4/25/24: TikTok Vs Cable Israel Divide, Biden Says War Funding Equals Peace, Bibi Says Campus Protests Are 1930s Germany, Texas Arrests Journo At Protest, Stabbed In Eye Hoax Debunked, Republicans Push Abortion Ban, Israel Rafah Invasion Imminent, 1968 Historic Parallels

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here,
and we here at Breaking Points, are already thinking of
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the absolute world to have your support.

Speaker 3 (00:20):
But enough with that, let's get to the show. Good morning, everybody,
Happy Thursday. We have an amazing show for everybody today.
When do we have crystal.

Speaker 1 (00:29):
Indeed, we do lots of big breaking news and a
few big announcements here at Breaking Points as well, so
I'll get to that in a minute. So first of all,
TikTok very much on his way to being banned. We'll
break that down for you in the context of some
exclusive new breaking points, pull numbers, big stuff, so get
excited for that one. We also have, while TikTok is
being banned, wars are being fully funded. We'll show you

(00:51):
what President Biden has to say about that. Bibi nat
Yahoo says that American students who are protesting are basically Nazis.
This comes amid a massive crackdown more than one hundred
arrests that happened yesterday and overnight, so we'll bring you
the very latest there, and it is truly astonishing what
is happening right now. Idaho's abortion ban, which is nearly

(01:13):
a complete abortion ban, was at the Supreme Court yesterday.
Some very interesting dynamics in the arguments and push back there,
so we'll bring some of that to you and what
it could mean for the future of abortion rights in
the country. An invasion of RAFA now appears imminent. We'll
tell you what the latest signs are and the latest
out of the Gaza strip and saga.

Speaker 4 (01:32):
I'm very excited for your monologue today.

Speaker 1 (01:34):
Is looking at the eerie parallels with nineteen sixty eight,
which is something which has been much commented on recently,
especially in the context of these campus protests and crackdown.

Speaker 2 (01:43):
This is honestly, even I was surprised at the amount
of parallel so that there are.

Speaker 3 (01:46):
I think people will enjoy it.

Speaker 1 (01:48):
Yeah, indeed, so before we get to any of that, though,
if you guys watch Counterpoints yesterday, you already know the
big news. We are going to be a Monday through
Friday big organization Emily and Ryan. You guys asked me
more Emily and Ryan. We are giving you more.

Speaker 4 (02:01):
Emily and Ryan.

Speaker 1 (02:02):
They're going to do a Friday show starting tomorrow and
they have a very interesting guest which we can reveal here.
Now you can put this up on the screen right
and Emily with Don Lemon so, I actually i haven't
watched the interview yet. I'm very excited to watch it
and see, you know, what they got into and all
of those things.

Speaker 4 (02:21):
So, guys, Thursday.

Speaker 1 (02:23):
Evening for premium subscribers and Friday what Friday morning?

Speaker 4 (02:27):
Yeah, for on Friday for everybody else.

Speaker 1 (02:29):
But if you want to support this Friday show, if
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Speaker 2 (02:40):
That's right, So premium subscribers are going to get it
early as always, And this show is actually it's a big,
big day for us, right because we have two things.
One we've been asked for consistently. That's one of our
big announcements that we drop a Friday show. It does
cost a lot of money, though, so if you guys
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we commissioned our own custom polling that we're going to
be dat viewing for everybody. It's a high quality poll,

(03:02):
it's got a great sample size, and it actually asked
the questions and a lot of mainstream media are not
able to Both of those things, you know, really are
two big new ventures for us, and we appreciate all
the people who helped us out on the way, and
if you do and can help us out, we deeply
appreciate it because these are exactly the type of things
that we want to do all throughout the election season. Yeah,
Breakingpoints dot Com again, if you can help us, and
of course you get first access to everything.

Speaker 1 (03:23):
I am actually very very excited about Emilyn Ryan's new show.
We debated giving it a different aim than Counterpoints because
the format is slightly different. They're going to do these
longer interviews like what they did with Don Lemon. They're
going to moderate some debates, you know, on interesting topics,
So it's going to be a little bit different than
the normal show format.

Speaker 4 (03:41):
But I think it's a great fit for Fridays.

Speaker 1 (03:43):
I think it's a great fit for them, So I'm
personally extremely excited to see what Yeah.

Speaker 3 (03:47):
No it to.

Speaker 2 (03:48):
It's very uniquely suited to them, to their format. It's
something also that is unique to the current format. It's
not just news with actual debates and some of the
other things that people have been asking for. So if
you guys missed, you know, panels or any of those
other things, they have big plans on that. Our entire
staff is working over time to make it happen, to
make it a very very high quality product. So thank
you all again for supporting it, and I think it's

(04:09):
going to be a fantastic addition to the breaking Points
extended universe.

Speaker 4 (04:12):
Indeed, all right, shall we get to the news.

Speaker 2 (04:13):
Well, let's get to the news, the news of which
also involves us. So, as Crystal teed up, that legislation
on TikTok officially has both moved from the House of
Representatives through the United States Senate and now sign by
President Biden. So what does it actually do and what
does it mean TikTok. The previous iteration of the legislation,
Crystal had one hundred and eighty days in which TikTok
would have had to divest itself of bike Dance in

(04:35):
his parent company.

Speaker 3 (04:36):
The extension has now moved to three hundred and.

Speaker 2 (04:38):
Sixty five days, very strategically, I would add, by President Biden.

Speaker 3 (04:41):
So it does not happen before the twenty twenty four election.

Speaker 4 (04:44):
In fact, what.

Speaker 1 (04:46):
I saw at least is that if the band does
go through, what happened like literally the day after if
Trump were to win.

Speaker 3 (04:52):
He was, yeah, no, that's correct.

Speaker 1 (04:54):
Yeah, I'm in here very intentional because they know how
much this is going to be objectly hated by young
Americans Welton.

Speaker 2 (05:02):
Stick that would be if by Dance asides not to
sell it. So this is where we should then get
to the CEO of TikTok, who is now revealing their
new strategy. TikTok spent approximately seven million dollars lobbying against
the bill. Obviously they were not successful, and their new
phase that they're moving into is a legal battle challenging
this in US core based on First Amendment grounds.

Speaker 3 (05:22):
Let's take a listen to the CEO of TikTok and
his response.

Speaker 5 (05:24):
Hi, everyone, the show here. As you may have heard,
Congress passed the bill that the presidents signed into law
that has designed to ban TikTok in the United States
that will take TikTok away from you and one hundred
and seventy million Americans who find community and connection on
the All platform.

Speaker 6 (05:41):
Make no mistake.

Speaker 5 (05:42):
This is a band a ban on TikTok, and a
band on you and your voice. Politicians may say otherwise,
but don't get confused. Many who sponsored the bill admit
a TikTok ban is the ultimate goal. It is obviously
a disappointing movement, but it does not need to be
a defining one. It's actually ironic because the freedom of
expression on TikTok reflects the same American values that make

(06:06):
the United States a beacon of freedom. TikTok gives everyday
Americans a powerful way to be seen and heard, and
that's why so many people have made TikTok part of
their daily lives. Rest assured, we aren't going anywhere. We
are confident that we will keep fighting for your rights
in the courts. Throughout US data security efforts. We have

(06:26):
built safeguards that no other pure company has made. We
have invested billions of dollars to secure your data and
keep our platform free from outside manipulation.

Speaker 2 (06:36):
All right, So there we got it is going to
be the legal battle of the century. This is a
multi billion dollar product. From what I've been able to
glean so far, this is going to be based on
a First Amendment interpretation and challenge of the law. They
will argue that it violates the free speech rights of
users to have the app content that's banned if it
does result in a removal from US markets. However, what

(07:00):
they're going to run up against is that the previous
time when President Trump tried to ban TikTok, and I
think it was in twenty twenty, based upon an executive order,
it was a similar pursuit of action, which was a
for sale and or ban. Investors in Byte Dance, people
like Jeff Yass, who is one of Trump's major campaign
donors and was very influential on getting him to reverse
they were actually successfully crystal able to sue in US

(07:23):
courts arguing that their rights as investors were infringed upon
by the government. This legislation was authored specifically to have
a congressional authorization that comes in the form of a
foreign export control which has long survived congressional court challenge.
So unless Byetance sells it, it does not look like
TikTok will survive the year, and I don't know what
by Dance is going to do, but they're very likely

(07:45):
not going to make a final decision until any of
these court cases do come But it's possible this one
goes to the Supreme Court. But just based again what
people that I've spoken to, they don't expect this to
be able to survive any challenge.

Speaker 4 (07:57):
So President Biden, given you your way.

Speaker 2 (07:59):
Yeah, I'm fine with it, but we can talk a
little bit about why exactly we got here.

Speaker 4 (08:03):
Let's talk about that.

Speaker 1 (08:04):
Actually, I want you to be able to Yeah, I
mean we're about to share some poll numbers and listen.
By the way, plenty of the members who were in
favor of this were quite explicit they're banning TikTok because
they don't like the fact that young people on the
platform were seeing the scenes of horror out of Gaza.
They don't like the fact that you were able to

(08:27):
bypass mainstream news.

Speaker 4 (08:29):
They don't like the fact that pro.

Speaker 1 (08:31):
Palestine content was wildly more popular on TikTok than the
pro Israel line. And so they were quite explicit that
that's why they're moving forward with this ban and frankly,
I think we should all find that terrifying. You know,
they're picking up on this Chinese connection to ban TikTok.

(08:52):
Let's say it is bought by Steve Manuchin. Is that
better he has ties to Israel and Saudi Arabia.

Speaker 4 (08:57):
And make no mistake.

Speaker 1 (08:58):
If they decide they don't like the tenor of the
discourse on any other platform, well now they've got a
roadmap to do the exact same thing to Twitter to
you know, we're going to show you some poll numbers
showing that actually the most pro Palestine individuals get their
news from podcasts and YouTube, So we're certainly not.

Speaker 4 (09:17):
Safe here either.

Speaker 1 (09:18):
So we should see this ban as being of a
piece with the campus crackdown that we're going to cover
later in the show. And oh, by the way, under
the radar, someone was you know, who's quite knowledgeable on policy,
was noting on Twitter that they're also coming after the
nonprofit status of pro Palestine organizations. So listen, people who

(09:40):
are in power are very concerned that they've clearly lost
the debate on Israel right sixty forty against military aid.
In terms of Americans, you have majority of Biden voter
saying it's a genocide. You have people, a majority of
Americans now disapproving of Israel's actions in the Gaza strip.
So rather than change course, rather than admit that the

(10:01):
people are not with this course of action under the
Biden administration and do something from a different policy perspective,
or just acknowledge like I've lost the debate, Instead they're
going with banning expression, trying to crack down on freedom
of expression on campuses, trying to crack down on the
platforms that they feel like are fueling this objection to

(10:23):
genocide that's unfolding, and that's what this TikTok ban is
really about. And I think we can put up a
two on the screen because this really underscores this point.

Speaker 4 (10:31):
This is quite extraordinary.

Speaker 1 (10:33):
So one of the things we did and are pulling
where we have a lot more data to gets you guys,
we just honestly haven't had a chance to go through
all of it and sort through it. So next week
you can look forward to a lot more data that
we got from this pull from Jail Partners that we conducted,
which is largely about Israel and Palestine. One of the
things we wanted to focus on is okay how are
people getting their news and how is that related to

(10:56):
their views on Israel and Palestine. Look at these word
clouds when you ask people in these different age demographics, Okay,
where do you get your news from? Look at eighteen
to twenty nine. TikTok, big bold letters. It's like the
most clear of any of them, by the way, fifty
plus all like Fox is such a.

Speaker 4 (11:14):
Big, big part of their news, which is over the oh,
it's terrifying.

Speaker 1 (11:18):
Thirty to forty nine, you've got YouTube and CNN basically
tied for number one in terms of their news consumption.
But for the purposes of this conversation, just look at
how influential TikTok is for that eighteen to twenty nine demographic.
And if we can put the next slide up on
the screen, you can see now. I think that remember

(11:40):
that correlation is not causation. Okay, So the fact that
younger people get their news from TikTok and they're more
pro Palestine doesn't necessarily mean that TikTok influenced their opinions.
I think young younger generations have shown to be different
ideologically in a lot of respects from older generations. But
just look at these numbers. When you ask okay, has
Israel committed war crimes? You have a majority fifty four

(12:04):
percent of people who get their news from podcasts and
YouTube saying yes, only twenty three percent saying no. Similar
numbers with TikTok, Instagram, ax, so other social media outlets,
forty nine percent say yes, Israel has committed war crimes
and only fifteen percent say no. The remainder are unsure,
and those are significantly different from people who get their

(12:27):
news either through cable news or print media. With cable news,
you have only thirty two percent saying Israel's committed war
crimes and thirty four percent so the plurality saying that
they have not. So this is the reason that TikTok
is being targeted right now. I have already had our
debate about whether we want TikTok to be targeted, but

(12:48):
I don't think you can deny that this is what
has motivated this.

