8/11/25: Trump Putin Summit Set, Internet Personality Destruction, Israel Assassinates Al Jazeera Team, ADL CEO "Intermarriages", Gaetz Exposes AIPAC Congress Trips

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey guys, Saga and Crystal here.

Speaker 2 (00:01):
Independent media just played a truly massive role in this election,
and we are so excited about what that means for
the future of this show.

Speaker 1 (00:08):
This is the only place where you can find honest
perspectives from the left and the right that simply does
not exist anywhere else.

Speaker 2 (00:14):
So if that is something that's important to you, please
go to Breakingpoints dot com. Become a member today and
you'll get access to our full shows, unedited, ad free,
and all put together for you every morning in your inbox.

Speaker 1 (00:25):
We need your help to build the future of independent
news media and we hope to see you at Breakingpoints
dot com. Good morning, everybody, Happy Monday. Have an amazing
show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal?

Speaker 2 (00:37):
Indeed, we do big show today. So Putin and Trump
are going to be meeting in Alaska? Might we get
a Ukraine piece deal? We will break all of that
down for you and what the indications are. Also, we're
going to dig into some social trends. I don't know
if you guys saw these viral charts. Social scientists are
sounding the alarm over some significant personality changes, especially among
younger generations. So we will try to figure out what

(01:00):
is going on there. Israel assassinated a well known Al
Jazeera A journalist and his entire crew. We're going to
have an editor over at drop site News who knew
him well join us to talk about his life, his legacy,
and also Israel's just relentless murdering of journalists and the
silence from the West as that has been ongoing. We're
going to dig into some wild comments made by ADL's

(01:22):
Jonathan Greenwlatt, including some on intermarriage quite a hot take there,
some big updates on the Israel First movement here in
the United States, and investigative journalist Seth Harp is going
to join us to discuss his new book before brag Cartel.
I do not think you want to miss that particular topic.
We're also going to be doing our AMA Live today

(01:42):
for premium subscribers, so if you want to take part
in those going forward, make sure you sign up at
breakingpoints dot com.

Speaker 1 (01:48):
That's right, Thank you everybody who has been doing that.
You can support the show breakingpoints dot com monthly or
yearly memberships. We're always looking out for benefits and for
the customer experience, but if you can't afford it, no worries.
Just please, if you're watching this video, go ahead and
hit the subscribe button on YouTube, or if you're listening
to this on a podcast, leave a five star review,
and then more importantly, send an episode that you really
like your to a friend, to a family member. It

(02:10):
really helps us grow. It's not one dollar in marketing
ever spent on this show, and yet it continues to grow.
So thank you to everybody. As Chrystl said, we're going
to start with the Ukraine Trump Summit, or the sorry
Trump Russia Summit. Ukraine is still a questionable one. It
will take place on Friday in Alaska. A lot going
on here behind the scenes. Here is Trump now talking

(02:30):
about it in the Oval office. Here's what he had
to say.

Speaker 3 (02:33):
President Zelensky has to get all of his uh uh
everything he needs because he's going to have to get
ready to sign something, and I think he is working
hard to get that done. Well, you're looking at territory
that's been fought over for three and a half years
with you know, a lot of Russians have died, a

(02:55):
lot of Ukraineians have died, so we're looking at that,
but we're actually looking to get.

Speaker 4 (03:00):
Back and uh, some swapping.

Speaker 5 (03:03):
It's complicated.

Speaker 3 (03:04):
It's actually nothing easy. It's very complicated. But we're going
to get some back. We're going to get some uh
some switched. There'll be some swapping of territories to the
betterment of both. And but we'll be talking about that
either later or tomorrow or whatever.

Speaker 1 (03:22):
Pay very close attention to what he said there about
the swapping of territories. That is going to be the
crux of this entire summit, and whether or not it
is successful or not. Let's go and put this ap
story up on the screen. Trump says he will meet
Putin next Friday in Alaska to discuss the end of
the Ukraine War. It remains up in the air whether
President Zelenski will attend. Originally, they had floated a summit

(03:44):
which was bilateral between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin and
then trilateral including the Ukrainians. However, the Ukrainians are making
quite a bit of noise now afterwards and drawing some
red lines of their own in the sand. This entire
idea of swapping territory is the one which the Russians
are going to have the most trouble with Crystal. All
of the by the way, the way that this has
all come about is so preposterous that you know, look,

(04:07):
I mean I generally am more supportive of Wikoff, I
think than most other members of the administration. But this
is part of the problem with having a guy who's
doing gaza in Ukraine and also previously built previous qualifications
of building the Fountain Blue Hotel in Las Vegas is
basically he met with Putin. Putin was like, sure, yeah,
let's end the war. I'll have a ceasfire and that
will attain basically freezing things where they are. Wikkof Nott

(04:29):
that to mean that he would be open to not
just a ceasfire, but potentially giving up some territory. Putin
in his comments had been like no, no, no, that's not
what we're doing. Meanwhile, the Ukrainians are like, hold on
a second, we can have a seapire. By the way,
Ukrainian law says that we need to have a national
referendum on whether any of that's going to happen. Remember,
the entire country, plus the delusional Europeans, all still believe

(04:51):
that Ukraine needs to be restored to its original borders.
So CRIMEA including CRIMEA so It's like we are basically
nowhere in terms of the conflict. There's been no diplomatic resolution.
At the same time, Trump has introduced the secondary sanctions
on countries like India, which currently has a fifty percent teriff.
The policy of the United States right now is all

(05:12):
over the map. We are both more hawkish direction with
harder sanctions than Joe Biden ever proposed. The United States
is currently shipping just recently some two hundred and fifty
million dollars of offensive weaponry to the Ukrainians, including the
shipping of a Patriot matte battery which was never open
under the Biden administration. And yet at the same time

(05:34):
we're meeting here with Putin. I, I mean, look my
cards on the table. I want the war to end,
but that's going to require some serious compromise from the
Ukrainians and the Europeans, which they have not yet been
able to make. So right now things are crazy. They
are just totally ambiguous. You know, the summit itself and
how it will all come about is one which is

(05:55):
indicative of the Trump administration, which is like flitting about
basically from policy a policy. We went from Beratings, Lensky
and the Oval saying you don't have the cards. Actually
he does have the cards because he's getting most of
what he wants. So yeah, it's that's where we're at
right now. You're meeting with Putin on Friday. We'll see
what happens in Trump's words, because I don't really have
anything else of them.

Speaker 2 (06:14):
Yeah, well, let me start with the positive. It's great.

Speaker 1 (06:20):
Good.

Speaker 2 (06:21):
You know, the only way you're going to be able
to resolve this is through these sorts of meetings, So
I will say that is.

Speaker 4 (06:26):
A positive step in the right direction.

Speaker 1 (06:28):
I'm with you.

Speaker 2 (06:28):
I want to dwell a little bit on what you're
saying about witcough because this was a major screw up
from him. He appears to have completely misrepresented or misunderstood
the Russian position in terms of what they were willing
to quote unquote give up, which is basically they're not
actually willing, at least from the outside outset to give
up anything. And so he misstated that created a lot

(06:49):
of confusion. Had to walk it back, and you know,
I think it's worth reassessing a lot of the witcough
Hey geography that we got at the beginning of this administration,
not just because of the sort of like amateur hour
fuck up with you know, a major high stakes negotiations
such as this.

Speaker 4 (07:06):
But we also know at this point.

Speaker 2 (07:08):
That with regard to Israel, Palestine, Gaza, Whitcoff has not
been part of the solution at the end of the day,
he has been just as much a part of undermining,
towing Netanyahu's line and destroying those negotiations with Hamas as
you know, as Trump himself and as net Nyahu. So
I think it's worth us putting to bed the idea
that Steve what Witcoff was going to be some you know,

(07:28):
some wild card great negotiator going to bring world peace.
That has not been the track record that this man
has that we have seen for this.

Speaker 1 (07:37):
Even though originally, you know, there was some promise. But
it's like you said, especially with the Gaza, you know,
with the way that that has all come about, it
does raise serious questions here about Russia, the way that
Russia and but the problem with the schizophrenia of the
Russia policy is that you can basically look into this
whatever you want, and I know I'm dwelling on this,
but it's very important if you follow the details. So
on the one hand, we're shipping weapons, and we're taking

(07:59):
more hawkish few who than Biden. On the other we're
now meeting with Putin. But listen, I agree, I'm all
for meeting, but all of the concrete policy has drifted
in the wrong direction. We're shipping weapons, we're doing more sanctions,
and we're basically demanding that Russia pull back, you know,
from whatever it's Donetsk or whatever province exactly that they

(08:19):
want to fully control, along with the two capitals which
they say the Ukrainians need to withdraw from. At the
same time, you know, we are not really doing much
to quell the European and Ukrainian delusions that all their
territory is ever coming back. Every day that the war continues,
they lose territory. This is an empirical fact, and you
can look at the realities of the battlefield on the ground.
We could ship them everything that we don't have strapped

(08:41):
to the ground that isn't going to start a nuclear war,
and they would still lose. They would just lose lower.
And so that's the question of like why do what
material interests does the United States have in all this?

Speaker 6 (08:50):
Well?

Speaker 2 (08:50):
And not only is that so that the territory is
one piece and one gigantic sumbling block.

Speaker 4 (08:56):
But then you also have to ask, okay, well, what.

Speaker 2 (08:58):
Were the underlying conditions that led to Russia's in cos
And this is again not to deny Russia's agency and
that they shouldn't have done it, and all of those
sorts of things, but you also have to understand their
perspective and what led to this aggressive action. And you know,
the NATO eastward expansion, the idea that Ukraine could be
part of NATO, our efforts to pull Ukraine into a

(09:19):
European sphere versus having Ukraine be a neutral party.

Speaker 4 (09:24):
Those are the.

Speaker 2 (09:25):
Underlying conditions that led to this provocative and yes illegal
action from Russia. So is the Trump administration going to
be serious about dealing with those underlying conditions? You also,
you know, we talk a lot about it, and understandably,
so okay, if we made a deal with Putin, can
we trust Putin? They have to be asked in the
same question, can they trust us? I mean, look at
the way our country in general operates, not just under

(09:47):
Donald Trump, but looks specifically at how Donald Trump operates.
There's no reason for them to trust us, and our
good faith in any negotiation.

Speaker 4 (09:54):
Just look at how we've acted.

Speaker 2 (09:55):
With Israel, and Ron exactly used the pretext of diplomatic
negotiations to launch an offensive, aggressive war against the Iranians.
So why would any country in the world, and certainly
not an adversarial one like Russia, trust that we're coming
to the table in good faith. So when we were
talking about how much of a problem that was that

(10:17):
we use the pretext of diplomatic negotiations, it wasn't just
about what the fall out would be with regard to Iran.
It was also about how will we be able to
approach these other high stakes diplomatic negotiations and have anyone
take our word for anything. So that also remains a
major issue going into this tetle.

