8/14/25: Trump Threatens Putin Before Summit, Will Dems Fumble 2026

Episode Transcript
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regularly scheduled programming.

Speaker 3 (00:37):
What do we have today, Cristel Oh, We have.

Speaker 4 (00:39):
A lot to tackle this morning.

Speaker 2 (00:41):
We're going to preview that big Trump putin Alaska summit.
We're also going to take an early look at how
the midterms are shaping up. We've got some news out
of Israel, including netnyahuo embracing the Greater Israel project, so
just mask fully off at this point. I'm also going
to take a look at Theo vonhad In, American doctor
who was just back from Gaz's pretty extraordinary episode. I

(01:02):
really recommend that you guys go and listen to the
whole thing, but we have a clip from that. I
wanted to talk a little bit about that as well.
Marthorie Taylor Green and Laura Lumer in an Absolute flame
war break the details down there, and Laura Lum are
making a pretty dire prediction about the future of the
Republican Party, So that is interesting to dig into as well,
perhaps more substantive.

Speaker 4 (01:19):
I don't know to dig into as well.

Speaker 2 (01:22):
Congresswoman Luna is telling Joe Rogan about UFOs, so Sager
has some thoughts.

Speaker 4 (01:26):
I guess I have some thoughts there. Well.

Speaker 1 (01:28):
She made some crazy claims, but she's also gone after
some whistleblower, so we'll talk about it.

Speaker 3 (01:32):
It's actually there's a lot going on there, Okay, yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:34):
Right, you'll break that down for us. And then Israel
might be preparing to go back to war with Iran.
So we are going to have Dave DeCamp of Anti
War dot COM's first time on the show. I've been
wanting to get him on for a little while to
break down all of the details there.

Speaker 4 (01:47):
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and or send your favorite episode to a friend. So
let's go ahead and start with that Trump Putin summit.

Speaker 3 (02:08):
It is tomorrow. We'll have some reaction on Saturday.

Speaker 1 (02:10):
By the way, we'll get to that in terms of
our future programming notes. But we actually wanted to start
with some of the contours of the debate and kind
of where things lie. So we thought we would kick
it off with Dave Smith, who was recently on Piers
Morgan's show, debating a very pro Ukraine, pro Western NATO
sentiment and really revealing some of the core truths I

(02:32):
think behind what continues to drive a lot of the
NATO support for the war.

Speaker 3 (02:36):
Let's take a listen, what.

Speaker 5 (02:37):
Are we doing. You're just trying to insult Vladimir Putin,
insult Russia. It's like the most childish immature, just taunting.
There's an actual war going on right now. Where hundreds
of thousands of people have been dying, and there's a
meeting coming up between the two leaders of the United
States and Russia. As I said before, ninety percent of
the world stockpile of nuclear weapons. Let's all take this

(03:00):
down a notch. Vladimir Putin has at least signalled recently
that he will maybe is open to the idea of
keeping the Donbass region done, asking Lahansk, of getting a
corridor to Crimea, and of leaving some of the other territory.
Why are we not all pushing in that direction. It
is undeniable that the West did a lot to provoke

(03:23):
this conflict. It's just undeniable. Our CIA director through all
of Joe Biden's term, Bill Burns, was the one who
wrote the NT means NEET memo, who warned Condoliza Rice,
do not keep pushing in this direction, and we continued
pushing regardless it's resulted in this catastrophe. Like I said before, Pierce,
I'm not absolving Vladimir Putin of any responsibility. He launched

(03:43):
this warrant, He's responsible for the destruction. But when you
start the program by asking a simple question like what
is the exit strategy here? What is the plan. No
one really has anything. No one has anything other than
maybe we could keep sending weapons and money in and
this slow grind of people dying will continue, and Vladimir
Putin will then, at the end of that take the

(04:05):
territory he wants. Let's try to negotiate an end to
this nightmare that never needed to happen.

Speaker 1 (04:10):
I thought he did a good job, kind of a
laying some of the stakes out. And yes, again I
understand nobody's absolving Vladimir Putin a buffer invading Ukraine. Were
simply acknowledging the contours of what.

Speaker 3 (04:22):
Led to this.

Speaker 1 (04:22):
Yeah, I actually find it almost similar maybe to the
Israel Hamas conversation. Right, It's like, to talk about October
seventh in a vacuum is kind of ridiculous.

Speaker 4 (04:31):
I'm like, do you condemn Hammad.

Speaker 1 (04:33):
Right exactly? Like, yes, of course on October seventh, and
it's like, let's look at the contours of the conflict.
That's part of the reason I think that Daryl Cooper's
series on Fear and Loathing in Jerusalem went so viral
because people are like I genuinely had no idea about
the history of these two actors and what led up
to this, and it starts to make a lot more
sense actually from both sides in terms of their actions,

(04:55):
both October seventh and the Israeli reaction, and you're able
to actually be able to down both and then look
at it, you know, without some single Israeli covered or
Palestinian covered glasses.

Speaker 3 (05:06):
Right, And that makes it what it's called nuance.

Speaker 1 (05:08):
It's about understanding how these things don't happen necessarily in evacuate.

Speaker 4 (05:12):
It's not an adulting version.

Speaker 2 (05:14):
Where it's just like he's an evil bad guy, so
he does bad stuff and they're evil people, so they
do they hate us because I were free, you know,
it's like the cartoon version of it. And I will
say there was one person on that panel that was
absolving Vladimir pos Ros, a dude in the car.

Speaker 4 (05:28):
It was like some I.

Speaker 2 (05:29):
Don't know, Russian State TV propaganda's and so that was
supposed to be like Dave's ally in the debate. Obviously
Dave doesn't agree with him, which he made clear, like
went out of his way to make clear, like the
things that this dude was saying, I do not co
sign whatsoever.

Speaker 4 (05:43):
So Peers is more pro Ukraine.

Speaker 2 (05:46):
The woman that was there is herself Ukrainian, and then
you've got two neocons there who are you know, very
pro Ukraine. And so it was basically Dave versus the
entire panel, and as you could see there handled himself
quite ably just by out you know, reality of where
we are, because this is you know, I have a

(06:06):
lot of sympathy and continue to have a lot of
sympathy for the Ukrainians. In fact, I'm disgusted with the
fact that the US was so integral and glowing up
a potential piece deal early on. I'm also disgusted with
the actions that multiple US administrations, including the first Trump one,
including Biden, including going back, you know, before this war
that they took that led to the provocation that created

(06:26):
the context for this illegal offensive action invasion by Russia.
And so, you know, if you are interested in trying
to bring this thing to a close, you have to
live in reality. The other alternative being offered here is
just what endless war or you know, if we're actually
going to try to get Ukraine to quote unquote win

(06:48):
and take back all their territory, I mean that would
require our actual direct involvement. Does anyone want that and
that's what's driven me crazy about this conflict from the
beginning is there's been a total unwillingness to have an
honest debate about what happened in the past, what it's
going to mean, what the off ramp is, what the
plan is, where this whole thing is going. And now

(07:09):
it's just a mess and a quagmire. And you know,
I'm not particularly hopeful about this summit this weekend. I'll
just put my cards on the table, and I think
we'll have some indications you're about to share of, you know,
not great signs going into it.

Speaker 4 (07:22):
But you know, I don't know.

Speaker 2 (07:24):
I'm just at this point there really needs to be
some sort of rational clothes to this thing, and I
don't know that we're anywhere close to it.

Speaker 3 (07:32):
I don't see it either.

Speaker 1 (07:33):
Here's Trump talking about the summit, setting expectations.

Speaker 3 (07:37):
Let's take a listener.

Speaker 4 (07:38):
Let's your face.

Speaker 5 (07:39):
Any consequences if Vladimir Putin does not agree to stop
the war after your meeting on Friday.

Speaker 1 (07:45):
Yes, they will.

Speaker 3 (07:47):
What will they will be?

Speaker 1 (07:48):
Cons There will be I don't have to say there
will be very severe consequences. Yes, very severe consequences. I'm
going to return to that, because basically this thing, at
least for now, looks like it's set up fail to
be fair. Here's what the Trump people have been telling
me behind the scenes. He starts off from the maximal
political place so that he can negotiate down from there,

(08:09):
which sounds reasonable in practice, like maybe in business, but
in something as sensitive as this, I still remain remains
to be seen, I think in terms of the success
and part of the reason why is this.

Speaker 3 (08:21):
Let's put this up there on the screen.

Speaker 1 (08:23):
There's been multiple reports out now, none of it contradicted
with the White House. Yesterday, Donald Trump held a meeting
both with Ukraine and many of the European great powers
ahead of the summit, where they agreed quote on Ukrainian
red lines with Europe. Before the Putin summit, the US
leader told European peers he will not negotiate territorial issues
during Friday's meeting, but will seek in immediate ceasefire. Now

(08:45):
included within that provision for a European ceasefire, and I
want to reiterate this are some of the things which
are already non starters for the Russians.

Speaker 3 (08:55):
I'm going to read it here.