Speaker 2 (12:50):
To happen, right I will be very honest. I think
it is absolutely because of Palestine. The reason is the
thing is, though sometimes the enemy of your enemy is
your friend. And I've been talking about this long before Palestine,
or I mean, I think I have very first segment
I ever dine on TikTok was twenty eighteen, whenever I
was a guest host on Rising. So, just so people
want to know about my bona fides on the issue,

(13:13):
I accused you of just being I've been against.

Speaker 3 (13:15):
This for a long time.

Speaker 2 (13:16):
I believe it is a basic market fairness provision where
our companies are banned their country and thus they should
not be allowed in hours. I would have banned it
back in twenty eighteen, long before it ever got to
one hundred and seventy million Americans. Now that's said, you know,
at the end of the day, I'm going to take
it because this is a market fairness position which I
vehemently have always been a proponent of. I believe strongly
and reciprocal trade policy against all countries. One day Israel

(13:39):
Palestine will end, but TikTok, China and all that that
ain't going anywhere.

Speaker 3 (13:42):
So if this is what it takes, so be it now.

Speaker 2 (13:45):
The reason that I don't I do disagree though, is
that if you notice the podcast and YouTube number on
that one is actually larger than TikTok for people, So
YouTube is not going anywhere. YouTube is a US company.
Twitter is a US company. All of these other companies
are podcasting platforms, et cetera. Even Spotify, although a Swedish

(14:05):
traded in US markets, None of those have any danger
of getting banned. Under this all free expression will continue.
All of these what is it these platforms and alternative
ones which will be able to post dissidant what, dissident
facts and dissonant narratives, et cetera, will be fine. You

(14:25):
can still watch Instagram or any of these other places.
And by the way, this is my main objection on
the Steve Nushen things. Stephen Ushan is a US citizen.
You know, he actually is under our jurisdiction. We can
control him. We can pass a law. If people feel
so strongly, then we can certainly put in free speech previsage,
which I absolutely one hundred percent support for all social
media companies, not just TikTok, Instagram, et cetera. Any potential

(14:47):
buyer of TikTok would have to be comply with US courts.

Speaker 3 (14:51):
The Chinese they don't. They're not Americans.

Speaker 2 (14:54):
At the end of the day, those people are a
geopolitical rival who have a direct interest in fomenting whatever
they want.

Speaker 3 (15:00):
Now what are they fomenting here? I have no idea.

Speaker 2 (15:02):
Okay, the Chinese, they don't particularly care about pales sign.
They're just one of those people. They love chaos here.
And I would say there's a reason that they've banned
our tech companies in their country because they want them
to have no influence.

Speaker 4 (15:13):
Now, they do want like basically also media for kids.

Speaker 3 (15:16):
That's not no, that's not very limitedly.

Speaker 2 (15:18):
They have their own TikTok version which has a different algorithm,
and they.

Speaker 1 (15:21):
Have saying they have much more regulations perhaps of what
kids can do. You probably support.

Speaker 3 (15:26):
It's complicated.

Speaker 1 (15:26):
Let me just say though, Okay, let's say that your YouTube.
Let's say that you're I mean Elon Musk. He does
whatever he does, so let's kind of put him to
the side.

Speaker 4 (15:35):
But let's talk about YouTube.

Speaker 1 (15:37):
We've seen the way that the government puts pressure on
them to censor. So are they gonna like completely take
down YouTube. No, But after YouTube executives have seen the
way that they were willing to come for TikTok because
they were allowing content that the powers that be didn't like.

(15:58):
You don't think they're going to get that message time
they get one of their little friendly requests on the administration.
Of course they are, So you know, I think this
opens the floodgates. I think it's naked censorship. I think
it's clearly because they didn't like what happened on the platform.

Speaker 4 (16:13):
And once you.

Speaker 1 (16:14):
Justify one massive social media company being banned under that context,
I think you've opened Pandora's box.

Speaker 4 (16:22):
And the last thing I'll say is listen.

Speaker 1 (16:23):
Number one, even the Intel agencies have admitted that any
like Chinese data problem is purely hypothetical.

Speaker 4 (16:32):
Okay, No one's been able to.

Speaker 1 (16:33):
Lay out like, Okay, here's exactly the problem, here's exactly
what we're concerned about.

Speaker 4 (16:36):
That's number one.

Speaker 1 (16:37):
Number Two, if you're concerned about data privacy, pass a
data privacy law that applies to everyone, that doesn't just
take out this one platform because you don't like the
views that are being expressed.

Speaker 2 (16:47):
Again, my counter would be this is that if a
government is censoring of social media companies like YouTube and
all that, you and I, as citizens of a journalist organization,
can submit a Freedom of Information Act request and we
can get access to that. We can sue the government,
We can pressure our Congress to actually enable legislation. We
have no zero visibility on the ability to do that
with TikTok. Second, you know, and what you're saying, I mean,

(17:09):
let's think about this and really extrapolate it. If Israel
owned TikTok, I mean, I think I know what your
position would be, and I would support it too. I
would say fuck them. I would say absolutely we can
force the sale of TikTok. Now would our Congress ban TikTok? No,
probably not. But if Israel any foreign government, and I
really mean this has that amount of influence over an

(17:29):
American company or an American populace, and has that amount
of data penetration, I would say absolutely not. So this
is not about me singling out China. I'm saying I
believe strictly in market fairness. If Israel ban Facebook, Twitter,
et cetera, and they own the largest social media platform
in America, I would say absolutely not, You're not owning

(17:51):
this company. And again on the YouTube front, that is
an American company. We have jurisdiction, we have the democratic
process that we can work through.

Speaker 3 (18:00):
We have no say on TikTok content policy.

Speaker 2 (18:02):
Even on data privacy, Let's say that we did pass
some data privacy law and transparency, et cetera. It still
wouldn't get to the algorithmic and influence changes that would
happen from the Chinese Communist Party.

Speaker 3 (18:15):
And I also would dispute what you said.

Speaker 2 (18:16):
I mean, I've done a lot of monologues here about
how bike Dance and the CCP does directly control a
lot of TikTok and specifically has those people answer them
and have used them for spying purposes on US citizens.
This is out there in the public. The CEO directly
lied to Congress. It is a unique situation.

Speaker 1 (18:32):
I mean, let's say, data that is available to them
via you know, owning TikTok is also like available for
sale anywhere. So it's not like getting rid of TikTok
gets rid of access to this data.

Speaker 4 (18:43):
It is true, Well, then.

Speaker 3 (18:44):
They can buy it.

Speaker 2 (18:45):
They can buy it on the dark web like the
Russians do. They're not going to at least get it
handed to the bar the US. My fine, I don't
care about that at the very least.

Speaker 1 (18:51):
Why do you care about it when it comes from
TikTok but not when it comes from you know, other sources.

Speaker 2 (18:55):
Because it is a foreign government that has direct control
of a U.

Speaker 4 (19:00):
I think you're listen.

Speaker 1 (19:02):
I know that you are genuine and also consistent in
these principles. I just really disagree about both the means
in which this was done and also that I mean,
first of all, I don't think that American data is
any safer from getting rid of TikTok or forcing it
to be sold to Steve Manduchin, who does have these,
you know, foreign government entangles and entanglements in his own agenda,

(19:23):
et cetera. I don't see that as a superior situation.
And now you have passed this bill explicitly under the
pretense of we don't like what's on this platform, so
we are going to ban it.

Speaker 4 (19:34):
Now, yes, there's stuff in.

Speaker 1 (19:35):
There about China and data and whatever, But if you
don't think that that same logic is going to be
applied elsewhere, or that other platforms aren't going to look
at how heavy handed this is and say, gosh, we
don't want that to happen to us, I guess we
better crack down on these pro Palestine voices or on
shows like ours or podcasts that are similar. I just
think that that's really I think it's naive.

Speaker 2 (19:57):
I understand where you're coming from. I read the legislation
very thoroughly. There is no danger for YouTube, podcast, Twitter, rumble,
any of the companies that people have been worried about.
If there was to be a danger, and this is
people are like, well, they could come after Elon because
he does a lot of business in China. I'm like, well,
first of all, you probably shouldn't be doing a lot
of business in China. They're Elon, But number two, that's

(20:17):
not even true because they don't own a twenty five
percent or whatever stake in the company.

Speaker 3 (20:21):
Like, the legislation is very very thing.

Speaker 1 (20:24):
I'm not just talking about this legislation. I'm talking about
what you've opened the door to. The precedent has now
been set that Congress can move and act if they
don't like the content that's on a platform.

Speaker 4 (20:36):
There's no putting that back in the box.

Speaker 3 (20:37):
I would put it this way.

Speaker 5 (20:38):
Then.

Speaker 2 (20:38):
I believe in much higher taxes for the rich if Republicans,
and I also believe in one hundred percent endowment tax.
So if Republicans are like, hey, we need to tax
Columbia's endowment for anti Semitism, I'd be like, listen, I
think that's dumb, but take it. You know, because I'm
gonna nupe them with it whatever I can in the
political system. If we can get taxes for the ultra
wealthy through and realistically have to work through the US

(21:01):
political system, and whatever their stupid impetuses are, fine, I mean,
that's just at the end of the day, that's what
politics is. If you have things that you want for
a desired outcome, then you have to work within the
constraints that you have.

Speaker 3 (21:13):
I agree.

Speaker 2 (21:14):
Look, my principles will never be compromised, but in terms
of desired end states, if they hit Columbia with one
hundred percent of downment tax for anti Semitism, it's going
to have the same net effect that I want. Regardless, now,
I will continue to fight and I would say that
it was dumb to do so.

Speaker 3 (21:28):
I think it's dumb to.

Speaker 2 (21:28):
Do this now, and I certainly agree in terms of
rhetorical precedent, I don't think you're wrong at all. But
there is a reality to working within the US political
system and getting things done. I mean, this is something
that we all recognize. For the end states of what
we want, Disparate coalitions can come together for different things. Now,
I don't support the vast majority of the rest of

(21:49):
the package or any of that. But you know, I
mean just think, like, think about the tax counterfactual. If
we got higher taxes on like a lot currently a
lot of Republicans. The way that they want to tax
the ultra wealthy is we need to tax opponents.

Speaker 3 (22:00):
I'm like, okay, fine.

Speaker 2 (22:01):
You know, it's like, let's take it. Let's take what
we can get. I don't think it's necessarily a good impetus.
But if that leads to a blanket you know, ultra
millionaire reduction in nepotism and in generational wealth, I'm fine
with that.

Speaker 1 (22:14):
See, I don't agree with that because if because there's
a limit, you know, obviously, look, there's there's cases where
you're like, Okay, well I don't have the argument that
you're making for this, but I like the o income.

Speaker 3 (22:23):
So fine.

Speaker 1 (22:25):
But let's say let's let's just take your example. Let's
say the argument to tax Colombia's endowment or raise taxes
on the rich or whatever is like, they're Nazi, so
we have.

Speaker 4 (22:35):
To tax them.

Speaker 1 (22:36):
Well, again, once you are going down the pathway of
we're going to use the power of the state against
people whose political ideology we don't like, that's a really
slippery slope to all sorts of outcomes that I don't want,
And I mean to start with, I don't want.

Speaker 4 (22:52):
This outcome with TikTok.

Speaker 1 (22:53):
So it's not really an applicable example here, but you know,
just to we have one more slide we can put
up here that under scores why this is happening right now.
So the question here is, you know, who do you
feel more sympathy with Israel or the Palestinians. And if
you look at print media, if you look at cable news,

(23:16):
very clear pluralities in favor of Israel. If you look
at TikTok, and if you look at podcasts, it's totally
flipped the TikTok social media folks a third say they're
more sympathetic with Palestinians. Only twenty percent say they're more
sympathetic with Israel. Similar numbers with podcasts and YouTube, twenty
six percent say they're more sympathetic with Palestinians, twenty one

(23:38):
percent say they're more sympathetic with Israel.

Speaker 4 (23:41):
So you know, I just I look.

Speaker 1 (23:43):
At these numbers, and especially since the podcast YouTube piece
is similar to the social media piece, like that's the
next logical target, and you can see what's happening, you know,
right now on cause campuses.

Speaker 4 (23:53):
You can see how much energy this has.

Speaker 1 (23:55):
It's one hundred percent support in the Republican Caucus and
probably like percent supported within the Democratic Caucus. So you've
now got this bipartisan consensus in favor of we're going
to ban platforms, We're going to crack down and like
the most authoritarian police state way imaginable. All the things
that I was like terrified under Trump are actually happening

(24:15):
now with this bipartisan anti Palestine, anti Palestinian human rights
coalition that has come together in this context to severely
crack down on our rights because they don't like the
conclusions that the American people are coming to.

Speaker 2 (24:28):
I do not disagree with you in terms of the protesters,
it's specifically in this case. I will say, look, if
they do come for YouTube, podcast, RSS, feed encryption, et cetera,
I'll be right there on the front lines with you,
and I will be marching. And if I here's it, Okay,
here's another one, since I've had to eat a stock
before on camera. If they use this specific legislation to
target any single other company as many bad faith. Critics

(24:50):
of this bill have claimed, I will eat another sock
right here on the camera.

Speaker 3 (24:54):
I don't believe that it's humanly possible.

