8/5/25: Trump Blocks Disaster Relief Over Israel, Bibi Plans Gaza Conquest, Trump Tariffs India Over Russia

Ryan and Saagar discuss Trump blocks disaster relief for Israel boycotts, Bibi plans conquest of Gaza, Trump tariffs India over Russia support. 

 

Abdul: https://abdulforsenate.com/ 

 

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Episode Transcript

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Speaker 1 (00:38):
Ryan Grimm is in the house. It's great to see you, Ryan.
Thank you for joining us.

Speaker 4 (00:41):
Always a pleasure.

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Absolutely got. He's got his pain into fingers. That's the
mark of a girl.

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Dad.

Speaker 1 (00:45):
I'm sure. I'm sure I'll be there in a few years.

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There you'll come back from vacation. Yeah, come back to.

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gonna be exciting. All right, what do we got today?
Toughest part of the job. We're gonna talk talk about
disaster funding, aren't we.

Speaker 1 (01:02):
This is an interesting story.

Speaker 3 (01:03):
I found myself actually at the center of it doing
some reporting. So initial reports from the Trump administration they
would withhold disaster relief funds from any state that allowed
the boycott of Israel, not just Israel, but Israeli companies.
There's been some changes to that official language, however, the
policy itself is still reserved the right of the Trump

(01:24):
administration of the Department of Homeland Security to do so.
That's a troubling trend of a boycott basically using states
thirty nine states with anti quote BDS laws on the
books that are now being weaponized against US citizens for
their own tax dollars. That's obviously a good segue into
our Israel segment. I'm going to rely on Ryan heavily there.
There are some reports coming out of Israel Netagna, who
has approved a quote full scale occupation of Gaza. What

(01:48):
does that mean? Is it a negotiation tactic?

Speaker 1 (01:51):
We'll see.

Speaker 3 (01:51):
We're going to talk about India, the Trump administration escalating
a trade war on India, not by the way, anything
about our country and how you know our country's trade
relationship would work with that country, non tariff barriers, etc.
But it's about Ukraine interesting, which obviously is an easy
way to talk about some of the.

Speaker 1 (02:08):
Developments in that war.

Speaker 3 (02:09):
Ukrainians now allowing sixty year olds to join the fight,
so obviously the sign of a thriving war machine over there.
We're also going to talk about jerrymandering. Jerrymandering sweeping the country.
Texas Democrats leaving the state after Texas Republicans attempt to
basically change the districts inside of the state try to
jerrymander away a few Democratic seats. This has actually caused

(02:32):
some brinksmanship New York and California saying okay, fine, one
party states, let's game on. So it's a race to
the bottom, and all of that has a lot to say.
Ryan is actually an expert on jerrymandering, or at least
much more of an expert than I am.

Speaker 1 (02:44):
So wasted a lot of time.

Speaker 3 (02:46):
I was going to say, there's a lot of time
in the twenty tens when jerrymandering was the top era
where Ryan in particular cut his teeth.

Speaker 1 (02:54):
So I'm going to rely on him.

Speaker 3 (02:55):
And then my friend Andrew Schultz breaking with Donald Trump
on IVF. Obviously that was a big well, not breaking
with asking Donald Trump why he decided not to follow
through with his pledge to provide quote free IVF. It
was a campaign promise and it was kind of a
signature way that they were trying to move away from
the more I guess what distasteful parts of the pro

(03:16):
life coalition. So that's what they landed on, and we'll
see if it actually does have some electoral pushback now
that the GOP officially has zero plans to cover free IVF.
And finally we're going to be joined by abdil elsayet
He is running for the Democratic primary in the state
of Michigan. Ryan, We're going to get his reaction to
the Alyssa Slotckett interview and.

Speaker 1 (03:36):
A few others.

Speaker 4 (03:37):
Running to be her colleague.

Speaker 1 (03:38):
He's running to be her colleague.

Speaker 3 (03:39):
Does he think her colleague, his colleague did well, future
colleague did well? Here he's going to have to navigate
a lot of very tricky issues here in Washington, you know,
being a senator. Is he going to vote for Chuck
Schumer for the leadership you know, how is he going
to handle himself? Obviously you've got a lot of Democrats
which are very angry he's running in this primary system
right now. But once you get to the big leagues,
how are you going to handle the John Fettermans, the

(04:00):
Alyssa Slotkins and all that other world. So we've got
some good questions for him, all right. So before we
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trying our best. I promise you Breakingpoints dot Com if
you're able to help us out. But with that, let's
get with the disaster relief funding. So let's go ahead
and put this up there on the screen. Absolute major
outcry yesterday after the Trump administration put out a FEMA guidance,
And let me just keep this up here while I'm talking,
just to explain how absolutely crazy this is. So, FEMA

(05:50):
put out a guidance ryan to all states that who
want to accept disaster relief grants, which you know, all right,
I would say all of them, and you know, even
the libertarians would be like, all right, text the federal government.