Speaker 1 (08:56):
Quote ceasefire as a prerequisite for any further talks. Quote,
any territorial discussion will start from the current front line,
quote binding Western security agreements that Russia must accept, quote
Ukrainian participation in the talks, and quote support from both
the US and Europe, including Ukraine for any deal. Now
Already on the Ukrainian side, it's going to be very

(09:18):
difficult to get a deal. Why because Zelensky has a
total ability to set the table and to bring anything
to some sort of national referendum, which he's not even
allowed to pursue any sort of peace on his own accord.
He has to bring it to the people. Now, he
may not even want to bring it to the people
because apparently, according to their own polls, the Ukrainian people
are actually much more pro peace than he is. Whereas

(09:39):
his entire administration, remember, he's deeply unpopular already for some
of the authoritarian anti corruption laws that he just signed
into office. He's already been dragging down in the polls.
There's been no election, The Ukrainian opposition has either been
banned or jailed inside of the country. Why would you
want to give that up if you're already a leader
of that country. His vision for how this thing was
going to go is already out of step with the

(10:01):
Ukrainian secondary to that is, quote, some sort of security
guarantee that Russia can that Russia must accept. The security
guarantee would effectively be some sort of NATO style security
guarantee outside of NATO. So Trump is trying to play
two sides of this coin, where he's like, well, it
won't be from NATO. It's like, dude, if the US
has a treaty bound organized or treaty bound obligation to

(10:24):
defend every inch of let's say, eighty percent of Ukraine,
that might as well be NATO. I mean, it doesn't
matter right functionally whether it's America or whether it's outside
of NATO or not. If all of the NATO powers
have an obligation to come and to defend your territory,
then that's basically NATO.

Speaker 3 (10:41):
Why would Russia live with that?

Speaker 1 (10:42):
And then the final one is that Russia must agree
to the current front line and they must not demand
any more of their territory.

Speaker 3 (10:50):
Well, again, for people who.

Speaker 1 (10:51):
Don't even follow the conflict, Russia just had its best
breakthrough on the frontline in over a year. Part of
the reason why a sea fire for them right now
may not make a lot of sense is because they're rolling.
Every single day that the war continues, they're doing better.
And then finally there's this theory of severe consequences. Russia

(11:13):
is the most sanctioned country on Earth by the United States.
I actually don't think people know that, more than Iran,
more than any other place. There's not another sanction that
can be left. That's why they're threatening these quote secondary
sanctions right Well, they've put fifty percent sanctions or tariffs
on India.

Speaker 3 (11:29):
India has not budged a single inch, not one.

Speaker 1 (11:32):
In fact, they're going to Moscow, They're going to China,
to Beijing. The two biggest buyers of Russian oil are
China and India. China by far, by the way, and
it faces no current consequences. The Senate has a bill
which Trump is threatened to support, which would put five
hundred percent tariffs on any buyer of Russian oil.

Speaker 3 (11:50):
But let's think about the consequences of that.

Speaker 1 (11:52):
That would mean a five hundred percent tariff on China,
which would effectively bring the US commerce industry, retail industry,
e commerce, et cetera to a complete.

Speaker 3 (12:00):
And shut off trade.

Speaker 1 (12:01):
Is everybody willing to shut down our economy and all
of our global trade for Ukraine. I mean this is where,
you know, it gets back to where we all had
to pay higher gas prices because of the Ukrainian conflict.
That wasn't popular. Actually, even though a lot of people
were like, yeah, sure, I'll pay higher gas, it's.

Speaker 4 (12:16):
Like, yeah, I didn't work out the beginning in theory.

Speaker 3 (12:19):
Yeah you got you got a lot poor.

Speaker 1 (12:20):
Most people paid a big FD Ukraine tax at the
pump for years and instead, by the way, they still
continue to pay it, at least in some form.

Speaker 3 (12:28):
But my point remain.

Speaker 1 (12:29):
Oh, I mean, I'm not even talking about the European
consequences all of those you know, the summers where their
electricity prices were sky high. It deregularly destabilized their entire economies.

Speaker 3 (12:41):
The German economy it took a massive hit.

Speaker 1 (12:44):
I mean, it basically looked like their entire manufacturing sector
was underwritten by cheap oil and gas. Like their whole
future of their economies is up in the air right now.
All that being said is just to say, you know,
Trump would always say we have the cards and he's right.

Speaker 3 (12:58):
For Ukraine, on Russia. It's not right.

Speaker 1 (13:01):
I mean, absent full blown US military NATO intervention.

Speaker 3 (13:05):
What else can you do?

Speaker 1 (13:06):
Yeah, this is not a military capable of adopting NATO weaponry.

Speaker 3 (13:10):
They've proven that.

Speaker 1 (13:11):
They only and I'll get to this in a bit,
they only know how to fight in a Soviet way.
Would just throw as much manpower into the trench as possible.
You think they're going to beat the Russians at their
own game. They have millions more people than you.

Speaker 4 (13:22):
Yeah, that's right.

Speaker 2 (13:23):
I mean, I guess the alternative view with regard to
Russia's recent success on the front lines would be, you know,
this has been going on for years now and they've
basically been stuck in place. There have been minor advances
on the Russian side, but it hasn't been like you know, yeah,
they're not taking on Yeah, it hasn't been dramatic. And
that these latest games may be a result of them

(13:46):
really throwing a lot of force in one area to
try to improve their bargaining position going into this summit,
in these negotiations. It's kind of the alternative explanation as
far as Trump goes, I guess we're just hoping since
he goes back on his word all the time, that
maybe he doesn't actually mean anything that he's saying here
about just like I'm in lockstep with the Europeans and
the Ukrainians and Russia's going to pay a price, et cetera,

(14:08):
et cetera. Very possible, very possible that Trump doesn't mean
a word that he is saying about any of this
and will completely flip once he's face to face with
Vladimir Putin, because famously he's very influenced by whoever happens
to be in front of him at that moment.

Speaker 4 (14:22):
So we'll see.

Speaker 2 (14:23):
I just want to zoom out though, also for a
second and talk about how utterly hypocritical and preposterous it
is at this point in time for the Americans to
posture like they care so deeply about territorial integrity. We're
going to cover later in the show how Israel is
now greenlit this massive and very consequential expansion of settlements
that basically makes a two state solution impossible. It's directly intended,

(14:45):
according to Smotrich himself, who was in charge of such things,
directly intended to make a two state Palestinian you know,
solution completely impossible, completely.

Speaker 4 (14:54):
Off the table.

Speaker 2 (14:55):
And of course we are also green lighting the complete
annexation of Gaza as well, so West Bank annexed, Gaza annexed,
and that we are we are part of, we are
green lighting, we are funding, we're providing diplomatic cover for.
And then on the other hand, we're going to pretend like,
you know, territorial integrity is all is you know, some
rarefied sakersang thing. I mean, it's just the levels of

(15:18):
hypocrisy are so brazen in your faces.

Speaker 1 (15:20):
Yeah, and I mean I've talked about before, but you know,
all of the rhetoric that you hear on Ukraine, They're like,
oh my god, Russia's killing civilians.

Speaker 3 (15:27):
Look, I'm not minimizing any civilian death.

Speaker 1 (15:29):
I think it's bad, but Russia has killed, you know,
on a daily basis. They'll be like, wow, twelve civilians
were killed in Ukraine. I think that's horrible. How many
civilians is Israel kill every single day with the US bomb?
What do we who are we talking to? You know
about this same booka of the massacre. It was a genocide,
that's what the Ukrainians say. Yeah, I mean again, look

(15:52):
at the death toll and compare it to the Palestinians.
It's like we can't talk out of both sides of
our mouth, and instead we just need to all be honest.
As a great power conflict, the goal was to try
and destroy the Russians bya Ukraine as a proxy state.
It failed miserably. I never thought I, my great naivete,
was having any confidence in the US global hagienemy on banking.

(16:13):
I thought that there was no way the Russian economy
would survive. I have been stu there's a lot of
lessons actually in the way that the Russians have been
able to It shows you that there's only two things
that matter. If you can make guns and if you
can pump oil, that's literally all that you need. You
don't need America at all. And you know they're doing
just fine.

Speaker 4 (16:29):
The world is way more prepared to move on from
US than we.

Speaker 1 (16:32):
It's true, I truly truly underestimated not only them, but
I vastly overestimated the power of US sanctions and have agemony.
And I kind of wish that we hadn't done it
for a conflict which has no bearing whatsoever on the
United States. Let's get to President Zelenski, who recently had

(16:55):
a press conference in London where he's been meeting with
all of the European powers setting the table for the summit.

Speaker 3 (17:00):
Let's take a listen.

Speaker 6 (17:01):
I told a President Trump and all European allies Peutin
is bluffing. Putin is bluffing, that sanctions is nothing and
they don't work. In fact, sanctions are hitting Russian or
economy hard. That Putin definitely does not want peace. He
will occupy Ukraine. And we all understand that Putin can

(17:25):
not fool anyone. We need future and further pressure and
European and American sanctions against Russia.

Speaker 1 (17:33):
So you can see it's like Putin doesn't want peace,
and I mean all of the table for that is
that I don't want peace either, right, is that we
want to continue fighting, throwing our people into the breach.
Let's put the next one, please up on the screen,
just to you know, continue what I was saying. Trump
promises quote very severe consequences at a military level, absent
sending troops actually on the ground. I was speaking with

(17:55):
some military experts yesterday. There's not a whole lot left.
Biden gave him everything that they possibly have asked for.
The critique from that is that, oh, he gave it
to them too late. But we are where we are.
We're in reality, right, We're in The average age on
the Ukrainian front line is probably between forty and sixty
years old.

Speaker 3 (18:10):
Nobody even really knows what that is.

Speaker 1 (18:13):
Horror, it's horrifying what has already happened to the entire population.
But you know, as you said, the hope is that
maybe he's speaking out of both sides of his mouth
and keeping everything up for negotiation. But I'm just not
so sure. Considering I would have thought that. You know,
in the first month of the Trump administration, we have
the Gaza ceasefire.

Speaker 3 (18:32):
I was like, wow, I was like, this is amazing.

