things. Ryan Is was like, well, everyone
Speaker 2: said missile defense doesn't work. I'm like, well, that's not
Speaker 2: the point. The point is what does it look like
Speaker 2: in a sustained attack. One of the things that we've
Speaker 2: learned from Ukraine is that the Russians have developed the
Speaker 2: perfect strike package to get through Western defense systems. Sure
Speaker 2: they can't use some and they frequently will have some
Speaker 2: shot down, but they figured it out. And that's the
Speaker 2: point is, Yeah, it works once, that's awesome, but what
Speaker 2: is it? How does it work on day two hundred
Speaker 2: and ninety six level war. That's actually a question where
Speaker 2: not a lot of people want to know the answer
Speaker 2: in terms of working rate and the cost.
Speaker 5: Yeah, on the on the cost point, this is the
Speaker 5: same thing we've seen with the Huthis where they're sending
Speaker 5: these you know, yeah, drones that cost hundreds or at
Speaker 5: most like thousands of dollars towards ships in the US
Speaker 5: is sending two million dollars cruise missiles to like knock
Speaker 5: to knock them out, or whatever they're sending is in
Speaker 5: the in the millions of dollars each each and every time.
Speaker 5: And that's that's just not a calculation that you can
Speaker 5: take forever. But you're point on the strategic benefit of
Speaker 5: this is interesting as well. Like you said, the Russians
Speaker 5: have learned through the practice, trial and error of how
Speaker 5: to get through this super expensive curtain of defense. And
Speaker 5: last night the Russians and the Iranians and actually well
Speaker 5: the entire world it's curious about it got to see
Speaker 5: what it would look like with Israel and all of
Speaker 5: its allies launching a full fledged anti anti missile defense approach.
Speaker 5: So now they know, like, okay, this is where they're
Speaker 5: coming from from the sea, this is where they're coming
Speaker 5: from face now they probably knew let's say eighty percent
Speaker 5: of that already, with a lot of valuable intelligence was
Speaker 5: picked up last night.
Speaker 2: You get a ton, yeah, from the Chinese from the Russians.
Speaker 2: Everybody is looking at this. The other thing that I
Speaker 2: would note is you could see the President Biden basically
Speaker 2: knew the exact time and hour of the attack. So
Speaker 2: one of the things that we gave away is how
Speaker 2: deeply the CIA, the NSSA and others have penetrated the
Speaker 2: highest sessional of the Iranian military. And they don't think
Speaker 2: they're not going to respond to that, Like you don't
Speaker 2: think they're immediately going to change their comms. This was
Speaker 2: something that happened after the Russian invasion where we basically
Speaker 2: gave away the whole game as to how deeply we
Speaker 2: penetrated the Russian military hire and command, the command and control,
Speaker 2: We knew everything from the time of the attack to
Speaker 2: Ukraine and all of that. My mea culpa was I
Speaker 2: didn't believe them, but clearly they are good at some things,
Speaker 2: these intel folks. And what did we give away, like, yeah,
Speaker 2: we know everything about what you say, what you do,
Speaker 2: the time of your attack, the hour, et cetera. Now
Speaker 2: maybe that's my intention, certainly possible, but you know, if
Speaker 2: you're smart, what do you say. Okay, the enemy has
Speaker 2: total you know, visibility into our comms. So let's change everything.
Speaker 2: So that was an attack not on us, on somebody else.
Speaker 5: Right, So right, you are giving that up. At the
Speaker 5: same time, some of it was was intentional.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 5: There was a direct line that and Turkey was to
Speaker 5: go between MM and it was it was through Turkey
Speaker 5: that the US actually communicated back to Iran like, here
Speaker 5: are the parameters within which should we expect it if
Speaker 5: an attack is going to take place.
Speaker 3: Well, that's what's complicated.
Speaker 2: So actually it's interesting because people are seizing upon that
Speaker 2: report saying that Biden greenlit the attack.
Speaker 3: At the same time, this is the problem with Biden.
Speaker 3: I mean, what he.
Speaker 2: Continues to do is just put himself in a situation
Speaker 2: where he just gets humiliated on the world stage. But
Speaker 2: basically everybody from his allies to the enemies, to the aggressors.
Speaker 2: Here we have President Biden imminently before the attack, the
Speaker 2: day before the attack.
Speaker 3: Here was his message to Iran in this moment, don't yeah,
Speaker 3: how did that work out?
Speaker 2: He said the same thing to Russia if people want
Speaker 2: to remember, back in February of twenty twenty two, He's like,
Speaker 2: my message to putin don't well they did, so no
Speaker 2: one It's like, this is where you know, you're putting
Speaker 2: yourself in a situation where you'd be like, look, we
Speaker 2: will we will immediately respond. You know all of this,
Speaker 2: but you know this is this is where he gets
Speaker 2: he Now he's flanked from his left and his right,
Speaker 2: because now what we have here is it's clear that
Speaker 2: people are not listening to President Biden, just embarrassing for
Speaker 2: a global superpower. But then you've got a huge invitation
Speaker 2: right now from the Israeli and the US right wing
Speaker 2: who are attacking Biden saying that we need more deterrence
Speaker 2: through force, and that we need to employ even more
Speaker 2: force on behalf of Israel and the Iranians and employ
Speaker 2: like more military action, get more deeply enmeshed. Then at
Speaker 2: the same time, you know, you see also that the
Speaker 2: Israelis don't necessarily listen whenever they're told what to do
Speaker 2: or what not to do. That kind of brings us
Speaker 2: back to the genesis of how do this all happen?
Speaker 2: That strike on the embassy. Apparently this is from what
Speaker 2: we know so far, Biden and the White House told
Speaker 2: the Israelis are like, listen, don't hit the Iranians without
Speaker 2: telling us about it. And they said, yeah, okay, cool,
Speaker 2: and then they just didn't tell us anything about it.
Speaker 2: That strike was totally within their purview. And this is
Speaker 2: what bothers me about it too. I'm like, okay, you
Speaker 2: guys want to do that, be my guest. But then
Speaker 2: you bear the costs, you bear the consequences whenever people
Speaker 2: And this is what we've seen through the emboldening of
Speaker 2: the Israelis is because we've set no red line, nothing,
Speaker 2: we have no conditions on our aid, they feel perfectly
Speaker 2: in their power to do whatever the hell they want.
Speaker 2: And that's how you get to a significant departure point
Speaker 2: of miscalculation. The anti gets upped one thing goes wrong.
Speaker 2: I mean, just imagine one iron dome missile goes wrong
Speaker 2: and that Temple Mount gets it. Now what I mean,
Speaker 2: we're in that whole new world living in that Yeah.
Speaker 5: No, yeah, I think that that's exactly right. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 5: I mean I forgot what I was going to say. Anyway,
Speaker 5: go ahead.
Speaker 2: Really, what I think is important just to underscore from
Speaker 2: the Iranians, the communication here with the Israelis is that
Speaker 2: Biden has injected a tremendous amount of uncertainty into the
Speaker 2: international system. Will defend Ukraine. Putin's war criminal, he's got
Speaker 2: to go. What does that signal send to the Ukrainians?
Speaker 2: Fight to the last man. Now we're like, well, you know,
Speaker 2: really mean it, and it's like, well, and they're all confused.
Speaker 3: I don't think we should said in the first place.
Speaker 3: I think right, and it should have been very clear
Speaker 3: from the beginning, and the only shift.
Speaker 5: From Biden this was what I was going to say.
Speaker 5: Has it's been to use the word iron clad over
Speaker 5: and over and over again.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 5: And so if you're Israel, what you hear from Biden
Speaker 5: is that his commitment is iron clad. Iron Clad means
Speaker 5: it does not matter what Israel does, the US will
Speaker 5: have their back. So if we say, hey, we would
Speaker 5: prefer a heads up before you strike, let's say in Iran,
Speaker 5: in embassy somewhere in Damascus, like okay, but your commitment
Speaker 5: to US is ironclad, right of course, guys, iron clad
Speaker 5: commitment Like okay, Well, then we're just going to do
Speaker 5: what we're going to do, and you're gonna support us. Now,
Speaker 5: maybe Israel feels like it can't launch an offensive attack
Speaker 5: on Iran without the support of kind of US aircraft
Speaker 5: and USC power and so that had something to do
Speaker 5: with their decision not to launch it yet. But they
Speaker 5: certainly feel like no matter what they do, the US
Speaker 5: is going to put its resources behind them in a
Speaker 5: way that is self destructive to its own interests in
Speaker 5: the region.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think this is all.
Speaker 2: This is very important for people to underscore just we
Speaker 2: are and a moment of a lot of uncertainty. US
Speaker 2: military equipment was involved in shooting this down. US service members,
Speaker 2: including US warships, were involved in shooting some of these
Speaker 2: down we've had. Apparently the US S. Eisenhower hasn't had
Speaker 2: a port call in months because they're just stuck in
Speaker 2: the Middle East waiting is sitting there, waiting to shoot
Speaker 2: down things and to be engaged in the war. There's
Speaker 2: a high level of readiness and of anxiety in the military,
Speaker 2: and just because something didn't pop off in forty eight
Speaker 2: hours doesn't mean that it won't. It took the Iranians
Speaker 2: what it was, about a week, I think, to respond
Speaker 2: to the ambassy attack. People have in their heads this
Speaker 2: idea that things, the escalation ladder and other things move
Speaker 2: at a lightning pace, And that's sometimes the case, but
Speaker 2: very often it's slow and then fast all at the
Speaker 2: same time. So you take a week to deliberate that
Speaker 2: you make it saying, and you make a decision. So
Speaker 2: the Israelis right now are in that you know system right,
Speaker 2: They could wait a month, but even if they do,
Speaker 2: we could still see things get to that point. It's
Speaker 2: been more than six months now since October seventh, and
Speaker 2: this was the nightmare scenario from the very first day,
Speaker 2: is that we were going to get to a broader
Speaker 2: regional war, and every single month that the conflict has continued,
Speaker 2: we get closer and closer at bombs on Lebanon, wo
Speaker 2: these Now we're striking Yemen. Now we're you know, now
Speaker 2: we're shooting down Iranian missiles. Now we got drones flying
Speaker 2: over the sky. What comes next month? That's my big worry.
Speaker 2: What comes next year? Hell or ten years from now.
Speaker 2: That's one of those where you know, could we can
Speaker 2: easily look back on this and say it was a
Speaker 2: significant moment. But we have a great guest standing by
Speaker 2: doctor Treta Parsi is going to break this down.
Speaker 3: Let's get to it.
Speaker 5: Bringing in now doctor tree to Parsi is executive vice
Speaker 5: president over at the Quincy Institute for Response simple state craft. Tredah,
Speaker 5: thanks as always for joining us. Really appreciate it.
Speaker 3: Good easure.
Speaker 5: I wanted to talk to you about something that that
Speaker 5: you flagged, which is that the head of the IRGC,
Speaker 5: Hossein Salami, came out and we can put this element
Speaker 5: up from tree to here, came out explicitly saying that
Speaker 5: we have decided to create a new equation with Israel.
Speaker 5: The equation is that from now on, if Israel attacks
Speaker 5: Iranian interests, basically, Ron will attack Israel from Iranian soil.
Speaker 5: Kind of moving beyond the status quo of deploying various
Speaker 5: proxies around the region, were not necessarily even deploying the
Speaker 5: various proxies, but sort of taking the leash off them
Speaker 5: a little bit, because I think what people think that
Speaker 5: and I'd be curious to get your take on this.
Speaker 5: People think that it's it's a it's a relationship where
Speaker 5: Iran instructs its proc around the region. Okay, now I
Speaker 5: need you to attack, Whereas I think it's more realistic
Speaker 5: to say that those proxies are actually much more militant
Speaker 5: and radical than the Iranian regime itself, and Iran is
Speaker 5: constantly holding a leash on saying no, do not, do not, please,
Speaker 5: do not, And when they do want an attack to happen,
Speaker 5: they let the leash out a little bit and say, Okay,
Speaker 5: you know what, actually, go ahead, you've been saying you
Speaker 5: want to hit that base, go ahead and hit that base.