Speaker 1 (06:05):
You know, the federal government doesn't have a lot of roles.
We could all probably say disaster relief.

Speaker 3 (06:10):
You know, broadly one of those is fous not going
to do it, right. So but I'm saying, first, if
you were to ask most people what the role of
federal government is, it's like, hey, if you get hit
by a hurricane, you know they're going to come in
and help you. We all pay into the system. System
helps us out whenever that happens. Well, the Trump administration
slipped in this exact language into these FEMA grants, and

(06:34):
I'm going to read directly just so you all understand
how absolutely crazy it is. It says that by accepting
recipients will comply with all applicable federal anti discrimination laws
material to the government's payments decisions for purposes of thirty
one USC.

Speaker 1 (06:51):
Three seventy two B four.

Speaker 3 (06:53):
Quote definitions as used in this COSTDI means diversity, equity inclusion.
DEI A means diversity, equity, inclusion and excess ability. Discriminatory equity.
Ideology has a meaning set forth and they talk about
in executive order. So so far they're saying you can't
have DEI policies on the books if you want to
this disaster really funding.

Speaker 1 (07:12):
Okay, I'm totally fine with that.

Speaker 3 (07:14):
But then Subpart D says here, quote discriminatory, discriminatory, prohibited
boycott means refusing to deal, cutting commercial relations or otherwise
limiting commercial relations, specifically with Israeli companies or with companies
doing business in or with Israel, or authorized by licensed

(07:35):
bire or organized under the laws of Israel to do business.
So let's underscore that is that the Trump administration was
telling states, if you allow the boycott of Israel, if
you allow the boycott of Israeli companies, if you allow
the boycott of companies doing business with Israel, you, as

(07:57):
a United States citizen and as a state, will be
barred from your tax dollars from getting disaster relief funding.
Now this was ryan, I think just too much for
everybody involved. And so what ensued was a fascinating about
face which is not really an about face, which takes
us to the next one.

Speaker 1 (08:17):
Let's put that up there on the screen.

Speaker 3 (08:18):
Shortly after many of us drew you know, basically had
outcry about this drew attention, the Trump administration removed that
exact language about discriminatory boycotts against the state of Israel.

Speaker 1 (08:34):
I have the original and the new.

Speaker 4 (08:36):
By the way, do we have Rufo here?

Speaker 1 (08:37):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (08:37):
Well I didn't originally have it in, but people like
Christopher Rufo was a d and right he was like, hey,
even this is this is not good. And Ryan, I
just want your reaction here now because they've come full circle.
Even though they did remove this anti discriminatory language about
the state of Israel, put the next one up here

(08:57):
on the screen. Just so I can very clearly explain.
The DHS put out this statement quote there is no
FEMA requirement tied to Israel and any current basically guidance.
No states have lost funding, no new conditions have been imposed.
FEMA grants remain governed by existing law and policy and
not political litmus tests.

Speaker 1 (09:17):
Quote.

Speaker 3 (09:17):
DHS will enforce all anti discrimination laws and policies, including
as it relates to the BDS movement, which is expressly
grounded in anti Semitism. So my explanation, based on my
reporting talking with many of the people involved, is that
after the outcry, they removed the specific language about Israel,

(09:38):
but the DHS statement makes it clear they reserve the
right to deny you your federal funding should you engage
in BDS.

Speaker 1 (09:48):
And I mean, Ryan, I did get a last one
line there.

Speaker 6 (09:51):
Yeah, those who engage in racial discrimination should not receive
a single dollar of that ceteral funding.

Speaker 4 (09:56):
That sounds like Biden, I mean.

Speaker 3 (09:57):
In actual racial discrimination. Sure, if it's about BDS. No,
And obviously that's why the languages matter. And that's why Ryan,
I just think this is such.

Speaker 4 (10:06):
Not racial discrimination.

Speaker 3 (10:07):
I know that you and I know that, all right,
do you know these terms, these terms all used to
mean things and they don't anymore. But Ryan, this is
just such a dramatic outrage to say that they would
with whole federal funding based upon boycotting the state of
Israel to any state.

Speaker 1 (10:22):
And you know the fact.