Speaker 1 (10:36):
All set I said that so much at the time,
I was like, does anybody understand what it means to
use diplomatic negotiations as a ruse? I was like, by
the way, Iran is smallball compared to Russia and to Ukraine,
And I don't think that there's any mistake that putin
at every turn. When Trump is like fifty days, He's like, yeah, okay,
I'm just going to keep bombing Kiev, and then the
next day they're like twelve days. He's like, yeah, okay,
I'm just going to keep bombing. He's like, what are

(10:58):
you going to do about it. I'm a nuclear armed
state with nine five hundred nuclear warheads. Go for it.
You can put all the deals or whatever you want
on the table. Here's the Vice president talking about the
issue recently in an interview. Let's take a listen.

Speaker 7 (11:11):
Fundamentally, this is something where the president needs to force
President Putin and President Zelenski really to sit down to
figure out their differences. We have a lot of economic
points of leverage and we're willing to use those to
bring about peace. And that was a big thing that happened.
To your point about weapons, what we said to the
Europeans is simply, first of all, this is in your
neck of the woods, this is in your back door.

(11:33):
You guys have got to step up and take a
bigger role in this thing. We're done with the funding
of the Ukraine war business. We want to bring about
a peaceful settlement to this thing. We want to stop
the killing. But Americans, I think, are sick of continuing
to send their money, their talk dollars to this particular conflict.
But if the Europeans want to step up and actually

(11:54):
buy the weapons from American producers, we're okay with that,
but we're not going to fund it ourselves anymore.

Speaker 1 (12:00):
Yeah, with great respect, that's the Biden policy, right, I mean,
the Biden policy was just the US and Europeans. You know,
remember the talking point of like, oh, it's going to
be great for the US economy, and like, oh, really,
the defense dollars, of course are widely distributed across our economy,
so we're dealing with that. We've also got Zelensky sounding
off here. And look, I understand, you know, it's an

(12:20):
emotional thing for the Ukrainians and for a lot of
Ukraine supporters here in America, but you need to deal
with reality. Your small country, you're up against a nuclear
armed power, it's a non NATO nation, there's no obligation
for the United States to defend you. And you're drawing
lines in the sand which were ridiculous on the day
that the war started, and Crimea was already overtaken and
frankly like delusional in the year twenty twenty five. But

(12:42):
here's what Zelenski had to say in response. He says quote,
Ukraine is ready for final decisions that can bring peace.
Any decisions that are against us, Any decisions that are
without Ukraine are at the same time decisions against peace.
They will not achieve anything. These are still born decisions.
They are unworkable decisions, and we all need real and
genuine peace, peace to the people, will respect, basically saying
that anything that Ukraine does not sign off on is

(13:03):
one that is completely bunked and will of course not
stand up. Now here's the issue, you know with that
is that the Ukrainian position is one that is again
I mean it is completely delusional. Let me read here
specifically from the Ukrainian Encounter, Ukrainian and European counter ceasefire proposal.
What they say is that in a joint statement from
the Europeans as well from you know, Germany, the UK

(13:27):
and France is all that any diplomatic end must protect
the Ukraine and europe security interests. But that specifically their
ceasefire proposal quote crucially, a European plan which presented to
all of the Americans, stipulates that any territorial concession by
Kiev must then be safeguarded by ironclad security guarantees including
quote potential NATO membership for Ukraine. And it just doesn't

(13:48):
make any sense to give NATO membership for Ukraine in
a war that started at least in part because of
a NATO invitation for Ukraine to join NATO. I already know,
you know, the neo as long as other people will
get very upset about this, but like, look at the
history of it. Ukraine has always been a lynchpin of
Russia's security strategy. I'm not saying it's legitimate, it just

(14:10):
has been. It has been recognized from the beginning of
the expansion of NATO by George Kennan, by Bill Burns,
who was a previous CIA director under Joe Biden. They
all said in writing, They're like, look, even expanding into
the Baltics is a problem, but Ukraine must always remain
off the table. And then if we look at the
exact moment the US Russia relations completely flipped on a

(14:31):
dime was when the Munich Security Conference of two thousand
and seven, that is very around the time that we
invite invite Georgia and Ukraine to enter NATO. And what
does Putin do in two thousand and eight, does everybody remember, like,
what was it putin at the Beijing Olympics, I think
in O eight while the Russians march into Georgia. And
now similarly here with Ukraine, where the Kamala and the

(14:53):
Kamala and the Biden administration were making a lot of
steps towards actually formalizing Ukraine into NATO, and then lo
and behold, we got to find our selves in a war,
not just justify the war. It's just reality. I understand
the Ukrainian's like, well, how can we ever, you know,
want peace. I'm like, listen, your your victory is you
get to live, You get to live, to fight another
you get to keep eighty percent of your country. That's

(15:14):
a decent deal considering all the amount of money and
you know, the amount of lives that everybody has expended. Yes,
it's easy for me to stay here from Washington, but
where the global superpower. We're the ones at the end
of the day who get to decide how the conflict ends.
And you know, if you want otherwise, well you know,
get some nuclear weapons. I don't really know what else
to say to you. Zelensky. He's a serious problem.

Speaker 2 (15:33):
Yeah, no, he is a problem. At this point I mean,
I think he has this Hollywood conception of like, you know,
he's the main character and there's a glorious, happy ending
in which all the you know, evil is vanquished and
good prevails and he doesn't have to budget single inch
off his position. And you know, Biden certainly fed into
that delusion. Now Trump has as well, you know, after
the whole like bullying in the Oval Office, then Zelensky

(15:55):
ends up getting all of all of the things that
he ultimately wanted. And I think it speaks to to
Trump's persona and the way he approaches these things, Like
I think he believed, you know, he thinks everything's like
a freaking real estate negotiation and that you can just
get in a room and you can you know, get
some rapport with the various players and figure out some

(16:15):
kind of a deal that's gonna work.

Speaker 4 (16:17):
And so he used his.

Speaker 2 (16:18):
Typical tactics of like public bluster and you know, the
theatrical display in the Oval Office, and when that didn't work,
now it's just kind of a mess. Like it's hard
to even say what the administration's position is.

Speaker 4 (16:33):
Remember the whole minerals deal, Like whatever the game of that,
what does that even mean in all of this going forward,
is that even a real thing? Who knows?

Speaker 2 (16:41):
So, Yeah, I think it's a real wild card what
could come out of this. But I'm not particularly hopeful,
you know, just to set expectations, and I would love
to be proven wrong.

Speaker 4 (16:49):
We'll see.

Speaker 2 (16:50):
But the other piece is that it is very difficult
to end worse. It shouldn't be that way, but it is.
We saw what happened with Biden the pull out of
afghanist and it's a very difficult political thing to do,
and you really have to lay a lot of groundwork,
narrative groundwork for the public to understand why the state

(17:10):
of position of the American government, of both administrations are
basically like Ukraine's going to get everything and we're not
going to give an inch, Why you're going to end
up with a result that is significantly different than that,
Why there are going to be so many concessions after
all of the support that we've given Ukraine over the years.

Speaker 4 (17:26):
And there also hasn't really been any.

Speaker 2 (17:29):
Narrative built to prepare people for that eventuality. And I
think Trump is intelligent enough to know that there are
many likely deals that could be done with Russia that
would be pretty unpalatable to the America.

Speaker 1 (17:42):
Oh absolutely, yeah, you're absolutely right. This is a propagandistic
thing too, where you have to look at mass media.
And this explains the Israel situation as well. If you
watch Fox News, you know Churchill and Zelenski are of
the same ilk as, like, there's no difference between them.
The Ukrainians are freedom fired, the Russians are committing genocide.
I mean, I'm not joking. This is literally what they

(18:04):
say over there. And the most politically palatable thing to
do is to do exactly what we did with Afghanistan,
which is just chunk as much money into the war
for as long as humanly possible. Slowly erode and the
mission continues to fail, but everybody just kind of moves
on with their life because I don't want to deal
with reality. And you know that, by the way, includes
many of the Ukrainians. Let's go and put a seven

(18:25):
police up on the screen because this is very important,
and this is from very recently. Ukraine's support for its
own war effort is collapsing. This is very similar to
the afghan situation, where the people who actually have to
do the fighting are like, yeah, I'm not so sure
about this, like, look, we'll take your money. You know
that pays for a lot of nice condos in Dubai,
but for the rest of it, not so sure. So

(18:47):
check this out. Ukraine's appetite, appetite for the war and
support of a negotiated piece. Back in twenty twenty two,
some twenty two percent said that Ukraine should seek to
negotiate an ending to the war as soon as possible,
just twenty two percent. Today, that is sixty nine percent
of Ukrainians. This is a gallup pole. And only twenty

(19:07):
four percent said quote Ukraine should continue fighting until it
wins the war, whereas in twenty twenty two it was
some seventy three percent. And that's because the reality of
combat and also of what the war is setting in.
Sixty year olds are now being allowed to join the
Ukrainian war effort. Sixty year olds are now being with
no age limit whatsoever on the number of people in

(19:29):
millions of the country have fled. The richest and most
powerful Ukrainians are not fighting in this war. They're long gone.
They're living. I saw them in the hotels in Budapest
and in Vienna. They're living the high life. Don't worry,
and a lot of them still are actually printing money
off of the corruption from the US money that continues
to flow into the country. By the way, if you
want to find out about that corruption, good luck to you.
Let's go ahead and put a nine please on the screen.

(19:52):
You know, again, the Western media basically ignored it. You know,
there are a few stories here every once in a while.
But Ukraines quote new anti corruption law led to the
biggest protests in Ukraine since the beginning of the war.
Why because the Parliament and Zelenski both approved legislation quote
restoring the independence of the country's two main anti corruption bodies.