Speaker 5: Curious a first for your take on that, but then
Speaker 5: also for your reflection on what it means that Iran
Speaker 5: is now saying forget all this, We're coming straight from
Speaker 5: Iran from now on.
Speaker 6: So your description of Yvonne's relationship with some of these militias,
Speaker 6: I think is true for some of them, perhaps less
Speaker 6: so for others. I mean, Yvonne has helped build up
Speaker 6: a network of various militias throughout the Middle East.
Speaker 7: That all are sharing an interest with Yvonne when it
Speaker 7: comes to a larger vision for the region.
Speaker 6: Some of them may not be ideologically aligned with van
Speaker 6: in a religious sense, but nevertheless they shared a larger perspective,
Speaker 6: which is that many of these Arab regimes are allied
Speaker 6: with the West. They're there to serve the domination of
Speaker 6: the West, and the region needs to take its future
Speaker 6: in its own hand, and as a result, joined.
Speaker 7: Together to fight this what they call the occupation. This
Speaker 7: is why they call it the access of resistance.
Speaker 6: Now, some of them actually absolutely are more hawkish and
Speaker 6: have their own motivations to go after the US troops.
Speaker 6: For instance, many of the Iraqi militias are looking for
Speaker 6: revenge for what the US has done in Iraq, which
Speaker 6: is not necessarily the motivation driven by the Vons. In
Speaker 6: regards to what the IRGC commander said, though, I think
Speaker 6: the interpretation there is Iran is actually taking this to
Speaker 6: a much higher level because it's no longer going to
Speaker 6: hide behind any of its allied proxiesli is, whatever you
Speaker 6: want to call them. And what we see here is
Speaker 6: a clear attempt of articulating a new doctrine for deterrence,
Speaker 6: meaning that this entire choreographed attack that was clearly designed
Speaker 6: to make sure that it inflicted next to zero damage
Speaker 6: on Israel, certainly no casualties, was not designed to start
Speaker 6: a war, was not designed to actually showcase what limited
Speaker 6: capacity YVON has, but to actually showcase that YVON actually
Speaker 6: has extensive capacity. Because remember the reason why all of
Speaker 6: these missiles and drones could could be shot down is
Speaker 6: because the yvoniance gave the US a seventy two hour
Speaker 6: heads up even told them exactly when these things are
Speaker 6: going to be shot They wanted this to be shot
Speaker 6: down because they wanted to show that yvon is ready
Speaker 6: to attack from its own soil. It wants to establish
Speaker 6: this new deterrence, this new red line, but it doesn't
Speaker 6: want to go towards a full scale war. But in
Speaker 6: that message also something else that is very important that
Speaker 6: I think has largely been missed. Had it not been
Speaker 6: for the seventy two hour heads up, the United States
Speaker 6: would not have had time to put itself in place
Speaker 6: to be able to help the Bricks, nor the French,
Speaker 6: and without the help of these other countries.
Speaker 7: Without the heads up, it is quite likely that a.
Speaker 6: Much larger garage of missiles from Yvon actually would have
Speaker 6: penetrated Israel's air defenses and would have caused a tremendous damage.
Speaker 6: But that was not the intent would distract. The intent
Speaker 6: was exactly as the IRGC commander said, as that establishing
Speaker 6: new redline. If these Raelis going forward kill Yvonian officials,
Speaker 6: attack Yvanian embassies, it will be responded to, and it
Speaker 6: will likely be responded to very quickly. And the hope
Speaker 6: of Yvon as appears to be to deter Israel from
Speaker 6: doing this in the.
Speaker 2: Future, Doctor Parsi, One of the things we're trying to
Speaker 2: understand here is the calibration of the Israeli response. The
Speaker 2: Israelly war cabinets seems to be all of the map.
Speaker 2: They're vowing our response. The Iranians say, if look, this
Speaker 2: is it from in terms of what they put out there,
Speaker 2: like will we will say that this matter is closed.
Speaker 2: If we do see some sort of retaliation by the Israelis,
Speaker 2: then what sort of decision matrix does that open up
Speaker 2: from the Iranians as it relates to the United States
Speaker 2: in our own military.
Speaker 6: Well, I think Biden actually has put himself in a
Speaker 6: bind with the formulation that he used. He come out
Speaker 6: and said that he would support Israel defensively, the support
Speaker 6: is iron cloud, but the United States will not support
Speaker 6: or participate in any offensive operations by Israel. Well, this
Speaker 6: distinction between offensive and defensive ends up being brought the
Speaker 6: meaningless the second the war begins, because what it has done,
Speaker 6: he has given Ntagnau a clear pathway on how to
Speaker 6: drag the US into the war. Israel responds to this
Speaker 6: Iranian attack with missile strikes et cetera. Against Yron. Iran
Speaker 6: will then obviously respond back. The United States will not
Speaker 6: participate in the first attack, but as soon as Yvon
Speaker 6: is counterattacking, then the United States gets dragged in. At
Speaker 6: that point, it was completely meaningless whether the United States
Speaker 6: was involved in the previous attack or not.
Speaker 8: So previous presidents, even very hawkish ones like Trump, actually
Speaker 8: resisted pressure from Netaniaho in particular to get dragged into
Speaker 8: war with Iran because it does not serve US interest.
Speaker 8: Now Biden has actually given Nataniahu a roadmap on how.
Speaker 7: To drag the United States into that war.
Speaker 6: If he instead had focused on the maingle or prioritized
Speaker 6: the mingle, which is to avoid a regional escalation and
Speaker 6: avoid getting the US into that war, it actually would
Speaker 6: have been better for Israel as well, because he would
Speaker 6: not need to provide any defensive iron cloud support for
Speaker 6: Aitel because there wouldn't have been an Ivanian counter attack
Speaker 6: in the first place. That would have served Israel's interest better,
Speaker 6: and most importantly, it would have served us interest much
Speaker 6: but because we would not get dragged into another war
Speaker 6: in the Middle East.
Speaker 5: Trieda I've heard Iatola Kamani described as risk averse almost
Speaker 5: to a fault, And I'm curious if you think that's
Speaker 5: an accurate description. How his approach to the conflict between
Speaker 5: Israel and I Ran plays into this and who is
Speaker 5: really making the decisions in the Iranian government.
Speaker 6: So the decisions are ultimately made by the Supreme National
Speaker 6: Security Council in Iran, which of course reports to the
Speaker 6: Supreme Leader, and the final decision is with the Supreme Leader,
Speaker 6: but it's really that he overrules everyone. There has been
Speaker 6: grumblings and quite loud ones within the IRGC and other
Speaker 6: elements of the Iranian government who believe that comedy has
Speaker 6: been two risk averse that he should have done this
Speaker 6: much sooner, and the fact that he didn't have enabled
Speaker 6: the Israelis to cheap on moving forward with increasingly blatant
Speaker 6: attacks against Iranian commanders and officials. And now we saw
Speaker 6: any Onion consulate in Damascus, and essentially the argument being
Speaker 6: that if he had reacted sooner and asserted yvons, the
Speaker 6: terrens and the Israelis would have stopped sooner. Now the
Speaker 6: reason why it happened this time around, I think is
Speaker 6: because this attack against the consulate with the final straw,
Speaker 6: and it also violated a clear redline because it was
Speaker 6: an attack on Iranian soil. The Iranian response at the
Speaker 6: end of the day was also a clear violation of
Speaker 6: an Israeli redline because these Radis had said that they
Speaker 6: had implicity message that they would not have responded if
Speaker 6: the attack it did not come from the Iranian soil,
Speaker 6: but now it did. And not only was it using
Speaker 6: cruise missiles, it was also using ballistic missiles. So it
Speaker 6: is clearly risky. But nevertheless, within that operation, it was
Speaker 6: designed to make sure that it didn't cause any damage,
Speaker 6: because if the Yvonians wanted to cause damage, there was
Speaker 6: no reason to give any heads up to Israel or
Speaker 6: to the United States.
Speaker 7: And not less you know, I said in the.
Speaker 2: Two hour heads up, last thing I wanted to ask you, sir,
Speaker 2: in terms of the geopolitics of the Middle East, there's
Speaker 2: a lot being made here in Washington of the Jordanian
Speaker 2: a guess allowance of the US and Israel to shoot
Speaker 2: down projectiles and drones over their airspace, of the Gulf
Speaker 2: Arab involvement as well. Can you break down some of
Speaker 2: the dynamics of that. Will there be lasting effects? Can
Speaker 2: we expect that to be some sort of coalition against Iran.
Speaker 2: How do we make sense of it?
Speaker 7: I don't think that's what it is pointing to.
Speaker 6: You're right to ask the question, though, of course, because
Speaker 6: the other countries Turkey, et cetera. Did not allow the
Speaker 6: United States to use their airspace for this, Jordan doesn't
Speaker 6: have much of an option. Jordan is completely dependent on
Speaker 6: the protection of the United States, and it's clearly not
Speaker 6: a particularly popular decision amongst Judainians either, mindful of how
Speaker 6: angry the population is with what's going on in Gaus
Speaker 6: and what they've received to be Judanian and broader Arab
Speaker 6: potents towards Israel. But I think Jordanians are trying to
Speaker 6: defend it by saying, at the end of the day,
Speaker 6: they have to assert their independence and not allow Jordan's
Speaker 6: airspace or territory to become an arena for a confrontation.
Speaker 6: The question is if the Israelis now use attacks, begin
Speaker 6: attacks against Iran and fly over Jordanian airspace, will Jordan's
Speaker 6: shoot down those missiles as well or is it only
Speaker 6: Ivani missiles that will be shocked there.
Speaker 5: I noticed from some Chinese news sources they were arguing
Speaker 5: that the Iranian attack on Israel was only made kind
Speaker 5: of possible and necessary by the United States blocking the
Speaker 5: United Nations Security Council from condemning Israel's attack on Damascus.
Speaker 5: When I first see that analysis coming on, like really
Speaker 5: just just a condemnation is all around needed and would
Speaker 5: have stepped away from that. I've seen it kind of
Speaker 5: so frequently and with so much, you know, the velocity
Speaker 5: in those spaces that it does seem like the US
Speaker 5: willingness to block condemnation did actually give a Ron more
Speaker 5: incentive to go ahead with a more robust response. But
Speaker 5: I'm curious for your take on the relationship between those
Speaker 5: two things.
Speaker 6: It's not clear whether a condemnation by the Security Council
Speaker 6: would have prevented this, and we will never know, essentially
Speaker 6: because it was blocked by the US, France, and the UK.
Speaker 6: But I pointed to a previous example that is very
Speaker 6: similar in some.
Speaker 7: Ways, because you had a situation with a ninety.
Speaker 6: Ninety eight in which the Tallebahb took math that to
Speaker 6: show even Afghanistan, they executed a very large number of people,
Speaker 6: but they also attacked the Yvanian consonants and they took
Speaker 6: eleven Yranian diplomats and executed them as well.
Speaker 7: The Yranians mobilized on their borders that were to go
Speaker 7: to war. They didn't want to go to war, however,
Speaker 7: because it was nothing.
Speaker 9: To gain from actually going into war with Afghanistan, a
Speaker 9: lesson that perhaps the US should have also taken to art.
Speaker 6: But nevertheless, they felt the strong expectation that they have
Speaker 6: to respond given this very blatant attack on their territory
Speaker 6: through the consulates.
Speaker 7: They went to the Security Council.
Speaker 6: I worked as a security council at the time for
Speaker 6: the Swedish Permanent Mission. Sweden was the president of the
Speaker 6: Council in that month, and they demanded a very strong
Speaker 6: condemnation by the Council, and that was provided. The Swedes
Speaker 6: orchestrated it and make sure that was a very very
Speaker 6: harsh reaction by the international community for what the Taliban
Speaker 6: had done. And that very strong reaction ended up being
Speaker 6: the exact face saving excuse the Yvani Is needed not
Speaker 6: to go to war with the Taliban, which they avoided.