Speaker 3 (10:24):
Is is that, look, yeah, it's great, they removed the language.
The factor was in the first place is insane. And
then the fact that the DHS basically put out a
statement saying we reserve the right to do so if
we would like to, shows us that the policy effectively
remains in effect today.

Speaker 1 (10:38):
It's preposterous, it's Unamerican.

Speaker 6 (10:40):
It's the exact same policy, because the states have been
put on notice by that DHS statement that they put
out on Twitter there that they believe that the law
as it's written gives them the right to withhold aid
money from any state that involves itself in a boycott

(11:01):
of Israeli company.

Speaker 3 (11:02):
And not even involves itself, allows allows allows its state's
residents to engage in boycotts.

Speaker 6 (11:08):
Right, and so are they saying that, And we can
put put these up next if we want the list
of states or you know, more than thirty states across
the country have laws on the books that say that
if you want to do any business with this the
that state whatsoever, which means like, you know a lot

(11:31):
of contractors that work for you may work for a
private company that itself does some other contracting with the
state set aside being a teacher or some other obvious
you know, state employee, that if you participate in BDS,
you can't participate in any in this, in this work
in your own society that you pledge that you will

(11:52):
never boycott, which then the line in there that says
you won't even limit your So what if you're like, well,
I was going to do ten orders of hummus right
for this party, but I think I might only need five,
and they're like, wait a minute, now, do you really
only need five?

Speaker 1 (12:12):
Or you are you limiting your purchase of Well.

Speaker 3 (12:15):
What's preposterous about it is that it includes Israeli companies,
companies doing business with Israel. As you said, what is
the stake going to come in and be like you're
not doing enough business with Israel? Or to do this
real business with Israel? Who's telling me that? As a
private business? Who are what I can do business with?

Speaker 1 (12:32):
Withever I want?

Speaker 3 (12:33):
Also, we'll all recall that conservatives gleefully supported the boycott
of bud Light Right, okay, right should be able to
do as you should be able to or what Ben
and Jerry said that they don't want to do. Fine, whatever,
you know you don't want to buy Ben and Jerry's
ice cream?

Speaker 1 (12:47):
Be my fucking guest, all right?

Speaker 3 (12:48):
You know, say I would go on forever. The Conservatives
targeted who they went after, Target? Right, all right, fine,
don't shop at Target, that's okay, and then we'll shop
at any Target to okay, good, yeah, you know saying Target. Yeah, no,
not poor Target. We don't need anymore, all right, that's
the message to my wife. We need to stop going
to Target, all right? Why are they obsessed with it?

Speaker 4 (13:07):
But Target?

Speaker 1 (13:08):
There's too much bullshit in Target. I totally agree.

Speaker 3 (13:10):
But my point, just broadly is that we should, of course,
as private businesses and as citizens, be allowed to do
whatever we want to do. And part of the reason
why this is so ridiculous is that we could simultaneously
refuse to do business with any other contry. It's a
carve out here specifically for the state of Israel. So US,
as a private business, Ryan could refuse to do business

(13:30):
with Peru or I don't.

Speaker 4 (13:32):
Even know, not Lithuania. Yes, a strong ally, Yeah.

Speaker 1 (13:35):
That's right. As Lit's the slot. Get made very clear
in our interview.

Speaker 4 (13:39):
Well, well you can boycott Russia.

Speaker 1 (13:40):
You can boycott Russia. You can pour their vodka right
out on them, that's right, sidewalk.

Speaker 3 (13:44):
Yeah, Smirana, is that still Russian owned? I don't know,
but yeah, all right, you can't. If you want to Ukraine, Yah,
boycott Ukraine.

Speaker 6 (13:52):
If you want to make your neighbors in the suburbs angry,
that's right, you can do that.

Speaker 1 (13:55):
I will. Yeah, I can't.

Speaker 3 (13:56):
Well, that would require boycott and in Ukraine company, which
you know I can'tven think of anybody.

Speaker 1 (14:00):
My point.

Speaker 6 (14:00):
So, is the question then that you actually have to
pass a law like that. If it says that if
you allow your citizens to boycott Israel that you don't
get this aid money, does that mean you have to
you have to join these other thirty plus states, yep,
and implement your own antibts law, or else you can't

(14:21):
get this aid money. It's truly, it's truly extraordinary.

Speaker 1 (14:27):
And it all fits with a bigger pattern.