(20:16):
But in reality, what it did is that inside Zelenski
and others basically allowed the They basically allowed the new
laws to go into place where you had the anti
corruption watchdogs come under attack. They reversed some of them,
but the point is is that it was seen as
a widely authoritarian law to cover up much of the

(20:38):
corruption for allegedly this democratic haven in Europe, which you know,
not only was the most corrupt country in all of
Europe before the outbreak of the war, but Zelenski himself,
of course, has canceled elections he has huge opposition actually
inside of the country. And worst of all actually is
that if you did want some sort of end to

(20:59):
the war is back. In twenty twenty two, Ukraine passed
a piece of legislation through its parliament basically saying that
any you know, quote negotiation or surrender or whatever has
to be approved by referendum. But of course the circumstances
of the referendum are up to the government, and of
course in the warning in the way that it would
all go out, so the government and all of them

(21:20):
have plenty of tools available to them to nix any
sort of deal. And then what can they say them like, oh,
we tried, our people won't go for it. And then
what's America going to do. Trump at the end of
the day, like you said, he's not going to cut
them off. He just thinks it'll be politically unpalatable. It
probably will be, to be honest, and so that leads
to what, you know, just the continuation of the war.
And you know, as if you're actually horrified by the
violence and the killing, well then you actually want to

(21:42):
bring it to an end, and that will require something
actually quite unpalatable. We could get there if media had
reported it properly, and also if the government had had
a consistent narrative from day one on Ukraine. But they haven't.
They're all over the place.

Speaker 4 (21:54):
They're all over the place.

Speaker 2 (21:55):
So we'll watch it closely see, you know, if there
are any positive indications on of this. But you know,
there's not a lot of not a lot of groundwork
that has been laid to create the likelihood of a
positive outcome.

Speaker 4 (22:08):
Miss how I would put.

Speaker 1 (22:09):
It, Afghanistan was the same way. I mean, it's like
it's snuck up on everybody because nobody was paying attention
and everybody just assumed, ah, they'll kick the can down
the road, and they're not actually going to do it.
Biden finally was like, no, I'm not going to do it.
We're out. And you know, we all saw how that worked.
So it's not good. It's not good the way that
this all works. And of course you know that if
they have to give if Ukraine has to give up
even one scrap of Eastern Ukraine, Fox News, CNN and

(22:32):
all these other people going to be united and how
this is the greatest travesty since Munich, And then what
will that lead to? More Boomer support and of course,
more pressure over at the White House from the guy
who only watches Fox News to get true to get
his feeling on the pulse, and.

Speaker 2 (22:46):
Who put way too many neocons in his administration. Also, yes,
and who has no you know, ideological core himself and
is very much buffeted by whoever is in his ear
at that moment.

Speaker 1 (22:56):
Absolutely, let's get to site. So this is one we've
been wanting to talk about for a while. There is
a meme online we live in a society, and so
the question is is what kind of society do we
live in?

Speaker 4 (23:08):
So it's like an important question.

Speaker 1 (23:10):
It is there John Burne Murdoch, who is one of
the best journalists out there. He's like the data correspondent
over at the Financial Times. What he does is he
goes deep into survey data from all across the world
and also here in America, and he's like, all right, well,
how do people feel or have views about different things.
He's talked about gender. This time he's talking about conscientiousness.

(23:30):
So let's go and put this stuff there on the screen.
This is how quote how young adults personalities are changing
with conscientiousness in free fall quote values as expressed at
percentiles of the full population distribution from how it stood
in twenty fourteen to today. So what he demonstrates is
that younger Americans and specifically people sixteen two thirty nine,

(23:51):
have had a drop in conscientiousness from twenty fourteen, which
was hovering around like forty five percent or so, to
sub thirtymatic and precipitous decline. That includes both younger Americans
and also forty to fifty nine year olds, so older
millennials and Gen X boomers seem relatively flat. Neuroticism, however,
has skyrocketed from above baseline in twenty fourteen for younger

(24:14):
Americans to sky high levels of some seventy percent. Agreeableness
has actually, again amongst younger Americans, was already below baseline,
continues to go down, and then similar dramatic drop in
extra version actually amongst all three age groups. So that
is the COVID effect. That's technology. All of this together
really just shows the consequences of people increasingly spending the

(24:36):
vast majority of their time on the Internet. And let's
go to the next one, please, shall we, because you
see this actually in the way that it's expressed in
social outcomes. So here, for example, you have people making
plans and following through massive drop in the sixteen to
thirty nine demographic, perseveres until finished. Massive drop in the

(24:57):
sixteen to thirty nine quote is easily distract did lo
and behold massive increase amongst the eighteen or sixteen thirty
nine demographic, and then quote can be careless a similar increase.
Now people might ask like, how exactly you measure these things?
It's a fair question. We'll get to that here in
a second. But the very last part here about extraversion

(25:17):
and about personality traits is fascinating. So this is about
extraversion and trust are in major decline. If you classify outgoing,
you actually see a massive drop amongst all three age demographics.
You see especially precipitous drop in quote is helpful to
others is trusting? Massive decline and then starts arguments. Actually

(25:37):
a major increase there for everybody. So the personality basically
that is being encouraged by the Internet, by COVID, by
our economy, etc. It all comes together is one that
is largely you know, singular alone spending a lot of
time on the internet. In the neuroticism, you can see,
you know, getting things that are kind of bad for

(25:58):
your psychology and for your worldview served to you on
an algorithmic basis, and then one which does not encourage
social contact and specifically like good relations interpersonally. And I
think that's probably the most important social story of the
twenty twenties. Gasoline port on the fire by COVID and
the social isolation.

Speaker 4 (26:19):
I think that's right.

Speaker 2 (26:21):
I think to me, the Internet is an accelerator trends
that were already pre exist because if you look back,
I mean, Bowling Alone.

Speaker 4 (26:29):
Right, is the perfect exam was I written ninety four.

Speaker 2 (26:31):
Early nineties, Yeah, and Robert Putnam took a look at
all of these metrics. I really still recommend that people
read that book because it documents pre Internet how we
were already coming apart in these ways where civic associations
and community participation and the way we participate in politics
went from being in person collective to individualize and increasingly

(26:56):
sort of on the sidelines.

Speaker 1 (26:58):
Right.

Speaker 2 (26:58):
So that trend has just been accelerated and lit on
fire by the social media age and our ability to
you know, be completely alone and still have this semblance
of like we're doing something like we're connecting with people,
but we're not really connecting with people. And there's some
wre stats to back that up that we'll get to

(27:19):
in just a moment. I think it speaks to a
lot of things. I mean, I think it speaks to
that is sort of the underlying ideology, I mean, not
sort of, it is the underlying ideology really of our
entire system, this very individualistic, neoliberal era view of like
yourself and your rights and you know your aspirations and

(27:40):
your goals first.

Speaker 4 (27:42):
And so when you have that in the.

Speaker 2 (27:45):
Bloodstream of society for years and years and years and years,
no one should be surprised when it's expressed in these
sorts of outcomes. I think it also is a reflection
of people's sense that the collective product we've tried to
engage in have sort of have sort of failed. Ryan
and I've talked before, I think we've talked before too,

(28:05):
about how there are echoes of the early seventies, when
you had these big social movements in the sixties, there's
the sense that they don't amount to what they wanted
them to amount to, and everybody, instead of continuing to
engage in these collective projects, then a lot of the
counterculture gets subsumed by mass media, by mass advertisements, and
people go back to the land into these little individualistic

(28:28):
like let's go live on a commune project, and you
can see echoes of this and like, you know, the
they're similar sort of like back to the land, mostly
on the right.

Speaker 4 (28:36):
Actually movements mahas kind of MAHA is.

Speaker 2 (28:38):
Like an expression of that, instead of we're not going
for medicare for all anymore. Now, we're just going to
try to We're going to like try to do these
little individual changes. We're going to go into the like
health influencer culture and make it all about the individual
pursuit of Okay, well what can I do since these
collective pursuits have largely failed? So I think that sort

(28:58):
of dovetails into these tistics as well. But you know
it's not good. No, it's having trying to raise kids
and you being a new dad. You look at these
trends and you know, I listened to like some of
the content that you know, my son in particular is
consuming on YouTube, and it's like this is this is
really this is really pushing us in a very atomized,

(29:20):
divided direction where you really you really don't even end
up with a society at the end of the day.

Speaker 1 (29:25):
It's crazy. So I read a lot of books about
early Washington and about how it all worked and even
early social life. The amount of socialization that people did
back in the day is crazy. I'm talking about five
to six nights a week, which I can't even imagine
right now. I mean host this show, but apparently the
predecessors of the nineteen fifties and sixties they were hanging

(29:46):
out all the time, all the time. And in fact,
what you had was a scenario where the television, yes
it existed, but it was just three networks and the
nightly news was only thirty Can you imagine all of
the news in the world delivered in minutes, So you
had a lot of time to fill your day. People
read a lot more, and they also just talked a
lot more. They would come together people playing cards, bowling

(30:07):
alone is a perfect example. But socialization was massive, and
also intra socialization in different neighborhoods. I literally don't even
know my neighbor's name. I don't know, but I mean
he doesn't have any children, so it's like, well, do
I even particularly need to know who he is? And
then most of them are actually older, they're all like
sixty five plus. But my point broadly is just that
you don't really have a scenario where you have like

(30:29):
either forced or encouraged social norms around polite conversation, around
getting people to know each other. This is a painting
with a very broad brush. I live in one of
the most urban environments in the United States, so it's
going to be very different than a suburb in Illinois
or something like that. I'm sure some of it still exists,
but broadly you see it on the decline. Internet is

(30:49):
an accelerant to it. Like you said, television was kind
of gen one of all of this. I remember reading
a study. I think it's like in ninety eight people
were watching six to eight hours of TV per day.
I mean it's the same thing, though, is that anything
that kind of keeps you from distraction, or it keeps
you from going outside or engaging in different things, is
broadly going to encourage atomization. You know another thing, I
saw this fascinating new discussion around houses about how you know,

(31:13):
if you look at the houses most fetishized today, they're
kind of the two thousand's MTV. You know, what was
it like what the crib show? I forget exactly what
it's called cribs, all right. So at that time, though,
what these are the new mcmnsions fifty five hundred square
feet with a movie theater and all the bar backyard.

(31:35):
And the point that somebody made was is that as
America becomes more isolated, people take all the old social
experiences and then want to put them in their own
home so they never have to leave. Yeah. I was like, wow,
I never thought about that, but it actually seems very true.
Is that we're taking all the stuff that people you
used to do on the outside and basically trying to
put it on the inside. I understand on an interpersonal

(31:57):
level why you may want all that because you don't
want to leave. It's kind of annoying. Actually it's also
very expensive. But that's my point is just that like
the culture is moving to moving much more away from
polite conversation, from engaging in society, and of course the
economy has a huge part to play in it. I
was actually looking at movie ticket prices. It used to
be quite affordable back in the seventies. Yeah, and in
the eighties. Nowadays, forget about it, what is it you know?

(32:18):
Fifteen twenty dollars just a single movie on top of
popcorner and any of those.

Speaker 4 (32:23):
Luxury movie experience.

Speaker 2 (32:24):
Yeah, you know draft hours very nice, yeah, always nice,
also very expensive, exactly.