Speaker 1 (18:34):
Right, well, you know, now we are where we are
where Wick cough is used talks with Iran as cover
for a strike, where on the Israeli side we just
keep saying things like, well, it's up to Netan. Yahoo.
You know, It's like, well, here, it seems like we've
done a total about face. From the initial days of
the administration, Trump sending two hundred and fifty million dollars

(18:54):
in additional military equipment, Trump continuing, you know, these via
European arms sets, but still fueling the conflict, sending patriot batteries,
threatening Russia with sanctions. This is straight out of the
Biden playbook. The India thing is literally out of Lindsey
Graham playbook. Has been wanting to do it since day
one at a military level, just to underscore that. Let's
put this one, next one please on the screen, just

(19:16):
to show everybody what the military reality is here. Excellent
piece written by some people were actually military experts, and
they say, quote, Ukraine's once nimble army is mired in
Soviet decision making. I remember reading this over the last
couple of years about how NATO tactics and others were encouraged,
NATO weaponry and a lot of these other things training
to try and get the Ukrainians to fight that way.

(19:37):
But their response is basically, look, we don't even know
how to do that. But also this is just the
way that we're trained, and we've found some level of
battlefield success. But attritional warfare favors the great power, not
the small power, especially the one that has no industrial base,
that has no capacity to wage war on its own
and would basically be giving up in a single day

(19:59):
twenty four hour p period. If the United States and
Europe pulled the plug from the conflict, big person who
is able to sustain that on a long enough basis
is the Russians. And there was also this theory that
lots and I also got this wrong.

Speaker 3 (20:11):
I'll admit it if I look back.

Speaker 1 (20:13):
You know, one of the things that brought down the
Soviet Union, or at least stirred up a lot of
internal descent was the death toll in Afghanistan during the
Soviet War. And you know, the Russians have nobody knows
exactly how many troops have been killed, but it's a lot,
hundreds of thousands probably, you know, the Russians will claim. Otherwise,
there doesn't seem to be very much. There just doesn't

(20:33):
seem to be a whole lot of descent. They somehow
seem to have solve that problem. I guess the population
just supports it, unlike they did in Afghanistan.

Speaker 3 (20:40):
I really have no other explanation.

Speaker 1 (20:42):
I also read that they're paying very generous salaries to
a lot of the draftees or a lot of the
people who will come in from the Caucuses or these
other regions, much more than they could ever earn otherwise,
and so even the widowers and the families are like, well,
it sucks, you know, to lose your husband, but I'm
getting a pension for the rest of my life. I
don't know how they did it. I'm not an expert
or anything, but what I thought that this could be

(21:04):
an Afghanistan type situation for them.

Speaker 3 (21:06):
It doesn't appear to be.

Speaker 1 (21:07):
People. They seem willing as a polity to accept hundreds
of thousands, if not millions of casualties in Ukraine. There
has been zero actual internal descent since twenty twenty two.

Speaker 3 (21:17):
Yeah, and a lot of the draft.

Speaker 1 (21:18):
In fact, it may have worked out for them because
the Western style elites they all just left Russia and
so everybody who's left is like, yeah, we're on board,
We're you know, we're on the train.

Speaker 3 (21:26):
Let's go.

Speaker 4 (21:27):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (21:27):
They have a large, you know, relatively poor, rural population
that is committed, that believes in the war goals, like
believes in the aims, and you know for whom those
those salaries are quite appealing. And so I, you know,
I'm I don't know, but that's my guess as to
why they've been able to sustain this high rate of
casualty without having any notable significant societal backlash as far

(21:50):
as we can tell, you know, as outsiders looking in. So,
you know, with regard to the ongoing war tactics, there
was actually a great quote in that piece. One of
the said, you know, big Soviet army beats little Soviet army,
basically saying like, yeah, they use these same terrible tactics
of just throwing men into a meat grinder and never
wanting to retreat even when it makes sense, letting their

(22:12):
troops get encircled and slaughtered. But they have a lot
more people than we do, so in the end, how
do you think that that is ultimately going to work out?

Speaker 4 (22:19):
You know?

Speaker 2 (22:19):
There was also some some quotes in here from a
guy who's fifty years old wanted to go fight, signed up.
He was like, you know, he'd never handled a weapon before,
had zero training, never been in the military before, but
wanted to serve and thought that he could go in
and get some training and go do something that wasn't
really on the front line. I mean, again, he's fifty

(22:40):
years old, he's never been in warfare before, he's never
fired a weapon before, and they didn't even give him
a gun before they send him to the front lines,
and he you know, he laughed, he was he was like,
I'm not doing this.

Speaker 3 (22:51):
That's the Soviet thing.

Speaker 4 (22:52):
I've everything, I'm not doing this.

Speaker 2 (22:53):
And apparently they have a lot of deserters because of
exactly this. They're like, you didn't give me any training.
You're sending one in the front lines. The you know,
guy who's in charge here is just willing to, you know,
let us get encircled and slaughtered, like we're not doing it.
And so, you know, you also have that dynamic unfolding
on the ground here too. But you know, your point
about us having all the cards with regard to Ukraine

(23:15):
is a really important one, really important. You know, the
party that we really have the most ability to pressure
is the Ukrainians.

Speaker 4 (23:21):
They are very dependent on us. That's just the reality.

Speaker 2 (23:24):
And so you know, pressure needs to be put on them,
and it needs to be done in order to secure
a deal that yes, they're going to be unhappy with, right.
It's it's not like in order to bring this war
too close now it would require territorial concessions.

Speaker 4 (23:38):
There's just no doubt about that.

Speaker 2 (23:39):
Certainly, crimea you know, Eastern Ukraine and what needs to
happen is there needs to be some ability to create
face saving for Zelenski, Like, if you're interested in actually
bringing this thing to a close, you put pressure behind
the scenes, You try to resolve the underlying issues that
led Russia to, you know, create to launch this illegal

(24:00):
invasion to begin with, and you try to create some
sort of face saving pretext for Zelenski so that he
has because his ego is massive, clearly, and he's backed
himself sort of into a rhetorical corner, so that he
has some sort of an out And it just seems
from the beginning the complete opposite policy has been pursued.
You know, the pressure has been on the Russian side,
so Lencia gets publicly humiliated. That actually doesn't help you

(24:22):
in terms of trying to get him to back off
of his egoistic position, which you should be doing is
pumping him up in public and then putting the pressure
on behind the scenes to force an outcome that again
is like not ideal and is going to be deeply painful,
but increasingly the Ukrainian population is actually open to Yeah.

Speaker 1 (24:40):
I think that look all well said the prop the summit,
you know, the initial by the way, as you know,
I loved the initial office meeting.

Speaker 3 (24:49):
I thought it was great.

Speaker 1 (24:49):
I was like, he needs to be put into his place,
and finally that we can break you know, in terms
of our so called special relationship, we could force him
to the table. But since then it's like I said,
Trump totally about face and this is not an advisor's thing.
I really believe that he seemed to think that he
could just use his relationship with Putin to bring the
conflict to an end, and I did not understand the

(25:12):
fundamental spot in Putin. The thing is about Putin is
he's crazy, but he has very rational objectives from within
his worldview. If you look at it, he disregards which
is insane, you know, the existence of all of these outs,
like these breakaway republics. He thinks the Treaty of Breslatosk

(25:33):
is like one of the greatest disasters to ever befall
the history of Russia, and that the tragedy was the
fall of the Soviet Union from the demise of a
great power, and that they've been bullied by the West.
Like I said, he is a czar through and through
in his security, defense or depth vision. Well for him,
if you look at him in that you know view.

(25:53):
It's personality has nothing to do with it. Yes, he
will use you as a personality to get relations or
any of it, but he only cares about one thing.
He invaded Ukraine for a reason and he will continue,
you know, along the same reason path. They've committed their
entire country towards this end. They will not simply give
up because of a nice phone call. Sanctions don't matter anymore, none.

Speaker 3 (26:17):
Of this stuff.

Speaker 1 (26:17):
It's all about territory and if and with the current side,
I mean even on the Ukrainian side and the Europeans,
they're like, we will never recognize diplomatically any of this territory.
Maybe we can live with it, but we will never
diplomatically recognize it. I'm like, I just don't see a
scenario where any of this stuff is going to fly
right where there's no How can you normalize relations or

(26:39):
any of that in the future. I guess the Korean model,
you know, some of these you know technically Koreas, you know,
state of war with a treaty and all of that.
It is possible, but it's very difficult to see with
the emotions and the way things are right now. And
you know, I come if I tie it back to Israel,
something I love that you said in one of our
last shows. You're like, Israel exists. It's not about right
to exist. We have to deal where we are today.

(27:00):
That's it, you know, we just have to look and
it's not just it's not nice, but that's geopolitics. It's
you know, there's no rights to territory. There's simply the
ability basically to take it or not. In Israel context,
it's kind of flipped because we're the ones enabling the
Russia of that region, and then out two sides of
our mouth, we're speaking differently. Yeah, and I get that it's.

Speaker 2 (27:22):
Sometime more to blow up that international law consensus of
like territorial integrity, integrity and human rights than any other
country on the planet.

Speaker 1 (27:30):
So yeah, again, it's like the country that invaded Iraq
based on the Coalition of the Willing, is going to
go around telling people about territorial integrity. What are we
doing here? You know, the country that toppled Libya and
turned it into a failed state, Syria. Look at where
it is right now, led by literally al Qaeda. You know,

(27:51):
it's like one of these where this commitment to democratic
norms or any of that stuff. It has never been
US policy. And in fact, I think that you know,
by by holding that up and continuing to act the
way that we've done, it's exactly why we are where
we are with Russia, with Ukraine, with so many of
these other different conflicts, and yeah, it just really holds
us back. So anyway, that's the table set. We'll see

(28:12):
what the hell happens. Yeah, it could all go otherwise.
I remember hell Sinki where it was totally different. Yeahright,
so it could be very pro putin.