Speaker 3 (14:29):
This is something that red states have now have been
doing for quite some time. Let's put this a five
police up on the screen. This just came a few
months ago. Governor Abbot Greg Abbott of the state of
Texas sent a letter to the city of San Marcos
for condemning it proposed a proposed anti Semitics resolution, according

(14:49):
to him, openly flouting Texas law. It says here quote
Israel is a stalwart ally of the United States and
a friend to Texas. I have repeatedly made it clear
Texas will not tolerate anti semitism quote anti Israel public.

Speaker 1 (15:03):
Are we seeing how these things are getting conflated?

Speaker 3 (15:05):
Anti Israel policies are quote anti Texas policies. Over a
year ago, following Hamas's attacks openly celebrated, I issued an
executive order addressing anti Semitism in higher education, and I
have proudly signed legislation prohibiting government entities from supporting efforts
to boycott, divest, and sanction Israel.

Speaker 1 (15:23):
That remains the law. Here.

Speaker 3 (15:25):
In the letter, Governor Abbott noted San Marcos is required
to certify it will comply with all state laws when
it enters into grant agreements with its office, including laws
prohibiting government support for boycotts of Israel, and the Governor's
office is reviewing active grants to determine whether the city
has breached these terms. If the city adopts this anti
Semitic resolution, the office of the Governor will immediately terminate

(15:49):
all active grants not in compliance with state law. By
the way, I've been to San Marcos, great city, You know,
there's a lot of some fun water parks and other
things down there.

Speaker 1 (15:58):
Rivers, etc.

Speaker 3 (16:00):
Nice part of the state, what in its governance has
anything to do with the state of Israel.

Speaker 1 (16:06):
And the Governor of Texas is withholding.

Speaker 3 (16:08):
Funds based upon the City of San Martos's position on
Israel and Palestine in a non binding local resolution.

Speaker 6 (16:17):
Yeah, and the city voted it down so as not
to bring on the wrath of the Governor of Texas.
All the resolutions said, by the way, it was there
should be a ceasefire.

Speaker 1 (16:29):
That's it.

Speaker 4 (16:29):
The citizens of San Marcos supports ceasefire.

Speaker 6 (16:32):
And also what it did is it calculated the percentage
of state and federal money that goes to Israel and
then divided it basically and figured out what proportioned. San
Marcos citizens were chipping in on that, and they said
we object to this, like we don't want to be
funding this.

Speaker 4 (16:50):
They were not.

Speaker 6 (16:51):
They have no capacity to claw that money back like that.
That wasn't even what was happening. In other words, they
were not allowed to say in a non binding way
that they disagreed with what was happening. That's with no
teeth at all, got it just they were not allowed
to publicly voice their opinion on the question, or else

(17:15):
they would lose all of these state contracts.

Speaker 5 (17:17):
Wow.

Speaker 6 (17:17):
Yeah, like that's it, Like that they weren't actually going
to take any bombs away from Israel.

Speaker 1 (17:25):
Yeah, what are they going to do? Is the city
of San Marcos, They've got the river.

Speaker 3 (17:28):
It's a population I just lived at ninety four thousand people,
all right, And if they want to pass some non
binding resolute whatever, all right. I mean, you know, it
didn't have any end or impact. Yeah, people do it
all the time. And just so people know, it's not
just red states that's happening. These are some of the
biggest states in the country. Let's put this up there
on the screen. This is from January of twenty twenty five.

(17:48):
Kathy Hochel and the New York governor actually condemned the
NYC University System faculty union for an Israel boycott. So again,
a resolution passed by the SUNNI Professional Staff Congress representing
its thirty thousand members puts his organization at odds with
the university administration and the state government. The union again,

(18:10):
a union of the professors at SUNNI had a resolution
quote citing the death toll in Gaza, talking about the
ICC and the International Court of Justice as reason for
a boycott. The resolution then said that this small student
or the Small Professororial Union will not will divest itself

(18:31):
from investment vehicles with Israeli corporate stocks. Okay, I mean again,
we're talking about thirty thousand people.

Speaker 1 (18:37):
They're pooled funds. What is a couple million dollars? Like,
let's be honest, you know, in.

Speaker 3 (18:41):
Terms of a lot of hummus, it's not a lot
of sabra, all right, you know. And it called on
the teacher's retirement system to quote enact a complete divestment
of Israel. Okay, So that resolution passes by a vote
of seventy three to seventy.

Speaker 1 (18:56):
The union confirms.