Speaker 1 (32:30):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (32:30):
When I was a kid growing up, we actually had
a dollar movie theater maybe thirty minutes from my house.
And it wasn't the new movies, but it was like,
you know, ones that were like a season behind, and
that's where we always went.

Speaker 4 (32:40):
And you know, family of five, pay.

Speaker 2 (32:42):
Five bucks for tickets plus tax sneak in your mike
and I extend your first from the dollar general store
and you're good to go. And that you know, that
opportunity does not exist. In fact, the trend is all
in the other direction, because the people have money are
you know, where advertisers, where companies want to serve to,
and so increasingly, you know, it's consolidating the luxury end

(33:03):
of the market because you want to tap the people
who have the largest amount of wealth. You know, I
think too about in terms of public policy, because some
of this is culture, but some a lot of culture
is driven from the top. And you know, in the
New Deal era, you did have this, you had a
collective project going on, and you had so much building

(33:23):
of like public parks, I mean the parks that you
and I still love and use, the national parks, you know,
the state parks that were built out. Virginia had some
fantastic state parks, Like so many of those public communal
amenities were built in a previous era. And so of course,
if those like public facilities are not going to be

(33:44):
you know, provided for in the community, then increasingly you're
going to be turning to Okay, well, then I have
to pay to go to this private you know, private pool,
or I have to have it in my own house
and you know, bring people in to my own or
just engage in that on my own time. So I
think those to public policy choices also make a big difference.
Actually went down a weird rabbit hole they're building in Manhattan.

(34:05):
I think it's in Manhattan. A pool that like is
on the river uses the river water. It looks amazing.
It's like an Olympic sized pool. It's a really cool design.
And they have this filtration system to like clean the
river water. So not only are you filling the pool,
but then that clean water goes into the river to
like refurbish the river as well. And I went down
this deep dive of they used to have tons of

(34:27):
these pools in New York City. It was like a
whole thing in the early nineteen hundreds of you know,
building pools in the river and building pools in general,
like bath houses, and there was this whole city wide
project of we need to make sure we have public
facilities for people to be able to use, and you know,
it was it was very successful in terms of providing

(34:48):
people with resources. And again we're still sort of like
drawing on those resources to this day.

Speaker 4 (34:52):
And you know, that's one area.

Speaker 2 (34:55):
Where I think we really need to reinvest in those
sorts of publicly available facilities that actually do bring people together.

Speaker 4 (35:03):
And that aren't expensive.

Speaker 2 (35:04):
In our town, the YMCA, which is you know, it's
not a state funded institution, but it's made.

Speaker 4 (35:10):
To be lower costs and supported.

Speaker 2 (35:11):
By donations and whatever sort of serves that serves that purpose.
But there needs to be so much more of that
to try to get people out of their homes and
try to bring communities back together, because it makes a
big difference. I mean, I live in the same town
where I grew up and just over the course of
that time, it still has that small town vibe if
you see you know the parents that are you know
at your kid's school, and the school certainly serves as

(35:33):
like a hub of activity, but it isn't. It's larger,
that's one thing, but it also it doesn't have the
same level of cohesiveness that it did when I was
a kid, where I literally knew, like, this person's in
that house, this person's that I know the kid, I
know their brother, I know their parents, like the whole bit.
It's just not quite the same thing.

Speaker 1 (35:51):
It makes sense. I mean, that's where public safety also
comes in, where where bigger cities, you know, if you
don't feel safe, then you're going to exit from a
lot of these public spaces that get taken over by
the bottom one percent. So that's a big problem. You
need higher trust in society. Let's go ahead and put
this B five please up on the screen, because this
is indicative of the Internet portion of all of this.

(36:11):
This is by far the biggest social Internet transformation of
my lifetime. Is that Meta says that most of the
time on Facebook and Instagram is just spent watching videos.
Only seven percent of the time on Instagram and seventeen
percent of time on Facebook involves consuming content from friends. Now,
if you're old like me and you're thirty three, well,

(36:32):
the Facebook of my youth was the newsfeed, which was
just of your friends. The idea that anything not involving
your friends on there, it would be preposterous. You would
spend one hundred percent of your time engaging with your
friend's content. Same with the early Instagram. It is just
a way to share photos. The photo dumps on early Facebook,
you know, where people would upload hundreds of photos from
the night before. People would tag each other. It was

(36:53):
actually like a real game even photo Facebook events and
groups and other types of things were used as like
social things. You start parties whatever. That is just not
how people engage with social media anymore. It's not about
content developed by your friends. It's about content developed by others,
hence the rise of the so called influencer culture. In
some ways it makes sense is that your friends are

(37:14):
probably not very good at making engaging content. But if
you take the entire world and you have them create
content and the top one percent will be consumed by
the bottom ninety nine percent, that makes sense at an
engagement level. It doesn't mean that it's good in terms
of engaging with other people. It used to be a
way to see what your friends are up to, and
now it's just a way to continue watching short form

(37:36):
video on whatever platform of your choice.

Speaker 4 (37:38):
Creating your own person, creating your.

Speaker 1 (37:40):
Own personal brand. Yeah, I mean I'm guilty of this,
right my Instagram account. Yeah, this is our job exactly.
My Instagram account used to be like my personal Instagram account,
and now it's you know, basically just for professional purposes.
What do you got to do? You got to exist
in the world. But it's still one of those watching.
The way that that has shifted over time is one
which at a societal wide level is really bad for

(38:02):
just encouraging intra personal engagement. I don't really know how
it looks, but what it actually just tells me and
I don't know if it's called which way is causal
is whether the social media use reflects personal preferences or
personal preference is shaped by that is, at the end
of the day, it discourages socialization. And that's bad. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (38:20):
No, I mean there's a literal monetary incentive to creating
content that's not for not just like interacting with friends,
but is for the world. And you know, those incentives
are created by the platform, but I think also as
an expression of this increasingly individualized society and obsession with
individual pursuits that you know, the personality trends reflect as well.

Speaker 1 (38:43):
Totally agree. All right, let's get to the next part.

Speaker 2 (38:47):
So we recently received the news that Israel murdered five
Al Jazeera journalists, among them Annas al Sharif, who was
a very well known correspondent for Al Jazeera. Joining us
now to discuss his work and this all on assault
on journalists is Shreif abdel Kutus.

Speaker 4 (39:04):
He is the Nina editor for Drop site News.

Speaker 1 (39:07):
Great to see you, Sharif, Good to you, Thank you
for having me.

Speaker 2 (39:10):
Yeah, of course, so you interviewed Annas back several months back.

Speaker 4 (39:14):
I remember reading this piece.

Speaker 2 (39:15):
We can put this up on the screen actually, about
what it had been like for him covering this genocide,
you say, Israel's genocide Gaza every day for eleven straight months.

Speaker 4 (39:25):
What was it like interacting with him? And you know,
what did.

Speaker 2 (39:28):
You make of the comments he made at that time
and his legacy that he's left behind.

Speaker 5 (39:32):
You know, there are no words. I don't know what
to say anymore. You know, words aren't enough at this point.
Action is required. Words did not save Vanasa Hidif and
his colleagues. And there's a there's a certain level of
brazenness now that how Israel is killing these journalists. And

(39:53):
I just want to tell people that the other journalist's names,
so Israel bumded media tempt opposite, but just outside of
Sheffa hospital intentionally killing Anna Sashidiv and Mohammad Kareka, who
is also correspondent for Al Jazeera, and camera operators Abrahim
Zoher Moment Aliwa and Hahmad Noufal. And there was a

(40:16):
six journalist also killed who worked for an outlet called
Sahatu's hammadr Hledi. You know Ennas he was just twenty
eight years old. He was probably the most prominent Palestinian
journalist who was still alive and still in Gaza reporting
a face recognizable across the Arab world and internationally. He

(40:40):
remained in the North throughout the entire twenty two months
gen Saddle assault, one of just a handful of journalists
who never left the North, and he was a near
constant presence on television online reporting almost every day on
air strikes, shelling, massacres, displacement, famine, death dismemberment and whenever

(41:05):
he could on glimpses of hope and resilience, Palestinian resilience,
and Israel assassinated him. And as his last tweet to
his more than five hundred and sixty thousand followers, just
before he was killed, he said, relentless bombardment for two hours.
The Israeli aggression has intensified on Gaza City. And we

(41:29):
know that Israel's security Cabinet approved Netanyahu's plan to take
control of Gaza City in the latest escalation of this genocide.
Barely an hour earlier before he was killed, he warned
about this. He said, Israel's planning a full scale invasion
of Gaza City. And I'm just going to quote he said,

(41:53):
if this madness does not end, Gaza will be reduced
to ruins. It's people's voices silenced, their faces raised, and
history will remember you as silent witnesses to a genocide.
You chose not to stop, And he set silence is complicity,
and barely an hour later he's killed. And it's not
just silence. I mean the world's governments, corporations, media elites

(42:17):
have not just stood by as Israel's committing these acts
of genocide. They have enabled it. You know, there's now
two hundred and thirty eight journalists killed, according to the
government Media Office in Gaza. Two hundred and thirty eight.
These journalists have been bombed, they've been shot, they've been
burned alive, they've been decapitated, They've been taunted and targeted.

(42:41):
And that's not to mention the journalists wounded, the journalists
in prison, the journalists who made this impossible decision to
leave Gaza because life was no longer sustainable there. And
in a very very real way, the only reason we
know about what is happening in Gaza is because of
Palestinian reporters who are performing the most heroic act of

(43:02):
journalism we will see in our lifetimes. And they're being
intentionally slaughtered and intentionally targeted for this and the Israeli military.
I have to remind people Israeli military was openly and
publicly threatening and he said this in an interview I
did with him, openly and publicly threatening Anasyschidif for months.
Back in November of twenty twenty three, he reported receiving

(43:25):
calls from Israeli officers telling him to seize his coverage,
telling him to leave the north and go south, getting
location messages on his WhatsApp as threats. You know, they
bombed his after he got those location threats. They bombed
his house in Jabellia, killing his ninety year old father,

(43:48):
and the threats only escalated from there. Last October, he
was one of six Al Jazeera journalists that Israel put
on what is essentially a hit list, saying that they're
all militants and taunting them online. One of them was
Hasem Shabbett, who used to report for drop site, and
he was assassinated in March, and the Israeli military boasted
about his killing and said, quote, don't let the press

(44:11):
vest fool you. And then the Israeli military continued to
openly threaten enus, especially in the last couple of weeks.
Nas himself repeatedly called on the world to do something.
Just a couple of weeks ago, he posted that he
was being threatened and he said, this is an attempt
to silence us, to cover up a genocide unfolding in

(44:31):
real time, and he said quote I call on international officials,
human rights defenders, and global media to speak out and
share this message. Your voice can help stop the targeting
of journalists and protect the truth.