Speaker 2 (28:20):
I could absolutely possible that we're eating Crow by Monday,
and we would be happy to do it. US programming note,
we are going to forego the Friday show in order
for Saga and Ryan actually going to cover the results
of the summit on Saturday morning. So we're going to
have a Saturday show and Friday show, so everybody look

(28:40):
for that.

Speaker 1 (28:40):
That's right, because the powers that be decided that Alaska
is five hours behind, and so by the time we
even get all the news and all that, it probably
won't be It could be midnight or something like that
if it all runs late, which, by the way, having
covered some of these diplomatic summits, they always go way
longer than they're supposed to. The meetings are scheduled twenty minutes.
The last an hour and fifty minutes the pressentforate.

Speaker 2 (29:02):
Ways to get the translation of what happened.

Speaker 3 (29:06):
Yes, the instant readouts.

Speaker 1 (29:07):
They're going to hold a just joint press conference, which
that's gonna be kind of fun. Actually, that's one of
my favorite traditions from the Washington Press Corps is it's
called a two and two where the American Press Corps,
when you get called on by your president, you actually
have the opportunity to ask putin a question. And so
whoever gets that, please do your homework. Don't ask some
dumb ass question. Actually ask something which is useful for

(29:30):
both for the Russians and for ourselves as well, So
you know, don't try and make yourself a dou hero
looking at you, Jim Acosta or any of these other people.

Speaker 4 (29:41):
So we haven't done a lot on polling and where
we are.

Speaker 2 (29:44):
As we head into I mean, I know we still
have a good bit of time before the midterms, but
trust me, these things are already taking shape, already heating up.
So we wanted to do spend a little bit of
time on the horse race and taking a look at
where things stand as best we can tell as of today.
Harryington did a breakdown civically on the issue of inflation
and how Trump has really fallen off a cliff on

(30:05):
the issue that voters continue to say is their number
one concern. Let's go ahead and take a listen to that.

Speaker 7 (30:10):
Look voters on Trump and inflation. He won the twenty
twenty four election because he was more trusted on inflation
than Kamala Harris was led by a margin of nine points.

Speaker 1 (30:19):
Look at where his net approval.

Speaker 7 (30:20):
Stands today though on inflation, my goodness, gracious, on the
issue that got him elected. He led on by nine
points on it last year, and now he's twenty five
points underwater. As I said, this is a complete and
total disaster for the president of the United States. Trust
which party more inflation? You go back to the twenty
twenty two mid terms. Look at this, Republicans led by
thirteen points on which party was more trust in inflation.

(30:41):
Look at where we are now, nearly a fifteen point
shift in the Democrats direction. It's within the margin of error,
but the Democrats up by a point, This just looks
totally different from where we were back in twenty twenty two, when,
of course Republicans took back the House. That's what Democrats
are trying to do this time around. What is the
top issue for you right now?

Speaker 1 (30:59):
It's a run of way.

Speaker 7 (31:00):
It's inflation. It's thirty four percent compared to the economy,
which is basically very similar at sixteen percent, Medicare and
Social Security at fourteen percent. But the bottom line is
voters in Paul after Paul after Paul say that Donald
Trump has taken his eye off the ball, off the
big issue of the day, which is inflation. And that
is why Donald Trump is way underwater on this issue,
and it's why Democrats have caught up to Republicans on

(31:22):
the all important issue of inflation and.

Speaker 2 (31:24):
Tager In some ways, I think that last piece about
which issues are most important to people is maybe the
most devastating for Republicans because, as Harrynton points out, Trump
is now very unpopular on any economic issue, but inflation,
you know, certainly so inflation is the number one issue.

Speaker 4 (31:42):
Economy in general is the number two issue.

Speaker 2 (31:44):
I don't think just like firing the BLS person and
not putting out jobs report is really going to fix
that for them. And then number three is Medicare and
Social Security. Well, what do you think that's about. That's
about the Big Beautiful Bill. That's why people are concerned
about Medicare. And I do feel like the Big Beautiful
Bill is that, Like I don't, we probably need to
talk about it more because I think for average people

(32:07):
it's factoring into their perception of this presidency much more
than it's sort of given credit for.

Speaker 4 (32:12):
Because just think about the numbers.

Speaker 2 (32:14):
You have millions of people or now have to be
concerned about whether or not they're going to have healthcare
going forward. And you pair that with the fact that
the way that's being financed is a giant tax cut,
predominantly for the rich, and it is an utter political disaster.

Speaker 1 (32:26):
Especially on the Medicaid front. Right yere, You're going to
see some impact. And I mean, by the way, part
of the problem with the messaging or whatever around this
is that you know, for a lot of people, they
didn't necessarily read Medicaid.

Speaker 3 (32:37):
They thought maybe it's aid Medicare.

Speaker 2 (32:38):
Yeah, and there are changes to Medicare as well, but
the bigger changes is certainly medic.

Speaker 1 (32:43):
Your Medicaid snap, any of those types of programs. By
the way, just as you and I were talking, there
is a new report out that shows that the core
producer price the PPI inflation came in at three point
seven percent versus two point nine percent, and the stock
futures are diving literally.

Speaker 3 (32:59):
Oh really, and I are talking right now.

Speaker 1 (33:01):
The wholesale price rose by point nine percent in July,
which is much much more than, much more than expected. Quote,
the Producer Price Index, which features final demand goods and services,
jump point nine compared to the Dow Jones estimate of
zero point two percent. That's excluding food and energy prices.
So that's particularly wholesale goods, which is going to show

(33:21):
up at the grocery store. I know, point nine doesn't
sound like a lot, but it's much more about the
impact of the overall rise inflation. It's almost three times higher.
It's as high as has been since April of twenty
twenty one in terms of the jump. So that is
one where it could be a precursor to higher inflation.
Just again, though, that's going to be something that if
the economists, stock marketing, all these people are worried about,
that could be something that's showing up for you. Combine

(33:43):
it with the Social Security, that Medicare, any of this
stuff where again look, I mean social Security didn't get touched,
but the medicaid stuff, and in particular the tax cut,
because again, the thing about the tax cut that everybody
doesn't remember is that that's when the Trump presidency in
twenty seventeen went off the rails. The first six months
of the first Trump administration was an outright battle inside

(34:05):
between like Paul Ryan and Jared Kushner and Steve Bannon.
Remember Steve Bannon had his white board for all the
things that they wanted to do, and there was even
the theater about the border wall. There was this floated
tax called the Border Adjustment Tax, which by the way,
would have been a great tax which went after remittances
and trade. It was supposed to be an initial kind
of trade imbalance way to correct with Mexico, and that

(34:27):
would have financed immigration enforcement. And the entire GEOP was like, yeah.

Speaker 3 (34:31):
We're not doing that.

Speaker 1 (34:32):
They're like, we're cutting taxes for rich people and that's it, right.
And so by the time that came out with the
corporate tax, the reduced taxes not only for corporations, but
for the highest income brackets that is really where Trump
sank to his lowest ever level of support. It makes
total sense to me. It's very similar to Obamacare. You know,

(34:52):
if you think back to the coverage of the twenty
ten election, the anger that was bubbling up in the
town halls was over Obamacare. But the country, even national
media can kind of moved on from there by that point.
They were talking about various different things, but that is
what slammed them at the ballot box. So it's very
possible that inflation and in particularly the capriciousness around trade policy.

(35:13):
What I have found is that Americans don't want to
tune into the news on the economy. They want it
to just run. And so when they have to check
every day, not only are their portfolio or businesses have
to pause deals and unpause, have to pause hiring and
then maybe reduce salary or if you have to think
about policy when it impacts their business.

Speaker 3 (35:31):
That's when people get upset.

Speaker 1 (35:32):
They don't want it to They only want to pay
attention whenever it's good, but when it's bad, that's not
what they want. And by and large, that's mostly where things.

Speaker 3 (35:39):
Are right now.

Speaker 2 (35:39):
Well, and you point it out to there are certain
certain key items where you can really see that price
hike directly as a result of tariffs. In fact, I
sent us this morning, Rocan is doing something smart. He's
introducing legislation to roll back, specifically the tariffs on coffee
because because we hit Brazil so hard, you know, because
we're mad at them over their court decisions with regard
to bolscenario, that is causing coffee prices to spike dramatically.

(36:02):
It also is causing beef prices to write to spike dramatically.
Good probably for American cattle ranchers, but if you're trying
to include steak in your diet here in the US,
you know it's going to become much more costly. So
in any case, I thought that was a clever tactical
move from him and.

Speaker 1 (36:18):
The coffee the pressure off yet, look is something I
think the vast majority of Americans drink coffee every single day.
If not, it's probably like seventy eighty percent. I need
to check the data. But the point is actually is
that if you look at the way it will really
impact you is if you buy it at a retail
chain like Starbucks or anything. By the way Starbucks are anything,
has anyone been recently? I never go to Starbucks or whatever.
It's like five dollars, So what the hell is going

(36:40):
on here?

Speaker 4 (36:41):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (36:41):
Exactly. I was like, I was like, whoa. I mostly
brew almost entirely all my own coffee. I'm pretty much,
you know, immune from whatever the retail market. But every
once in a while you'll just check and you're like,
what the hell is going.

Speaker 2 (36:52):
I mean, even if you're not going to Starbucks, Like
how many you know, blue collar guys are going out,
you know, early morning, they're stopping at seven eleven getting
their cup of as they're on the road how to
do their job. I mean, this is very common, you
know experience, cross class experience, and those would be the
people who will be most sensitive to those price increases.
And so even if it's not five bucks at Starbucks,

(37:13):
you're still going to notice.

Speaker 4 (37:14):
That price increase.

Speaker 3 (37:15):
Absolutely.