Speaker 3 (18:58):
The New York Governor then comes out and says exclusively
in a statement to The Times of in my first
week as governor, I signed an executive order to divest
public funds from institutions to participate in the harmful BDS movement,
and that order remains in effect. I strongly oppose the
resolution narrowly passed by delegates and will continue standing up

(19:19):
against anti Semitism and hate in all forms. So the
New York Democratic governor and the Texas Republican governor have
two things in common. They have bds executive orders that
were very quickly signed. You know, in these two states,
we have a blue state and a red state. Here
just to show you how big of a problem this
entire thing is. Finally, Ryan, can you explain this next

(19:41):
one to us. Let's put it up there on the screen.
This is from the Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics
at UCLA. Pay seven please, and Ryan's going to explain
to us what happened.

Speaker 6 (19:51):
This one is truly enraging from top to bottom. So
and this is Paul Grammage shared this post from Terence Tao,
who is a UCLA mathematician who is broadly agreed to
be the greatest or at least one of the top

(20:11):
three mathematicians of the last like fifty years. Like this
is a guy who has nobody wants to hear me
attempt to describe. We're the mathematics that he has, that
the the kind of breakthroughs that he has rendered in mathematics.

Speaker 4 (20:29):
Look it up. Suffice is to.

Speaker 6 (20:30):
Say, it's some incredible stuff that has actual that has
led to and I was looking up last night, like
it's what he has done is theoretical, but his theoretical
advances have led to a MRI machines working ten times
better than they would otherwise because of the expanded capacity.

Speaker 1 (20:48):
To do to do visioning, like and so.

Speaker 6 (20:51):
And when it comes to all sorts of other practical applications,
advances in mathematics help and is that we can't even
begin to understand. And if we don't have those advances,
then we don't get those technological advances either. And that's
for the people who are like well, who cares about math,
like you, whether it's like applied or pure.

Speaker 1 (21:12):
So this guy has been at has been a.

Speaker 6 (21:15):
Full professor at UCLA since the nineties when he was
twenty four, the young youngest person to ever become a
full professor at UCLA. He is known throughout his field
for his collaborative work. Hundreds of papers, more than sixty
of them are are with other mathematicians. So he's the
kind of guy that is working with others to lift

(21:38):
people up. What he's what he announced here is that
he's now lost. He's now lost all of his funding
through the NSF and NIH.

Speaker 1 (21:50):
There's because he's a UCLA professor.

Speaker 6 (21:52):
He'll still have his you know, UCLA salary, so it's
not like he personally is being fired as a result
of this. But what it means is that all of
his grad students are now unfunded.

Speaker 4 (22:03):
And if you think about.

Speaker 6 (22:04):
Who his grad students are, these are the up and
coming best mathematicians in the world. Because if you're a
math prodigy anywhere in the world, you want to work
with Taren Staffleich. This is this is the guy, because
not only is he a genius ten times over, but
he's he's collaborative, and he's and he loves working with people.

(22:25):
What he's what he wrote in his post here is
that he had already had a bunch of his grants
cut earlier when Doge was coming through, and so what
he did is he took all of his own funding
and deferred it. So he's like, I don't need any
money for myself. I want all the money that was
coming to me to go to my grad students so
that they can stay on for a little while longer.

(22:48):
And now they've come back and they've cut that too.

Speaker 1 (22:51):
And why, oh, Israel, and what's the justification?

Speaker 6 (22:55):
They don't look, they don't Trump doesn't like the way
that UCLA handled pro tests.

Speaker 3 (23:01):
But if you remember, I was going to say, if
I recall the cops let a bunch of prous students,
and even that is not good enough.

Speaker 6 (23:13):
So you had Joe Lonsdale, private equity guy, yeah, tweeted,
So Paul Graham who posted this, Joe Lonsdale shared it,
and it's like, look, Terrence obviously a genius. We all
respect his work, but he should work somewhere else because
u c l A is actually terribly anti semitic and
handled the handled the protests like they let the thugs

(23:34):
beat the students, and then he disciplined a bunch of
students for protesting a genocide.

Speaker 1 (23:41):
That's not good.

Speaker 6 (23:41):
Enough for you that that you have to like destroy
Terrence tow the.

Speaker 3 (23:48):
And who wins, okay, And the irony is that u
c l A and the University of California system has
already taken extraordinary steps to comply with the currently just
so everybody stands U see system, the University of California
system has put a ban on bds and has said
that any student organization that participate, which is like all,

(24:09):
which is a lot not a shocker, the UC system
will not be eligible for funds from the university, so
already the university system.

Speaker 1 (24:19):
So it's like, well, what else do you want?