Speaker 6: Now the parallels are very interesting. Once again, the Yvanis
Speaker 6: are not looking for a war, but their consulate was attacked,
Speaker 6: their personnel was killed, but the difference is time was
Speaker 6: that it wasn't a strong combination because of the blocks
Speaker 6: by the US, the UK, and the French. Now again
Speaker 6: we don't know for certain if the parallel would have
Speaker 6: worked out, but I think it's interesting in terms of
Speaker 6: the role that the US's defense of Israel and political
Speaker 6: protection plays here because the US did what.
Speaker 9: Essentially Biden has been doing for the last seven months
Speaker 9: in the US is done for more than twenty years,
Speaker 9: which is to constantly provide political protection in the Security
Speaker 9: Council for Israel, so it is not condemned. Well, that
Speaker 9: approach appears to also incentivize other countries and to take
Speaker 9: harsher measures than they otherwise.
Speaker 7: May have to.
Speaker 5: And then that a couple days later you see Ecuador
Speaker 5: be like, oh, okay, then maybe we can just raid
Speaker 5: the Mexican embassy here in Quito. But up next, we're
Speaker 5: going to talk about Trump in Allentown, hitting on a
Speaker 5: new nickname for genocide Joe that he seems to actually
Speaker 5: appreciate but treated Parsi, Executive Vice President of the Quincy
Speaker 5: Institute for Responsible Statecraft, thank you so much for joining us,
Speaker 5: Thank you, sir, Thank you Donald Trump. Over the week
Speaker 5: and went to Allentown, Pennsylvania, just northwest of that beautiful
Speaker 5: Lehigh Valley, and I wanted to play this absolutely just
Speaker 5: mind blowing clip from that rally. We're going to unpack
Speaker 5: what this means for twenty twenty four. Here's here's Trump
Speaker 5: and Schnecksville.
Speaker 7: He is a big problem. Jo Jo the side, Joe,
Speaker 7: Joe right side.
Speaker 3: They're not wrong, They're not wrong. I swear saga.
Speaker 5: I have watched that clip like twenty different times trying
Speaker 5: to figure out how on earth we got there. Now.
Speaker 5: On one hand, it's just it was completely predictable and
Speaker 5: predicted that Trump would start to capitalize on the anger
Speaker 5: at Biden for his facilitation of what a majority of
Speaker 5: Democrats believe is a genocide, despite the fact that a
Speaker 5: majority of Trump's supporters kind of support what's going on,
Speaker 5: and that Trump himself and that's at that same rally,
Speaker 5: you know expresses you know, continuing support for is There's
Speaker 5: there's so many different layers and levels on which Trump
Speaker 5: can attack this. What my read, and I'm curious as
Speaker 5: a Trump connoisseur yourself, is that you know, Trump for
Speaker 5: people to all not this like take drain the swamp
Speaker 5: for instance, Like When that was first rolled out to Trump,
Speaker 5: He's like, this is kind of cliche, and the.
Speaker 3: Lane stupid, this is dumb.
Speaker 5: He rolled it out at a rally boom roar, yeah,
Speaker 5: and he's like, oh you like y'all like that?
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 5: He's like, well, here's here's some more of that.
Speaker 2: Build the Wall was actually the exact same thing. I
Speaker 2: don't know if people know this build a Wall was.
Speaker 2: He thought it was corny. He didn't even think it
Speaker 2: was smart. He never really came up with it. I
Speaker 2: think he made an offhand comment where all of a
Speaker 2: sudden he just saw it ripped through the crowd and
Speaker 2: be shouted back at him, and he said, all right, well,
Speaker 2: you know, I'll seize on that. Let's go for it,
Speaker 2: and what's the next line? And Mexico will pay for it.
Speaker 2: Who do you think he got that from? It was
Speaker 2: from the crowd. So Trump, as you said, he is.
Speaker 3: A connoisseuring focus groups.
Speaker 5: Use those.
Speaker 2: It's actually smart. That's one of the things you learn.
Speaker 2: It's like what actually catches on? What does anybody's ever
Speaker 2: done speaking or live performance or anything knows exactly the
Speaker 2: feedback loop that you can get into with the audience
Speaker 2: My big thing was I was like, how much of
Speaker 2: this was just those two guys, because what's clear in
Speaker 2: the clip is that there were two guys who were
Speaker 2: behind him, and they i think by chance, had access
Speaker 2: where they could hit the microphone so we could actually
Speaker 2: hear what they were saying, and they were behind him.
Speaker 2: For people who don't know the people who are placed though,
Speaker 2: behind Trump, you kind of have to be selected for that.
Speaker 3: They don't just give it to you. It's not like
Speaker 3: first come, first serve.
Speaker 2: In general, the campaign is very you know, very weary
Speaker 2: or very it's very They take a lot of care
Speaker 2: as to who gets placed behind him. That's why it's
Speaker 2: usually diverse and women all of it. Sometimes you know,
Speaker 2: the blacks or Trump guys who are behind him. So
Speaker 2: I'm curious, you know, if they asked to be able
Speaker 2: to do that, if this was something that was greenlit,
Speaker 2: possibly by the campaign. But what's fascinating about it is
Speaker 2: not just that we have two guys in MAGA hats
Speaker 2: chanting genocide Joe, which is interesting. I mean, all right,
Speaker 2: there's a libertarian right coalition right that certainly believes that
Speaker 2: it was Trump's embrace of They're not wrong, and the
Speaker 2: reason why that's important is if you loo, if you
Speaker 2: google it and you look into it. We're talking about
Speaker 2: write ups in the Washington Post. We're talking about right
Speaker 2: ups in the Times of Israel. And even though no
Speaker 2: Republican politician was criticizing Trump for saying this and all that,
Speaker 2: you can bet your ass that this was viewed very interestingly,
Speaker 2: I think by the Israeli population, and I mean from
Speaker 2: my count right now, the clip has millions of views
Speaker 2: all across of social media, and it was shared. I
Speaker 2: think what Trump has always been a genius at is
Speaker 2: he's always trying to spot cleavages in the in coalitions
Speaker 2: of his enemies. So with Hillary, he was always doing
Speaker 2: the same thing. He was encouraging people who were anti
Speaker 2: Hillary not to vote for Hillary, right, and he would
Speaker 2: very often, you know the same thing with black voters.
Speaker 3: What do you have to lose?
Speaker 2: Why would you continue to support them? They're not going
Speaker 2: to do that. We see some of that here, And
Speaker 2: I mean, look, he reads the news and he watches television.
Speaker 2: He knows that Joe Biden has a problem. Let's say
Speaker 2: he can get even one to two percent of people
Speaker 2: who believe that it's a genocide or to either not
Speaker 2: vote for Biden or he may be somebody who could
Speaker 2: support something that they have.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, it will be a political victory for him.
Speaker 5: And we're going to talk about the polling later in
Speaker 5: the show and the way that nostalgia plays a role
Speaker 5: in how people think about Trump. And then also people
Speaker 5: are so desperate they're willing to kind of overlay onto
Speaker 5: any politician, but in particular Trump, what they want to
Speaker 5: see if they're so deeply frustrated by Biden. So it
Speaker 5: is not hard to find people who will make the
Speaker 5: argument that Trump would actually be better for Palestinians because
Speaker 5: Biden is ideologically a Zionist and willing to take political
Speaker 5: heat back home, you know, in pursuit of that ideology
Speaker 5: that he is dug in on his position that he
Speaker 5: really believes in. People don't think that Trump believes anything.
Speaker 5: That he's the most kind of narcissistic and nihilistic finger
Speaker 5: in the wind politician that you could ever produce, and
Speaker 5: that the second anything is causing him a problem, he's
Speaker 5: going to throw it overboard. And so there is a
Speaker 5: hope among some out there that well, maybe if the
Speaker 5: war becomes difficult for Trump and is causing him problems
Speaker 5: that he'll just throw Israel overboard.
Speaker 2: Yes, that is a very important thing for people to
Speaker 2: understand this. There was a case to be made, that's
Speaker 2: what it would be. His track record is not necessarily
Speaker 2: good right on the issue.
Speaker 5: But what we could say, we've a lot of good choice.
Speaker 3: So Trump doesn't believe anything.
Speaker 2: Actually, I think he believes one thing, which is America's
Speaker 2: being ripped off, which I support.
Speaker 3: I thought he's right.
Speaker 2: But outside of a few foundational things he's been talking
Speaker 2: about for let's say thirty forty years, America is getting
Speaker 2: ripped off.
Speaker 3: Our leaders are.
Speaker 2: Idiots and a genius and manipulation of the media. He
Speaker 2: doesn't believe anything. He doesn't care abortion, Israel, etc. He
Speaker 2: thinks Israel is very politically beneficial to him, basically behind
Speaker 2: the scenes and even in front of the camera. He's
Speaker 2: we got in front of the Republican Jewish Coalition. He's
Speaker 2: been like, there's a lot of good businessmen here.
Speaker 3: In the stream.
Speaker 2: You know, he just openly he just doesn't care. And
Speaker 2: they don't care either, because they give him money and
Speaker 2: he does what they want.
Speaker 5: And he may or may not used to have had
Speaker 5: my comp next to his bad according to his Wow
Speaker 5: really yeah, wow, like that he was one book he
Speaker 5: would actually read, like according to a vantage promp.
Speaker 2: Listen, you know there's you can study history in any way.
Speaker 2: There's some annotated versions out there that I've taken a
Speaker 2: look at before.
Speaker 5: So if that's the guy, if you're the Israel lobby,
Speaker 5: and that's the guy that you're putting all your chips.
Speaker 2: On, well you saw that too in the Trump interview
Speaker 2: when with the Israelis when he said you gotta wrap
Speaker 2: it up, you gotta wrap it up, because they were
Speaker 2: like they were shocked.
Speaker 3: What do you mean you got to wrap it up quickly?
Speaker 2: He's like, well, we got to bring peace, and you
Speaker 2: know your pr you know, you guys are losing getting
Speaker 2: killed the war and all that, and I mean.
Speaker 3: They were stuned. They couldn't believe it.
Speaker 2: And that's because he's not ideological in the same way.
Speaker 2: So if he senses that it becomes politically unpopular to
Speaker 2: support Israel, then he'll just turn on a dime. No,
Speaker 2: he will always care about himself more than anybody else. Now,
Speaker 2: the other question, though, is what are the people around
Speaker 2: him believe? Who do they support, what are they trying
Speaker 2: to do. Another interesting thing that I thought paired with this,
Speaker 2: let's put the next one on the screen, was a
Speaker 2: recent truth just the day.
Speaker 3: Before from truth Social where Trump.
Speaker 2: Said I would vote for RFK Junior if I was
Speaker 2: a Democrat because he is a better man than Joe Biden.
Speaker 2: So what he said actually in the video is RFK
Speaker 2: Junior is, as you know, the most radical left candidate
Speaker 2: in the race. He's more so than the Green Party,
Speaker 2: He's more so than even Crooked Joe Biden. But he's
Speaker 2: got some nice things about him. I happen to like him,
Speaker 2: Trump said in the video. And he says, I guess
Speaker 2: that would mean that RFK Junior is going to be
Speaker 2: taking away votes from Crooked Joe Biden, and he should
Speaker 2: because he's basically.
Speaker 3: Better than Biden. He's much better than Biden.
Speaker 2: If I were a Democrat, I would vote for RFK
Speaker 2: Junior every single time over Biden because he's frankly more
Speaker 2: in line with the Democrats, and he's a better man
Speaker 2: than Joe Biden that I can tell you, saying it
Speaker 2: was great for MAGA that he was in the race.