Speaker 2 (37:15):
Let's go and get to this next slide that shows
you where the generic ballot is.

Speaker 4 (37:20):
So this is just if you ask people.

Speaker 2 (37:22):
Would you vote for the you know, whoever the Democrat
is or whoever the Republican is in your congressional district
without specific names attached who comes down on top and
you can see. Listen, let's all take the polls of
the grain of salt at this point in our lives,
at this point in American history. However, you have a
very consistent trend here in favor of Democrats. The overall

(37:43):
RCP average has them up three point five percent on
the generic ballot. You've had one poll from Yahoo News.
Actually this Atlas Intel one is the highest one up
on the board of plus eight for Democrats. More common
is more in the two three four type of range.
But you know, a significant edge, especially when you consider
that Republicans have a very narrow edge in the House. Now,

(38:06):
what is going to happen with all this redrawing of
the maps in Texas and California, New York and whatever's
going on there. I don't know, maybe Republicans, but I mean,
I think the very fact that they're pulling the fire
alarm to potentially do a new sense is to redraw
these maps, et cetera, shows you they don't feel real
great about their position going into the midterms either. Now,

(38:29):
on the other side, on the flip side, let's put
this next piece up on the screen. I think this
is what Republicans are kind of comforting themselves with. The
Democratic Party is wildly unpopular. Net favorability plunges to near
three decade low according to polls, and to me, Sager,
I think this reflects a lot of things. I mean

(38:51):
think there's just like a lot of mistrust of the
Democratic Party overall. But the reason it's reached this historic
level of unpopularity, you know, and this is reflected in
the data, is because there are a lot of Democrats
that are disgusted with the Democratic Party. And I do
think Israel is a big part of that because it's
just such a you know, moral atrocity, it's such a

(39:12):
there's such massive divergence in you know, the numbers are
starker than maybe any other issue I've seen, the distance
between Democratic leadership and where.

Speaker 4 (39:21):
The base is.

Speaker 2 (39:22):
Then you add to that that they feel that they
aren't fighting the Trump administration. They aren't you going to
the mat to try to fight for democracy, fight against
their legislation in the ways.

Speaker 4 (39:33):
That they want to see.

Speaker 2 (39:33):
And then you see like Chuck Schumer and King Jeffrey's
not even willing to endorse their on mom Donny. I mean,
they're just an embarrassing, pathetic mess, especially like the higher
up you go, the more embarrassing and cringeworthy it becomes.
So I think that's a big part of why their
favorability has sunk to such historic lows.

Speaker 1 (39:51):
I saw it actually in the DC context. Dave Weigel
was like, you know, because the DC mayor and the
politicians were all caught off guard, and Wigel was like, oh,
you've only had seven months to prepare when he said
he was going to do it on the campaign trail.
It's like, so, if you're Chuck Schumer, fine, you know
you're not focused on Washington, d C. If you're Mayor Bowser,
it's like, what you.

Speaker 3 (40:10):
Never thought about? It was like, you guys literally never
thought about it.

Speaker 1 (40:12):
He had no plan for how this was all going
to go and police chief embarrassing yourself on national TV
or anything. It's like, so, what's happening? Yeah? Right, It's
like I think that's what's so frustrating Ryan for.

Speaker 2 (40:22):
A lot of a councilwoman who was who's more on
the left, who was disgusted with her, and like, you know,
you're not even going to like try a lawsuit to
you know, may at least force them to say what
the emergency is like, at least go through that process.

Speaker 4 (40:36):
But instead it was just like, eh, okay, what are
we going to do?

Speaker 1 (40:39):
Yeah, I just thought it was crazy the way that well. Actually,
DC another good example Eleanor Holmes Norton. If you live
in the Washington is your not she has a non
voting power in the House of Representatives. But it's symbolic.
But I mean, you have your politician, you're popularly elected.
What is she eighty eight years old? She has not
made a single public statement on what's happened, and is

(41:01):
running for really and is running for reelection and by
all accounts is basic. Look, I mean, you know, to
avoiding libel or whatever, hasn't showed up to a lot
of events. Yeah, a lot of questions by her some
of her constituents about her health, the DC political machine
doing nothing about it. And it's like, you look at that.
If you're watching a d C lib which statistically ninety

(41:23):
five percent of you are, you should be really mad
about that. I mean, you know, if everyone on license
plate says no taxation without representation, but it's like even
your representation is doing nothing. Again, I'm not saying you
know that I'm that if you're a Republican you should
be like, yeah, that's hilarious, But if you're a Democrat
you should be mad. I mean, you should think about
it in the Republican context from back in nine. That's

(41:44):
exactly why they voted out so many of their leaders
in nine, or in twenty ten and again in twenty fourteen,
because they felt completely abandoned on the issues that were
the most core to that.

Speaker 2 (41:53):
Yeah, and that's what is different is that they do
feel abandoned. Democrats do feel abandoned by their leaders in
a way that is very different from any other time
you know that I've seen in modern history. And if
you play on that Tea Party twenty ten wave analogy,
you also had Republicans unpopular with their own base.

Speaker 4 (42:11):
But that didn't mean that they didn't do well in
the midterms.

Speaker 2 (42:14):
There was you know, a massive way of Obama called
it a shellacking. You know, so many Democrats swept down
of office. That ends up being incredibly consequential because then
you had the twenty ten census, then you had redistricting
that helps to lock in the political era that we're
in at this point in time. But in any case,
so I don't know that this number of Democratic unpopularity

(42:35):
is going to be the saving grace that Republicans hope
it is.

Speaker 4 (42:39):
Now.

Speaker 2 (42:39):
What I will say is if they were doing a
lot better, I think they would be poised. You know,
if they were fighting in a way and had a
clear and compelling message and had people who were younger
than eighty years old making that clear and compelling message
on a day to day basis, I think they would
be in position to truly romp and have you know,
an opportunity and maybe take back the Senate or things
like that. I think the fact that they are not
particularly trust will limit the gains, but I still think

(43:01):
they're probably in well possession, and history would indicate that
in this midterm you're likely to get a backlash against
the incumbent party in any case. The other thing that
to keep an eye on that's coming up more rapidly
here is there are two states this year that have
their governor's races, New Jersey and it's Virginia. New Jersey
obviously more of a democratic state and Virginia, more of
a swing state, can put be four up on the screen.

Speaker 4 (43:23):
So this race is.

Speaker 2 (43:25):
Going to pit former undercover CIA agent Abigail span Burger.

Speaker 1 (43:30):
Why are these spooks?

Speaker 2 (43:32):
The Democratic Charity loves any like national security police whatever.

Speaker 4 (43:39):
They love that this is a rama manual thing.

Speaker 2 (43:42):
Actually recruited all these like veterans and you know, cops
and whatever. So anyway, that's who Abigail span Burger is.
She's very centristy kind of a Democrat. And the Republican
is win Some Sears, who is the current lieutenant governor,
and she right now Spanberger has a pretty wide and

(44:03):
as far as I can tell in the polls, quite
consistent lead.

Speaker 4 (44:06):
Now, again the polls can be.

Speaker 2 (44:07):
Wrong, but I will say in Virginia she has Winsome
Sears has a particular problem because of Doche So many
federal government employees live in Virginia. And I'm not just
talking about northern Virginia, although Northern Virginia is where a
lot of the political power in the state is at
this point in time, you also have a lot of
federal government jobs throughout the state, surrounding many military bases, etc.

(44:32):
I mean, the little town I live in is based
around you know, civilian scientist naval research center called Dalgren
And so this is a very key issue and Winsome
Seers has not availed herself well when she's talking about dough.
She's been unable to separate herself in the Trump administration,
unable to separate herself from the DOGE federal government worker cuts,

(44:53):
and so you know, I think that has significantly hobbled
her chances, and I think it was going to be
a difficult race to be with. I believe I saw
something about the RGA basically like, Okay.

Speaker 4 (45:04):
She's not funding.

Speaker 1 (45:05):
Yeah, it's all a question how much she's going to.
I mean, I think Spamberger might been what he thinks
seventeen eighteen points.

Speaker 3 (45:11):
I don't think that's too far. So what's nine and
one by two the previous Well, what was the.

Speaker 4 (45:17):
Twenty seventeen Spanberger by seven?

Speaker 3 (45:18):
Spanburger by seven?

Speaker 1 (45:19):
Wow, that's still actually lower than I would think, because
I mean, all indications right now are just a blowout.
Put B five up there on the screen. I sent
this because this is just shows you how crazy things are.
The Virginia Police Benevolent Association, which four years ago supported
every Republican in the state, is now backing Spanberger over
win some series.

Speaker 3 (45:39):
They're like, yeah, she's done. We don't even have a choice.

Speaker 2 (45:42):
Well, I think yeah, and I think that's what it is.
First of all, Spanberger did try to vote for like
police funding. She was certainly never a defund the policer, right,
But they they endorsed against her when.

Speaker 4 (45:54):
She ran for Congress.

Speaker 2 (45:56):
And so now I read it as they see the
writing on the wall and they're like, we may as
well endorse her and being good with her because it'll
put us in a better position to advocate for whatever
it is we want when she's governor. That's how I
that's how I read the endorsement.

Speaker 3 (46:11):
I think that's the right way to see it.

Speaker 1 (46:13):
But the point is just that it's always been a
precursor this one. I think, as you said, it's more
of an outlier just because Doge.

Speaker 3 (46:20):
Is going to be so impactful.

Speaker 1 (46:21):
If you saw yesterday Emily and I covered the layoffs
higher since twenty twenty one, a massive portion of it
is government employees. Yeah, massive portion of those are going
to live in Northern Virginia, and so those people are
just I mean, I get these are my neighbors. They're irate,
they hate They probably hate Trump more this time than
last time because of Doge.