Speaker 2 (24:56):
Every lawyer that I've spoken to, everything that we're down
the line is talking about hypotheticals. And again, if and
when there is some some bipartisan consensus directly to censored
this program, podcasting, Rumble, Twitter, YouTube with Snapchat, any of
these other US based companies, Facebook, Instagram, I will radically

(25:17):
oppose it, and I do not believe actually it would
pass in the same way. And those companies have a
lot more rights than TikTok does because they are actually
US flagged and traded on a US public market.

Speaker 1 (25:26):
So it seems to me that in terms of the
China agenda, Joe Biden has done a lot of the
things that were on your wish list.

Speaker 3 (25:33):
I continue the.

Speaker 1 (25:34):
Tariffs, well hips sacks, but that's actually up for branning tiktoks.

Speaker 4 (25:39):
You're gonna give them some credit.

Speaker 2 (25:40):
Sure, I'll give them credit, absolutely. I mean, who championed
the chipsack me? I said, your SAA, that was great.
I mean, I'm not necessarily saying everything the man had
done is bad.

Speaker 3 (25:49):
He pulled out of Afghanistan. I supported it.

Speaker 2 (25:51):
I support the Chipsack, I support the TikTok legislation. I'm
trying to think what else has he done on China?
On the tariffs, he kept the Trump tariffs.

Speaker 1 (25:59):
But would you say, from your perspective, he's been better
on China than Trump.

Speaker 2 (26:03):
No, I don't think you could say that in terms
of in terms of actual execution. The only things he
really built on were chips Act. Even here on TikTok,
I mean, he didn't actually propose it. Congress is the one.

Speaker 4 (26:14):
Is getting done under him.

Speaker 3 (26:15):
You guys. But I'm not saying that he's.

Speaker 4 (26:18):
Trumps book club now he's on the other side.

Speaker 2 (26:20):
It is true, absolutely, I was comparing it to his
record for the tariffs. I would give Trump more credit
because he actually fought against the establishment to put it in.

Speaker 3 (26:27):
Biden simply renewed it.

Speaker 2 (26:29):
In terms of how the two would govern on Trump,
I genuinely have no idea which way you would go the.

Speaker 3 (26:33):
Next time around.

Speaker 2 (26:34):
Biden also, though, has been very very different in terms
of some like fake climate policy whenever he's done with China,
which I do not support, and there's a couple of
other things. But yeah, I mean, look, you're not wrong.
He's done certainly some of the things that I would
have advocated for. And as the chorus, I think I
could say too that you will ask me. I have
given him credit where I think he deserves it.

Speaker 3 (26:53):
Yeah, I do. No, it is it is absolutely one
of my core issues, no question.

Speaker 1 (26:59):
Let's talk about some of the things we agree upon
and both hate.

Speaker 3 (27:02):
Let's go to wars.

Speaker 2 (27:03):
Yeah, these wars were definitely both going to be against
jee President Joe Biden. He has come out and now
said that the one hundred billion dollars we will be
shipping to foreign wars, both in Israel and Ukraine, will
bring peace and peace and strength in our land, and
very much in the way that Neville Chamberlain once did

(27:24):
in Munich in nineteen thirty eight.

Speaker 3 (27:26):
Here was his remarks when he signed the legislation.

Speaker 7 (27:29):
It's a good day for America. It's a good day
for European it's a good day for world peace and
for real, this is consequential. I just signed in the
law of the National Security Package that was passed by
the House Representatives this weekend and by the Senate yesterday.
It's going to make America safer it's going to make
the world safer, and it continues America's leadership in the world,

(27:50):
and everyone knows it gives vital support to America's partners
and so they can defend themselves against threats to their
sovereignty and lives and freedom of their citizens. And it's
an investment in our own security because when our allies
are stronger, and I want to make this burn again
and again, when our allies are stronger, we are stronger.

Speaker 2 (28:11):
There you go, When our allies are stronger, we are stronger.
This is going to be all about peace through strength.

Speaker 3 (28:16):
It's funny.

Speaker 2 (28:17):
The reason I put that Munich and dig in there,
Crystal is that they often try and use that against opponents,
and I'm going to try and start weaponizing it and
say no, no, no, Actually you're the chamberlains because they're like,
this is if everything is peace through strength, or everything
is peace in our time, then nothing is peace in
our time. And in fact, this is just fundling an
endless war machine. But something I was remarking to you
while the clip was happening, which I just find amazing,

(28:39):
is you know we've all watched Biden now for several years.
This man you know, he is falling apart on the camera,
loses his way even here. He had a gaff later on,
but in this moment you could see a glint in
his eyes. And just look at the religion that these
people feel whenever they are sending our money and weapons
to foreign countries so that they can continue to fight

(29:01):
pointless and endless wars which are keeping us less safe.
That's actually what struck me most about the clip. It
wasn't just the rhetoric. Is he truly he was alive
in that moment, from one of those brief times where
you could see the glimmer and the glint in his eyes.
And that's what gets these people going, especially Biden is
funding Ukraine and funding Israel.

Speaker 3 (29:19):
You really see it in that.

Speaker 1 (29:20):
I mean, I don't even know what to say about
this crap anymore. Like it's just sickening to me. It's
sickening to me, you know, especially with regard to Israel.
Like here we are watching an imminent invasion of Rafa,
which five seconds ago the media was claiming it was
a red line for Biden. Now it's about to happen
or have ampted up strikes most severe in Goza that

(29:44):
we've had in a while unfolding as he's claiming this
is for peace, like it's disgusting, it's disgusting, it's insulting
that he thinks any of us would buy this crap.
And you know, it just makes you despaired that there's
like an ounce of democracy left in this country, because

(30:05):
look at what's unfolding across the Look at the way
that Americans have shifted against this war. Look at how
majorities of Americans have been for a ceasefire from the
very early days. And now those numbers, which we also
have some in our poll that we can bring you.

Speaker 4 (30:19):
Next week, are overwhelming.

Speaker 1 (30:22):
There's a bipartisan consensus among the American people in favor
of among Republicans, Democrats, and independence, in favor of stopping
the slaughter in Gaza. And he's out here talking, oh,
this is going to bring peace.

Speaker 4 (30:39):
It's sick.

Speaker 1 (30:40):
And on Ukraine, listen, you know it's I think the
Ukrainian piece is frankly more complicated. But what's the goal here,
what's the end plan? How are you going to say
this money is going to fund peace when all it
does is lead to more war. I mean, that's the
bottom line. But the next piece you highlighted this, you
can explain this.

Speaker 3 (31:00):
Let's up there please.

Speaker 1 (31:02):
You know we're instantly now shipping long range missiles to Ukraine.
I'm the type that the Biden administration previously said like, oh, no,
we don't want to do that because we might risk
a provocation with Russia. Now Here we frickin are And again,
what's the plan? If you've got a plan for peace,
we would dearly love to know how these billions of
dollars are going to lead to anything more than the

(31:22):
continued slaughter of Ukrainian men.

Speaker 2 (31:25):
Yeah, so these longer range missiles were ones that we
refuse to send to Ukraine out of fear that they
would escalate the war with Russia. Now this is actually
a duel betrayal because not only has Biden reversed his
policy and sent these missiles to Ukraine, which they then
used in the last two weeks to strike deep inside
of Russian tour territory, including into Crimea, but also that

(31:49):
they shipped these weapons to the Ukrainians and allowed them
to use the most offensive weapons to date at the
very same time that we were all debating Ukraine aid
in Congress that their most offensive weapons that we've given
to Ukraine, which are the most destabilizing towards Russian communications
line and Russian territory. We're given to them at exactly

(32:10):
the same time that we were all debating Ukraine AID.

Speaker 3 (32:12):
Now, why do you think that all is?

Speaker 2 (32:14):
It's so that none of us were to actually realize
both the Ukrainian desire to actually bring the war to Russia,
to actually make sure that we get pulled into the
war with Russia, but second, so that all of us
don't debate and understand the stakes of an extra sixty billion.

Speaker 3 (32:30):
Dollars to this dangerous regime.

Speaker 2 (32:33):
Second is that is very clear in terms of the
artillery numbers that are now acknowledged by the Ukrainian General
staff in the Ukrainian military that they have put out
there publicly.

Speaker 3 (32:44):
At best, given their current.

Speaker 2 (32:46):
Fires rate where they are right now for defense, they
will run out of artillery in one year, and that
the Russian artillery advantage will remain of five to one.
So all we have done is fund the continued slaughter
of these Ukrainian men and give them the ability to
continue losing the way that they have lost. And when
we consider what the Russian negotiators ask them for this

(33:09):
is another canard which is driving me nuts. Now that
all the documents are public from those peace talks in
twenty twenty two, you know what the Russians wanted. They're like, look,
well stop where we are, and you guys just have
to agree to neutrality.

Speaker 3 (33:19):
That's it.

Speaker 2 (33:19):
They kept saying neutrality, neutrality, and neutrality andutrality. You can't
join NATO, you can't join NATO, you can't join NATO.
And everyone's like, this war is not about NATO. Well
then why whenever the actual war was going on and
they were trying to get concessions with the Ukrainians, did
they say just say that you won't join NATO.

Speaker 3 (33:33):
That's it. So if that's really all that we could get,
that's all.

Speaker 2 (33:36):
We have to do is tell them like, hey, guys,
all right, we're gonna give you some weapons, a little
bit of security guarantee on the side, not you know,
full blown war, but you're not going to join NATO
and then we could all just move on with our
lives and there could be peace or at least lack
of conflict for now in Eastern Europe.

Speaker 4 (33:51):
How is that not.

Speaker 3 (33:52):
Worth it compared to you know where we are right now.
It's madness.

Speaker 1 (33:55):
Well here's the thing, like, here's what they'd say, Well,
you can't trust Podin. They Okay, we may say that,
but you know he's just going to use that as
an excuse to then continue his.

Speaker 4 (34:02):
March through Europe or whatever the hell.

Speaker 1 (34:04):
And listen, maybe maybe I severely doubt it, because it's
not like this has been really great for Russia either,
especially at that point.

Speaker 4 (34:14):
But there's one way to find out. And then if
this was.

Speaker 1 (34:17):
Just a pretext to then go and break the agreement
immediately and move into you, then we can act accordingly.
But you have to do peace deals with people you
don't like or trust, with nation state governments that you don't.

Speaker 4 (34:31):
Like or trust. That's the way that it works.

Speaker 1 (34:34):
So listen, we know what's going on here, because even
you know, in our lives, we've seen the way that
these the logic of these wars just continues and continues
and continues. Because think about President Biden. Okay, the truly
courageous thing that he did on foreign policy is to
withdraw from Afghanistan, and nothing hurt him more in terms
of his approval ratings and in terms of media coverage

(34:55):
than that actually truly courageous thing that he did, which
was to say, Nope, I am not just gonna continue
to fund and support the status quo and kick the
cand to the next guy and hope that they clean
up this, you know, multi decade mess and utter foreign
policy catastrophe. I'm going to actually do it. And it
was a disaster for him Politically, it was a disaster

(35:15):
for him. I think that's outrageous, but that's reality and
they're not stupid. So now we're settling into an endless
status quo in Ukraine where there is.

Speaker 4 (35:25):
Not even any talk of it ending.

Speaker 1 (35:27):
It's just we're going to continue to spend this money
and write another check and whatever we need to do.
We've got our little pro Ukraine consensus. We've got Trump
on board. Now, we got McConnell, we got a Keen Jeffries,
we got Mike Johnson, we got Joe Biden, like we
got a lock on both parties to just continue funding
this thing forever and never have to take the heat
over because imagine, imagine that Biden did what we would

(35:50):
want him to do, and he actually said, you know what,
we're not funding this anymore. We're pushing both parties the
negotiating table. We have to bring this thing to a conclusion.
He would be slaughtered by the press. It would be
over for his realaction. I mean, that's the reality because
of the way it would be covered right now preposterously.
The area that he has the highest approval ratings on

(36:11):
in many polls is his handling of the Ukraine War.
So that's how these things become ten twenty year engagements,
because these presidents realize that to actually do the right
thing and bring this to some sort of conclusion, which
we know would require Ukraine giving up some part of
territory after they promised not one inch and we're going

(36:33):
to take back not only the Dunbass, but we're going
to take back Crimea, et cetera. It would be a
political blood bath for Joe Biden. So I mean, even
if he was inclined to do it, there's no way
he's going to.

Speaker 4 (36:45):
So that's where we are.

Speaker 1 (36:47):
We are in the indefinite, forever war phase of the
Ukraine War where they don't even talk anymore about how
it might come to a close because they have no
plan for that. They have no plan for that. And
you know, with Israel, by the way. One other thing
I want to mention about the actual vote. There were
only this is so disgusting to me. There were only

(37:07):
three Democrats who voted against it. Peter Welsh, kudos to him.
Bernie Sanders, kudos to him, and Jeff Murkley kudos to
him over their objections on Israel. How many people do
you have now in the Senate Democratic Caucus who have
said we're worried about the humanitarian crisis. Chris Van Holland
has been one of the most strident critics. He actually
went over and saw the way that Israel was blocking

(37:30):
humanitarian aid and causing a literal famine. People, children, babies,
starving to death, and he votes for it, and he
votes for it, like how do you live with yourself?
Ryan Emily made a great point saga that I want
to raise here as well and make sure everybody hears it.
Which is part of the reason they put all this
crap together and why they do this all the time,

(37:50):
these omnibus bills is to avoid any sort of democratic understanding,
so there's no clarity because it's just so many things,
you're like overwhelmed.