Speaker 1 (44:43):
Wow, Scharienne. One of the things that has been hypothesized
here is that Onas was killed largely because right now
is when Israel is moving into Gaza City. And we
also want to highlight what you said there about the
number of journalists who have actually been killed. Can we
put se for Police up on the screen just to
show everybody the contexts and the number of journalists who

(45:05):
have been killed here in this conflict, and you can
just see it's overwhelming, you know, in terms of the
Gaza War compared to Ukraine, the war in Afghanistan, for the
Yugoslav wars in Vietnam, it's unprecedented in modern history, and
particularly you know, by a so called civilized nation.

Speaker 5 (45:20):
Yeah, I mean I think they Israel essentially yesterday wiped
out Al Jazeera's Gaza City correspondence and crew and journalistic
crew ahead of this what is expected to be a
horrific invasion of Gaza City to ethnically cleanse Gaza City

(45:43):
and displays forcibly displaces everyone there again to the south,
and you know, losing en Us and losing these other journalists,
we are going to know less about what is happening
as this is unfolding and yeah, there's something, there's something else.
Is just so horrific that journalists like Ennas and Hasemshabad,

(46:09):
who's to report for drop site. He pre wrote a
message anticipating his death that he knew would be published
after he was killed. Can you imagine working in these circumstances.
He's twenty eight years old, knowing you're going to be killed,
and knowing that the world is likely not going to
stop it, you know. And in his message he says

(46:31):
some very important things. He says that he was born
in Jabelia at the refugee camp. He reminds people that
he dreamed that his family could return to their land
and home that they were expelled from in nineteen forty
eight and what is now at the Israeli time of
Ashkalon or Amazhdan. He reminds people the most Palestinians in
Gaza are not from Gaza, the refugees, and then he

(46:53):
writes of the suffering that you know, he bore witness
to and that he also endured. And he again, you know,
kind of points the finger at the world that watched
this happen and is watching this happen and is allowing
it to happen. And those were his final words to
the world, and he said, you know, don't forget us.

(47:14):
And when I spoke to him and asked to me, no,
he said, like a ten minute voice note response. His
voice was wary but firm, and you know, I asked him,
why do you keep doing this? And he said, I'll
also quote from him. I'm sorry I'm quoting so much
from him, but I think his words are important. He said,
maybe the world won't act, maybe the world won't help us,

(47:37):
but there might be a motive to stop this war.
Every time I document a massacre or event or bombing,
I think that maybe through this bombing or this image,
that the war could stop and this war could end.
This drives us to continue in our coverage to our
last breath. And he did it to his last breath.

Speaker 2 (47:54):
Well, and we know Israel considered him dangerous. That's why
they and the information he was sharing with the world dangerous.
That's why they assassinated him and his four colleagues working
for Al Jazeera. And the other thing that's really disgusting me, Sharif,
is the way that Western media has given Israel pass.
They have not student solidarity with these Palestinian journalists. There

(48:15):
have been pieces, you know, think pieces written about well,
do they even really count as journalists? You know, so
much credence given to consistent Israeli claims that, oh, well
they're really Hamas, which is preposterous, Like, you can see
this guy out there doing his job literally every single day.
At what point does he have time to go and
be a Hamas militant alongside live streaming his own you know,

(48:36):
genocide and ultimately murder at the hands of the Israelis
every single day. So that's been one of the things
that's really disgusted me, and there's been a consistent drum
beat two of Israel needs to let in the Western journalists,
and unfortunately, I think because of you know, anti urban,
anti Palestinian racism, I do think that those images being

(48:56):
shared by Western journalists may have more of an imp
but it shouldn't be that way. There are journalists in Palestine,
there are journalists in Gaza. It just happens that most
of them are Palestinian. So they're dismissed and their work
is minimized or called into question as to their motives
by oftentimes by liberal Western media.

Speaker 1 (49:18):
Figures.

Speaker 5 (49:20):
Look, I mean, I think international journalists should absolutely be
allowed into Gaza. Not because there we can question at
all the veracity and the strength of reporters in Palestine
in Gaza who are doing this, but for two reasons.
One is to shoulder the labor of covering this war.

(49:42):
They are covering this genocide absolutely by themselves, and I
think it's incumbent on international journists to help them in
this coverage. The second thing is because of this racism,
because of the way that Western media institutions and Western
governments see Palestinian journalists. Foreign journalists going in will act
as a shield in a certain way, as a shield

(50:04):
two people in Gaza as a shield to Palestinian journalists,
and I think that's why they need to go in.
The reaction to anas Is killing, I am still somehow
shocked by it, even though I shouldn't be after so
long by Western media institutions, the National Press Club called
for a thorough and transparent examination of the circumstances surrounding

(50:27):
NAS's death. What on earth does that mean? They're putting
out a boilerplate statement calling for an investigation. Israel openly
publicly threatened him for months they bombed the tentuos in
and then they took credit for it and bragged about it.
What investigation are you talking about? Reuters? The headline of
Reuters is Israel kills Al Jazeer journalist. It says was

(50:50):
Hamas leader, and then it goes on to quote to
quote the Israeli military saying, you know, he was responsible
for advancing rocket attacks or some of you know, preposterous claims.
This is making this, it's enabling Israel to do this.

(51:12):
And if we look, there's been a progression of brazenness
of how Israel killed journalists in Palestine. In the beginning,
they would deny that they killed them, or they would
say it's collateral damage or that there was some mistake.
Then they started claiming that the journalists were in fact
militants after they killed them. They did this with Hamsea
Dahdur in January to twenty four they produced some ridiculous

(51:35):
documents claiming he's a Hamas militant or Slami jah Had
I don't remember. Then they continue to step it up.
They credit this hip list in October and they put
six elder zero journalists and basically saying openly we're going
to kill them, and now they've killed two of them.
You know, they went even further. In April, they targeted
one of the most prominent journalists in Gaza. His name

(51:56):
was Hasseneslayech. They bombed him in a very similar way
to the bombing they did yesterday. The bombed the media
tempt but this one outside of Nassert Hospital and Hawness.
They killed two journalists. One was burned alive and the
other died. But the journalists they were trying to kill
Hassan he was wounded very badly. He was burned, he
lost two of his fingers. He was recovering inside the hospital.

(52:18):
They bombed the hospital and killed him. They bombed an
injured journalist a month later, barely a month later, and
killed him and then openly admitted to it. So they're
becoming more brazen about it, openly admitted to it because
they know there will be zero consequences.

Speaker 4 (52:33):
No, that's what they did.

Speaker 5 (52:35):
They pushed some words of condemnation, but the money, the weapons,
the support and the coverage by most Western media outlets
will allow this to happen.

Speaker 4 (52:44):
Right, that's right now, that's what they do.

Speaker 2 (52:46):
They test the limits and every time what they found
is they can get away with literally anything. Sure if
thank you so much, Sure for joining us today, We
really appreciate it.

Speaker 1 (52:57):
Sure to thank you for having me. So.

Speaker 2 (53:02):
The head of the ADL, Jonathan Green Black, gave a
couple of interviews, a long one with the New York
Times but which caught a lot of attention. But the
first coupe we want to start with was actually from
a different interview where he expresses concern over intermarriage.

Speaker 4 (53:15):
Let's take a listen to that.

Speaker 8 (53:17):
But like, this is why we need a revolution in
our community on so many levels. So look, the reality
is is that intermarriage rates continue to go up, assimilation
continues a pace, and look, I find anti symptism, that
is my job, but I worry a great deal about
broader questions of Jewish identity. I think we talked about over.

Speaker 2 (53:37):
Lunch concerned about intermarriage, which is interesting because if we
put this next piece up on the screen, Remember ADL
is supposed to be a civil rights organization. This is
from their website concerning over white supremacists who fear and
hate the concept of multiracial couples, relationships, or families, believe
that such relationships pollute the pure white race as a

(53:58):
result of fairly common white supremacist and bill depicts a
multiracial couple or family with a red circle or bar
superimposed over the depiction, indicating that such relationships ought to
be prohibited. So, yeah, I don't know what to tell you.
My commentary on this was I think it just should
be abundantly clear at this point that if you are

(54:19):
committed to sort of like basic liberal classical liberal, classical
liberal values, Zionism and classical liberal values cannot coexist, and
that relationship has become increasingly untenable. And when you see
comments like this, I think it underscores that fact.

Speaker 1 (54:35):
Well, I mean, there's so much to say about it,
which is fascinating. So first of all, is it okay
to say? That's actually a very interesting debate. And so
I was talking about it with some Jewish friends and
they're like, listen, even though it's green black, this is
a very common sentiment in the Jewish community. I was like, okay,
so let's talk about that. Why And it's like, well,
we're concerned about Jewish identity and we'd want to make
sure that the Jewish story of the last six thousand

(54:57):
years gets carried on. I said, Okay, I think that's
entirely reasonable for let's say a Jewish rabbi or others
to talk about now, even in terms of actualizing it
in America, I think it's a big problem. But I'll
return to that. But John Greenblatt is talking about this
in the context of support for Israel, and actually, really
what he's saying is that people who are half Jews

(55:19):
or people who marry outside of their religion are not
real Jews, and thus they are polluting support for Israel
right America. And that's what I find actually deeply distasteful
and really gross. This is, let's all be honest. This
is a common sentiment amongst recent immigrant arrival communities in
the United States. It was common amongst the Irish. Back

(55:40):
in the nineteen hundreds, common amongst the Italians. Intermarriage between
the two was seen as sacrilegious, especially with the Protestants, Lithuanian, Slovenians,
Eastern Europeans, etc. Obviously, it took a while and everybody
pretty much got over it. It's common today amongst the
Indian community, It's common amongst the Muslim community. It's common
any ethnic subgroup, especially one which is like tightly controlled value.

(56:02):
Chinese Americans, I'm sure, Japanese Americans, I'm sure have the
same story, and then, of course, over five six generations,
things kind of peter out. The problem that I find
in it, and this is returning to your liberal story,
is that it is one fundamentally which is talking about
the preservation of Jewish identity in his particular case, Zionism
and support for Israel in the United States, and not

(56:25):
wanting to basically quote assimilate, which he says is a
bad thing into the broader American project and story. I
think that's really bad. People have the right to do
what they want, but in terms of what we should
say is part of the so called melting pot, etc.
Is not one which actively goes out of its way
to say that ethnic subgroups, and in this particular one

(56:45):
one which he wants to preserve for loyalty and support
for a foreign state is quite literally the subversion that
Theodore Roosevelt talked about hyphenated American in his speech on
Hyphenated Americanism back in the early nineteen hundreds. And that's
the big problem that I have broadly with what he's saying,
because he is talking about it in the context of
support for Israel, and that is one where by the way,

(57:07):
if you're Jewish, you should be so insulted by this
because you're basically saying, hey, don't go and marry some
filthy goy, you know, and to make sure that your
kids are going to grow up to be pro hamas
you know. It's like, well, you know, last I checked,
the passport, says American. That's the only thing that's supposed
to matter. But of course that's not what they think.