Speaker 3 (46:41):
You just can't stand it.

Speaker 2 (46:42):
Here's the other thing is it's not just the direct
federal government employees.

Speaker 3 (46:45):
The contractors here right with They all so.

Speaker 2 (46:48):
Many of these contracts, like the funding was cut. And
you know, even if you're not losing your job, okay
you don't, you're not on with this particular client. I
was actually just talking to a woman about exactly this.
She's like, well, they cut our contract over at a camera,
but I think she was at USDA. And so now
there's not really a place for me to go internally,

(47:08):
So I'm just going to be working at like booz
Allen Hamilton, you know, doing the whatever in the office.
And so it's it has a wide ranging impact. And
if you drive around this area, you know, within a
forty mile radius, it's contractor after contractor after contractor. And
this has been a huge upending of their lives. And

(47:30):
you know, it's it's the having to come into the office,
it's the you know, the the change to lifestyle, the commuting,
the pay cuts, the contract loss, the actual job loss,
just the chaos and the uncertainty, which is very stressful.
So that will definitely weigh on the Virginia race. I mean,
in some ways, It'll be interesting to watch the New
Jersey race. Even though all expectations are that the Democrat

(47:52):
Mikey Cheryl, who's another like Centricty type of Democrat, all
expectations are that she will end up prevailing, but the
margin there will be interesting to see as well if
there's some sort of Democratic over performance, especially since New
Jersey was a state where Trump sort of overperformed.

Speaker 1 (48:07):
So yeah, that's right. I mean, I still wonder how
much of that is A twenty I think the twenty
twenty four election will be the high water mark for
Republicans and Republicanism for quite a long time. There's a
lot of reasons for that. The popular vote, you have
the popular vote, you have the vibe, you have Kamala like.
There are multifaceted reasons for why it was. I think

(48:29):
it could either be a flash in the pan or
they could have built on it. I think the built
on it has passed mostly at this point. I mean,
they could still.

Speaker 3 (48:38):
Possible. It's very possible they could do it again.

Speaker 1 (48:40):
It would have to be I think, a total change
both in the way that the two parties come into
the twenty twenty eight election. But yeah, just looking at
where things are trending right now, and in terms of
the way that they've handled themselves, it does not look
like the midterms are going to go all that well,
all jerry mandering or redistricting or whatever, withstanding, which is
still such an same story the way that.

Speaker 2 (49:01):
They can also screw themselves with that if yeah, I
tried it, if they try to be too cute and
make the districts a little too tight, they could like
it's not you know.

Speaker 3 (49:10):
Yeah, Rian made that point.

Speaker 1 (49:11):
If you go fifty two forty eight in every single district,
you can find yourself in some serious upsets, which happens
in Texas all the time.

Speaker 2 (49:17):
Especially because Trump as this particular unique pull pull. So
the numbers that Trump pulled, let's say, with Latino voters
in you know, the Rio Grand Valley in Texas, you
can't rely on another random Republican to be able to
pull the Ted Cruise or whoever to be able to put.

Speaker 1 (49:34):
Texts when in South Texas, you know, yeah, they probably
hate him. Yeah, HiT's that absoually Sorry, I'm sure John
Cornyn is going to clean up down in Laredo. You know,
It's like that's not.

Speaker 2 (49:46):
Happening exactly, And so I think, you know, I think
that's that makes it even diceier is that Trump is
sort of like his own entity, so you don't have
as much predictability about the way individual like voting groups
are going to behave So anyway, will continue to track that.
That's an interesting story in and of itself. Agreed, All right,

(50:07):
let's go and throw this up on the screen. A
little update about some of the full mask off that
the Israelis are going on at this point. So Netanyahu
says he is on a historic and spiritual mission and
that he feels a connection to the vision of greater Israel.

Speaker 4 (50:23):
Let me go ahead and read this.

Speaker 2 (50:24):
Specifically, He was asked if he feels a connection to
that vision of greater Israel. Not now who says quote
very much that question about a greater Israel. After he
asked a premiere if he feels he's on a mission
on behalf of the Jewish people, Netanyaho answers, he's on
a mission of generations. There are generations of Jews that
dreamt of coming here and generations of Jews who will
come after us. So if you're asking if IY have

(50:45):
a sense of mission historically and spiritually, the answer is yes,
And this has been a pretty consistent theme here. Sager that,
like from the beginning, if you listen to either the
most hyperbolic leftist or the most psychotic settler, you would
have a much better understanding. Certainly, don't listen to the
Western press. Certainly, don't listen to the US politicians who

(51:06):
just pretend they have no idea what's going on, even
as you have words directly out of the mouths of
the Prime Minister or the Minister of Defense, like the
you know, smoke Chrich Ben Givier, the members of his coalition,
et cetera. They just pretend they don't hear or see
any of that. But at this point in time, Netanyahu
is feeling so emboldened thanks to a combination of Biden
and now Trump, you know, enabling every atrocity and allowing

(51:28):
him to do literally whatever he wants apparently that he
is just out and out saying, yeah, greater Israel, I'm
into that, just so people if they don't know. Now,
in fairness, there are apparently different conceptions of what quote
unquote greater Israel might mean. Some of them mean just
from the river to the sea, you might say, including
quote unquote Judae and Samaria in the Israeli which is

(51:52):
the West Bank in with Israel and Sagaza strip. But
there is a more expansion, expansionative vision as well. We
can put this map up on the screen that looks
like this, you know, includes Egypt, includes part of Egypt,
part of Saudi Arabia, part of Iraq, part of Syria,
all of Jordan, you know, the Sinai Peninsula of course,

(52:13):
all of Israel plus the West Bank plus Gaza.

Speaker 4 (52:17):
So you know, just putting it out.

Speaker 2 (52:19):
There that this is a potential vision, and certainly the
actions that Israel has taken, given that they have been
bombing almost all of these countries over the past couple
of years, again with our support and arming them, makes
it much less preposterous than it felt at one point.

Speaker 4 (52:35):
We can put this up on the screen. C three.

Speaker 2 (52:37):
Saudi Arabia very unhappy with these comments from Prime Minister
net Nyahuu Foreign Ministry, expressing the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia's
condemnation in the strongest terms possible of the statements made
by the Prime Minister of the Israeli occupation government regarding
the so called vision of Greater Israel, and expresses its
outright rejection of the settlement and expansionist plans adopted by

(52:59):
the Israeli occupation authority.

Speaker 4 (53:01):
So, Sager, what did you make of these comments?

Speaker 1 (53:03):
Well, uh, well, the Saudi Arabian ones are interesting because
the entire theories, the Abraham.

Speaker 3 (53:08):
Accords and all of that.

Speaker 1 (53:09):
But the whole point around Greater Israel is just the
ideological vision and divorcing it from the things that they
say as in like, look, we're just about dismantling Hamas,
we're just about occupying Gaza. We're not going to stay there,
we promise, even though we said that there was going
to be an indefinite presence. I mean, the reason why
KSA is so upset about the map is because did

(53:32):
you see the map that we put up like country?
And the reason why you are forced to take it
seriously is because of the actions of the Israeli government
under Nata Yahu. If it was just Gaza, it would
be part of the Greater Israel project. But you have
to contextualize it with the current treatment of the West Bank,
of the two tiered system of justice, of the indefinite

(53:55):
presence in Lebanon, of the indefinite presence in Syria of
the overthrowing of this series government and then if basically
trying to establish a druze Israeli free zone inside of
a country outside of the goal on heights of the
sixty seven you know recognized bards, right. So, like all
of these things point to an expansionist rogue power and

(54:15):
we're going to get to a little bit later on
in the show about the potential war with Iran. But
it all fits together as part of something which is
just destabilization, regime change everywhere else in order to serve
this smaller nation which could never do any of this
without the backstop of the United States for America.

Speaker 3 (54:33):
Yeah, that's really the point.

Speaker 2 (54:34):
They recognize the historic moment that they're in where support
for Israel is plummeting off. I mean, we're the only
country that really matters to them, and support for them
is plummeting off a cliff. They've already lost the Democratic Party.

Speaker 4 (54:46):
It's gone.

Speaker 2 (54:46):
I don't think you're going to get a twenty twenty
eight Democratic nominee who holds the same positions that Joe
Biden and Obama and every other you know, bipartisan politician
has on Israel and modern history. I don't think you're
going to get that in twenty twenty, and I don't
think it's going to be possible. And certainly the Democratic
base is disgusted and horrified by what our tax dollars
have done. On the Republican side, as we've discussed, you

(55:06):
have a younger generation that thinks very differently. I think
they know that, and so that's why they are really
going for it, trying to secure this greater Israel vision,
abandoning the pretext that this I mean, just think of
how preposterous it is at this point to pretend like, oh,
this is all just in self defense, and we're doing

(55:27):
these limited targeted strikes against Hamas and this is just
all about going after the bad guys who got us
on October seventh. Utterly and completely preposterous when you consider
the number of countries that they're bombing, the territory that
they've annexed, the actions in the West Bank. You know
that we're going to talk a little bit more about that.
Jasper Nathaniel has been highlighting. I mean, the West Bank

(55:48):
annexation is all but complete, and this is all in
quote unquote self defense. For October seventh, you'd have to
be a fool to believe that at this point, or
a liar, which you know there are many of those
as well. Just to take it back to what the
settlers have been saying, because they've long been pushing this
biblical vision quote unquote of greater Israel. Let's go and

(56:09):
take a listen to Daniella Weiss explaining why this is
central to her conception and her ideological goals.

Speaker 3 (56:16):
How big is that lan, Because it's very big.