Speaker 3 (24:21):
And you know, reading through all of this, the justification
of the look, it has nothing to do with America,
and that's why it's just infuriating to me. You want
to pull the guys visa or whatever visa here illegally. Okay, no,
I'm not saying what I'm saying. Previous there were examples
of that. Right, you want to pull the guy's visa
because he committed a crime, because he's a foreigner who

(24:43):
you know, violated the visa r or whatever. I'm fine
with that, or at least is justifiable. If you want
to pull the person for being discriminatory against fellow US
citizens or engaging in racial discrimination or something, I would
be fine with that. But here it's about anti what
they claim is anti Semitism, but as you just laid out,

(25:04):
is about boycotting a foreign state. And by the way,
this guy didn't even from what I can earner, he's
not even political, right, or I mean probably political to
the extent all academics are, which is like vaguely liberal
and Gavin yeah voted forgotten yeah, loves Gavin loves you know,
and this the Irons funding.

Speaker 1 (25:22):
Gets pulled at the UCLA.

Speaker 3 (25:24):
So I just want people to understand the justification for
this sledgehammer from the government and the deploying of funds
across all sectors of our economy and of our states
that are based on boycott of Israel.

Speaker 1 (25:37):
And this is a right left.

Speaker 3 (25:38):
Problem, this is now a Trump problem, and it's just
completely absurd. And finally, Ryan, you have an update here
eight about you on and Twitter removing a blue check
from Francesca Albaniez, who has been on the show.

Speaker 6 (25:53):
By the way, Yeah, so this is like, this is wild,
Like there are entire organizations that have been set up.

Speaker 4 (26:00):
I think unwatch dot org, which is reference.

Speaker 6 (26:03):
In this tweet here is one of specifically, it seems,
for the sole purpose of trolling Francesca Albanesi, who is
an unpaid un special rappertoire for like Israel Palestine. She
was sanctioned recently by the US government, which people need
to absorb what that means, Like it makes it very

(26:25):
difficult for her to bank, to travel to kind of
exist as a human in the world. Sanctioned for the report,
what does she do she has no power whatsoever. She
can convene events and made a report and put out
reports which you can read or you cannot read.

Speaker 1 (26:44):
I read it.

Speaker 3 (26:44):
It's she was your R show. You can go watch
that interview. By the way, if you're interested.

Speaker 4 (26:48):
Oh, you might get sanctioned.

Speaker 6 (26:49):
Actually yeah, So this these pressure, these prosial pressure groups
reached out with lawyers to Twitter to get her blue check?
Are you joking? And ELI worked immediately. Okay, fine, blue
check gone?

Speaker 3 (27:07):
Wow?

Speaker 4 (27:07):
Taking the blue check?

Speaker 1 (27:08):
Interesting? The justification is that sanctions now, so the Iyatola.

Speaker 6 (27:13):
Has can't take her money. If she can't take her
eight dollars, how.

Speaker 3 (27:15):
Do you even know she's paying for it? Because nowadays
you don't even have to pay to get your quote
blue check.

Speaker 1 (27:19):
Oh if you was follower? So how did that work out?

Speaker 3 (27:22):
By the way, I remember a lot of people in
my mentions talking about how genius the blue check system is.

Speaker 1 (27:28):
Really worked out? Well didn't it?

Speaker 4 (27:29):
That was great?

Speaker 1 (27:31):
So that's where we're at, guys.

Speaker 3 (27:33):
And like I said, I mean, if you want to
have some hope, I guess you can. You know, there
was outcry about the explicit anti semitism boycott language in
the document they took it out, so okay, I mean,
you know, somewhat of a win. But the truth is
that the policy remains. In fact, if they wanted to,
they can enforce it at any time. They say BDS

(27:55):
is root in anti Semitism. Thirty nine states in this country,
red and blue. You can't accomplish that if it's not
truly bipartisan have ANTIBDS laws and or executive orders on
their books, which is probably the vast majority of the
US population now living under those laws. It's ridiculous and
it just shows you the extent to which our government
is basically at this service, state, local, federal, now all

(28:17):
at the service of the interests of a foreign nation.
I just think everybody should keep that in mind.

Speaker 6 (28:22):
And the other downside of this weird relationship with this
small country.

Speaker 1 (28:26):
Is that you just had to spend the.

Speaker 6 (28:28):
First block of this program talking about it rather than
you know, things that actually should matter.

Speaker 3 (28:34):
Well, I mean, the reason and so, and that's a
reasonable question, but.

Speaker 6 (28:39):
Like, yeah, we don't control we don't. If we don't
control our own politics, right then what's the point.