Speaker 2: So clearly he sees RFK Junior as a spoiler. But
Speaker 2: this is the thing that Chrystall and I continue to
Speaker 2: look at. If you look at the polling, it's pretty
Speaker 2: even who the man pulls from, and if his favorability
Speaker 2: ratings are so much higher with Republicans, there's a decent
Speaker 2: chance he pulls more from Trump than he.
Speaker 3: Does from Biden.
Speaker 5: To you're going to have this spectacle over the next
Speaker 5: several months of Democrats calling RFK Junior right way right
Speaker 5: and Republicans calling him radical.
Speaker 3: Ironically, both are true.
Speaker 5: Actually, he does have positions that fit on both. And
Speaker 5: I think a key moment, if it ever comes, would
Speaker 5: be if Trump affirmatively just uses genocide Joe rather than
Speaker 5: like crooked, crooked Joe or sleepy Joe. Very hard to
Speaker 5: see him kind of use it without being prompted. And
Speaker 5: I'd love to see a future rally because I think
Speaker 5: you're right, like those two dudes, those American heroes, they
Speaker 5: single handedly or double handedly you got that chant going,
Speaker 5: and it wouldn't have wouldn't have been a news item
Speaker 5: if Trump had not responded in the way he did, saying,
Speaker 5: you know, they're they're not wrong. Yeah, if it hits
Speaker 5: another rally and becomes a thing, that's my question that
Speaker 5: becomes a wild question. I still think that Trump believes
Speaker 5: that the pro Israel crowd still trusts Republicans more than Democrats.
Speaker 3: They do have a question.
Speaker 5: Even with the even with the difference of an ideologically
Speaker 5: zionist committed Joe Biden as the Democratic nominee and the
Speaker 5: kind of ambivalent Trump as the Republican nominee, the apparatus
Speaker 5: around each is more likely to continue to support it Israel,
Speaker 5: probably from the Republican signe Yes.
Speaker 2: Look, I think that's probably the correct bet. But with Trump,
Speaker 2: you genuinely have no idea. He could scramble everything and
Speaker 2: then he can scramble right back. That's always the fun
Speaker 2: thing about covering him. We have some really interesting polling
Speaker 2: that's been coming out. Let's go and put this up
Speaker 2: there on the screen. This, I think, more than anything,
Speaker 2: really explains Trump's staying power and why I think he
Speaker 2: has such a major political advantage. So this is and
Speaker 2: let's keep this up here, please, How respondence views of
Speaker 2: Trump have changed from twenty twenty to now In terms
Speaker 2: of his approval of handling the economy. From twenty twenty
Speaker 2: to now, he's seen a ten point bump from fifty
Speaker 2: percent or so past sixty two thirds of the are
Speaker 2: now approof of his handling the economy when he was president.
Speaker 2: Think he left the country better off plus nine. Approve
Speaker 2: of his handling of maintaining law and order, plus eight,
Speaker 2: Approve of his handling of unifying America, plus four, approve
Speaker 2: of his handling of COVID, plus three approve his handling
Speaker 2: of the Supreme Court, plus one. Note that one, because
Speaker 2: we're going to come back to that. But this is
Speaker 2: where I think is really important. From twenty sixteen to now,
Speaker 2: think electing him is a safe choice plus eleven, but
Speaker 2: there has been a minus four in think.
Speaker 3: He respects women, which is kind of funny. But let's
Speaker 3: go to the next one.
Speaker 5: Four percent that thought he did. Yeah, now give it up.
Speaker 3: Let's go to the next one. Guys, because this is
Speaker 3: even more important.
Speaker 2: Do you generally remember the years that this candidate was
Speaker 2: president as mostly good or mostly bad For Joe Biden?
Speaker 2: Twenty five percent say mostly good, not really good or bad,
Speaker 2: twenty seven percent mostly bad, forty six percent don't know
Speaker 2: one percent Trump, forty two percent mostly good, twenty three
Speaker 2: percent not really good or bad. Only thirty three percent
Speaker 2: say mostly bad for America To me. That is the
Speaker 2: single most important one that we could take away. And
Speaker 2: the reason why is because, and I've said this so
Speaker 2: many times, the nostalgia for pre COVID America is so strong,
Speaker 2: and why shouldn't it be. Gas was cheap, Inflation was
Speaker 2: not there, interest rates were low. All the madness had
Speaker 2: not yet happened. Things were mostly fine. Twenty nineteen of
Speaker 2: January is the highest level of Republican identification that we
Speaker 2: ever had in this country in modern history. I did
Speaker 2: a whole monologue about it at the time because I
Speaker 2: remember being stunned.
Speaker 3: But what can we take away from that? People want
Speaker 3: the good times back.
Speaker 2: Throughout all pandemics in history, there's always a mass amnesia afterwards.
Speaker 2: People are like, Wow, that was terrible. Let's go back
Speaker 2: and guess who was President Trump. That's a huge benefit
Speaker 2: that he has.
Speaker 5: And what's incredible is that people living at the time
Speaker 5: had a chance to kind of express how they felt
Speaker 5: Trump fit into that utopia that we have now kind
Speaker 5: of retconned. And that was the twenty eighteen midterms, and
Speaker 5: it was an absolute bloodbath for Trump. So while you
Speaker 5: did have the highest Republicans edification January twenty nineteen, you
Speaker 5: also at the polls, you know, had Republicans tossed out
Speaker 5: of power and voters turned things over to Democrats because
Speaker 5: his presidency was just this ongoing train wreck of a
Speaker 5: spectacle that really galvanized Democrats in a way that gave
Speaker 5: them the ability to kind of swamp you know, Republican
Speaker 5: turnout in those midterms. But now as people look back,
Speaker 5: that eleven point shift from you know, a safe choice
Speaker 5: is profound because that eleven points right there, those people
Speaker 5: who thought that he was just an unsafe person, like
Speaker 5: a lunatic in the oval office, you cannot trust him
Speaker 5: with power. Now he's been in power. And as people
Speaker 5: say it, while we survived, well, you know, lots of
Speaker 5: people did not survive. Yeah, but those people are not
Speaker 5: around to vote. And it's it's incredible actually to think
Speaker 5: about how COVID is and his handling of COVID is
Speaker 5: not really hurting him as as an issue in this campaign.
Speaker 5: And I think that that's a reflection of our desire
Speaker 5: to just forget the whole thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and why shouldn't we. I mean, it's not like
Speaker 3: Biden's got his hands clean, you know on COVID. I
Speaker 3: could go on forever and this is one of.
Speaker 5: These because I locked down and people like, you know.
Speaker 3: What's vaccine mandates, all the stuff. I mean, we can
Speaker 3: go through every I think both sides.
Speaker 2: Neither hand, nobody else, nobody wants to. Why should you know,
Speaker 2: why should we relitigate all of it? If especially if
Speaker 2: we're going to try and you know, do checks and
Speaker 2: balances and all that in the moment, it's very very difficult.
Speaker 2: Let's we'd be remiss though, if we didn't highlight this.
Speaker 2: This is probably the singlet biggest confounding variable. Let's put
Speaker 2: it up there on the screen. From the risk of
Speaker 2: losing suburban women on abortion. So what we have here
Speaker 2: is actually a rating of the most important issue for
Speaker 2: we're a suburban women in swing states.
Speaker 3: So that's why this is a good poll.
Speaker 2: Abortion is thirty nine percent most important issue. Number two
Speaker 2: is immigration sixteen, economy seven, left wing ideology for inflation,
Speaker 2: for anti writing ideology.
Speaker 3: Three.
Speaker 2: But then if you look here, share of suburban women
Speaker 2: in swing states saying that the presidential candidacies on abortion
Speaker 2: are too restrictive. With Trump, it's fifty seven percent, just
Speaker 2: about right, is there? The twenty eight percent and then
Speaker 2: not restrictive enough? Is like negligible, But then check out
Speaker 2: Joe Biden. They say, seventeen percent is too restrictive. Forty
Speaker 2: nine percent, nearly half of the suburban women in these
Speaker 2: swing districts say that Biden is just about right. And
Speaker 2: in general, if what we can see, if abortion is
Speaker 2: going to be that much of the most important issue
Speaker 2: in general, if abortion is your top issue post row,
Speaker 2: you're voting for a Democrat Ryan right, and that is good.
Speaker 2: That chart right there. If by And wins, it's going to.
Speaker 5: Because of that right and that seventeen percent are you know,
Speaker 5: they're to the left of Biden. They recognize, they recognize
Speaker 5: that Biden is out there saying things like, you know,
Speaker 5: I hate abortion of all. You know, he's doing this
Speaker 5: very kind of catholic you know, eighties nineties Democrat things.
Speaker 5: You've got seventeen percent of Democrats are like, that's you know,
Speaker 5: that's not for me. I want I want more than that.
Speaker 5: But they're still going to vote for him because he's
Speaker 5: the he's the one that's on the ballot. I think
Speaker 5: what's going on here is that A. It's it's a
Speaker 5: fundamental right that affects people's lives. H and b people
Speaker 5: are seeing policy change as a result of politics, very.
Speaker 3: Direct change, Yeah, because of the ballot with.
Speaker 5: Everything else, inflation, like wars spiraling out of control, unemployment,
Speaker 5: you draw people do draw a connection between, oh, this
Speaker 5: is the party in power. So I'm I either am
Speaker 5: punishing or crediting the party in power because of how
Speaker 5: things are going here. But the direct line to how
Speaker 5: the policies are kind of creating the downstream effect is
Speaker 5: not that clear. It's more like it's more based on vibes.
Speaker 5: When it comes to abortion policy, it's very clear, yes,
Speaker 5: Like Republicans are writing laws that are banning abortion, banning IVF,
Speaker 5: going back to the eighteen sixty four pedophile author law,
Speaker 5: and Democrats are writing laws that are expanding abortion rights.
Speaker 5: Like you don't need economists to come in and explain
Speaker 5: to you how you know the ARP is linked up
Speaker 5: with the federal results interest rate policies, and so they're like, Okay, well,
Speaker 5: I don't really believe that politics is worth participating in.
Speaker 5: I'm very cynical and jaded about this, but I do
Speaker 5: know that if I go out and vote for this,
Speaker 5: this particular thing will actually change.
Speaker 3: That is a fantastic point. I've not been on the show.
Speaker 2: Since that Arizona thing came down, Bill cannot believe that
Speaker 2: it happened. It is the greatest gift to Democrats that
Speaker 2: I could have possibly thought.
Speaker 3: And I think if again, if.
Speaker 2: Arizona goes blue again, we're going to know exactly why,
Speaker 2: especially in the context of a multiple blue representatives being elected.
Speaker 2: Carrie Lake doing herself no favors, being on camera straight
Speaker 2: up supporting the law and now is like, no, I
Speaker 2: actually don't support the law.
Speaker 3: I'm like, yeah, good luck with that, Carrie.
Speaker 2: Let's see whether that video is blanketed on the entire
Speaker 2: state of Arizona. I think all of this explains too.
Speaker 2: Let's put another confounding variable. Biden is shrinking Trump's edge
Speaker 2: in this latest time SIENA poll forty six to forty
Speaker 2: five don't know is about eight percent quote. President Biden
Speaker 2: has nearly erased Trump's early polling advantage, signs at a
Speaker 2: Democratic base has began to coalesce around the president, despite
Speaker 2: the lingering doubts about the direction of the country, the economy,
Speaker 2: and his age.
Speaker 5: So and the Times looked at like, yeah, sixteen or
Speaker 5: so polls that were taken were where a poll was
Speaker 5: taken by the same polster before and after the State
Speaker 5: of the Union, and on average by it a little
Speaker 5: bit more than a point. The public is moving towards Biden,
Speaker 5: which is not which is not huge, but given that
Speaker 5: significant of a data set, it does it does mean something.