Speaker 2 (57:27):
Yeah, I mean, I don't know if this is controversial
at this point, but I am a big believer in
the melting pot, and I think like intermarriage is actually
a big part of that. Now, like everybody can have
their own individual preferences and desires and for their own
family and what they want to do in their own lives.

Speaker 4 (57:42):
But again, what makes it a big issue is when
this is.

Speaker 2 (57:46):
The head of a civil rights organization, an American civil
rights organization, decrying intermarriage. That to me is problem and
again expos it is the tension between Zionist values and
liberal values of equality. Let's go ahead to the next one.

(58:09):
So this was as part of an interview with Lulu.
I always forget her last name, but over at the
New York Times, they did a lengthy interview. I actually
would encourage you to go and listen to it because
it is very interesting. In any case, she presses him
a bit on Okay, what do you say to people
who say that what Israel's doing is a genocide?

Speaker 4 (58:27):
What do you think about that?

Speaker 2 (58:29):
And he claims he doesn't really know about it, he
doesn't really know the definition. Shortly after talking about how
clarity of words is so important as the head of
the ADL, let's go ahead and take a listen to that.

Speaker 8 (58:40):
I do feel that my job requires me to have
a kind of moral.

Speaker 1 (58:44):
Clarity and on the use of words. On the use of.

Speaker 8 (58:47):
Words, I do think what's happening in Gaza is a terrible,
catastrophic situation. I don't think it's a genocide because that's
a legal definition, which means an intentional effort. And have
the dictionary in.

Speaker 5 (59:01):
Front of it.

Speaker 8 (59:01):
Here's intentional. Okay, what is it?

Speaker 9 (59:03):
I mean, it's a un right.

Speaker 1 (59:04):
We should say.

Speaker 9 (59:05):
It's a legal definition, and it says any of the
following acts committed with intent to destroy and hold in
part and national, ethnical, racial, or religious groups such as
killing members of the group, causing serious bodily or mental
harm to members of the group, deliberately inflicting on the
group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical
destruction in whole or part, imposing measures intended to prevent

(59:27):
births within the group, forcibly transferring children of the.

Speaker 5 (59:30):
Group to another group.

Speaker 8 (59:31):
In fairness, I don't have that definition in front of me, right,
and I haven't read it like you have before this.
But what I'll simply say is that I don't believe
the Israeli government is committing genocide.

Speaker 2 (59:45):
I mean, it's just incredible. At first, he's like, well,
I haven't looked at the definition. Okay, well here's the definition.

Speaker 4 (59:50):
Well, I don't have it in.

Speaker 2 (59:51):
Front of me, and I haven't really thought about it.
It's like, yes, how would you have not thought about it?
And then there's no, well, here's why I don't think
they is really government. Here's what I don't here's what
the definition is. Why don't think it fits. It's just
now I don't believe that.

Speaker 1 (01:00:04):
Next question, Look, I mean again, you know it's one
thing I think. You know I've argued here before about
the legitimacy of the international law. I think it's fake,
and that's part of the why I think a lot
of these terms are just like not particularly useful. But Greenblatt,
if your entire worldview is that the genocide, the holocaust
of the Jewish people is the foundation for why you

(01:00:26):
need the ADL in America and the existence of the
State of Israel, then yeah, you probably should think quite
a lot about the term in genocide and what is
or is not a genocide. Actually should go and check
their record on the quote Armenian genocide or any of
these Rwandan genocide, right, I mean, if you go, for example,
if you go to the Holocaust Museum here in Washington,

(01:00:47):
d C. They literally sell like never again merch and
they have stuff which highlights the Rwandan genocide, the Armenian genocide,
like the mass murder of ethnic subgroups of people that's
built into the Holocaust Museum here in Washington, d C.
So it's a ridiculous thing to say that the ADL

(01:01:08):
or any of these prominent Jewish organizations have not thought
about the term when they're the ones who invented the term,
you know, basically use the term as some sort of
legal architecture from the UN Genocide Conventions in nineteen forty eight,
inventing the never again in the R two P doctrine
of the nineteen nineties, which was born of the Rwandan genocide.

(01:01:28):
So my point is just like for him to just
sit there now all of a sudden want to like
parse every little word. It's like, dude, you just sound
you sound just like the people. It's like the Turks
today who are arguing whether the Armenian genocide was a
genocide or not. I'm like, okay, that's part of the reason.
By the way, I can find the term very tedious
sometimes because it's like, Okay, did you murder hundreds of
thousands of them or not? Like, what are we talking

(01:01:49):
about here? You know, yes, the answer is yes, just
to everybody is clear. I'm sure this will be clipp
by the Armenians.

Speaker 2 (01:01:54):
We should, we should you guys can go when watch
Agranize disagreements about genocide and why. I think that term
is actually really important, very consequential specifically in this context.
But Greenblot's answer here really actually relates back.

Speaker 4 (01:02:08):
To his stance on intermarriage.

Speaker 2 (01:02:10):
Because Zionism is a is an ideology of Jewish supremacism.

Speaker 4 (01:02:15):
That's what it is.

Speaker 2 (01:02:15):
It says, it justifies the idea that Jewish people in
Israel should have different rights, should have more rights, should
be should reign supreme in that state, and they should
be able to directly appriss Palestinanes both within the you know,
original Israeli borders, and you know they have completely now
subjugated people in both the West Bank and in Gaza.

Speaker 4 (01:02:35):
It is a Jewish supremacist ideology.

Speaker 2 (01:02:38):
So you know, the prohibition on race mixing makes very
makes tons of sense in the context of a Jewish
supremacist ideology. And it also is the truly, if he's
speaking honestly, it is the real reason why he and
others won't acknowledge that what Israel is doing is a
genocide because they believe that.

Speaker 4 (01:02:59):
They, as you know, a Jewish supremacist.

Speaker 2 (01:03:02):
That they basically get a pass to do what they
whatever they want to do, and that nothing that they
could do could ever constitute a genocide.

Speaker 4 (01:03:11):
And you hear this.

Speaker 2 (01:03:12):
Even, you know, in a more i guess diplomatic or
more sort of liberal coded answer from Jeremy benam Me
when he was debating Mehdi Hassan about the use of
the term genocide, and it's basically like, well, it makes
me feel bad, so I don't want to use that
term because I don't like the way it makes me
think about like what Jewish Israelis are supporting and what this.

Speaker 4 (01:03:33):
Means for my whole ideology.

Speaker 2 (01:03:34):
And after the fact, apparently after reflection into his credit,
he put on a substack basically saying like, you know what,
I'm no longer going to object to the term. I'm
not going to use the term because it still makes
me feel bad. But I don't object to the term
because I see that this is what is actually happening here.
But I think that's truly where the denial comes from.
It's because it couldn't be us, because he's so steeped

(01:03:56):
in this Jewish supremacist ideology of Zionism that he thinks
that it could never be that Israel is committing genocide.
No matter even if they nuked Gaza, he would still
he would still insist, No, I just don't believe that
Israel is committing genocide in this world.

Speaker 1 (01:04:15):
Well, let's talk about the intermarriage thing too, So, yeah,
in Israel, you cannot have interfaith marriage. It's not legal, Like,
does anybody know that for everybody, all for all of
the Oh it's an equal.

Speaker 4 (01:04:26):
Christry, liberal democracy, and you.

Speaker 1 (01:04:28):
Literally cannot have an interfaith marriage in the State of
Israel unless both people convert to the same religion. I'm
just telling you the facts. The compromise is they will
recognize legal marriage from outside of the country, but they
will not perform them inside of the country. Okay, I
mean that's pretty crazy, don't we all think. And I'm
not even talking about in the West Bank, where like

(01:04:50):
you just talked about, where we see this in action,
where if you murders somebody and your Israeli or you're
a settler, then you basically have two tier systems of justice.
And if you if you murder someone in your Palestinian,
a soldiers is going to shoot in the face and
there's no such thing as do process. And it's basically
the opposite where if you do murder a Palestinian you're
Israeli settler, not only do you get set free, you're
basically a hero in the entire country and you get

(01:05:12):
free guns, you know, from the government. I'm just telling
who reality is. And so if you look at this,
I mean the fact that interfaith marriage is actually banned
inside of the country. Basically, you know, emphasizes a lot
of the core points that he is talking about, and
a lot of this like liberal democracy stuff which they
love to trot out. It's a Jewish ethno state. And
by the way, I think ethno states, you know, broadly,

(01:05:36):
I would look at it as more value neutral in
terms of whether it's quote good or not, and more
in terms of should America tolerate ethno states? Likely we
have ethno states all over the world. Okay, so be
it all right, it's reality. But my point just about
it is, don't sit here in gaslight me about how
you're just like us, because you're actually not. You know,
so in their country, I could not have I could
not marry my wife. That's fucking crazy. Don't tell me

(01:05:58):
you live in a Western country.

Speaker 6 (01:05:59):
You don't.

Speaker 1 (01:06:00):
Yeah, right, And I could do that in probably I
think every European democracy, and I have a lot of
problems with them. But don't put yourself on the same
on the same tier as the rest of us.

Speaker 4 (01:06:08):
Yeah no, my kid's dad is Jewish.

Speaker 1 (01:06:11):
Yeah, there you go.

Speaker 4 (01:06:11):
And I was thinking about this, I was like.

Speaker 2 (01:06:13):
Shit, my typically, you know, the Jewish heritage comes from
the mother in terms of most you know, sex of Judaism,
although reform is different.

Speaker 4 (01:06:24):
And so I was looking.

Speaker 2 (01:06:24):
I was like, do my kids have some kind of
like a right to be able to like rite to
return and they, sure.

Speaker 1 (01:06:29):
Enough they do.

Speaker 4 (01:06:31):
They have no connect.

Speaker 2 (01:06:31):
That's insane that they have more right to live there
than the Paleston means who've been like that just shows
you how absolutely insane this state actually is and what
we're what our tax dollars are bolstering and supporting here,
and it's been layered over with this idea that this
is some liberal democracy, which is total and complete bullshit. Okay,

(01:06:52):
speaking of total and complete bullshit. He also got pressed
by Lulu about his equation of anti Zionism with anti Semitism.
Doesn't have a lot of great responses here either. Let's
take aalism.