Speaker 4 (38:00):
By all the pieces.

Speaker 1 (38:01):
And also so that people don't have to be on
the record on each of these individual pieces, because I
guarantee you if you went to van on, why'd you
vote for this Israel funding unconditional support, He'd say, well,
I have the Ukrainians.

Speaker 4 (38:13):
So that's how you end up.

Speaker 1 (38:15):
With, you know, people who have claimed to be opposed
at this point to unconditionally supporting bb Net and Yahoo's genocide,
how they still end up voting for it and sleeping
at night apparently looking at themselves in the America.

Speaker 4 (38:28):
Oh, because it's the Ukrainians.

Speaker 3 (38:30):
Yeah, no, you're right. And also we've just seen continued escalations.

Speaker 2 (38:33):
Put this up there here, you know, from the Israelis,
the Israeli strikes. This is from Haretz quote reports the
most severe attacks there in weeks. So we'll end, you know,
with some of the words from Michael Tracy, who I
thought put it well. Putting aside my disagreement with him
on the TikTok piece, let's go to his tweet bear please.
He says, this was the most disturbing legislative process I've
seen in fifteen plus years of covering US politics. A threshold,

(38:53):
husband cross. The US has now made an enormous down
payment on global war across at least three geographs, theaters,
and imposed radical government control of the Internet. My disagreement
on the last sentence there aside, I do absolutely think
he is correct. There is no more bipartisan consensus than
funding the war machine. And just to underscore what you
said as well about media and linking back to our

(39:17):
segment about where people get it, if as long as
we live in a country where forty five to fifty
five year olds are the ones who are vastly going
to vote and have stakes in the political system than
the media that they consume and their interpretation of events,
it's all that is going to matter. And unfortunately, that
is the reality you know, that we currently live in,
and it just explains so much about the way that

(39:39):
all of our politics works. I mean, you can look
at a poll and you can see the vast majority
of Republicans are against more A to Ukraine, but then
if you isolate it to sixty five plus, you'll see
that it's like fifty to fifty.

Speaker 3 (39:49):
And then you see that.

Speaker 2 (39:50):
Over eighty to ninety percent of the Republicans in the
Senate ended up voting for it.

Speaker 3 (39:54):
You're like, well, how does this work?

Speaker 2 (39:56):
Same on Democrats yeah, you may have a bunch eighteen
twenty years nine year olds screaming on a college campus.
It doesn't matter when the boomers are watching MSNBC and
they love Bbie and they love Israel because they don't
see some of the stuff that we show you here
on this show. And it's like, as long as that's reality,
we're all locked in. You know, I'm thirty two years old,
and until these people are gone, it's going to be

(40:18):
I'll be I'll be their age by the time we
even get to have any say in this country. And
by that time, I'll be screaming at the young ends.

Speaker 3 (40:24):
So who don't even know.

Speaker 2 (40:24):
But I like to think that we'll have more humility though,
as people who had to go through this, to look
at the people who are coming up and say, I
know what it was like to be you and to
be totally powerless in your own country.

Speaker 4 (40:34):
I one of alls.

Speaker 1 (40:36):
So make sure to highlight that Michael Tracy tweet just
because he's been such a resource.

Speaker 3 (40:39):
Yes, that's right.

Speaker 1 (40:40):
He's done such a great job, you know, really covering
the ins and outs of this legislative process, and we've
really relied on him and his analysis as well. Since
he's reading through the bills and he's very good at
picking out some of the critical pieces. So just want
to make sure to give him a shout out as
well for doing great coverage.

Speaker 2 (40:55):
So subscribe to a substack if we can, we'll put
a link there in the description.

Speaker 3 (40:59):
He's a great guy, even when I disagree.

Speaker 2 (41:00):
I think he's very very I think he's very very
good faith and principal in the way that he approaches thing,
is very upfront about the way he is, and that's
actually quite rare in this business.

Speaker 3 (41:08):
So shops shout outstand.

Speaker 1 (41:13):
So, as we've been covering all week, there has been
a nationwide moral panic freak count and attendant authoritarian state
crackdown on peaceful college protesters who are upset about the
atrocities they witness in Gazan who specifically want their schools
to divest from any related investments. Prime Minister of Israel

(41:34):
bb Natan Yahoo has joined the fray, issuing this statement
and calling American college students effectively Nazis.

Speaker 4 (41:42):
Take a listen.

Speaker 8 (41:42):
What's happening in America's college campuses is horrific. Antisemitic mobs
have taken over leading universities they call for the annihilation
of Israel. They attack Jewish students, they attack Jewish faculty.
This is reminiscent of what happened in German universities in
nineteen thirties. It's unconsidable. It has to be stopped. It

(42:04):
has to be condemned and condemned unequivocally. But that's not
what happened. The response of several university presidents was shameful.
Now fortunately, state, local, federal officials, many of them have
responded differently, But there has to be more. More has
to be done. It has to be done. Not only
because they attack Israel. That's bad enough. Not only because

(42:25):
they want to kill Jews wherever they are that's bad enough.
It's also when you listen to them. It's also because
they say not only death to Israel, death to the Jews,
but death to America. And this tells us that there
is an anti Semitic surge here that has terrible consequences.
We see this exponential rise of anti Semitism throughout America

(42:47):
and throughout Western societies as Israel tries to defend itself
against genocidal terrorists, genocidal terrorists who hide behind civilians. Yet
it is Israel that is falsely accused of genocide, Israel
that is falsely accused of starvation and all sundry war crimes.
It's all one big libel. But that's not you.

Speaker 1 (43:05):
Oh my god, Zaga, I'm going to lose my mind.
I mean, this has it, has it all? We're going
to just let a foreign government leader smear our college
kids as Nazis.

Speaker 4 (43:22):
In addition, I mean, I have a million things I
want to say about this.

Speaker 1 (43:24):
I'm like sort of sputtering with anger at every piece
of that. How much have the Jewish students who are
at the heart of these protests been completely erased the
idea that they're calling for death to all Jews? What
they want their themselves to be killed? They want themselves
to be genocided? Like this isn't It's so insane. Ryan

(43:48):
and Emily did a great interview yesterday with one of
the student organizers on Columbia.

Speaker 4 (43:53):
She was out buying.

Speaker 1 (43:55):
Ingredients for their satyr, which they had very peacefully interfaith. Okay,
that's what we're talking about here. And are there some
rally chants that I wouldn't necessarily choose?

Speaker 4 (44:04):
Sure?

Speaker 1 (44:05):
Are there some genuinely anti Semitic comments that are made
in the context of especially not even the college campus
but outside. Sure, Okay, there are assholes and racists exist,
no doubt about it, But you're going to use that
to smear everyone who is sick to death watching these
babies being starved and slaughtered as an anti Semite. It's disgusting,

(44:31):
it's despicable, and nothing will make actual anti Semitism rise,
by the way, farther and faster than forcing every Jew
in America around the world to be conflated.

Speaker 4 (44:42):
With the state of Israel. Okay, because we can.

Speaker 1 (44:45):
All see what you're doing on TikTok and YouTube and
lots of other places. Your soldiers, your idf soldiers, are
out there tiktoking their war crimes.

Speaker 4 (44:52):
We're not idiots. We can see. And it's not just
college kids.

Speaker 1 (44:56):
It's the un special rabbertur, It's the ICJ saying plausible genocide.
It's the body count, it's the relentless, complete siege. It's
the fact that you're about to imminently invade Rafa, where
more than a million Palestitians are currently sheltering like ugh, sickening, sickening,
And the fact that politicians in America are letting this
foreign leader smear our kids as racist and Nazis, and

(45:19):
they just let this go and they freaking support it.

Speaker 3 (45:22):
Oh.

Speaker 2 (45:22):
See, that latter part is where I wouldn't even bother
pointing out hypocrisy. I would just say, hey, man, you
worry about your country and we'll worry about ours.

Speaker 3 (45:31):
And in fact, you especially shouldn't be worrying about ours.

Speaker 2 (45:34):
And talking about ours when you are actively telling us
not to sanction your units based upon our you know,
US laws like the Leahy law, when you're actively your
president just put out a police saying please stay out
of Israeli politics whenever they attack Chuck Schumer or others
for calling for an end to the Netan Yahu government

(45:55):
by saying, hey, you shouldn't be calling for interference in
our domestic politics. I mean, this man is in English
talking about a domestic political issue that we as Americans
can resolve together as to what constitutes anti Semitism, what
proper use of force looks like, etc. That is a
debate for us to have and for them to have

(46:16):
no play or parted, especially whenever they are a client
state who receives more foreign aid than any other nation
in the world. That is particularly why it's so galling
is because their ego and the goal and their impunity
is such that they can keep their handout and then
smack our populace at the very state time. So to them,
I say, keep your mouth, keep your face completely out.

Speaker 3 (46:40):
Of our politics, and you worry about your own business.

Speaker 1 (46:43):
And the impunity is cultivated by Joe Biden. He knows
he can say that he can smear whoever he wants
is a Nazi. I mean, he's actually comparing the whole
country to Nazi Germany because he says, oh, this, we
haven't seen this since that time period. We haven't seen
you know, Jews unsafe on college campuses or whatever. He
said again, no, this is not about Jewish student safety,
because if it was, there might be a few words

(47:04):
of Karen concern for the Jewish students who were being
cracked down on by a you know, aggressive police state
and being threatened with the freaking National Guard people courting
another Kent state. Maybe you'd have a little concern for
those Jewish students if that was really truly your concern.
So it's disgusting. Additional disgusting situations unfolded. You had Mike

(47:25):
Johnson and a bunch who's of course speaking of the House,
a bunch of other Republicans who went to tour Columbia
give a press conference and wasn't received particularly well by
the student body there. First of all, apparently he didn't
have like a microphone to product his voice. He was
just speaking into like the press microphones, so no one
could even hear him. So there are a lot of people,

(47:47):
a lot of the students were yelling like grandstand louder
and like speak up, you piece of grab and stuff
like that. Anyway, and the press around really couldn't hear
what he had to say either. But anyway, here is
a little bit of Mike Johnson attend to speak and
getting hackled by the crowd ticklism.

Speaker 3 (48:03):
After meeting with Jewish students.

Speaker 9 (48:05):
Let's listen live in the Columbia campus.

Speaker 10 (48:07):
So thank you all for being here today. We have
several members of Congress here, and we're here today at
one of America's pre eminent academic institutions on a very
important day and a very important time throughout history Columbia here.

Speaker 1 (48:31):
So anyway, receiving a warm welcome there, and you know
it's notable. I believe they had a few Jewish members
along with them. They managed to remain safe in spite
of the fact that this is apparently you know, Nazi
Germany and Manhattan at this point and you were talking
about this, I think you should lay this out. But like,
there's a very clear political benefit here for Mike Johnson,
who has some problems with parts of his coalition because

(48:53):
of the Ukraine Aid stuff. This is this crackdown on
free speech. Minutes ago, these people were oh, we love
free and now suddenly it's like bringing the police, bringing
the National Guard. Very unifying for the Republicans and divisive
for the Democrats, so it's a smart wedge issue for
them politically.

Speaker 2 (49:08):
This is very useful to Mike Johnson because he was
facing that motion motion to vacate revolt that was on
his right flank from Freedom Caucus types and others. So
by going to Columbia, even with all of the Republican
leadership that he had behind him, including a few others
that were willing to make the track, he actually is
solidifying some of his support within the caucus and then

(49:29):
turning the tables, like you said, in terms of a
division against the Democrat. So this is kind of a
political jiu jitsu move on his part to move the
attention away from the Ukraine, AID and all of that
to an area where he's very, very safe within his
own caucus, and that's where he finds himself right now.
It's directly why he immediately was like, I'm going to
Columbia and this is the reason.

Speaker 1 (49:50):
Yeah, police day crackdowns on peaceful protesters apparently unifying issue
for the Republican caucus and frankly for much of the
Democratic cacus. Are a number of Democratic members of Congress
who went and toured Colombia too, and amazingly, thank goodness,
they were able to remain safe. What an incredible miracle. Obviously,
this is not just Colombia at this point. Also an
update there. The president has been, you know, in some

(50:13):
sort of negotiations with the students. There were initial threats
that they were going to bring the NYPD back in.
You recall they crackdown before and arrested a bunch of students,
suspended a bunch of students. There was a threat that
they were going to bring them in again. There were
other people who were threatening, oh, we might bring in
the National Guard. She's now in these discussions with student protesters.
I believe the deadline for those talks is something like

(50:34):
four am on Friday morning. So we'll see what happens there.
But that story certainly is not concluded. And now we've
got some extraordinary scenes unfolding truly coast to coast. At
this point, we can put this up on the screen.
This is from University of Texas Austin. Now they sent
in an overwhelming police force. By the way, this is DPS.