Speaker 8 (56:20):
No, this is the promise of God to the patriarchs
of the Jewish Nation. It's three thousand kilometers. It's almost
as big as this is it?

Speaker 2 (56:31):
So this is the biblical Israel.

Speaker 9 (56:35):
Yeah, so, and this is what's and so which countries artists.

Speaker 8 (56:39):
And which country don't mention? I think it's Iraq and Syria.
So you thought of Saudi Arabia.

Speaker 1 (56:48):
This is a holy place.

Speaker 8 (56:51):
It's a place, one part of the universe that was
chosen by God. It's a kind of a stage for
the Jewish nation to express the ideals, the ideas and
ideals of the Jewish nation.

Speaker 4 (57:09):
So there you go. It's very large, she lays out
for you.

Speaker 1 (57:11):
It's a rock.

Speaker 2 (57:12):
It's Syria, it's part of Saudi Arabia. This is God's
promise to us. This is also why like theocracies are
really bad, because if you believe that your religion justifies
a genocide, rogue wars against all your neighbors, this incredibly
you know, expansionist, aggressive foreign policy.

Speaker 4 (57:33):
If you believe that.

Speaker 2 (57:35):
And you know, obviously net Nyahu is sort of embracing that,
even though himself he's like more of a secular figure,
but he's allied with these hardcore religious figures and you know,
who have absolutely psychotic ideas about what the state should
be and what they should do to effectuate it. You
end up with absolute horror, which is exactly what we

(57:56):
do have.

Speaker 1 (57:56):
And it fits actually with this next piece to put
it up there on the screen. This is very significant
and inside of Israel is actually getting a lot of play.
So after a twenty year freeze, the Finance Minister Besilosmotrich
has approved the construction of new housing units in an
area where the development has been blocked. The reason why
even these psycho settler movements and others have not allowed

(58:18):
settlers to go and be there is because doing so
would quote effectively block the establishment of a Palestinian state
due to its strategic position separating areas south of Jerusalem
from those to its north. And actually they followed it
up this morning Prosmotrich in a press conference in the country,
where he said, by doing this, we quote bury the

(58:40):
idea of a Palestinian state.

Speaker 3 (58:43):
Just again.

Speaker 1 (58:43):
To understand exactly while all this is happening, and even
in the Israeli press, here's what they say. To understand
the significance, we have to go back to nineteen forty eight,
during the War of Independence, the Arab malicious place to
siege on Jerusalem. After they broke the siege, the Holiest
site has now been under Jordanian I occupation until the
IDF liberated it in nineteen sixty seven. The siege left

(59:04):
a stain on the consciousness of Israeli leadership, but they've
kept it open for the potential establishment of a Palestinian state.
So now by green lighting, yes, even this small settlement
of thirty four hundred people, the strategic location of it
is a is a signal to the Palestinians, to the
Arab States, to the Jordanians and others it's not happening.
It's also meant as a counter diplomatic signal to all

(59:26):
of the Western countries which are talking about recognizing Palestinian statehood.
You can't recognize statehood if it doesn't exist in any
sort of conception.

Speaker 2 (59:34):
Yeah, that's what people say, is like, okay, point to
me on the map where the Palestinian state is, because
this is you know, this is an extraordinarily provocative and
I think significant development in terms of blocking any future
Palestinian state Smotriche again, he says it. You know, this
isn't us just like theorizing or making it up. They
put it out there and make it plain what is

(59:56):
going on here. And this is what Jaspernathdaniel wrote about
in that piece that we interviewed him about. He actually
talked about this specific development and how consequential it was
in terms of locking the possibility of a Palestinian state.
So this is what's going on. This is why annexation
of the West Bank is de facto complete, because the

(01:00:17):
Israelis have in real life, like in what's actually happening
on the ground right now, they have complete control over
everybody's life who lives in the West Bank. They are
living under Israeli government rule. And it is truly you know,
I mean, any thought that this wasn't an apartheid system
goes out the window when you realize that, yes, the

(01:00:38):
Palestinians who live in the West Bank are fully under
Israeli government control, and we know that they don't have
any rights whatsoever. We know the settlers are encouraged to
go and murder them, and then you know they get
the settlers get off scott free and are just sent more,
sometimes American made weapons. So that's the reality of what's
happening in the West Bank. And just to again tie

(01:00:59):
it in here, because it's not only the religious extremist
terrorists running Israel that are a problem and part of
what has created such an insane situation, you also have
some plenty of religion being invoked to justify our continued,
endless support of Israel here in the US as well.
Let's go ahead and take a listen to Lindsey Graham.

Speaker 10 (01:01:21):
I am tired of the word genocide. Let me tell
you about genocide. If Israel wanted to commit genocide, they could,
They have the capability to do that, they choose not to.
To people in my party, I'm tired of this crap.
Israel is our friend, They're the most reliable friend we

(01:01:43):
have in the Mid East, there's democracy.

Speaker 1 (01:01:46):
It's not a hard choice if you're a Christian.

Speaker 10 (01:01:49):
A word of warning, if America pulls the plug on Israel,
God will pull the plug on us.

Speaker 3 (01:01:57):
Israel is not the bad guy. They're the good guy.

Speaker 10 (01:02:00):
The bad guys or the rag wal Islamis who would
kill everybody in this room.

Speaker 3 (01:02:04):
They could.

Speaker 10 (01:02:06):
So I haven't lost my vision of right and wrong
when it comes to foreign policy. President Trumps stood up
for all the right things, and he stood up against
wrong things.

Speaker 2 (01:02:20):
Yes, the government that is starving babies to death, they're
the good guys.

Speaker 4 (01:02:24):
Those are the good guys.

Speaker 2 (01:02:25):
But he says if Americans pull the plug on Israel,
God will pull the plug on us. And Soger, perhaps
you want to weigh in on his statement that Israel's
the best friend.

Speaker 4 (01:02:34):
We could ever have. They're great.

Speaker 1 (01:02:37):
I can't weigh in whenever it's rooted in your biblical ideology,
which you know many of your own believers say is Harris.

Speaker 3 (01:02:44):
Look, I'm not Christian.

Speaker 1 (01:02:44):
You know it's not my job to sit here and
critique dispensationalism or whatever.

Speaker 3 (01:02:48):
I can only just say I think.

Speaker 1 (01:02:49):
It's crazy and not really the way that you should
conduct foreign policy based upon the particular interpretation of the Bible,
which is a much more recent development and divorced from
any sort of national interest. But that's Lindsay Graham and
the Republican Party for you.

Speaker 3 (01:03:05):
I don't even know.

Speaker 1 (01:03:06):
You know, that's the other thing here with him. Does
he really believe this or does they just use it
as a cudgel. I actually don't know which one it is.
I kind of think the latter, because you know, look,
Lindsay Graham, he has crazy beliefs.

Speaker 3 (01:03:18):
I don't think he's a dumb guy.

Speaker 1 (01:03:20):
I think what he does is see clearly to preserve
his like neo conservative ideology that the one last bastion
of pro Israel support is these Kufi John Hagy evangelical Republicans.

Speaker 3 (01:03:31):
South Carolina is full of them.

Speaker 1 (01:03:32):
And so that's the one way that he can message
himself as like the upholder of their religion in terms
of their foreign policy priorities. That's the only way I
could possibly see it and to hold on to any
sort of like grasp organically at a political level. But
that is a window. And two is real support. Now,
it's all biblical, biblical.

Speaker 2 (01:03:51):
Yeah, I think I think you're right that it's probably cynical.
I mean, not that really makes the difference whether he
does or not. He has really certainly used it cynically
of course. You know, they see this long cultivated the
you know, evangelical Christian right in order to you know,
make sure that they have this solid base of support
in the US. And we have to say it's been
very successful for a long time.

Speaker 3 (01:04:11):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:04:11):
Absolutely, all right, let's go and get to this next piece.
I listened to this entire Theovon podcast. I really recommend
that you guys do as well. You know, THEO made
a lot of waves when he came out and said, listen, guys,
I think this is a genocide. He asked jd Vance
about it when he was on the show, and he
went a step further now by hosting a doctor, an
American doctor who is just back from GASA, you know,

(01:04:34):
for a full episode to discuss what this doctor saw
when he was there on the ground at NASA Hospital.
Let's go and take a listen to a portion.

Speaker 11 (01:04:42):
Of this Saturday, they had the MCI it's called a
mass casualty incident, and they basically pull a fire alarm.
What the hell's that? Oh, every doctor come down to
the er to try to help, and so I was like, okay,
So went downstairs, got in there. There's just a brain
matter coming out of people. There's guts coming out of
people's abdomen, there's people's legs blown off, and someone's carrying
it in next to the you know, one of the

(01:05:03):
family members bringing it in for the doctors, and you know,
they think you can just reattach it and.

Speaker 1 (01:05:08):
It's just like absolute chaos.

Speaker 11 (01:05:10):
There's family members, security in the hospitals trying to push
out the family members so the doctors and nurses can
take care of the patients. It's it's absolute chaos. And
then US American physicians are just like looking at it here,
They're like what is going on here? And you know
that was that was that's when reality hit and I
was like, okay, this must be like a one off,
and it just kept happening every day and sometimes multiple

(01:05:32):
times a day. Essentially, basically, we can we found the
pattern related to when the GAHF sites were opening up.

Speaker 2 (01:05:39):
So he's there backing up the claims which we heard
directly from a doctor who was just recently back. We
of course heard from Anthony Aguilar GHF whistleblower that when
the sites are active, you are going to have mass
casualty incidents. You were going to have, he says, hundreds
of people showing up in the hospital wounded, you know,

(01:06:01):
in the conditions that he describes.

Speaker 4 (01:06:04):
There were a couple other.