Speaker 9 (01:07:04):
You have equated anti Zionism with anti Semitism. It is
and I will say that in preparation for this conversation,
I talked to a lot of different people, and one
of the things I heard is that anti Zionism for
them is a desire to have the rights of Palestinians

(01:07:25):
be equal to the rights of Jews in Israel. And
the Palestinian territories, the idea of sort of, I guess
the one state solution, if you will, is that definition
of anti Zionism to you anti semitic?

Speaker 8 (01:07:39):
Well, look, if you believe that only Jewish people don't
have the right to self determination, that's anti Semitic because
it's holding out Jews to a double standard you don't
accord to other people. So if you believe my definition
of Zionism, which is really not my definition widely accepted,

(01:08:02):
it's peculiar to me how anti Zionism isn't the opposite
of that, How people choose to interpret it, to embellish it,
to sort of dress it up as something other than
what it is. But the reality is, if you believe,
you believe how I laid out Zionism, then anti Zionism
is pretty simple.

Speaker 9 (01:08:22):
I think the challenge is if someone defines their view
of anti Zionism in a way that allows for Jews
to exist in a state of Israel, but that grants Palestinians' rights,
but you're seeing that as anti Semitic.

Speaker 2 (01:08:39):
And she brings up in this exchange, which is longer,
and I encourage you to read it, she actually brings
up Azra Client's piece, which I think was an intelligent
way to go about it, just as it's very first
of all, he's Jewish.

Speaker 4 (01:08:50):
He wrote this piece about the divide.

Speaker 2 (01:08:52):
In the Jewish community in the way that Israel's genocide is,
you know, sort of exercising Israel from being a really
central focus of Jewish life in America. And he says,
I hope I'm not butchering this quote. Basically like the
question isn't does Israel have a right to exist? Israel
does exist. The question is does Israel have a right
to dominate? And she puts that to him, and again

(01:09:13):
he's just sort of like, well, you know, I think
they're denying Jewish ability of self determination, and so my
definition is the one that counts. Therefore, that's how I'm
defining it. Therefore, anyone who is anti Zionist is also
anti Semitics. She also prosses him at a certain point
on like the statistics they compile of you know, oh,
anti Semitic incidents are up a million percent year over

(01:09:35):
a year, and there is It is sort of revealing
because he makes this comment. He says, in the ten
years that I've been head of the adl anti Semitic
incidents are up some thousand percent or whatever it is.

Speaker 4 (01:09:47):
It's like, well, then, aren't you kind of failing at
your job?

Speaker 2 (01:09:49):
I think is that your whole job is to bring
down anti Semitism, So you know, maybe your approach is
not really particularly working here.

Speaker 4 (01:09:57):
Have you thought about that?

Speaker 1 (01:09:58):
Well, it turns out that screaming antisemid all the time
doesn't particularly do anything about anti Semitism. It turns out
also that really is about concrete policy action. Most of
the things that brand is antisemitic or not anti Semitic whatsoever,
and would be laughed at ridiculously, you know, in the
context of any other country. But yeah, in particular his
thing about that, I see. I love that point about

(01:10:20):
it exists. And this again, I know people don't like this,
but this is my assault on the liberal democratic framework.
Is there's no such thing as right to exist. There
is just existence. There's no such thing as, you know,
a right to It's like, we live in reality. Israel
is a nation recognized by X number of states. Does
it exists? So now what do we do about it?
The Palestine was a state that was supposed to be existed,

(01:10:41):
and now quote doesn't exist. It's not about right to exist.
It doesn't and we probably should do something about it.
There's no right or not in order to restore peace,
which I think is good. Right, that's all really the
way that we should talk about these things. And they
try to gaslight you into this right to exist questions
like what do you bitching about? You want already not
only do you have your own country, you have it
beyond the borders of what you originally set out and

(01:11:03):
actually now you've annexed all this territory and quote greater Israel.

Speaker 4 (01:11:06):
Yeah, yes, does Lebanon have a right to exit?

Speaker 1 (01:11:09):
I mean, by the way my point, and even those
states are basically fake and drawn up on you know,
by the bridge. We could go on forever, but yeah,
this rabbit hole. So the point is it's like, no,
Syria exists as a polity now, doesn't make sense? Probably
not if you really look at it from the past.
Should we do anything about it? Yeah, it's kind of
more up to them. Should we let Israel dictate its

(01:11:31):
neighbor's politics and cause problems for us? Let's again center
ourselves in that equation. No, that's ridiculous, and it's the
same for the entire region. That's the point. And actually
it all comes back to the point around America and
the way that we should think about this is it's
not just the question about slaughtering of Palestinians and the
strategic goal. It's about do we want to be wholly

(01:11:53):
responsible for and alienate this entire region of which we
are somewhat dependent on for oil and may so that
they can militarily dominate and conquer vast swats around this
At the same time, we're going around the world preaching
about how all borders are sacrisanct after World War Two
and we can allow any domination or violation of liberal norms.

(01:12:17):
What ground do we have to stand on with the
Ukraine Russia consult when Gaza is going on.

Speaker 2 (01:12:23):
Yeah, it's ridiculous, And there's that is so true. And
there's another parallel with Russia Ukraine as well, which is
both our undying commitment to Israel no matter what, which
we'll talk more about in the next segment, the Israel
first segment, and our commitment to making Russia always and
forever an enemy state. Both of these are like obsessive

(01:12:45):
Cold War ideology. The reason we were so into Israel
is because we saw them as an ally against Russia
in the Cold War in an area where you know,
Russian communists, like left wing ideology was a sendate.

Speaker 4 (01:13:00):
So that's why we were in love with Israel.

Speaker 2 (01:13:03):
The Cold War is over, at least that Cold War
is over, and yet we still are hanging on to this.
And so you know, when you ask Alyssa's luck and
like why are they an ally, It's like, well, they
just are. And it doesn't matter what you say serve
or how much trouble it causes us, or how much
it costs us, or how much it embroils this region.
It's just they're an ally and that's it. And now
I'm going to shut my brain off, and these ones

(01:13:24):
are adversaries and that's it, and that can never change,
or you know, is completely permanently immovable as well, Like
who wants to view the right?

Speaker 1 (01:13:31):
I mean, people should really go back and read history.
A major reason that the state of Israel was even
recognized by Harry Truman is because at one point he
had a business partner in his haberdashery who was Jewish,
who connected him with his Zionists, with a Zionist preacher
who allowed to get himself in the oval. I'm not joking.
George Marshall, the architect of the Marshall Plan of the
modern American Empire, literally told Truman that he would not

(01:13:54):
vote for him in the upcoming election if he recognized
Israel because he thought it was a terrible idea. General Eisenhower,
the during the World War Two, Yeah, it was generalized
now or the victor of World War Two in the
nineteen fifties, during the Suez Crisis and all of that,
was very willing to be like, who the fuck do
you think you are going around here with the British
and the French trying to, you know, basically have some
conquest here in Egypt. That's not happening, like this modern cult.

(01:14:18):
It did not exist back in the day, to the
point where many, many of the architects of the American
Empire thought that the recognition of the state of Israel
was a disastrous idea that would be counter to American
interests in the Middle East. You can read a book
if you want to. It's all public record. Now. Of course,
they don't want everybody to really know the truth. They
think this special bond has existed since time. But I

(01:14:39):
mean Yeah, if it weren't for Truman's Jewish haberdashery partner,
we literally may not have the entire modern state, which
I was joking, it's true.

Speaker 2 (01:14:48):
Well, and you know, it's one thing when Israel is
screwing up our foreign policy. But I think part of
why there has been such a revolt against Israel, you know,
on the entire your democratic side and increasingly among young
Republicans as well, is because of the way now Americans
writes and what we're allowed to say are being directly

(01:15:10):
curtailed and ADLs. Jonathan Greenblatt gets asked about the censorship
that this government is engaging in to quash any sort
of pro Palestine protests, you know, deporting anyone who wrote
an op ed that they didn't approve of, etc. And
he acknowledges that he works with the Biden administration on
those efforts and works now with the Trump administration on

(01:15:33):
those efforts as well. Let's take a listen to that.

Speaker 8 (01:15:35):
I have worked worked with the prior Education secretary, and
I've worked with this Education Secretary, and I credit the
Biden administration for their National Strategy to County Anti Semptism,
a really important document no one had done with the
Biden administration had done before in elevating anti Semitism to
a federal priority and ADL and full disclosure worked with
them on that, and they get a lot of credit

(01:15:57):
for adopting the plan. And then I give credit to
the Trump administration for actually implementing aspects of the plant
and taking a strong view again in the face of real,
not imagined, real acts of hate, real acts of discrimination. Again,
we help to write the National Strategy to Counter Anti
Semitism released by the Biden administration. We were deeply involved

(01:16:20):
in that.

Speaker 2 (01:16:21):
So again, this head of a quote unquote civil rights
organization wants to trample on your rights in service of
his Israel first Jewish supremacist ideology and is working aggressively
with whatever bipartisan you know, Democrat, Republican. Trump has certainly
taken it beyond anyone's his wildest ambitions. He is happy

(01:16:44):
to work with them in service of trying to crush
your ability to speak out against your tax dollars going
to fund genocide.

Speaker 1 (01:16:51):
Yep, it's totally crazy. But look, I mean, I think
one good thing is that people are starting to see
this organization for what it is. For years, it was
a heroic organization amongst the left because it called out
white supremacy. It just rings a little hollow when you're
also talking about intermarriage for yourselves. So don't be telling
us and warning with the boogeyman when the boogeyman may

(01:17:12):
be amongst us the entire time.

Speaker 2 (01:17:17):
All right, let's go ahead and get to you know,
like I said, dovetails well with what we were just
talking about, the backlash to these Israel First policies and
the continued pushing by politicians of you know, making sure
that we prioritize Israel above all else.

Speaker 4 (01:17:33):
So let's start with this.

Speaker 2 (01:17:34):
There's a Wisconsin town hall or Republican representative by the
name of Brian Steele who is just aggressively booed to
the point and people are outraged over his support for
the genocide in Gaza, to the point that he has
to actually like leave the event, shut down the event
and leave. Let's go ahead and take a listen to
a little bit of that.

Speaker 5 (01:17:52):
People have a write a free speech.

Speaker 1 (01:17:57):
What do you have to say about dead prime?

Speaker 6 (01:18:00):
I had to say, it's not Oh.

Speaker 8 (01:18:11):
Do you hear? I want to have you addressed the
question that was shouted about the starving children in Gaza.