Speaker 3 (28:45):
Yeah, And I think that's why, you know, reasonable question,
why lead with it? Well, Number One, you know, obviously
topic I think near and dear to a lot of
people in our demographics, like audience is hard. But two
is it's like you just said, how can we talk
about anything if the framework is such where people have
to be weary of their language and of their actions

(29:07):
as private citizens, as businesses, as state residents, and others.
If we're literally not allowed to freely say whatever we want. Especially,
it's stings coming from a near decade long freakout over
anti racism, which I was there with you, okay, I
fought in the trenches anti racism and DEI and you know,

(29:28):
I was there long before a lot of these other
folks were talking about Nicole Hannah Jones in the sixteen
nineteen project, and I was with the Trotskyites over at
what was at World Socialist Web who were writing some
of the original takedowns. I loved them, guys, by the way,
shout out, you know to some of the originals who
were speaking out against this. So for me, it's stings

(29:48):
because I literally was there and saw many of the
people were enacting this policy speak out against or speak
out for free speech, for censorship and cancel culture for
this type of behavior. You know, similarly, remember I had
I remember I met a Texas politician. They were outraged,
for example, that that their state funds would be subject

(30:10):
to black rock policies or bank policies because they weren't
allowed to invest in oil and gas and or gun companies.
And I was like, yeah, I mean, why should they
tell you, you know, put your money wherever you want.

Speaker 1 (30:21):
This is the same you know, freak out about ESG.

Speaker 3 (30:23):
You remember that, right, I mean I think all of
these things almost pale in comparison now at this point
to the state explicitly denying you funds and or telling
you what and you can't do, so, I think that
it also should speak.

Speaker 6 (30:35):
And last point, none of these states actually do boycott
what they do it actually do and we've done something
about Hey.

Speaker 1 (30:43):
I was fascinated by this. Please explain it.

Speaker 6 (30:46):
Cities and states by high risk, low yield Israeli bonds
as a statement of political support.

Speaker 1 (30:55):
Got it.

Speaker 6 (30:55):
They're high risk bonds that ought to be high yield.
If you're willing to take on risk, you're supposed to
then take on a higher interest rate as a result
of that. But because we're so friendly, we're going to
oversubscribe to these high risk Israeli bonds. So all of
these cities and states could be getting higher interest rate
returns for their taxpayers. Instead they're sending the money to

(31:19):
support Israel's debt policy. Interesting, so that's far far from
boycotting Israel. That what cities and states are doing is
propping it up. That's crazy the expense of absolutely crazy
returns that states could be getting.

Speaker 1 (31:35):
Ryan, let's get to Israel, the actual.

Speaker 4 (31:37):
The actual war.

Speaker 6 (31:38):
So Yahu and we'll get to this in a moment
has announced that he is going to transform the assault
on Gaza into a long term occupation. Whether or not
he actually does that or this is just a negotiating
ploye remains unclear. Donald Trump was has supposedly green lit

(31:58):
this strategy. He was asked yesterday does he believe that
what Netahu was doing as a genocide.

Speaker 2 (32:06):
Here was his response, I see evidence of a genocide
in Gaza.

Speaker 1 (32:10):
I don't think sad.

Speaker 7 (32:12):
Look, they're in a war.

Speaker 5 (32:13):
There.

Speaker 7 (32:14):
Some horrible things happened on October seventh. As you know,
it was a horrible, horrible thing, one of the worst
I've ever seen. I've seen a lot of bad things
in some president in terms of wars and potential wars.
I mean, if you look at the one that we
just stopped, they had thousands of people being dead already
at the border between Thailand and Cambodia. Thousands of people.

(32:39):
And I mean, I've seen some bad things, but that
October seventh was with Hamas was really really bad.

Speaker 1 (32:46):
Thailand and Cambodia happening in the hotspot.

Speaker 4 (32:49):
I don't remember thousands of people. I think it was
one tie.

Speaker 6 (32:52):
So far anyway, So I mean Siegel, who is important
to follow because is he channels net Yahoo.

Speaker 3 (33:02):
He's a neta Yahoo English mouthpiece and is very open
about his not only support but conveying the internal views
of the government.

Speaker 1 (33:11):
So that's why we're putting up there.

Speaker 6 (33:13):
So whether what I mean Siegel is saying is true
or not isn't the point. We know it is coming
direct from net Yahoo, correct, So we can put up
B two here. He had a major report yesterday that
Nen Yahoo has made the decision that there's going to
be a massive expanded invasion of Gaza, including a long

(33:40):
term occupation, and that they're willing to operate in areas
where they suspect that hostages are being kept, which has
been a line that they have publicly at least attempted
not to cross because for obvious reasons, it puts them
at immediate risk of of being killed, you.