Speaker 2 (01:06:05):
Moments Soccer that I also thought were really interesting, I
mean horrifying. He said that he heard of people who
were basically trying to commit suicide by GHF, where you know,
in Islam, suicide is banned, and so people would talk about,
like listen, if I lose my family, like I'm just
going to go to one of these GHF sites and
hope that they take me out. Like that's how grim

(01:06:27):
and dire the situation was. And yet he was really inspired,
you know, but of course by the people he saw there.
He was really man doctors are cut out of a
different cloth, because he felt so energized by just getting
to go and help care for people and like be
in this situation where he was able to do something
and not just walk from watch from Afar, so, I mean,
it's just remarkable to see the way these people operate.

(01:06:50):
And then there was also a moment that I thought
was pretty interesting from THEO because he explained more why
he felt the need to speak out on this and
come forward, even he felt some pressure not to. And
he's like, you know, from the time that you're a kid,
you're taught endlessly about the Holocaust and this idea of
like this genocide and can never happen again, and then

(01:07:10):
you see it happening and you're supposed to stay quiet.
So he, you know, he sort of really took in
at face value this idea of like we can't be
involved in that. We when we said never again, we
really actually should mean it, And that's why he felt
the need to say something and speak out, even though
that's obviously, you know, sort of an uncomfortable place for
him to be.

Speaker 1 (01:07:30):
Yeah, I mean, I think for him, he is just
naturally found out about the issue.

Speaker 3 (01:07:35):
He's horrified by the issue.

Speaker 1 (01:07:36):
He's not boxing into politics since he's like, this is
how a normal person reacts.

Speaker 3 (01:07:39):
So it's actually a.

Speaker 4 (01:07:40):
Good barometer I think for a lot of you know, yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:07:42):
Because for most people, they're not coming in with all
the baggage of Washington and the social consequences and they're like, yeah,
I think this is really messed up.

Speaker 3 (01:07:50):
That's it.

Speaker 1 (01:07:51):
And then actually it's when you get the backlash that
you're like, WHOA, am I crazy? And then that's the
battle test for THEO and for Miss Rachel. It's kind
of fascinating the track of Miss Rachel, if you go
and you look at it is. She started out with
a single thing where she's like, my heart weeps for
the babies of Israel and Gaza boom, I mean mass attack.

(01:08:14):
Then she did her hop Little Bunnies song with a
three year old girl who got her leg blown off.
Same thing. Now it's like anti semi anti, and she
had to decide, I've actually been listening to some interesting
episodes and stuff where she talks about this, and she
was like, look, I mean, by the way, look let's
not tony.

Speaker 3 (01:08:32):
Miss Rachel's filthy rich, right, So at this point, you
don't need to do it for the money.

Speaker 1 (01:08:35):
You're one of the most watched YouTube videos Netflix and
all that.

Speaker 3 (01:08:38):
You're a brand.

Speaker 1 (01:08:39):
And so she's like, okay, so if I'm the next
mister Rogers, which she considers herself like in that vein,
she looked back to a nineteen sixty nine episode that
mister Rogers did where he hosted a black man and
they both put their feet in the same pool as
a statement against segregator. He didn't make he didn't make
anything about it. It was just one of those things
by doing it treated as normal statement against Jim Crow

(01:09:01):
and against segregation. So she sees herself now in that
vein where you've made enough money that you don't care anymore,
and then you set yourself at the standard. And what
I think that a lot of these Zionists and pro
Israel supporters don't understand is that when you bring the
full hammer down on people, especially if you're independent like
THEO or Miss Rachel or places like this show, you
don't have the tools of control, you actually make us

(01:09:23):
be like no, actually screw you, Like we're going all in,
going all in. Yeah, we're going all in. We're talking
about intermarriage, We're talking about Jewish supremacy, like we're we're
putting it all on the table now. And I think
that's what they underestimated in terms of us popular culture,
is that for the Internet and for people who don't
have their ties to all these think tanks or whatever,

(01:09:44):
you can speak very very freely and say whatever you want.

Speaker 3 (01:09:47):
And so you know and acknowledge reality.

Speaker 1 (01:09:49):
And that's part of the consequence of how this has
all gone about, and it's actually really pushed people and
made them feel as if they have a responsibility a
certain point to be like, no, I need to counter
you know, all this other bs that's out there.

Speaker 2 (01:10:01):
Yeah, and it's why the tactics become increasingly heavy handed,
where it's like, Okay, we're going to deport you, we're
going to arrest you, we're going to you know, block
your block, We're going to install an IDF sensor at TikTok.
You know, they've become increasingly desperate. And it also ties
in back to what we're saying about you know, them
really grow going for it with the Greater Israel Project
and the co Fleet annexation both of the West Bank

(01:10:22):
and the Gaza Strip, because they recognize that there's a
limited runway here for them at this point. One other
thing I wanted to highlight is Emma Biggeland interviewed over
on the Majority Report, UH doctor who was talking about
you know, what what he saw in the ways in
which he believes uh. And this is backed up by
you know, a Lancet study and other other studies of

(01:10:42):
the death count. Why he believes the official death count
is such a wild understatement.

Speaker 4 (01:10:48):
Let's go ahead and take a listen to a little
bit of that.

Speaker 9 (01:10:50):
The numbers are a wild undercount.

Speaker 3 (01:10:52):
That's perfect.

Speaker 9 (01:10:52):
I can tell you, for example, about malnutrition. So I
work within the Ministry of Health System. Right we as
what are called emergency medical teams, international doctors and nurses
and allied health professionals. We go in in solidarity with
medical teams, and so we sort of follow their lead
in terms of how they do things. When I document
what the cause of death is for somebody, everybody receives

(01:11:13):
a piece of paper that says how they died. What
our directive is is that if there's anything other than
simple malnutrition that's causing this death, don't write it down
as a malnutrition case. You can write it as secondary tertiary,
but don't write that this person died for malnutrition. Similarly,
Palestinians do not count the debt unless they have been
to a hospital. So, for example, there have been many
AID massacres, which by the way, is another kind of

(01:11:34):
depravity we haven't even touched upon. When the AID massacres
have been happening, there are many bodies that people tell me.
Lots of my patients will tell me their bodies stranded
there that we couldn't get to. We don't count those debts.
We don't count them even really as more than missing,
because we don't know for one hundred percent sure that
that person is dead. Like look at the lists the
Palestinians release. They release only the bodies they can identify
with the ID numbers attached to them. Of course, it's

(01:11:56):
a wild undercount. Think of how many people are under
the rubble, how many people are still in red zone,
how many people are thrown around laying dead in the sun,
including at GHF sites.

Speaker 3 (01:12:05):
Of course, it's a wild undercount.

Speaker 9 (01:12:07):
Really, credible organizations that have done these counts for other
places like Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo estimate
the number at this point to be five to six
times more easily. That's three hundred thousand people who were
very likely dead. And of course there's another concept in
medicine called excess deaths. So for example, I've seen numerous
number of people DIACIS patients. So I saw diacis patient too.

(01:12:28):
We worked on yesterday for a number of hours who
ended up dying in our account that person died of
a kidney related cause. But obviously that person who was malnourished,
they couldn't receive dialysis care the way they were supposed to.
They were killed by Israel, they were killed by the occupation,
but we don't count those as direct conflict related deaths.

Speaker 2 (01:12:46):
So I thought that was a really effective explanation of
the ways in which and the very you know, rational
ways in which this is likely a very wild undercount.
And you know, I also think about Amir who was
killed at a J eight side and now just quote
unquote missing. You know, how many other people were I
mean likely what happened is Israelis came in with their

(01:13:07):
bulldozer and he is buried somewhere under the sand thereby
that GHF. It's very likely the case, you know, as
they come through and they use the bulldozers to destroy
all of Gaza city, Like how many bodies under the
rubble will never be recovered? And then he talks about,
you know, people who have other conditions, they're not able
to get the medical treatment they need. Their bodies are
incredibly stressed by hunger and a lack of clean drinking water,

(01:13:30):
and the endless displacement, and now they're exposed to the
elements with there's been extraordinary heat wave in the Gaza
strip and those deaths don't get counted in the official
war death toll. So you know, I don't know if
we'll ever know exactly what the count is, but I
think we can say with a lot of confidence now
it is wildly higher. The number of people who have

(01:13:51):
been killed by Israel during this genocide is wildly higher
than the official number. And if anything, the news media
downplays that number. Its oh the Gaza, you know, the
Hamas run Gaza health ministry.

Speaker 3 (01:14:03):
We're not doing that anymore.

Speaker 1 (01:14:04):
Yeah, you know, health ministry, trutherism or whatever. Look, eventually
one day we'll know. I actually that is point about
Rwanda and all of that was very apt because the
death soll did take a while for it all to
come in. It would make sense that you can't have
accurate accounting of the dead. I mean what you think
the Nazis had a very accurate account right of who
they killed and when. It was more accurate than people thought.

(01:14:27):
But you know, people had to go back and look
to actually assemble all the records to come to the
numbers that they eventually did. So it's just one of
those where you know, you really have to just think
about that, both the death toll and the way that
it's being messaged. But I do broadly think that the
theovon Miss Rachel phenomenon on all of that is very
impactful on the culture in a way that a lot

(01:14:47):
of people in Washington are underestimating. I really think America,
American politics is way too captured by Twitter, where Israel
is wildly overrepresented, and that if you look at any
other social media platform, it's ninety ten. I remember thinking
that with the Milk Boys episode, and that's a real
lesson for people just in terms of media consumption and

(01:15:09):
kind of where the country is going. And I think
it should be internalized by people in power, but they
don't want to listen.

Speaker 4 (01:15:14):
No, they certainly do not

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