(50:58):
These are some of the that's the agency. There were
some of the cowards that would not go in when
it was UVALDI children who were at risk, but you
know they could show up here and they're all suited
up and crack some college kids' heads. So these were
some extraordinary scenes that were happening here. I would just
want to be clear there aren't even any reports of
anything even colorably anti semitic at ut Austin, nor any

(51:22):
violence no quote unquote I stabbing incidents, And we'll get
to that in a minute and how that was a
complete hoax. But you can see this is happening around
the country. You've got Brown, You've got University of Southern California,
you've got University of Minnesota, You've got Columbia, of course,
you've got NYU. This is just a sampling of the
type of scenes that are truly unfolding at Elite and
you know, normal state institutions around the country and the

(51:45):
type of crackdown that they have been met with. In
particular at U t Austin, there was a local press
cameraman with the local Fox news affiliate who was tackled
and arrested by these police for just being there to
document the protest and what was going on. Just take
a look at this, can narrate this, and then there's

(52:07):
actually an interview with him that I can show you.

Speaker 4 (52:09):
So you see him.

Speaker 1 (52:09):
There with his camera like he's got his pressed credentials on,
He's just doing his job, and you can see him
grabbed by the police, thrown to the ground, okay, and
then he is zip tied and arrested.

Speaker 4 (52:23):
Here, let's go ahead and switch out throw to He.

Speaker 1 (52:26):
Was interviewed by someone else who was on the scene
there and explains like, I'm just here trying to do
my job.

Speaker 4 (52:31):
Let's take a listen to what he had to say.

Speaker 3 (52:33):
Were you RINOs?

Speaker 5 (52:38):
I think it's uh. They were pushing me and I
they say that I had an officer.

Speaker 3 (52:42):
I think again an officer where you're pushing you know
what I mean? They're pushing me. Everyone. What's your name
in naming data birth.

Speaker 11 (52:50):
We're gonna send attorney to you.

Speaker 3 (52:56):
Has this happened.

Speaker 4 (52:59):
To me before? What is going on?

Speaker 2 (53:01):
I mean, he's literally doing his job. You can see
very clearly on camera. He didn't push anybody. He has
his press credentials that are around his neck. He had
the live view backpack, so he's broadcasting live.

Speaker 1 (53:11):
They've charged him with criminal trustpassing, which also tells you that, oh,
he hit an officer is bullshit because if he hit
an all officer, he'd be charged with assault exactly, even
if it was like colorable. But that was a complete lie.
So he's this American journalist, local news journalist being charged
with criminal treuspassing for.

Speaker 4 (53:32):
Doing his job.

Speaker 2 (53:33):
Governor Abbott has almost certainly violated Texas law here and
we can show you some of the evidence.

Speaker 3 (53:37):
Just go and put this up there on the screen.

Speaker 2 (53:39):
Governor Abbot tweeted, quote, arrests are being made now, right
now and will continue until the crowd disperses.

Speaker 3 (53:44):
These protesters belong in jail.

Speaker 2 (53:46):
Listen to this very clearly, he says anti Semitism will
not be tolerated in Texas period. Students joining in hate
field anti Semitic protests at any public college or university
in Texas should be expelled. So he is explicitly saying
that the pro test is being broken up because of ideology.
This again is very clearly a violation of Texas law,

(54:07):
which clearly lays out that at a public university the
only way that you are allowed to break up protests
is in violation of time, place, and manner. Stuff that
is on the books. The organization, the free speech organization
fire put this out. Let's put this up there on
the screen. They say that the chilling show of force
the UT is a disproportionate response to an apparently peaceful protest,

(54:29):
sending it in feinlanks of law enforcement threatens protect and
speech where it should be at its most free. A
public university like UT Austin. Governor Abbott's public commentary clearly
makes it a disregard for the firstman's protection of political speech.
Clear we encourage those with Firstmendment rights who are threatened
at UT Austin or elsewhere to contact fire. This is
specifically a law called SB eighteen, which is a Texas

(54:51):
free speech legislature, a law that passed several years ago.
It allows university to create disciplinary actions for students who
quote interfere with speech activities, but it does put into
place very clearly restrictions on the time, place, and manner
of such activities, and specifically areas of the public university remembered.

(55:11):
You know, Texas taxpayers and the federal government are the
ones who fund this university race is not Columbia. Colombia's
private land. It's private university and they can technically do
whatever they want. But in public universities it's a whole
other ballgame. And this reminds us very much of a
lot of the stuff that happened during the Vietnam War.

Speaker 1 (55:27):
Yeah, listen, I'm not a legal expert on this, but
I can tell you the Supreme Court has upheld numerous
times that First Amendment rights apply on public university campuses.
So when you're talking about this kind of crackdown at
UT Austin, it is a very different The moral landscape
is the same, but the legal landscape is very different.
And then you also have to talk about just the
incredible hypocrisy here. I mean, this man was how long

(55:49):
ago growing about free speech on college campus, and then
he doesn't even in his old tweet, he doesn't even
claim there's violence. As I said, I haven't seen a
single report of either violence, anything even colorable as violence,
or anything any anti Semitic incidents, none of that. He

(56:10):
just doesn't like the cause that they stand for, and
so we sent in a bunch of cops to arrest
I believe dozens of students and including this journalist who's
just there trying to do his job. There is no
excuse for this. There's no excuse for it. I don't
care where you are on this issue. I defended many
people who were saying a lot of crap that I
find offensive. I don't agree with, I don't like, but

(56:32):
I'm like, you have the right to say you're offensive bullshit, Okay,
this is America and this. Situations like this are exactly
why I made sure that I in particular defended the
speech that I personally disagreed with and found offensive, because
that's when it's tough, that's when it matters. I don't
want to hear a single person who is supporting any

(56:54):
of this ever say another.

Speaker 4 (56:56):
Word about free speech.

Speaker 1 (56:59):
It was always naked and very selective, but it has
never been more naked and selective than right now. I mean,
some of these like billionaire Republican donors who three minutes
ago were funding all of these free speech efforts and
pressuring to allow you know, Ben Shapiro or whoever to
appear on college milo Unapolis or whoever to appear on
college campuses.

Speaker 4 (57:18):
Suddenly, oh, oh, I'm offended, this speech is violence.

Speaker 1 (57:23):
They sound like the greatest caricature the liberals could have
never in their wildest dreams imagine this kind of nationwide
crackdown from New York to Texas to la It is
so despicable and enraging I can't even begin to comment,
and so disconnected from what is actually happening on these campuses.

Speaker 4 (57:44):
If you go to the protest, if you speak.

Speaker 1 (57:46):
To the students who are involved in engaging in it,
they will come right out and say, we are totally
opposed to violence. We completely condemn that, we completely condemn
anti semitism.

Speaker 4 (57:55):
By the way, many of.

Speaker 1 (57:56):
Us are ourselves Jewish, insane, insane situation.

Speaker 2 (58:00):
Well, I mean, and this is where I even have
to move past it and say even if they were
anti Semitic, they are still US citizens who have the
right to do what they want. So that was a
white nationalist group, I would say the exact same thing,
And they probably hate my guts because I'm from Texas
and apparent according them, I shouldn't have even been there
in the first place. I don't mind if that's what
they want to say. You know, we are all Americans.

(58:20):
We have our citizenship, and that's the issue that we
find this. Texas in particular has had the BDS law
now on the books and even enforced it in the
past firing state employees. So they've always had a Israel
exception to their free speech law. And yeah, it's one
of those where this is very clear. Yeah, the optics
again of the Texas DPS, which was involved in the
horrific response of Vivalde to this. Actually some of the

(58:44):
students on campus were openly chanting this. And this is
a likely only a preview of what is to come,
especially with the deadline at Columbia expiring sometime in the
next twenty four to forty eight hours.

Speaker 3 (58:55):
We don't know what's going to.

Speaker 1 (58:56):
Happen there, and I want to say too, Like obviously
with the Columbia example, this isn't a red state phenomenon.
This is like a you know, elite bipartisan instances in
California and Blue California, LA. They also sent in the
cops to arrest I believe, somewhere around one hundred students
to keep you know, an encampment from growing in size there,
and they've poured gasoline on the fire. I mean, these encampments.

(59:19):
I just saw a message from our front Motaz, who
we had on the show before, who's a palestin, the
American activist who's lost more than a hundred of family
members in Israel's assault on Gaza. They one just sprung
up at GW. So this is truly a nationwide phenomenon here.
I saw someone pointing out on Twitter too, like the
school years was almost over.

Speaker 3 (59:41):
I was going to say, it's over in about like
two weeks.

Speaker 1 (59:44):
If you had just allowed these things to go and
do their thing and like peacefully fizzle out, you probably
wouldn't have had I mean, you wouldn't have had this
big momentum here at the end of the school year
and all of this fraud situation at Columbia university cancel
classes for the rest of the year, Like you wouldn't
have had this insanity if the Columbia University president hadn't

(01:00:06):
sent in the police to you know, crack down on
these student protesters and really spark this whole conflagration. So
it's completely contrary to you know, their desires for all
these people to just go away, and the polar opposite
thing obviously is happening. And then this is a little
bit of a tease for your monologue, Soccer, but you know,
some of the echoes of sixty eight here are particularly

(01:00:27):
profound at Columbia University. You can put this up on
the screen. So Columbia's own website, this person points out
on Twitter, actually literally has a page about how the
last time that they had student protesters mass arrested, that
they now realized they were completely wrong and that it
screwed up their reputation for decades. So let me read
this from the Columbia University web page. It says Columbia

(01:00:48):
is a far different place today than it was in
the spring of sixty eight when protesters took over university
buildings IMiD discontent about the Vietnam War, racism and the
university's proposed expansion into Morningside Park. After a week long standoff,
New York City police stormed in the campus, rust of
more than seven hundred people.

Speaker 4 (01:01:03):
The fallout dogged Columbia for years.

Speaker 1 (01:01:06):
It took decades for the university to recover from those
turbulent times. They go on to say Columbia's commemorating the
fiftieth anniversary of those long ago events with a deep
dive of scholarship and exhibits chronicling what happened then in
its effects today. So apparently they need to do a
little deeper dive into that scholarship to realize that guess
what those lessons you learn back in nineteen sixty eight,

(01:01:28):
they apply right now today. And I know you're going
to draw out some more of those historic parallels from
nineteen sixty eight.

Speaker 3 (01:01:34):
Stay tuned.

Speaker 2 (01:01:35):
It is exactly fifty six years ago to the day,
which is wild like to the day of where all
of this was going down. And if we listened to
the lessons of sixty eight, there's a lot more chaos toic.

Speaker 8 (01:01:46):
Come.

Speaker 4 (01:01:49):
Let's talk about a hoax, shall we? Let's talk about us.

Speaker 3 (01:01:53):
There's nothing I love more than hoaxes.

Speaker 1 (01:01:55):
So are you covering you will recall I joined Piers
Morgan's Piers Morgan Uncensored this week and one of the
individuals that I was on with was a Jewish student
at Yale who claimed she had been and these were
her words.

Speaker 4 (01:02:10):
Stabbed in the eye with a flag. Okay.

Speaker 1 (01:02:14):
Now, I noted in the segment her eye seemed okay, okay,
and this happened only I believe two days prior, so
you typically, I believe if you're stabbed in the eye,
the recovery time is a little bit lengthier.

Speaker 4 (01:02:27):
But okay, I'm gonna.

Speaker 3 (01:02:28):
Yeah, taking the word for it, taking your word, right, what.

Speaker 4 (01:02:31):
Am I gonna do? I'm gon take you out your
Word'm glad you're okay.

Speaker 1 (01:02:33):
Well, now video has emerged of the I stabbing, and
go ahead and put this up on the screen. So, okay,
you can see she's in the middle of protest, she's recording.
There's people who are all around her. You know, they're
wearing their cafeas they're doing their thing.

Speaker 4 (01:02:48):
They're moving by.

Speaker 1 (01:02:50):
Okay, I don't know, you know exactly what's happening here,
but there's just a lot of people moving around. Right,
Someone comes close. Okay, oh there's the flag, and and okay,
that was it. That was the I stabbing. Someone walked
by with a flag. It's not even clear that she
was hit with the flag at all. I'll give her

(01:03:11):
the benefit of the doubt. I guess, even though it's
clearly not deserved, that maybe the flag accidentally, you know,
grazed her somewhere in the eye vicinity.

Speaker 4 (01:03:21):
But put the next piece up on the screen.

Speaker 1 (01:03:25):
This is how this was reported in Barry Wise's The
Free Press. Here's literally the headline, I was stabbed in
the eye at Yale. The school has allowed anti Israel
students to run roughshod for their most basic policies. Yesterday,
I paid the price for their inaction. And the first
line of this piece, by the way, is also I
was stabbed in the eye last night on Yale University's

(01:03:45):
campus because I am a Jew.

Speaker 4 (01:03:49):
There was no eye stabbing. There was no eye stabbing.