Speaker 5: And a lot of the polls, like the Siana one
Speaker 5: you saw, you saw more significant swings. One explanation would
Speaker 5: be he's now definitely the nominee. And so you've got
Speaker 5: some percentage of Democrats who are like, all right, you're
Speaker 5: really going to make me vote for Joe Biden. Yeahs
Speaker 5: Bo Burnham says in that song like yeah, all right,
Speaker 5: are really going to make me do this? Well?
Speaker 3: All right?
Speaker 2: I mean if you're fortunately your top issue and that's
Speaker 2: all that you care about, then yeah, you should vote
Speaker 2: for Biden.
Speaker 3: You'd be an idiot, not too right.
Speaker 2: I mean one of those where like, let's be real,
Speaker 2: like when we're talking about that now, I don't vote
Speaker 2: that way.
Speaker 3: I don't have like a.
Speaker 2: Tope issue you know that vote on. You gotta kind
Speaker 2: of think holistically. But I'm not going to blame people
Speaker 2: who do. That's fine. You know, you get to it's
Speaker 2: your decision. You get to care what you care the
Speaker 2: most about, and that's like, why will inform your decision.
Speaker 5: Like people who supported herschel Walker, yeah, okay, or Broy
Speaker 5: Moore or John Father.
Speaker 3: It's fine, yeah, you know, yeah, you make your enjoyments.
Speaker 3: I guess that's one of those where I.
Speaker 2: Mean the Faederman one is a perfect example because it's
Speaker 2: a straight up vegetable on the day of the election,
Speaker 2: can't even speak and wins the election by five points.
Speaker 3: Because people have him, well would rather have him. All
Speaker 3: he's got to do is vote blue. That's all it takes.
Speaker 5: Turned out to be that is rabid, yeahsh.
Speaker 2: But I mean that is very informative for how people,
Speaker 2: if an issue is so overwhelming, will look well past
Speaker 2: candidate flaws and much more to go ahead and to
Speaker 2: vote for somebody. So just keep that in mind and
Speaker 2: we will continue to pay attention because that I still
Speaker 2: think is the most. It's covered a lot, but it's
Speaker 2: such an unknown variable and unknown unknown as Donald Rumsfeld
Speaker 2: used to say that, Actually I guess this would be
Speaker 2: a no, yeah, you're right. At the same time, there's
Speaker 2: some major developments here in Washington. The Iranian attack on
Speaker 2: Israel is very likely to spur possibly some movement in
Speaker 2: terms of not only Israel Aid being passed through the Congress.
Speaker 3: But Ukraine Aid as well.
Speaker 2: President for former President Trump also making some news. I
Speaker 2: did a joint press conference at mar A Lago with
Speaker 2: Speaker of the House Mike Johnson and appears to have
Speaker 2: now flipped and supported actually more aid to Ukraine as
Speaker 2: long as it's alone.
Speaker 3: Here's what he had to say.
Speaker 10: They're talking about it, and we're thinking about making it
Speaker 10: in the form of a loan instead of just a gift.
Speaker 10: We keep handing out gifts of billions and billions of dollars,
Speaker 10: and we'll take a look at it. But much more
Speaker 10: importantly to me is the fact that Europe has to
Speaker 10: step up and they have to give money. They have
Speaker 10: to equalize. If they don't equalize, I'm very upset about
Speaker 10: it because they're affected much more than we are. The
Speaker 10: Ukraine situation would have never happened if I was president,
Speaker 10: would have never ever happened. And everybody says that, including Democrats,
Speaker 10: that it happened to such an outrage people. Millions of
Speaker 10: people are dead right now, both sides. Millions of people
Speaker 10: are dead.
Speaker 2: So as we had to say, look, he's not wrong
Speaker 2: in terms of the European rhetoric that he had there Ryan, but.
Speaker 3: Casualties here is the problem.
Speaker 7: People.
Speaker 3: Well yeah, probably probably not correct in terms of millions,
Speaker 3: but it is hundreds of thousands on both sides, that's
Speaker 3: no question.
Speaker 6: Uh.
Speaker 2: The issue is that this is now some trojan horse
Speaker 2: idea which appears to have gotten to his head from
Speaker 2: none other than Lindsey Graham, who figured out from Trump.
Speaker 2: He's like, well, if we con him into saying it's alone,
Speaker 2: then Trump will be like, oh, well then we're not
Speaker 2: actually spending. If you think you're going to dime that
Speaker 2: money back from Ukraine, you are an idiot. Okay, these
Speaker 2: people can't even pay their own government bills. Who do
Speaker 2: you think is running it right now? But America is
Speaker 2: paying for their bills.
Speaker 5: Well, so they most of the money is not going
Speaker 5: to leave Northern Virginia anyway.
Speaker 11: Yeah.
Speaker 3: No, that's another good point.
Speaker 2: And that's actually that's this is the irony, and let's
Speaker 2: all let's explain this is. The Hawks are like, well,
Speaker 2: the reason why this money is good is because we're
Speaker 2: just reinvesting it into our defense supply chain. So if
Speaker 2: you presume that it is alone, then you're basically asking
Speaker 2: Ukraine to have money that they don't have to then
Speaker 2: send over here to buy weapons and then to send
Speaker 2: it back to them and then miraculously in the future
Speaker 2: when Ukraine, formally, when it was intact one of the
Speaker 2: most corrupt and frankly like poor nations in all of Europe,
Speaker 2: is somehow just going to be able to pay back
Speaker 2: hundreds of billions of dollars of weapons loans, Like, let's
Speaker 2: live in reality, it's never going to happen.
Speaker 5: It's way outside of their GDP potential exactly, Like, it's
Speaker 5: just mathematically impossible. And if you believed that one hundred
Speaker 5: percent of the money that we're spending on weapons for
Speaker 5: Ukraine is for the benefit of Ukraine, then you could
Speaker 5: make an argument that okay, Ukraine should pay that back
Speaker 5: and little interest on the top there for our trouble.
Speaker 5: But the money that we're spending is for the benefit
Speaker 5: of the of the United States. And when I say
Speaker 5: the United States, I mean you know, Northern Virginia, the
Speaker 5: military industrial complex, the kind of the heads of the empire. Yeah,
Speaker 5: so to speak, that's that's that's what's going on here.
Speaker 5: And so to try to say that you're going to
Speaker 5: make the Ukrainians pay for that when you know they
Speaker 5: are just rapidly fleeing to get away from the draft.
Speaker 5: Like you know, if this was a fight where you know,
Speaker 5: there were you know, hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians who
Speaker 5: were demanding AMMO and weapons to go to the front
Speaker 5: lines to defend you know, the integrity of their of
Speaker 5: their nation, and that all they need is the world
Speaker 5: to support their effort. Then that's one thing. Now you
Speaker 5: could still a lot.
Speaker 2: By the way, we already passed that and guess what,
Speaker 2: they're all dead or.
Speaker 5: They've lost their links. Yes, exactly, that's not the situation.
Speaker 5: The situation is the government, which is indefinitely postponing elections,
Speaker 5: is running around trying to round up anybody like under
Speaker 5: sixty five seventy.
Speaker 2: Years, kidnapped of old, including people with down syndroms, video training.
Speaker 5: Them for a couple of weeks, and then throwing them
Speaker 5: into the into the front lines to fight against refreshed
Speaker 5: and trained Russian reserve troops. Yes, Russians. We're so kind
Speaker 5: of propagandized here in the US that that everybody seems
Speaker 5: to believe that the Russians are the ones that are collapsing,
Speaker 5: and the Russians are the ones that had had to
Speaker 5: do this like enforced conscription. The front lines don't have
Speaker 5: any conscripted Russian soldiers. They do have conscripted Russian soldiers,
Speaker 5: but those are those are in the back end doing
Speaker 5: the doing the basic glen of grunt work that needs
Speaker 5: to happen to make sure that an army can continue
Speaker 5: to function. It's the Ukrainians who have had to conscript endlessly,
Speaker 5: forcing people to front lines. And I just don't see
Speaker 5: how it's a moral use of my tax dollars to
Speaker 5: put a gun in somebody's hand who doesn't want to fight, Like,
Speaker 5: if they themselves don't want to fight, who are we
Speaker 5: to force them to?
Speaker 3: I totally agree. And here's let me read this to
Speaker 3: you from Senator mc romney. Here's his argument for more
Speaker 3: A to Ukraine.
Speaker 2: Providing weapons Ukraine may not change the course of the war,
Speaker 2: but not providing it to Ukraine sherwood.
Speaker 3: So, in other words, just keep using them as cannon fodder.
Speaker 2: Right, they could sit there and we can plug them
Speaker 2: full of artillery and bullets, and we'll just get more.
Speaker 3: Ukrainian guys that are in there, and more.
Speaker 2: Ukrainian sixty year olds, more mentally retarded people, and all
Speaker 2: of them will just kill them off as much as
Speaker 2: the government, you know, is at its whim when they've
Speaker 2: already lowered the draft age to twenty five.
Speaker 3: This is the other Iron Europe.
Speaker 5: Trying to get the other European countries it's sent back.
Speaker 2: It sounds nuts that they've only lowered the draft age
Speaker 2: of twenty five. You know why, because they already have
Speaker 2: a population problem where they don't have that many young men,
Speaker 2: and the young men don't want to serve. It's tremendously unpopular.
Speaker 2: Their families don't want them to do so why are
Speaker 2: we even providing them with the weapons to be able
Speaker 2: to continue this madness?
Speaker 3: Yet?
Speaker 2: Speaker Mike Johnson appears to be going in the hawk
Speaker 2: direction and very likely to possibly include here Ukraine aid
Speaker 2: on top of some sort of Israel rider. He gave
Speaker 2: an interview to Fox News Sunday, and here's what he
Speaker 2: had to say.
Speaker 12: How does this change your plans this week in terms
Speaker 12: of voting on an aid package for Israel.
Speaker 4: Well, we've understood the urgency of this from the very beginning,
Speaker 4: I mean a few days after I became speaker. Way
Speaker 4: back in October, we passed our Israel support package. It's
Speaker 4: been sitting on Chuck Schumer's desk ever since because we
Speaker 4: included a pay for as you remember, what a concept
Speaker 4: we took from the IRS expansion slush fund to pay
Speaker 4: for the Israel priority. We tried it again just about
Speaker 4: a month and a half ago, a clean Israel that
Speaker 4: many Democrats one hundred and sixty six as I remember,
Speaker 4: in the House voted against. Why because President Joe Biden
Speaker 4: said that he would veto that. So the House Republicans
Speaker 4: and the Republican Party understand the necessity of standing with Israel.
Speaker 4: We are going to try again this week and the
Speaker 4: details of that package are being put together right now.
Speaker 4: We're looking at the options and all these supplemental issues.
Speaker 12: Well, the former president President Trump has talked about the
Speaker 12: possibility of turning aid for Ukraine into a loan. Is
Speaker 12: that what you're considering?
Speaker 4: Yes, you know, I had a great visit with them
Speaker 4: at Mary Lago on Friday, and he and I are
Speaker 4: one hundred percent united on these big agenda items. And
Speaker 4: when you talk about ad to Ukraine. He's introduced the
Speaker 4: lone lease concept, which is a really important one I
Speaker 4: think has a lot of consensus, as well as these
Speaker 4: other ideas, the Repo Act which we've discussed, which is
Speaker 4: seizing the assets of corrupt Russian oligarchs to help pay
Speaker 4: for this resistance. I think these are ideas that I
Speaker 4: think can get consensus, and that's what we've been working through.
Speaker 3: There you go from the horse's mouth and now it's live.