Speaker 10 (01:18:21):
To me, the easy answer to address this crisis is
for Hamasta surrender and release the hospital.

Speaker 8 (01:18:28):
That a war.

Speaker 5 (01:18:34):
In Israel.

Speaker 10 (01:18:35):
Israel was unfair, was unfairly unjustly attacked, their civilians were
killed and kidnapped.

Speaker 5 (01:18:44):
By Hamas chats.

Speaker 1 (01:18:48):
Israel has a right to defend itself. It's jettasigh you
believe in Shadda.

Speaker 5 (01:18:54):
Side is the thing we maybe we may just agreed this.
That's fine. Thank you ladies and gentlemen for coming tonight.

Speaker 1 (01:19:15):
We're going to close it off here because there's no
point in continuing.

Speaker 10 (01:19:21):
I appreciate everybody coming out tonight.

Speaker 5 (01:19:23):
Listening and everyone only agree.

Speaker 7 (01:19:26):
I know there's a lot of.

Speaker 1 (01:19:29):
You here.

Speaker 9 (01:19:31):
Well you look forward to say, everybody, you're not having
absolute one of.

Speaker 1 (01:19:36):
The clods horrible.

Speaker 4 (01:19:44):
So there you go.

Speaker 2 (01:19:46):
And I hope Centator Slot can take a look at
that footage because she seemed to believe that people only
protested Democrats when it came to this issue, and I
can tell you that's certainly not the case, is evidenced
by this town hall. But you know, I hope all
politicians are paying attention to this, not that I think
they're going to like, you know, have a heart and
have a soul and like decide suddenly that they're going
to do what's right. But just in terms of a
cynical political calculation, like this issue has become much more

(01:20:09):
important than ever even I would have thought. And it's
because if you are still in you know, August eleventh,
twenty twenty five, out here just going through the Israel's
a right to defend itself and release the hostages and
like saying the same things that you've been saying for
almost two years. At this point, the public is not
buying it. Democrats certainly aren't. In Pens certainly aren't. Increasingly

(01:20:31):
Republicans aren't either, And it has become a litmus test
of whether you have a shred of integrity, whether you
are willing to stand up to organize money, or whether
you are just a stooge for donors. And that really
is what it comes down to. Where Ryan is going
to be in for Soger tomorrow. He and I are
probably going to cover Pete booda judge's comments where look,
eight percent of the Democratic Party, eight percent supports what

(01:20:53):
Israel is doing, and still he can't find himself to
have any answer yes, no, you know, up down should
we recognize the Palestinian state? Any answer whatsoever? And you
know why, it's clearly one hundred percent about donor maintenance,
because it is certainly not where the Democratic base is.
And you know, obviously this is a Republican in a

(01:21:15):
Republican leaning district. I have no idea what the demographics
of this district are, how tough of a reelect he
has or whatever, but it's obviously an animating issue for
many people. And we saw this even in our focus
groups of the AOC Trump voters, that it came up
much more often than we expected it to it that I.

Speaker 1 (01:21:31):
Wouldn't claim that this is all that representative as you
and I know people who go to town halls are
the most politically. Yeah, they're acts like the activists of
the activists. But you know, I remember in twenty ten
there was a lot of cope like what I just said.
Remember Arlen Spector and others were getting booed and shouted
down by Republicans, and the Democrats were like, that's just

(01:21:52):
Republican coke planted activists, and then boom, you have this
gigantic GOP wave in twenty ten. So like, we can't
sit here and say that it isn't indicative of something,
especially in midterms. Midterms are all about who's the most
animated and enthusiastic to vote. And if Democrats are jazzed
up around a variety of issues from Trump to Gaza
to all that, well then they're going to put pressure

(01:22:14):
on their elected representatives. If you have a low turnout election,
then of course you're going to have a big blowout
for especially a lot of the Democrats. So the point
remains that even if it is not representative, and I
really don't think that it is that amongst the activist
class as Iraq was back in six as well, would
be remiss. I mean, unfortunately, a big portion of the
country still supported the war in Iraq in two thousand

(01:22:36):
and six. They agreed that the war was going badly,
but the activist base of the anti war people all
came out to vote in six and they delivered big
victories for the Democrats.

Speaker 2 (01:22:47):
Well, and think of why Barack Obama about getting the nomination.
I mean, the Iraq war ended up being incredibly central.

Speaker 1 (01:22:54):
It was number one, number one. Because everyone forgets is
Iowa that what Obama didn't Iowa it still remains like
the blueprint for all modern politicians because he changed the electorate.
It was all college students. I mean it's five. Look,
who's the most animate about is world?

Speaker 2 (01:23:10):
I'm rebably that, even just putting aside the like horse
race politics, so much of our political world that we
exist on in now is downstream of the Iraq War.
I mean Trump also in part gets the nomination because
he decides he's going to be opposed to the Iraq War.
So you know, I do dispute this idea that foreign

(01:23:31):
policy never ends up. Vietnam was obviously incredibly impactful in
terms of American politics, the Iraq War ends up being
incredibly central, to the point that we're still dealing with
the fall on today. And I think that this is
such an issue because it does expose so much of
the hypocrisy, the lies, the claims of concern about humanitarian

(01:23:52):
issues or on the right, the claims that, oh, what's
America first and we're just looking out for American interests.
It really exposes the lies and the hip hopcy of
both parties, which is why it's such an explosive issue.
Matt Gates another thing, People are becoming more aware of
is the role of APAC and more broadly, these Israel
aligned entities, with the APAC being the sort of largest
and most most influential. I would say Matt Gates revealed

(01:24:15):
something pretty interesting about his experience when he went on
one of these APAC trips to Israel. Let's take a
listen to what he had to say.

Speaker 6 (01:24:23):
I went on that APAC trip, I went on subsequent trips,
and there is an actual downward pressure from the leadership
and even the committee chairs, Like if you're on the
Foreign Affairs Committee, if you're on the Armed Services Committee,
if you're on the Intelligence Committee, there's like an expectation
that you go there and some sort of like Congressional
Hodge and I remember being at the I'll never go back.

(01:24:45):
I was at the King David Hotel and I rolled
back to my room unexpectedly when the rest of the
group was still on some planned activity, and there's some
dude in my room. I'm like, hey, man, what are
you doing here? And he acted like he was associated
with the hotel and taking an inventory but had no clipboard.
And so yeah, it's there's a lot of reasons why
they want members of Congress over there and it is

(01:25:09):
ideologically to steep them in this notion that the protection
of Israel is of great import to people in America,
but it's really not that important of voters, and that
is becoming more clear on the right and left.

Speaker 2 (01:25:22):
So Sager Kyle and I interview Jamal Bowman, who APAX
spent millions of dollars to get that man out of office.
And you know, and at that time, by the way,
his critique of Israel was quite mild and moderate, but he.

Speaker 1 (01:25:34):
Didn't really go that hard if fire recall.

Speaker 4 (01:25:36):
No, not at the time.

Speaker 2 (01:25:37):
And so in any case, he shared with us that
when he first was running for Congress, how aggressively APAX
sought to get a meeting with him. And so first
they called and he was like, I'm not interested. You know,
I know what they stand for. I'm not aligned. I'm
not interested. Then they went through this respected in New
York City organization Uplifting Black Men that was like well

(01:25:59):
known and bom and was familiar with their work, et cetera,
and went through them to sort of strong armed Jamal
into taking this meeting, and you know, ends up like
he goes this coffee and it's like the APAC person
and the person from this organization. But that's how aggressively
they will seek to try to cultivate these relationships. And

(01:26:19):
then you know, there's all the propaganda that comes out
that there's obviously the threat of millions of dollars with
Jamal Bowman did ultimately face and is probably the reason
he's not in Congress now, the threat of all those
millions of dollars being dropped.

Speaker 4 (01:26:30):
On you, and then soccer.

Speaker 2 (01:26:31):
There's also just like the human sense of like, oh,
but I know these people and like Fred is going
to be really disappointed in me if I vote against
this anti Semitism definition or whatever, and that can be
very powerful as well for you know, people who are
who up to this point there was no cost on
the other side, you know, there was no cost to
bear from just being lockstep with Israel every single step.

Speaker 1 (01:26:53):
Of the way. Well also you, I mean, you just
laid it out well. And I will reference the Harry
Truman thing I was just talking about of his personal
relationships and Apac knows that. Let's go and put E
three up on the screen just to show you. This
is all of the Republican congressmen in Israel with Prime
Minister net and Yahoo, the APAC trackers put all the
money that they've received. Lest you believe that this is

(01:27:15):
a singular partisan phenomenon, should we go to the next slide.
What do we see there? Oh? Interesting? All of the
House Democrats are there? Who are where are they?

Speaker 6 (01:27:25):
By the way?

Speaker 1 (01:27:25):
Something CARYO, Yeah, I have a Moss tunnel. Not sure?
Also going on there, and look, you know not to
not to just cape too hard for Republicans, but at
least the Republicans are wearing suits. What are these people
doing here? You know, on vacation shirt. You're wearing your
a low hot shirt while you're in Israel.

Speaker 4 (01:27:39):
Well, and let's just draw this out for one moment further.

Speaker 2 (01:27:42):
Okay, this is when they're on break right Congress, the
emergency break so that they could avoid.

Speaker 4 (01:27:48):
Voting on any Epstein stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:27:50):
Also ties back to Israel, by the way, and what
you're supposed to do on those You're supposed to actually
go and do what Brian Steel was doing. Go to
town here from your constituents. You know here that they
hate you for your view on supporting a downside and Gaza.
That's what you're supposed to be doing right now, and
instead at a moment when nat Yaho's security cabinet just

(01:28:10):
voted for the complete invasion of Gaza and destruction and
occupation of Gaza City in particular as part of a
plan to fully completely displace the population of the Gaza strip.
Here you are on an APAC sponsored trip, having a
little smiley happy time in whatever this weird tunnel is
while this is all going on, and you dare say

(01:28:32):
that you're representing the American people, You dare say, for
the Democrat side, that you care about human rights, like,
no one should take these people seriously ever again, every
single one of them should be primaried, every single one
of them should be voted out of office because they.

Speaker 4 (01:28:48):
Do not care about you.

Speaker 1 (01:28:49):
Thanks for watching, guys. We'll see you all tomorrow. Ryan
will be in for me, but then I'll be in
for him on Wednesday, so we get an little switcher
here on the show. So I'll see you then.

All Episodes

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

Stuff You Should Know

Dateline NBC

New Heights with Jason & Travis Kelce

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

.css-r6mb8g{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:1;overflow:hidden;}Stuff You Should Know

Dateline NBC

New Heights with Jason & Travis Kelce

All Episodes

Stuff You Should Know