Speaker 1 (01:03:51):
You were, like, maybe potentially grazed unintentionally with a flag.

Speaker 4 (01:03:57):
That is clearly what happened in the video.

Speaker 1 (01:03:59):
It's no wonder even though she took this video, she
did not circulate this video when she was doing her
whole I was stabbed in the I pressed her. And
by the way, it wasn't just Barry Weiss's outlet that
they were the ones that initially ran that.

Speaker 4 (01:04:12):
This got picked up everywhere and.

Speaker 1 (01:04:14):
Obviously you know Peers Moorgan featured her testimony here as well.

Speaker 3 (01:04:18):
Well.

Speaker 2 (01:04:19):
Was she on her way to subway? Is that what
was going on? Was she on her way to subway
sandwiches two in the morning? Were there any maga hats
involved over here?

Speaker 1 (01:04:27):
I see what you're doing the ice, so I forgot
about the sub maga mullet.

Speaker 9 (01:04:30):
Where there were there's some where? Was that guy a
personal trainer or something? Was what was going on there
with all of this? Listen, this is all complete bullshit.

Speaker 2 (01:04:41):
And as my I urge everyone in this rule, if
there is any claim of assault, of racism, of any
attack of which you stand to benefit or which benefits
a political cause, my rule is it didn't happen. It
didn't happen. The burden of proof is on you. And
even then, if it's on camera, it's probably exaggerated, which

(01:05:04):
is the evidence that we all have here. I often
tell the story, but Rolling Stone is what really made
me create that rule.

Speaker 3 (01:05:11):
But where I went to school.

Speaker 2 (01:05:13):
George Washington University was the site of one of the
original panics over Swastika's, where a student kept calling the
police saying that someone was drawing a swastika on her
dorm room and America freaked out. This was a nationwide story.
Oh my god, Swastka's being done on.

Speaker 3 (01:05:27):
The dorm room.

Speaker 2 (01:05:28):
So GW put a camera in the dorm to make
sure that they could catch the swastika drawer. Who do
we all think it was who was drawing the swastika?

Speaker 6 (01:05:37):
It was her.

Speaker 3 (01:05:38):
It was her the whole time.

Speaker 2 (01:05:39):
These people are victims, and I'm talking about you know,
but what's that guy's name, Nascar Bubba, whatever his name is,
and the news how did that work out? The NASCAR
nows Rolling Stone. I mean, there's if you want to
get controversial, Christine blasi Ford.

Speaker 3 (01:05:58):
I mean, in every case, several years later.

Speaker 2 (01:06:01):
We can look back and just be like, yeah, this
was some straight up bs that completely was used for
political benefits.

Speaker 3 (01:06:08):
So I urge everyone to use that rule. Whenever you're
looking through this.

Speaker 2 (01:06:11):
Be deeply, deeply, deeply, deeply skeptical. And I mean I
was privately cracking jokes in our group chat and all this,
but like, yeah, where's your eyepatch? You know, making all
of this because I didn't believe it from the beginning.
I'm not going to say that in public, but now
that the video has come out, I feel very very
comfortable ridiculing and making fun of this lady.

Speaker 1 (01:06:29):
Well, and here's the thing is, it wasn't without consequence.
Like I'm personally extra irritated because I had to like,
you know, be yea, let's be sympathetically to this person.
And it was so emotionally manipulative, and not to me,
who cares me, but to the whole audience. This was
a big part of what sparked now this total freak
out and crackdown. And you know, the people who initially

(01:06:52):
read the like, oh someone was stabbed an eye nonsense
from a variety of news outlets, They're never going to
see this video. They're never going to see a action
because probably none of these outlets are even gonna make
a correction. And so not only did you trigger this
freak out, you also made a lot of Jewish students
feel genuine fear, like, oh my god, maybe there's something
is really going on that I need to fear for

(01:07:13):
my safety. All based on nonsense, and you know it
is true. This is not This is like across ages
demographic groups, there are some number of people who are
just so desperate to be like the center of some
victimhood story.

Speaker 4 (01:07:28):
It's like it is like a sickness.

Speaker 1 (01:07:30):
This shy DIVIDI guys definitely fits that mold as well,
where it's like they're so desperate to be a victim
that you'll go in and just invent some of you'll
go into the situation hoping that something happens that you
can even colorably pretend was, you know, a hate crime,
a grave victimization of you versus someone like accidentally bumping

(01:07:52):
into with like insane. By the way, just to show
you like this isn't our first trip to this rodeo.
But the last element c eight up on the screen,
So I don't know if you guys remember this.

Speaker 4 (01:08:02):
This was a minor blip.

Speaker 1 (01:08:04):
Back in December, the same woman had tweeted out imagine
returning to your dining hall to find that salad labels
were renamed to remove mention of the salads being Israeli.
That happened at Yale. This it's the subtle changes and
reactions that are the most pernicious.

Speaker 4 (01:08:22):
So apparently there.

Speaker 1 (01:08:23):
Was some Israeli couscous salad that she claimed the sign
verbiage had been changed. Literally the next day, some other
student at Yale was like, here's the sign.

Speaker 4 (01:08:34):
It still says Israeli couscouse like relaxed.

Speaker 2 (01:08:37):
Yeah, no, it was a complete hoax as well. So
you know, hoax me once, Shame on me. I hoaxed
me twice, shame on you.

Speaker 4 (01:08:44):
Yes.

Speaker 1 (01:08:44):
Indeed, all right, let's move on to some additional domestic
situations that are onfolio.

Speaker 4 (01:08:49):
This is really important.

Speaker 1 (01:08:50):
Yesterday the Supreme Court heard oral arguments about the Idaho
state almost complete abortion ban and whether it is in
conflict with a federal law that mandates and this is
for any hospital that takes medic air funds, which is
basically every hospital that mandates that they perform emergency care
and stabilize patients.

Speaker 4 (01:09:12):
So let's take a listen.

Speaker 1 (01:09:14):
This was a very interesting exchange from liberal Justice Sonia
Soda Mayor and then backed up by conservative Justice Amy
Cony Barrett, very concerned about the implications of this Idaho
abortion band for women.

Speaker 4 (01:09:28):
Let's take a listen.

Speaker 11 (01:09:29):
Imagine a patient who goes to the ar with pre
prompt fourteen weeks. Again abortion is accepted. She's up. She
was in and out of the hospital up to twenty
seven weeks. This particular patient they tried had to deliver
her baby. The baby died, she had a hysterectomy, and

(01:09:52):
she can no longer have children. All right, you're telling
me the doctor there couldn't have done the abortion earlier.

Speaker 6 (01:10:00):
It goes back to whether a doctor can in good
faith medical judgment.

Speaker 11 (01:10:04):
That's a lot for the doctor to risk.

Speaker 6 (01:10:06):
Well, I think it's protection of doctor judgment.

Speaker 11 (01:10:09):
When id the whole law changed to make the issue
whether she's going to die or not, or whether she's
going to have a serious medical condition. There's a big
day life by your standards, correct.

Speaker 6 (01:10:22):
It is very case by case. The example that I'm kind.

Speaker 12 (01:10:25):
Of shocked actually because I thought your own expert had
said below that these kinds of cases were covered, and
you're now saying they're not.

Speaker 6 (01:10:32):
No, I'm not saying that, that's just my point, your
honor is that.

Speaker 3 (01:10:35):
Well, you're hedging.

Speaker 12 (01:10:36):
I mean, Jessice Sodomower's asking you would this be covered
or not? And it was my understanding that the legislature's
witnesses said that these would be covered.

Speaker 6 (01:10:44):
And those doctors said, if they were exercising their medical judgment,
they could in good faith determine that life saving care
was necessary. And that's my point is is a subjection
some doctors couldn't.

Speaker 12 (01:10:56):
Some doctors might reach a contrary conclusion. I think as
well as Sodomowa is asking you.

Speaker 4 (01:11:00):
Just think about this.

Speaker 1 (01:11:01):
So at issue here is the fact that the law
has an exception in place for the life of the mother,
but not for the health of the mother. So the
scenario that jess as Sonya Soda Mayor is laying out
here is, let's say a woman comes to you. She's
in crisis, her health is failing, but she's not dying.

Speaker 4 (01:11:22):
Now.

Speaker 1 (01:11:22):
If you perform the abortion now, and this is not
hypothet there are genuine instances where this is the case.
If you perform the abortion now, she's going to be okay,
She's going to maintain she's.

Speaker 4 (01:11:31):
Not going to have to have an emergency hysterectomy.

Speaker 1 (01:11:33):
She's going to be able to maintain her ability to
conceive a child and have a child in the future.
You know, this is presumably a woman who is pregnant,
who wants to be a mother. If you don't act,
if you wait for her to get to the point
where she is about to die, then not only is
the baby still going to die, but she's going to
have to go through this emergency hysterectomy. But because her

(01:11:53):
life was not literally at stake right now, there would
be plenty of doctors who would look at the law
and say, my hands are tied here. And you're also
putting doctors in this impossible situation of having to make
these legal judgments themselves in fear huge consequences for them. Directly,
if some court finds down the line that, oh, no,

(01:12:15):
her life wasn't really at stake, and you perform this abortion,
you're in violation of the law. I don't know if
Idaho has criminal penalties, but some of these states do.
So you're also putting doctors in this horrific situation. We
can put this up on the screen The New York Times.

Speaker 4 (01:12:27):
Right up, they said.

Speaker 1 (01:12:28):
The abortion case before the Supreme Court on Wednesday featured
vigorous question comments, particularly by the three liberal justices.

Speaker 4 (01:12:34):
At issue is.

Speaker 1 (01:12:34):
Whether Idaho's near total ban on abortion is so strict
that it violates a federal law requiring emergency care for
any patient, including providing abortions for pregnant women in dire situations,
could reverberate Beyond Idaho, there are at least a half
a dozen other states that have similar, very restrictive bands. So, again,
as I was saying, it allows abortion to save the

(01:12:54):
life of a pregnant woman, but not.

Speaker 4 (01:12:56):
To prevent her health from deteriorating.

Speaker 1 (01:12:58):
The Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act from nearly forty
years ago says when a patient goes to emergency room
with an urgent medical issue, hospitals must either provide treatment
to stabilize the patient or transfer the patient to a
medical facility that can stabilize the patient, regardless of the
patient's ability to pay. And so they're saying, this state
law conflicts with that federal law, you know, in terms

(01:13:22):
of the arguments that and ful, we just showed you
a liberal and a conservative justice kind of appearing to
be on the same side. But I don't know which
way this one is going to go. You had a
LEDO in particular, arguing in the other direction and raising
all sorts of you know, questions about he For one thing,
he asserted that some of these concerns were hypothetical.

Speaker 4 (01:13:42):
They're actually no, I'll get to that in a minute.

Speaker 1 (01:13:44):
He was also using this emergency medical law to assert
that it should apply not only to the woman but
to the fetus, so asserting some sort of like national
heartbeat personhood rights to the fetus, which would open up
a whole other can of worm. So I genuinely have
no idea which direction this one's.

Speaker 4 (01:14:05):
Going to go in.

Speaker 3 (01:14:06):
Yeah, no, it is crazy.

Speaker 2 (01:14:08):
And this is actually a real preview into post stops
politics based on how that all goes, because it does
show you that you can try and leave it to
the states, but it's going to escalate to a federal level,
like about fatal fetal personhood. What sort of ruling like
that would mean. I mean, imagine for all of the
states that currently have legal abortion. Conversely, in terms of

(01:14:29):
the bands themselves, this is just going to insert even
more pressure into the democratic process.

Speaker 3 (01:14:35):
We can put this up there on the screen.

Speaker 2 (01:14:37):
I found this actually an astounding statistic, So apparently that
was noted. In the short time that Idaho has been
allowed to enforce the abortion BAM for people who need
emergency terminations, six women have actually had to be airlifted
to other states for care that is illegal in Idaho,
which just demonstrates also how stupid the whole policy is,
because if you're just going to be airlifted to another
state for the same policy, then what exactly is the

(01:15:00):
point right the law on the books?

Speaker 3 (01:15:02):
You're just freaking idam.

Speaker 4 (01:15:03):
You're just torturing these ways.

Speaker 3 (01:15:04):
Yeah, it's and do you know how much an airlift costs?
Does anyone want to know?

Speaker 2 (01:15:08):
Even with insurance, it's gonna what two hundred grand something
like that. I mean, you're saddling these people. If they're
not if they're uninsured, you're saddled with debt for life.

Speaker 3 (01:15:16):
You're done. If a single event like this happens.