Speaker 2: And if you think the neocons aren't going to use
Speaker 2: this to their best advantage, well just watch and see
Speaker 2: what happens this week. Same thing. Mitch McConnell. It's going
Speaker 2: to put this up there on the screen. He says
Speaker 2: that the consequences of failure are now clear and devastating
Speaker 2: and avoidable, and that is why they immediately need to
Speaker 2: have passage of Ukraine and Israel aid through the House
Speaker 2: of Representatives. So this Iranian attack in some ways has
Speaker 2: been like the biggest boon to Ukraine aid that has
Speaker 2: happened in some time. The House of Senatives has already
Speaker 2: said all week this is our number one priority is
Speaker 2: sending aid to Israel. Now the question is would Senator
Speaker 2: Schumer and them back down if they sent aid to Israel,
Speaker 2: which is not tied with Ukraine aid. But I increasingly
Speaker 2: see it unlikely Ryan, that anything gets through the House
Speaker 2: which doesn't have some sort of Ukraine rider.
Speaker 3: What do you think that's right?
Speaker 5: Because you know, Democrats have been unable to get a
Speaker 5: majority for Israel only aid because permilajaiopaul AOC, a bunch
Speaker 5: of folks on the left have said, no, you know,
Speaker 5: not not amid this genocide, are we going to send
Speaker 5: you money for Israel. That means that you need to
Speaker 5: get Republicans and Democrats to come together. And you know,
Speaker 5: the Republicans need to be able to move forward without
Speaker 5: the Freedom Caucus kind of America first wing, and the
Speaker 5: Democrats are gonna have to go forward without the squad
Speaker 5: and the Progressive and a decent chunk of the Progressive Caucus.
Speaker 5: And so, like you said, this running attack was probably
Speaker 5: a gift to the McConnell's of the world and to
Speaker 5: the people who are pushing for Ukrainian aid because it
Speaker 5: ramps up the pressure on getting aid to Israel and
Speaker 5: coming at the same time that you've got Mike Johnson
Speaker 5: and Donald Trump saying okay, you know what, we don't
Speaker 5: want to give aid to Ukraine. But as long as
Speaker 5: the Europeans are paying their fair share and we turn
Speaker 5: it into a lend lease, which will be a completely
Speaker 5: forgivable loan, and you know, it's never never coming back
Speaker 5: except in terms of kind of a more American.
Speaker 3: Pace, except in an accounting thing where you know, just
Speaker 3: technically having debt on our books for the nest two
Speaker 3: hundred years from from Ukraine.
Speaker 5: Yes, so that that does seem to be the most
Speaker 5: likely path that they'll put both of these through together.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and this is ironic too, because all it would
Speaker 2: do is stop the Europeans from actually trying to get
Speaker 2: their act together and.
Speaker 5: Also and also stop the eventual end to this war,
Speaker 5: Like exactly there has to be at some point, you
Speaker 5: would think an end to this war.
Speaker 2: The best they hold what they currently have, which is
Speaker 2: way worse than the peace deal that was on the
Speaker 2: table in.
Speaker 3: The first at risk, right, if we send all the
Speaker 3: weapons by listening to it, Romney, we won't. It may
Speaker 3: not make a.
Speaker 2: Difference, Okay, So you know it's one of those where yeah,
Speaker 2: sixty billion dollars or whatever that would be sent to Ukraine,
Speaker 2: Why exactly is that worth money to so that for
Speaker 2: the integrity the Eastern Dunboss region.
Speaker 3: How does that affect my life? Oh wait, it doesn't actually.
Speaker 2: Senator jd Vance gave an interview with CNN's Jake Tapper
Speaker 2: where he argued strendlously against any aid to Ukraine.
Speaker 3: Here's what he had to say.
Speaker 13: Let me ask you about Ukraine because you wrote an
Speaker 13: op ed in the New York Times saying that you
Speaker 13: don't think it makes sense the Biden pitch for at Ukraine.
Speaker 13: You've been accused of appeasement, You've been accused of surrender.
Speaker 13: Even the National Review had a column about that. And again,
Speaker 13: I'm going to get to Iran in Israel, which I
Speaker 13: know is a big pressing story, but I do want
Speaker 13: you to address that because the National Review is basically
Speaker 13: saying that your solution to the problem of Russia invading
Speaker 13: a sovereign Ukraine is to just surrender. Are they wrong?
Speaker 5: No, Look, my solution to.
Speaker 14: The problem is to rebuild our own country. The reason
Speaker 14: that we're in this position, Jake, is because we're stretched
Speaker 14: way too thin.
Speaker 5: We're stretched way too.
Speaker 14: Thin, and the number of weapons systems that we need,
Speaker 14: the Ukraine needs, the Taiwan needs, that Israel needs, and
Speaker 14: we can't do all of these things at once. So
Speaker 14: when you're stretched too thin, you've got to focus and
Speaker 14: you've got to rebuild your own country. Let's take just
Speaker 14: one of those weapons systems that we're talking about, one
Speaker 14: hundred and fifty five millimeters artillery shelves. The Russians currently
Speaker 14: have a five to one advantage over the Ukrainians. The
Speaker 14: Israelis will need this stuff, the Taiwanese need this stuff,
Speaker 14: and of course America needs this stuff. Can we possibly
Speaker 14: fight all of those conflicts that wants to know?
Speaker 5: The math just doesn't make sense.
Speaker 14: So what we should be doing is with Ukraine, encouraging
Speaker 14: them to take a defensive posture, not these disastrous counter
Speaker 14: offensive the Biden administration has been promoting.
Speaker 13: Is within Ukraine. The counter offensive is within Ukraine. They're
Speaker 13: not seeking land from Russian In.
Speaker 14: Fact, just today, I'm just asking judgment on the morality
Speaker 14: of what they're doing. Of course it's their territory, Jake,
Speaker 14: but you have to acknowledge military reality on the ground.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, it's sensible and it's obviously true. Even
Speaker 2: like we just talked about in our Israel block, we
Speaker 2: just spend one point three billion dollars in defense on
Speaker 2: a single attack from Iran.
Speaker 3: How do you think it's going to look like we're
Speaker 3: going to full on war.
Speaker 2: That's exactly how when we were in Afghanistan, the toll
Speaker 2: at some point was some two hundred million dollars a
Speaker 2: day that we were spending in the war in Iraq
Speaker 2: as well. That's how that six trillion number got as
Speaker 2: high as it was. People really have no idea like
Speaker 2: once the ball is rolling, and just the amount of
Speaker 2: money that gets printed and spent on this stuff is astounding.
Speaker 2: The Republicans, though, do have a genius plan, by the way,
Speaker 2: to pay for A to Israel.
Speaker 3: Let's go and put this up there on the screen.
Speaker 2: Johnson apparently has a proposal which will condition A to
Speaker 2: Israel on domestic spending cuts. It's not just from the IRS,
Speaker 2: it's from other programs that we have here. So let's
Speaker 2: just all just ruminate a little bit on that.
Speaker 5: And we could argue about this endlessly. But the quote
Speaker 5: unquote cuts to the IRS actually add to the deficit,
Speaker 5: because if you defund the IRS, you get less tax
Speaker 5: money coming in. And by the way, just one fun detail,
Speaker 5: the one hundred and fifty five millimeter shells, those are
Speaker 5: the ones that Pakistan has been making for the US
Speaker 5: since we overthrew in ron Khan. That's basically that's why
Speaker 5: we overthrew. Oh where there's a result of overthrowing in
Speaker 5: ron Khan is that it pushed Pakistan in our direction.
Speaker 5: And what Pakistan does is makes lots of those shells,
Speaker 5: and so we got those factories humming for for Ukraine's benefit.
Speaker 3: As a result.
Speaker 2: And just even with all of that, it doesn't really
Speaker 2: matter because the best estimate for a bifiscal twenty twenty
Speaker 2: eight is eighty five thousand shells a month. That's according
Speaker 2: to the US Army, and the Russians are currently at
Speaker 2: like one hundred and seventy five thousand.
Speaker 3: So just so people understand just how far.
Speaker 5: Bea we're dropping those all over the bread basket of
Speaker 5: the world. Yeah, how's that working?
Speaker 3: Yeah that's right.
Speaker 2: Okay, Well we'll see thank you Trump. Len Ley's program
Speaker 2: genius absolutely genius scam by the neocons here, But as
Speaker 2: usual for him, he's like, well that sounds good, we'll
Speaker 2: make it alone. Great, great idea. Cornell West, the Independent candidate,
Speaker 2: has chosen Black Lives Matter activist Melina Abdullah as his
Speaker 2: vice president. The Independent candidate says he needs a VP
Speaker 2: pick to gain access to the ballot. This actually explains
Speaker 2: also why RFK Junior announced his VP picks so early.
Speaker 2: There's some contestation right now whether he actually qualified for
Speaker 2: the Arizona ballot or not, because he didn't have his
Speaker 2: VP listed whenever he made his petition. So that's why
Speaker 2: the two of them are announcing their VP candidates much
Speaker 2: earlier than everybody else. But what's your immediate reaction to
Speaker 2: Cornell West choosing a BLM activist here?
Speaker 5: Cornell West said, he he wants to run with somebody
Speaker 5: who brings some joy and then he feels proud of me. Obviously,
Speaker 5: this is not a he's not playcating any kind of
Speaker 5: he's a triangulating. He's he's leaning completely in right. Uh,
Speaker 5: he's as as he said it. Uh, you know, he's
Speaker 5: he's running. Uh, he's running for Genius Malina. Uh is
Speaker 5: running for Allah. So you're kind of a Christian Christian
Speaker 5: social justice warrior and a Muslim social justice warrior on
Speaker 5: the on the ticket together. Malina was a basically an
Speaker 5: original founder of of b l M like this, so
Speaker 5: as as you know, it began with kind of a
Speaker 5: hashtag on Facebook. Uh, that really took off. And then
Speaker 5: the organizers captured that energy, got together in a room
Speaker 5: and decided, you know how they were going to you know,
Speaker 5: take that energy and move it forward. And Molina was
Speaker 5: among among those people. And and she's also she's kind
Speaker 5: of been a kind of an elder in that in
Speaker 5: that space, as you know a lot of a lot
Speaker 5: of the original BLM founders were you know, teens twenties.
Speaker 5: She's a more kind of accomplished professor. Uh, you know,
Speaker 5: like any radical leftist in this country who hasn't scrubbed
Speaker 5: her Twitter feed, you're gonna find all sorts of stuff.
Speaker 2: Let's take a let's take a trip down memory lane,
Speaker 2: shall we. Let's go and put some of these up
Speaker 2: there on the screen from miss Abdullah we have. Why
Speaker 2: do I feel like it's slightly racist to be a
Speaker 2: Taylor Swift hit?
Speaker 5: This one got some trash in real time.
Speaker 2: That actually was literally only two months ago. This isn't
Speaker 2: some old tweet that we're looking at here. Let's continue
Speaker 2: to play some of the greatest hits. The American flag
Speaker 2: symbolizes the genocide of Indigenous people, the theft of their land,
Speaker 2: the enslavement of dehumanization, exploitation of black people, and settler colonialism.
Speaker 2: Critique around Beyonce's artistic choice is important and healthy, not
Speaker 2: hate hashtag cowboy Carter. As Ben Jacobs, the political reporter notes,
Speaker 2: is this our first anti American flag candidate? Let's go
Speaker 2: to the next one here as Well says these are
Speaker 2: some older ones, but none is older than July of
Speaker 2: twenty nineteen. On Pete budaj Edge apparently saying the word Niger,
Speaker 2: she says nobody white should ever refer to the nation
Speaker 2: of Niger period misspelled period?
Speaker 3: Does anybody else.
Speaker 2: Resent that COVID nineteen has made it acceptable for old
Speaker 2: white men to hijack Black culture and give each other
Speaker 2: a DAP and fistball. Wait, Ryan, that's us, we fist
Speaker 2: pump each other. I guess we're hijacking Black culture with
Speaker 2: the DAP. No self respecting black persons should be singing
Speaker 2: the white national anthem hashtag demned debate and not digging
Speaker 2: the white children referred to as Mama La.
Speaker 3: Didn't she just get married?
Speaker 2: That's a dig at Kamala Harris for having the temerity
Speaker 2: to embrace her step children.
Speaker 3: So all very popular positions, each one actually less popular
Speaker 3: than the next. Here's another one.
Speaker 2: In July twenty nineteen, I was compelled to step off
Speaker 2: the sidewalk three times during my thirty minute walk so
Speaker 2: that white folks and their dogs could pass. Got me
Speaker 2: feeling like hashtag gentrification is hashtag Jim Crow revisited. I'm
Speaker 2: going to say that the next time that I'm forced
Speaker 2: off bi pitbull. So these are these are all let's
Speaker 2: just say, interesting choice here by Cornell West.
Speaker 3: I mean, what is he thinking.
Speaker 5: Let's be honest, they're like obvious racial dimensions to gentrification
Speaker 5: and then they do walk.
Speaker 3: Let's let's not even try. Let's not even try and
Speaker 3: rescue this abdella here? All right, Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 5: About the dog.
Speaker 3: The dog, come on, what.
Speaker 2: Are you talking about? But I think, look, I guess
Speaker 2: if you want to defend it, you can. This is
Speaker 2: just pure gobbledegook. Looking at this woman's background, Pan African studies,
Speaker 2: University of California, totally poisoned with activist type rhetoric. And
Speaker 2: that's my thing here with Cornell and like, what are
Speaker 2: you trying to do? You know, it's interesting too, because
Speaker 2: look I get that BLM social justice and all that
Speaker 2: is foundational to some of his political identity. Fine, okay,
Speaker 2: but don't you have some political reason as to why
Speaker 2: you are running beyond trying to capture this kind of
Speaker 2: activist base and vote, which, let's be honest, these people
Speaker 2: long to vote for Biden anyway, In terms of the
Speaker 2: practical realities, I see no political calculus other than becoming
Speaker 2: a laughingstock by picking somebody like this.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Cornell has always had kind of a broader lens
Speaker 5: when it comes to his radical love and his radical politics,
Speaker 5: one that you know what you know. He endorsed Obama,
Speaker 5: for instance, I remember campaign for Obama and has always
Speaker 5: tried to unite people and make the argument that racism
Speaker 5: is dividing us so that the one percent can walk
Speaker 5: away with all of the spoils, which is probably an
Speaker 5: argument that Molina would would agree with, but she doesn't
Speaker 5: lead with it.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Well, whereas where Cornell West does lead with that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And that's why I found it confounding, is this
Speaker 2: is very much the opposite, at least from what I've
Speaker 2: watched and listened to him. He's generally I mean, I
Speaker 2: wouldn't call him like a race first person. He definitely
Speaker 2: indulges in a lot of racial rhetoric, but has always
Speaker 2: at least tried to adopt that this is something that
Speaker 2: is downstream of classism. But you know, from a pure
Speaker 2: political lens, it's like, why would you give this gift
Speaker 2: to to not only for media, I mean, we wouldn't
Speaker 2: be covering it otherwise otherwise, you know, otherwise it's like,
Speaker 2: who barely even cares he's even going to be on
Speaker 2: the ballot, But for this, I mean, just to me,
Speaker 2: seems like a profound political misjudgment.
Speaker 3: Maybe it's just what he believes. I think that's fine too,
Speaker 3: if you want to do that.
Speaker 5: Coroner West has almost seemed I hope we can get
Speaker 5: him on the program.
Speaker 2: By the way, we have tried. His campaign has been
Speaker 2: a pain in the ass. So if anybody who's listening,
Speaker 2: who is out there, doctor West, We've invited you on
Speaker 2: the show more than a dozen times, and I have
Speaker 2: yet to receive a proper response.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it feels like he has regretted the decision to
Speaker 5: run since he launched it and has and has been like,
Speaker 5: my conspiracy theory, if I were going to get it
Speaker 5: in his mind, is that he has been consistently trying
Speaker 5: to undermine his own campaign so as not to undermined
Speaker 5: by it.
Speaker 3: Interesting. Oh wow.
Speaker 5: First he launched with the People's Party, clearly doing anything that.
Speaker 5: Immediately as soon as he realized what he'd gotten into,
Speaker 5: he's like, WHOA, what is this mess? Then he goes
Speaker 5: over to the Green Party. Apparently he hadn't done much
Speaker 5: work with the Green Party because I could have told
Speaker 5: you that thing is a complete and total mess. And
Speaker 5: so he was like, whoa, the Green Party is extremely
Speaker 5: difficult to deal with. They're not going to just coordinate me.
Speaker 5: He didn't want to fight for the nomination.
Speaker 3: Why should they coronate because because there are a self
Speaker 3: respecting parties. Yes they're they're actually by the way, on
Speaker 3: the ballot, you know.
Speaker 5: But then I think he started to worry, Oh wait,
Speaker 5: now I might be if I win this, I will
Speaker 5: be on ballots and then I might throw the election
Speaker 5: to Trump. So then he's like, I'm going to run
Speaker 5: as an independent. And running as an independent, I think
Speaker 5: he's only on like three ballots at this point. Running
Speaker 5: as an independent, it's very difficult to get on the ballots.
Speaker 5: He's raised less than a million dollars, and he doesn't
Speaker 5: seem to have the energy to kind of get on
Speaker 5: the ballot in fifty states. And is that deliberate? Like
Speaker 5: that is that expression of his Wait a minute, because
Speaker 5: he is very clear that he believes that Trump is
Speaker 5: a more dangerous that's form of fascism than Biden's form
Speaker 5: of fascism. Like that is? That is and he has
Speaker 5: ticked off an enormous number of people on the left.
Speaker 5: You with that position, but that is his position. And
Speaker 5: if that is your position.
Speaker 3: Then what's your raise on? What are we doing here?
Speaker 5: And I think what he's doing here is not running?
Speaker 2: Oh well, I like the psychoanalysis. Maybe that's why I
Speaker 2: won't come on the show. Doesn't want a big enough program.
Speaker 2: All right, all right, let's see. All right, let's move
Speaker 2: on to Bill Maher Ryan and I had to break
Speaker 2: this one down. Bill just injecting himself into the abortion
Speaker 2: debate in the single most bill way possible.
Speaker 3: Let's take a.
Speaker 15: Listen, not if you believe it's murder. You know, That's
Speaker 15: why I don't understand the fifteen week thing or the
Speaker 15: Trump's plan is let's leave it to the states. You mean,
Speaker 15: so coming babies is okay in some states. I couldn't
Speaker 15: respect the absolutest position I really can I scold the
Speaker 15: left when they say, oh, you know what, they just
Speaker 15: hate women people who aren't pro wife they do the
Speaker 15: pro choice, they just they don't hate women. They just
Speaker 15: made that up. They think it's murder and it kind
Speaker 15: of is. I'm just okay with that, I am. I mean,
Speaker 15: there's eight billion people in the world. I'm sorry, we
Speaker 15: won't miss you. That's my position on them. What, Yeah,
Speaker 15: exactly is that not your position if your pro choice is.
Speaker 3: Maybe because you don't like children? No?
Speaker 15: No, I mean but if you are, you said your
Speaker 15: pro choice, that's your position too.
Speaker 3: So yeah, there's a lot going on there. So Bill,
Speaker 3: I mean, I guess we should note he is sixty
Speaker 3: eight years old and unmarried. So I don't think Peers
Speaker 3: is off by saying, you know, do you just not
Speaker 3: like kids? Like what exactly is going on here?
Speaker 2: The problem for Bill is that he's basically embracing the
Speaker 2: og pro abortion argument by Margaret's Anger and other eugenicists,
Speaker 2: which is like, hey, we need abortion so that black
Speaker 2: people in particular will stop having a bunch of kids.
Speaker 3: This is why a lot of white.
Speaker 2: Supremacists, eugenicists, and others were original supporters of abortion. You'll
Speaker 2: actually hear this from a lot of pro life people
Speaker 2: in general.
Speaker 5: They took Martin Sanger's name off the Planned Parenthood building.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right. Yeah, as a result of that. But Ryan,
Speaker 3: give us the pro choice critique of what Bill has
Speaker 3: to say.
Speaker 5: I mean he's he's pro murderer. Yeah, you know, most
Speaker 5: reasonable people are anti murder.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: The argument that it's okay to murder people because there
Speaker 5: are too many people on the planet is evil. Like,
Speaker 5: it's just deeply evil.
Speaker 3: This straight up depopulation.
Speaker 5: Man, that's crazy. So at what age? So okay, how
Speaker 5: about sixty eight year old?
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, like, like you.
Speaker 5: Said, Bill mar sixty eight, right, he thinks contributed to
Speaker 5: the population, he be killed. Yeah, Like taking that logic seriously,
Speaker 5: it is impressive to be able to make the absolute
Speaker 5: least the absolute worst argument on either side in this spate. That. Okay,
Speaker 5: he says, I say that life begins at conception, but.
Speaker 3: It is good to murder children because there are too
Speaker 3: many because there are too many people. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 3: this is where this is the issue. And look, I
Speaker 3: mean I'm not even going to as people know, I
Speaker 3: don't believe in God. Okay, So for me. This is
Speaker 3: a it's a difficult issue.
Speaker 2: As everybody always says, the general societal consensus for some
Speaker 2: reason is that we seem to accept it in the
Speaker 2: first trimester and all of that. Even with medical advances
Speaker 2: and all of that, it actually becomes more complicated at what.
Speaker 3: Exactly fetal viability is, et cetera. Go ahead.
Speaker 5: I know he is right that there's a contradiction between
Speaker 5: believing as you know the pro life crowd does, and Emily,
Speaker 5: I'll talk about this that you know, if you believe
Speaker 5: life begins at conception, but you're okay with fifteen weeks, then.
Speaker 3: Yeah, what is that exactly?
Speaker 5: He is correct. No, that is if it is murdering,
Speaker 5: how do you leave it? How do you go back
Speaker 5: to the state. The pro choice croud just does not
Speaker 5: believe that, yes, that having an abortion is murder And
Speaker 5: also mar is just wrong to completely dismiss the misogynistic
Speaker 5: angle here. That doesn't mean that every pro life supporter
Speaker 5: quote unquote hates women like he said, but it is
Speaker 5: a it is a fundamental part of upholding the patriarchy. Well,
Speaker 5: and I think even most pro life supporters would it
Speaker 5: would acknowledge that and say that, yeah, it is related
Speaker 5: to our resentment of and opposition to this sexual revolution
Speaker 5: and everything that is that, everything that is unfolded since
Speaker 5: then we would like to go back to pre nineteen
Speaker 5: sixties version.
Speaker 2: I think that's fair, and that's where I agree that
Speaker 2: it's wrong because it's one of those where it hates women. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean that's it's a little bit hyper hyperbole. However,
Speaker 2: when we look at polling and we see that the
Speaker 2: number one issue for suburban women or even for a
Speaker 2: lot of women is abortion, something is going on there,
Speaker 2: and in general, the vast majority of them are pro choice.
Speaker 2: In general, especially here in America, what we individually select
Speaker 2: for is our right to self actualization. Now, this is
Speaker 2: where the pro life community and the religious community gets
Speaker 2: upset because at the end of the day, individualism is
Speaker 2: the enemy of collectivism, and specifically collectivism whenever it's related
Speaker 2: to religion and organized religion. So what they are trying
Speaker 2: to go against is exactly as you said. The ideas
Speaker 2: in the genesis of the sexual revolution, which was enabled
Speaker 2: by birth control, is the idea that the sex act
Speaker 2: itself can be disaggregated from procreation. That is literally the
Speaker 2: enemy of the Christian conception of procreation and of why
Speaker 2: the existence of sin and all that is here in
Speaker 2: the first place, as it's been explained to me. So
Speaker 2: my point though, is that this is an enemy. These
Speaker 2: are two competing ideologies, one very clearly is trending in
Speaker 2: a different direction when it comes to an increasingly secular America.