Speaker 1 (01:15:18):
It's incredibly dangerous for these women to have to wait.
They are in severe pain and suffering while they're having
to be airlifted out of state to wherever to actually
get the care that they need. That means that wherever
that hospital is, they're not going to have their friends
and family and support network around them while they're recovering,
and they may have to undergo things like hysterectomies that

(01:15:40):
they wouldn't have if they could have gotten immediate emergency
medical care. And by the way, they're still getting an abortion.
The number of abortions is precisely the same. You're just
ending up with vastly more cost and human suffering. I
mean again, you're you're torturing these women for this band.
So that's the reality there was, Like I said, in

(01:16:04):
terms of the legal arguments, no idea which way this
is going to go, and it could have extraordinary repercussions.
This is one to watch really carefully. It certainly is
going to have extraordinary repercussions for the women that live
in it's like twelve to fourteen states that have these
sorts of complete bands in place. I just there's no
doubt in my mind that at some point a woman

(01:16:24):
will die because she's not given an abortion, even though
you know, a doctor thought, oh maybe your life isn't
at risk and in the process of being airlifted, like
at some point that's going to happen if these laws
remain on the books. This is extraordinary too in terms
of the way that women are processing the DOBS decision.

Speaker 4 (01:16:41):
Put this up on the screen.

Speaker 1 (01:16:43):
The number of young adults, young women who have decided
to get their tubes tied post DOBS. I mean, huge,
huge spike, which just shows you. I mean, they're basically like, listen,
if I'm not going to be able to have, you know,
all these options on the table, like I'm just out,
I'm just not going to have kids. I'm going to

(01:17:03):
take that off the table. Like, no matter what I
think about in the future, this is done for me.
And I think that's pretty extraordinary too. And you know,
also contrary to a lot of conservatives who want women
to have children and families and have that be a
core part of American life, this is exactly the opposite direction.

Speaker 2 (01:17:19):
That's exactly why what I think, and I think this
is really sad also because it's a permanent procedure, also
not without risks, and also not without a cost that
costs a lot of money, you know, to get.

Speaker 3 (01:17:28):
Any of these things done.

Speaker 2 (01:17:29):
So regardless, we're just been posing like a huge amount
of costs, uncertainty, and chaos into the system all for
a policy which, if we leave to the democratic process,
is going to get reversed. Let's go to the next one, please,
just very clearly so everyone can see. Already, despite you know,
several tries by the Republicans to block it, they caved
and the Arizona House is now advanced to repeal of

(01:17:51):
the state's near total abortion man in the Senate.

Speaker 3 (01:17:54):
And if you think that Arizona.

Speaker 2 (01:17:55):
Voters aren't going to remember that it took three separate
tries to get this through the Arizona houseverbal Presentatives that
is controlled by the Republicans, then you're an idiot.

Speaker 3 (01:18:04):
What they currently are.

Speaker 2 (01:18:05):
Moving is an abortion law that would allow up to
fifteen weeks in the state. But again, we are talking
about a issue which had to be forced through the
Congress multiple times and which Terrie Lake is on record
endorsing and then flip flopping on. So even if we
get to some fifteen week thing, which that was the

(01:18:26):
previous iteration of the law, and in the previous iteration,
there was already a campaign to move it to a
statewide referendum. Because this fifteen weeks is still very unpopular.
Good luck to the Republicans who are running on this.

Speaker 1 (01:18:38):
Well, and you know how many Republicans joined with Democrats.

Speaker 3 (01:18:41):
I know, yeah, three, Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:18:42):
That's it, and many of them are still opposed to this,
which listen, in fairness to them, this law is consistent
with what they've claimed they support for many many years,
so you know, I mean true, I do think the
state starts thing really is such a cop out because
I'm not okay with like, oh, sure, it's fine if

(01:19:02):
Idaho decides they want to torture women, Like, no, I'm
not okay with that. This should be at the federal
leg there should be rights for women. So I mean
the Legila Like, I'm glad that they're getting this repeal through,
and I'm sure Arizonas at the ballot box were going
to have their say anyway, but you know, it's it
is clear that they have been faced with the political

(01:19:23):
consequences of their long held positions that they worked so
hard to get enacted into law, and then when actually
faced with the political consequences of that, they are just
running as fast as they can in the other direction.
And I just wonder, like, what is this going to
look like? Is the Republican Party going to shift? Because
Arizona is a swing state, the legislature was not overwhelmingly

(01:19:44):
dominated by Republicans, They had a narrow majority, so you
only needed three to join with the Democrats.

Speaker 4 (01:19:49):
To get this ultimately through.

Speaker 1 (01:19:50):
But a lot of other states where even though the
public may be wildly opposed to these things. You've got
a very Republican dominated legislature who won't year of it.
Because the pro life movement is still so powerful and
so influential within the Republican caucus, and also because they
have stick down this position for so many years, it's
hard to just then explain why no, no, no, I didn't

(01:20:11):
actually mean any of that.

Speaker 4 (01:20:12):
Let's get rid of this band now.

Speaker 2 (01:20:13):
National pro life is too powerful and it will never change,
even if it does on a state wide level. There
was a Republican governor who actually always wanted to run
for president and he never did.

Speaker 3 (01:20:21):
You may remember him, Brian Sandival. He was the governor
of Nevada.

Speaker 2 (01:20:25):
He was one of the most popular Republicans in the
entire country. But he was a non starter for what
reason he was pro choice and being pro choice, that
was it not going to happen. There's no way even
look at what happened with John McCain. John McCain was
like relatively moderated on abortion by two thousand and what
was he partial? He was like pro partial birth or
something pro whatever. My point is that he was out

(01:20:46):
of step with the national parl That caused no big
consternation back in two thousand and eight with the pro
life standoffs, so their power, I don't think it's going
to go down.

Speaker 3 (01:20:54):
Look at Trump even, yeah, I mean.

Speaker 1 (01:20:56):
I mean, that's the perfect example. He was pro choice
for most of it. He was given planned parent and
then he but and there were so many issues where
he was happy to steamroll rhetorically over the Republican establih.
I mean, the Iraq war is a perfect example. He's
just like, no, this is what I think, trade with China, whatever, Like,
there were a bunch of issues or the TPP trade

(01:21:16):
deal that was huge with the Republican establishment, and he
was willing to steamroll over that. But he knew he
could not. He could not be out of step with
the Republican base when it came to abortion. Let's move
on to the very latest out of Israel. We have
some grim news to report this morning. Let's put this

(01:21:38):
up on the screen. There are increasing signs that that
RAFA invasion is all but inevitable. In what some analysts
they write in this piece of the New York Times
and residents of the city saw as a preparation for
an invasion in Israeli military official on Tuesday, gave some
details that include relocating civilians to a.

Speaker 4 (01:21:56):
Quote safe zone. There are none of those, by the way.

Speaker 1 (01:21:59):
A few miles away along the Mediterranean coast that would
be I believe it's called Mawasseie.

Speaker 4 (01:22:04):
We've talked about this before.

Speaker 1 (01:22:05):
Where there's there are no there is nothing set up
there that would ename sewage, water, shelter, any of the
basics of life there is wildly inadequate.

Speaker 4 (01:22:16):
In any case, They go on to.

Speaker 1 (01:22:17):
Say, just a day earlier, Israeli warplanes bombed Rafa. We
covered that here, increasing fears among some of the civilians
sheltering there that a ground assault would soon follow. They
interview a fifty seven year old resident of Rafa who
said that these indicators are quote terrifying, mean they may
really be close to starting an operation. He says, our
bags have been packed for months now at for the

(01:22:39):
time of evacuation, and you know, to give you a
sense of how much this is being cheerleaded within Israel
and how many preparations are being made, an influential think
tank called the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel
Aviv called on Israel to make quote brave decisions and
to develop a plan for the hermetic clothesure of the

(01:23:00):
Philadelphi Corridor in close cooperation with Egypt and the US.
That would be a violation of the agreement between Egypt
and Israel from I believe it was two thousand and
five that assigned you know, authority to Egypt to secure
that border. And then obviously the I can't even tell
you how many, how many deaths we're looking at, how
much of an exacerbation of the humanitarian crisis. You know,

(01:23:22):
many of the people in Rafa, they're either from Gaza
City or they're from Communis.

Speaker 4 (01:23:26):
Both of those cities have been wiped off the map.
Gone yes, So there's nothing to go back to there.

Speaker 1 (01:23:32):
There is no real plan that is credibile at all
to protect people whatsoever. And so it's going to there's
just it's going to be continued horror, like escalated horror.
The death toll is going to be massive, the humanitarian
toll is going to be gigantic. The diplomatic fallout with Egypt,
god knows what's going to happen. There very upset about

(01:23:54):
this direction. So it looks more and more like that
report of Biden said, Hey, if you do a more
limited strike on Iran.

Speaker 4 (01:24:03):
Fine, you can go into Rafa. I mean that's looking
very possible.

Speaker 2 (01:24:06):
Like that actually unfolded, absolutely, and if we stick with
the US political system and where things are, let's go
and put this up there on the screen, because this
is extraordinary. Mike Johnson says that he is admitted to
this by this is not even reporting. Said he had
called White House, specifically Jake Sullivan to intervene and on
behalf of the Israeli military if President Biden was considering

(01:24:28):
slapping sanctions on that Israeli military battalion which was charged
with violating human rights in the West Bank.

Speaker 3 (01:24:35):
Again, keep in mind this is in the West Bank.

Speaker 2 (01:24:37):
These are allegations that actually stem both before October seventh
than others. That is a violation of the State Department's
Leahy Law, which says that we will sanction any individual
will not provide any US support to military battalions or
forces which are engaged in what the US State Department
determines as an ongoing human rights abuse. And independent report
which we covered here had previously identified human rights abuses

(01:25:01):
by this idea of battalion inside of the occupied West Bank,
and that with that policy was a violation of law,
and our speaker actually called and it appears Crystal he
was successful, and it does not look like these sanctions
are going through.

Speaker 1 (01:25:14):
The White House is pushing back on that, but you're
right that there was hid reports and it hasn't happened yet,
and there were multiple reports that the White House was
backing off of this. And there's a lot of things
to say about this. Number one, just one. There are
many incidents of you know, documented torture, allegations and all
sorts of horrifying things from this unit, which is this

(01:25:36):
unit that's set up specifically for the ultra orthodox, has
a bunch of these quote unquote hill top youth sort
of like radical often violent settlers that are in this unit.
So surprise, surprise, lots of human rights violations in one
of them include it was a Palestinian American who was
an elderly man, I think around eighty years old who

(01:25:57):
was tortured, handcuffed and left in the cold to die.
That's one of the allegations and incidents here that we're
talking about.

Speaker 4 (01:26:04):
So our own speaker.

Speaker 1 (01:26:06):
Is supposedly American Speaker of the House begging this administration
to violate US law. To let this unit off the
hook for killing an American citizen like it's insane. And
you know, I'm critical of the very limited nature of
this to begin with, because the whole conceit from the

(01:26:27):
Biden administration is, oh, it's just a few bad apples
that it isn't the direct result of overwhelming government policy.
But it's at least something, and clearly the net Nyahoo
administration doesn't like it. So in any case, extraordinary. He
revealed this, by the way, to Hugh Hewitt. He said, quote,
we heard a rumor of this before our aid bill
was actually brought for a vote in the House, I

(01:26:47):
mean hours before. I'll tell you what I did, Hugh,
and I don't. I guess I'm breaking news here. No
one knows this, but I called the White House immediately
and talked with Jake Sullivan and Tony Blinken was overseas
at the moment.

Speaker 3 (01:26:56):
Yeah, there you go.

Speaker 2 (01:26:57):
So that's one where it's very very clear I think
where things are going, and also the defense that they
have with the political system as we grapple with what
a potential invasion of RAPA would look like. We'd also
be remiss if we didn't get everybody an update on
the Gaza floating pier.

Speaker 4 (01:27:12):
Yeah, tell me how is construction going?

Speaker 3 (01:27:14):
In?

Speaker 2 (01:27:14):
The US military was to We're putting our servicemen in
danger building this peer.

Speaker 3 (01:27:19):
All of that.

Speaker 2 (01:27:20):
We recently got an update from the US military Pentagon spokesperson.
Turns out not a single thing is actually close to
being operational.

Speaker 3 (01:27:28):
Here's what you have to say.

Speaker 13 (01:27:29):
You have the temporary peer, which is of course several
miles offshore, which can receive both military and civilian vessels.
There has been no physical construction of the temporary peer
or the causeway. We are positioned to begin construction very soon,
in the very near future.

Speaker 2 (01:27:48):
So very soon in the near future. It has now
been forty eight days since bri Joe. I can't believe
state of the units forty eight days ago. I feel
like I'm living in a time vacuum. I feel like
this yere covering it. But okay, put that aside. It
feels like just yesterday we were covering it, we were
talking about it, we were doing segments about it. It's
been fifty days now and nothing is happening. In the

(01:28:08):
near future. It may be operational, they put out all
those diagrams. It's like, is this even going to happen
at this point? Doesn't look like it. And in the interim,
the whole reason that it was the bust happened was
that more aid was supposed to go into the Gaza
strip and then that hasn't happened either, So what has
the damage rot been in the meantime?

Speaker 3 (01:28:25):
So more fecklessness on the part of.

Speaker 1 (01:28:27):
The USUS just they think we're so stupid, you know,
I mean, well most people are hard like we honestly
called this from the beginning that it was a total
pr stunt, skeptical if it was even going to happen.
We knew it was going to say they were claiming
sixty days at most, at most they were.

Speaker 4 (01:28:42):
Weren't they saying thirty to sixty days?