Speaker 2: One of the most underreported like stories of our lifetime
Speaker 2: is I grew up and so did you, Ryan in
Speaker 2: a Christian country. I grew up in nineteen nineties Texas
Speaker 2: where some ninety percent of the people around me were
Speaker 2: straight up evangelical believers. If I go back now today,
Speaker 2: even today in a very Christian Christian place, you don't
Speaker 2: feel it just quite as much. You don't see that influence.
Speaker 2: And we see declining church attendance, declining religiosity, declining religious identification.
Speaker 2: The secularization has been such a mass change in American
Speaker 2: religious identity. We haven't seen anything like it since the
Speaker 2: Great Awakening in the eighteen hundreds when we saw mass
Speaker 2: Christian adoption or I guess church attendance, and that revolution
Speaker 2: in our lifetime is a huge part of this debate.
Speaker 2: It's funny because I noted all these people were attacking
Speaker 2: Trump for saying leave it to the States, and I
Speaker 2: was like, hey, the entire time I was growing up,
Speaker 2: the pro lifers always just said leave it to the states.
Speaker 3: But somebody was like, no, no, no, dude.
Speaker 2: But you don't understand if they didn't, if they realized
Speaker 2: leaving it to the states would mean pro choice referendums
Speaker 2: would passing red states, they never would have said that.
Speaker 3: They didn't believe it in the first place. And I
Speaker 3: do think that is undred percent.
Speaker 5: The other fascinating part about the great unawakening that we're
Speaker 5: living through is that some of it, some of its
Speaker 5: connected to the spread of evangelical Christianity in the sense
Speaker 5: that those types of folks are not actually.
Speaker 3: Going to church much. Yeah that's right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they consider themselves evangelical, but they don't even they
Speaker 2: don't really.
Speaker 5: Be iheard, you know, evangelicals, but are ye not going
Speaker 5: to church because they believe that they have their own
Speaker 5: relationship with Jesus, and you know they don't. They don't
Speaker 5: need the institution to get in the way of it.
Speaker 5: Or you've got the megachurches, which are a very it's
Speaker 5: a very tenuous kind of connection to a church that's
Speaker 5: not a it's not a neighborhood that is organized around
Speaker 5: this particular thing. It's just just a fun thing that
Speaker 5: people do on Sunday.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, it's it's it is very interesting. I would
Speaker 2: just say though, part of the problem, and this is
Speaker 2: one of the things I think that some of the
Speaker 2: religion folks are correct about, is that it does lead
Speaker 2: to the normalization of some straight up ghoulish rhetoric like
Speaker 2: what Bill Maher just said, which is depopulation. When you
Speaker 2: remove yourself from morals and you start to think purely
Speaker 2: in these terms, then you can arrive at eugenicism and
Speaker 2: just think like, hey, why doesn't this stuff make sense?
Speaker 5: He seems surprised by the reaction. He watched the crowd.
Speaker 5: He thought he was going to get some guffaws at
Speaker 5: his like pro murder stance and even even yeah.
Speaker 2: Even peers, why, I guess peers from Britain. Yeah, in Britain,
Speaker 2: I mean they're not religio. They haven't been religious for
Speaker 2: like fifty.
Speaker 5: There was some collar tugging going on, and the crowd
Speaker 5: that comes to a Bill Maher show has to be
Speaker 5: ready to hear some pretty impolitics stuff. And even they were.
Speaker 2: Like yeah, because look That's the whole point in terms
Speaker 2: of the messy issue, and the way that the consensus
Speaker 2: and all of that has been arrived is, as you said,
Speaker 2: is that a lot of people just don't believe that
Speaker 2: life does begin at conception, and it's much more fetal viability,
Speaker 2: and so thus they're like, I don't believe in murder.
Speaker 2: There in a way, Bill was like accepting like the
Speaker 2: Christian framing, saying it is kind of murder.
Speaker 3: But I'm okay with that.
Speaker 2: Because we have eight billion people on the planet, I
Speaker 2: will expect actually to see more of these types of
Speaker 2: discussions in America. What I'm really interested in is the
Speaker 2: fact that even though as Americans become much more secular,
Speaker 2: is we do still seem to have a moral code
Speaker 2: carried over through many civilizations which are non religious, where
Speaker 2: we still are like, yeah, murder is bad, eugenicism is bad.
Speaker 2: It's like, these are all lessons that, even in a
Speaker 2: non Christian nation, that we're arriving at our own kind
Speaker 2: of social, individualistic consensus, which is interesting. Nonetheless, there's certainly
Speaker 2: a lot else going on that is important in this world.
Speaker 2: But something I couldn't just let go by without at
Speaker 2: least a word is media assessment of the death of
Speaker 2: OJ Simpson. The OJ case is one I never really
Speaker 2: cared about. I was only one year old at the
Speaker 2: time of the murders. I have no memory of the
Speaker 2: verdict or any of the media environment at the time.
Speaker 2: My interest came many decades later after the release of
Speaker 2: the FX series The People Versus OJ Simpson. It inspired
Speaker 2: me to actually do a deep dive on the case
Speaker 2: and read several books about it. What I came away
Speaker 2: with is a disgust that I can barely describe. Reading
Speaker 2: an exquisite detail how OJ's defense team and the tabloid
Speaker 2: media transformed a narcissistic, abusive murderer into a black panther
Speaker 2: police justice icon one of the most insane things that
Speaker 2: happened throughout the nineteen nineties. I will not re litigate
Speaker 2: every detail here, but suffice it to say that the
Speaker 2: media and Johnny Cochran got what they wanted. They split
Speaker 2: this country completely apart by race. You can see it
Speaker 2: clearly in the famous reaction shots to the verdict. Black
Speaker 2: audience is cheering the OJ not guilty verdict, many others
Speaker 2: repulsed by it.
Speaker 3: Let's take a listen, Oh kid.
Speaker 11: I think it's great. He deserves to go free. They
Speaker 11: had no evidence on him.
Speaker 3: So much evidence for as short as they did and
Speaker 3: come back with a not guilty verdict.
Speaker 7: I think it.
Speaker 11: Shows that the jury was pretty irresponsible, and.
Speaker 3: I'm just don't think justice has served. I don't think
Speaker 3: the jury did their job. I think they knew what
Speaker 3: they were going to do from the gate.
Speaker 16: I think it was racist based and it was racist
Speaker 16: from the black point of view.
Speaker 4: This is terrible that he's going to get away with this,
Speaker 4: you know, because I do believe that he did it,
Speaker 4: and it's just not fair.
Speaker 3: He's guilty. He's got to live in himself. Man, he
Speaker 3: knows he did it.
Speaker 5: DNA.
Speaker 3: He's not racial. It doesn't see black and white. It
Speaker 3: guess sees that he was there and he did it.
Speaker 3: He's got to live in himself, that's all.
Speaker 2: I thought we'd at least left all that behind in
Speaker 2: the nineties where it belonged. But I couldn't help but
Speaker 2: find that rage build back inside me when I started
Speaker 2: to see media reactions to the announcement of OJ's death
Speaker 2: the same race huckster collapse trap in twenty twenty four.
Speaker 2: Let's take a listen from CNN.
Speaker 17: It's not like OJ Simpson was the leader of the
Speaker 17: civil rights movement of his error. You know, he wasn't
Speaker 17: a social justice leader. But he represented something for the
Speaker 17: black community in that moment, in that trial, particularly because
Speaker 17: there were two white people who had been killed, and
Speaker 17: the history around how black people have been persecuted during slavery.
Speaker 3: There were just.
Speaker 17: So many layers, and I guess I would just close
Speaker 17: with this is that there was racial tension. Then there
Speaker 17: is racial tension. Now it might not be the backdrop
Speaker 17: of the Trump campaign, but until this country is ready
Speaker 17: to actually have an honest conversation about the racial dynamics
Speaker 17: from our origin story till today, we will always have
Speaker 17: moments like OJ Simpson that manifest and our country will
Speaker 17: always be divided if we don't actually deal with the
Speaker 17: issue of race.
Speaker 3: So let's break that down.
Speaker 2: This woman, Ashley Allison, former Obama staffort, says that OJ
Speaker 2: Simpson represented something to the black community because he murdered
Speaker 2: two white people, and then somehow connects OJ's not guilty
Speaker 2: verdict to slavery. I cannot tell you how angry that
Speaker 2: makes me because it is the exact strain of thought
Speaker 2: and exploitation that Johnny Cochrane, Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson
Speaker 2: used in the nineteen nineties to transform his case into
Speaker 2: something it was not.
Speaker 3: What's insane is that it wasn't even.
Speaker 2: The first case of OJ apologia on CNN in the aftermath.
Speaker 3: Of his death. The very first was this live reaction.
Speaker 3: Take a listen.
Speaker 16: It's also just worth noting how much was impacted by
Speaker 16: this trial, Jake. So many things happened, we saw policing
Speaker 16: changing here in the city. And it's also worth noting
Speaker 16: because of that unrest, that racial unrest in the nineties,
Speaker 16: that is why so many people who may not have
Speaker 16: been invested in OJ Simpson were just happy to see
Speaker 16: that someone who was rich and famous and black could
Speaker 16: get away with what other people did in the system
Speaker 16: as well too.
Speaker 2: What was that so many people who was rich and
Speaker 2: famous and black could get away with what other people
Speaker 2: did in the system too? What strikes me about the
Speaker 2: OJ case was how much it parallels the fightce that
Speaker 2: we've had ever since the nineteen eighties. Take race out
Speaker 2: of it, and instead you see a different picture. A multimillionaire,
Speaker 2: world famous athlete who routinely beat and abused his wife,
Speaker 2: paid off or used his influence to quash police investigations,
Speaker 2: then bought his way out of a double murder homicide
Speaker 2: by throwing money at the most extensive attorneys in Los Angeles.
Speaker 2: His victims were a waiter who was trying to be nice,
Speaker 2: returning Nicole Brown Simpson's glasses, and Nicole Brown Simpson herself,
Speaker 2: who Oj married when she was an eighteen year old
Speaker 2: girl and was routinely and financially, emotionally and physically abused
Speaker 2: by Simpson up until the day she died at his hand.
Speaker 2: You instead have a tale here of the rich and
Speaker 2: powerful able to get away with literal murder, while people
Speaker 2: with less resources and fame lie dead with no recourse.
Speaker 2: Look no further than the New York Times to see
Speaker 2: the media legacy of the OJ trial. Their obituary of him,
Speaker 2: the Times wrote, quote, he ran to football fame on
Speaker 2: the field, made fortunes in the movies, but his world
Speaker 2: was ruined after he was charged with killing his former
Speaker 2: wife and her friend. His world was ruined. Poor guy.
Speaker 2: Can't believe it ever happened to him even after all this. Today,
Speaker 2: the trial affect lingers the race politics that were pioneered
Speaker 2: by Cochrane and Jackson and Sharpton and the media. They
Speaker 2: went into overdrive in the interim decades. That's what poured
Speaker 2: gasoline on the fire of DEI initiatives, affirmative action, and
Speaker 2: the division that we have today, the parallel track, the
Speaker 2: path of the rich and the famous and the powerful.
Speaker 2: They were able to get away with whatever they want.
Speaker 2: It's only accelerated in the last thirty years, using race
Speaker 2: politics like they did as their shield. That is the
Speaker 2: true and the lasting effect of the OJ Simpson trial.
Speaker 2: It is one of the most shameful periods in modern
Speaker 2: American times, and one whose true lesson should be how
Speaker 2: much damage that it wrought over that time.
Speaker 3: That was what I couldn't get away with Ryman.
Speaker 1: And if you want to hear my reaction to Sager's monologue,
Speaker 1: become a premium subscriber today at Breakingpoints dot com.
Speaker 2: Chris will be back tomorrow Counterpoints. She will be in
Speaker 2: for you on Counterpoints, So I guess you'll have three
Speaker 2: days of Chrystal and a row, So enjoy that and
Speaker 2: we will see you all tomorrow.