Speaker 3 (01:28:43):
And that what they were saying, Yes, that's right, that's
what they said.

Speaker 4 (01:28:46):
Here we are.

Speaker 1 (01:28:47):
Forty eight days later and they have not even started
and cannot even give us a date for when it
would start, Like this was just a lie, something for
Joe Biden to say the State of the Union, to
pretend like he cares about Palestinian civilians starving to death
and dying on mass They haven't even started.

Speaker 4 (01:29:09):
They haven't even started. Just incredible.

Speaker 1 (01:29:14):
Meanwhile, so you've got the imminent invasion of Rafa, you
already have anted up strikes which are killing Palestine civilians
and many children. Now you also have Gaza basically coming
to the West Bank.

Speaker 4 (01:29:25):
Let's put this up on the screen.

Speaker 1 (01:29:27):
There's been very little reporting on this apparently, even though
there's been this has been ongoing for a while. Their
headline here is Israel's hut for one elusive militant brings
Gaza tactics to the West Bank. Airstrikes, drones and ground
troops targeting militants turned Palestinian territory into another war front.
So you know, we have already had the war expanded

(01:29:49):
into Lebanon and Syria and Iran and now ramping up
also in the West Bank. And you know, make no
mistake about it, they've killed more than four hundred thirty
five Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem since
October seventh. About forty nine hundred Palestinians have been injured
in the West Bank specifically since then, either by Israeli

(01:30:09):
forces or by settlers. We brought you that news previously
of that Israeli settler pogram that unfolded with the IDF
just standing by and watching. So, you know, West Bank
increasingly looking more like the Gaza strip in terms of
Israeli tactics. And then the last thing we wanted to
share with you is this little nugget from the New

(01:30:30):
York Times.

Speaker 4 (01:30:30):
Put this up on the screen.

Speaker 1 (01:30:31):
This went sort of unremarked upon, but seems pretty significant.
The headline here is the stark reality of Israel's fight
in Gaza, and they're saying basically, you know, it's similar
to like what Haratz had written before about if you
look at their stated goals, it's not going too well.
You know, they aren't really accomplishing their mission. We saw
those reports that Shinwar is sort of still openly operating.

(01:30:53):
The Israelis of Clay always just hunkered down in this
tunnel and can't do anything. There were some reports at
least that were very contrary to that, but specific. What
I wanted to point to in this piece is they say,
quote in an annual intelligence assessment released in March, American
spy agencies express doubts about Israel's ability to truly destroy.

Speaker 4 (01:31:10):
Hamas, which the US IS doesneyed as.

Speaker 1 (01:31:12):
A terrorist group, Israel probably will face a lingering armed
resistance from Hamas for years to come, the report said,
and the military will struggle to neutralize Hamas's underground infrastructure,
which allows insurgents to hide, regain strength, and surprise Israeli forces.

Speaker 4 (01:31:28):
So even the US intel.

Speaker 1 (01:31:29):
Community is saying, like, you're not going to defeat Hamas,
and I mean that's the conceit with Rafa is like, oh,
once we do that, it's the final boss, right, once
we go into Rafa, then finally Hamas will be defeated.
And this is just it's just bullshit. It's just going
to cause more misery and suffering. I've come back to
what someone on Twitter, some wise person on Twitter said,
which is like they've managed to destroy everything in Gaza

(01:31:52):
except for Hamas.

Speaker 2 (01:31:54):
Yeah, it is an astounding that, according to this that
Sinwar still maintains command and control of the organization. It's
like a glaring failure. It's a lot like the Bin
Laden thing. Actually, Afghanistan is the perfect example. So we
had a couple of options. In Afghanistan. We could have
gone in, thrown everything at the Battle of Torbora, actually
killed Bin Laden, and then we could have gotten the
hell out of there.

Speaker 3 (01:32:13):
Instead we get distracted.

Speaker 2 (01:32:14):
We want to oh, now we're propping up the freedom
forces and now we're going to build a democracy. In
the Israeli case, they're just wiping out basically every building
that exists for any future operation. But the actual people
responsible for our October seven, they don't seem to have
any actually been punished in the way that they allegedly
could have been. And you could have just had a

(01:32:35):
dedicated to counter terrorism operation from the beginning which would
have done this. You could have avoided all this carnage
and all this nonsense. And very much like us, they
will likely reap the reward of that which is an
ongoing mass terrorist blob inside of Gaza that is ungovernable,
inside of a chaos that will bother them now.

Speaker 3 (01:32:56):
For years and years and years to come.

Speaker 2 (01:32:58):
So good luck to them, and they are solely responsible
now at this point and for what they're going to reap.

Speaker 1 (01:33:04):
And also like it's nice that the media is now
like actually waking up to this fact or actually admitting
this fact. But we've been saying this. We played that
Jocko will it clip how early on when he was.

Speaker 3 (01:33:16):
Like it does not rocket sign.

Speaker 1 (01:33:17):
If you actually, okay, if they're serious about counter and tagency,
here's how you do it. You're actually really nice to
the civilian population. You fled them with aid because you
want to create a wedge between.

Speaker 4 (01:33:27):
Them and Hummus.

Speaker 1 (01:33:28):
They haven't had any other option than Hamas as their government,
so you have to give them some other alternative that's
going to satisfy their aspiration. So whether that's you know,
it talks towards peace, some sort of negotiation. We know
throughout history with the Gaza strip, when negotiations and possibility
of peace we're ongoing, support for militant groups like Humas

(01:33:48):
were much lower.

Speaker 4 (01:33:50):
So you do that.

Speaker 1 (01:33:51):
You also need the civilian population to collaborate with you
and tell you where Sinoar is hiding or whatever, and
then you do count targeted counter insurgency strikes. That's the
way you do that. It was never approached that way. Instead,
the first thing they do it was bomb the hell
out a gaza and kill a bunch of kids and
civilians bury them under rubble and drop two thousand pounds

(01:34:13):
bombs on refugee camps and raid hospitals, etc. That was
the first approach. So we always knew this was not
some intelligent, strategic, targeted attempt to get The batties who
fomented October seven are genuine bad guys, like I'm not
denying that, but we always knew that. And now here

(01:34:33):
we are, what are we seven months? And now at
this point they're finally like, oh, by the way, this
may not work. It's like, no shit. And how many
of these people who you've kids, who you've orphaned and
murdered their brother and sister, left them amputees for life whatever,
How peace loving do you think that they're going to
be in the future. How many new comas recruits do

(01:34:54):
you think that you have created while you've been doing this,
And there's no end in sight, no end.

Speaker 4 (01:35:00):
In sight whatsoever? Absolutely all right, soccer, what are you
looking at?

Speaker 3 (01:35:06):
Well?

Speaker 2 (01:35:06):
Oftentimes in American politics, historical analogies are stretched too thin.

Speaker 3 (01:35:10):
They don't even mean anything.

Speaker 2 (01:35:11):
How every time that we need to fund a foreign war,
it's Munich in nineteen thirty eight, or every time a
new election is the most important election of our lifetime,
it's recapturing the spirit of seventeen seventy six.

Speaker 3 (01:35:21):
Most of the time it doesn't have any relation.

Speaker 2 (01:35:24):
And if it does, it's far less related than those
people lead you to believe. But with all my cynicism,
even I am struck by this recent observation from historian
Keith Rahel, who notes, quote, I just can't believe the
parallels of nineteen sixty eight. I mean, okay, Columbia has
widespread unrest, there's widespread anti war activism.

Speaker 3 (01:35:42):
That might be the confidence but coincidence.

Speaker 2 (01:35:44):
But there's a guy named Robert Kennedy running for president,
and the DNC is Chicago. Like this is even a
bit to make it even more eerie, As he notes
later on, the original Planet of the Apes movie was
released in nineteen sixty eight, and we are, of course
due for our latest in the modern series to be
released in this year, twenty twenty four. Hype for Planet
of the Apes aside, there is something actually very eerie

(01:36:05):
about all of this. Even though it's obviously not a
one to one situation with nineteen sixty eight, there's a
lot of lessons we can still learn from one of
the most important years in modern American history.

Speaker 3 (01:36:14):
Start with the campus parallel.

Speaker 2 (01:36:16):
Exactly fifty six years ago to the day of this monologue,
Columbia University was a washed with protests over the Vietnam
War and what students said were racist policies at the university.
Students seized five buildings, they took the Dean hostage, they
refused to vacate, and this led to a week long
standoff until April thirtieth, nineteen sixty eight, when nearly one

(01:36:36):
thousand officers from the New York City Tactical Patrol Office
poured onto campus used force to arrest students. More than
one hundred ended up being injured in those arrests, and
photos went viral in their.

Speaker 3 (01:36:46):
Own nineteen sixty eight way.

Speaker 2 (01:36:48):
The Columbia protests, like today, were a flashpoint because it
all happened in New York City and it got massive
media attention. That March April to nineteen sixty eight period,
exactly fifty six years ago, was a massive turning point
in American history. It was days before the Columbia University
protests that Robert Kennedy decided to enter the Democratic race

(01:37:08):
against Lyndon Johnson. Here, too, the parallels are striking. LBJ
was an unpopular incumbent Democratic president. He had ripped his
coalition in half with the Vietnam War and his pursuit
of the Civil Rights Act. He was, however, a masterful
politician who had seemed would be able to hold on
to his nomination until someone with the golden last name
of Kennedy enters the race. Kennedy's entry into the race

(01:37:30):
was done largely out of opposition to lbj's Vietnam war policy,
in the same way that the current RFK is against
Biden's Ukraine policy and his fundamental belief that both Nixon
and LBJ would divide rather than unite the country. Now
sadly for us all, of course, Kennedy was assassinated in
nineteen sixty eight in questionable circumstances, tying Democrats' hands and
leading to the nomination of Hubert H. Humphrey, which was

(01:37:53):
the vice president of LBJ. It leads to the final
eerie parallel of nineteen sixty eight the upcoming Democratic convention
in Icago, reminding us of the past. Many people know
that the nineteen sixty eight Chicago Convention was violent, but
very few actually know the details. The Democratic Coalition at
that time was a lot like today, completely split on
how to handle Vietnam. Their approach to politics was generally

(01:38:16):
that older voters were much more likely to support the
Vietnam War and to put their trust in the president.
While radical politics had completely overtaken the youth vote. Democratic
leaders they knew this going into the convention, and they
had a mission, just like Biden has today, cover up
all their differences, squashing protests and especially against the Johnson
faction of the DNC. Now the president at the United

(01:38:39):
Today wanted to present this united Front against Nixon. But
these heavy handed tactics backfired massively. Major Mayor Richard Daly
of Chicago took extreme security measures at that convention to
keep protesters out, including putting own restrictions on media coverage.
Protesters knew this, and then they sought to get their
attention anyways, so they began a march to the convention grounds.

(01:39:01):
From there, the torch is led police protesters are clashing
in the streets, tear gas, beatings, violence. It dominated the
airwaves in the age when a vast majority of the
population was watching television and it didn't have alternative entertainment options.
What few also remember is this the nineteen sixty eight
was not just an election between two candidates. It was
between three candidates. Here, again, the parallels are very eerie.

(01:39:24):
Third party candidate George Wallace ran on a platform of
preserving the Jim Crow regime in the South. It split
a critical part of the Democratic coalition from Hubert Humphrey.
The subsequent vote results show us that Richard Nixon won
three hundred and one electoral votes, but with just forty
three percent of the popular vote. Hubert Humphrey got one
hundred and ninety one electoral votes, but he got forty

(01:39:44):
two point seven George Wallace carried forty six electoral votes
thirteen percent of the overall vote. Take a look here
at the most recent poll of RFK Junior in a
lineup against Biden and Trump, and you see RFK Junior
is projected to get exactly thirteen percent of the vote
right now, much like that Wallace campaign in nineteen sixty eight. Now,
have I shoehorned a few things in here to fit

(01:40:06):
my story? Yes, absolutely, our things as bad today as
they were in nineteen sixty eight. No, thank god, at
least for now, thousands of American servicemen remain safe and
not on the front line in an.

Speaker 3 (01:40:15):
Active and unwinnable war.

Speaker 2 (01:40:17):
But the electoral parallels teach us one lesson that the
chaos of sixty eight has left a lasting impression upon
all of us, and that the chaos at the time
itself was not inevitable. It was a choice of the
elites at that time who lied and they cheated, and
they hid vital facts from the American public, and then
they refuse to grapple with the righteous outrage at being deceived.

(01:40:38):
So it's actually pretty fascinating to think.

Speaker 1 (01:40:40):
And if you want to hear my reaction to Sager's monologue,
become a premium subscriber today at Breakingpoints dot com.

Speaker 3 (01:40:46):
All right, guys, thank you so much for watching. We
deeply appreciate you.

Speaker 2 (01:40:49):
Thank you for supporting us with the poll with Counterpoints Friday,
and for premium members you will get access to that Don.

Speaker 3 (01:40:55):
Lemon interview tonight.

Speaker 2 (01:40:56):
Otherwise everybody else, it will drop on our public feeds
on front to day.

Speaker 3 (01:41:00):
So we love you and we'll see you all later

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