Speaker 1 (34:01):
Know, either by.

Speaker 6 (34:04):
Israel, either the IDF, or by their captors, who Hamas
has long said have been told if you're guarding hostages
and they're trying to take them by force, like that's it,
like you all go down.

Speaker 3 (34:20):
Well, let's go even further. He says, we are going
to occupy the strip. The decision has been made. Hamas
won't release more hostages without total surrender. We won't surrender
if we don't act now, the hostages will starve to death,
and Gaza will remain under The hostages will starve to death,
not everybody else will starve to death, and Gaza will
remain under Hamas control. Amid says Israel was at a crossroads.

(34:43):
It's achieving neither victory nor hostage release. The figure says
that the mandate of negotiations is broad, but no deal
was reached, so they're going to move to occupy Gaza.

Speaker 1 (34:51):
Now.

Speaker 3 (34:52):
Quote, occupying Gaza entails what exactly ran I mean. It
could entail all sorts of things. First, it could entail
literally like house to house combat. I'm going to rule
that out because they haven't done it in the last
two years, and that would be what you would actually
want to.

Speaker 4 (35:06):
Do if you want to res destroy the houses.

Speaker 3 (35:08):
So they just destroyed the houses, starve the population, and
miserate the entire population, tried to drive them out, you know,
quote voluntary migration, I guess in the ways that.

Speaker 1 (35:16):
They put it.

Speaker 3 (35:17):
But second is occupying Gaza entails the quote indefinite presence
that they originally had wanted. And so this is not
an occupation, it's an annexation, and it's an annexation which
will be Look, I mean, I know we're already an
extraordinary part, and yes they already control the borders and
all that, but it is important to distinguish what this
quote full spell occupation would look like because it would

(35:40):
mean the political administration of the state, and it would
be entirely not just US funded, but it would allow
them to facilitate their so called voluntary migration, the forced
expulsion of the whoever is left living inside of the
Gaza strip. Further, you know, basically enacting their policy of
starvation or denial of aid or all of these other

(36:01):
things on top of a US led administration. I don't
want to drop that either, because that's the American point
of all of this, is that you think Israel has
the money or the manpower to actually take quote occupy
forget about it. Okay, Look, they can't. They can't keep
up what they're doing. Yeah, exactly their current pace of operations.
They've already had a thousand soldiers killed, a bunch of them.

(36:23):
They're already having major reservist problems.

Speaker 1 (36:25):
Money.

Speaker 3 (36:26):
It may costs an extraordinary amount of money to continue
their military. They're going to need untold numbers of bailouts
from the US to continue this occupation. And considering the
way that they've acted, I think we all know what
that occupation would look like.

Speaker 1 (36:38):
It literally looked like a rack cakewalk.

Speaker 3 (36:40):
And of course the political risk and all that then
falls on who America right, And I think that's a
very important part of the story and broadly what this
will all look like for this occupation.

Speaker 1 (36:51):
This is not about hostages.

Speaker 3 (36:53):
This is about full scale annexation, recontrol of the land,
maybe even more so than the West Bank now, and.

Speaker 6 (36:59):
Tactically because of the tunnel system, it's not at all
obvious how they could even accomplish this in bethanun for instance,
IDF has gone in i believe five times and declared
each time that they had operational control. They went back
in recently to this place that they said they had
operational control and immediately got hit with an ambush. Hamas

(37:24):
and the other resistance factions is it's not just Hamas
rely for their primary supply of weapons unexploded Israeli bombs.

Speaker 4 (37:34):
Israel has dropped multiple.

Speaker 6 (37:36):
Hiroshima's worth of explosives on Gaza because they are dropping
them in what they call non ideal circumstances. In other words,
you're not supposed to just drop them on random urban environments,
and when you do, they don't explode at the normal rate.
And they're already started, already started with a bunch of
their older stuff. So you know you're looking at a

(37:58):
ten to twenty percent DoD rad even if it's say
two percent doud rate. That means that there is nearly
an unlimited supply of explosive material for Hamas and other
resistance groups to extract. That's that's where that's literally where
they get their weapons. Then they turn them into small

(38:18):
bombs and they on foot, walk them up to tanks
and then blow up the tanks.

Speaker 1 (38:24):
So it's like basically I D northea, non story, very common.

Speaker 4 (38:28):
And so as long as there are.

Speaker 6 (38:32):
Human beings alive willing to do that, they're going to
continue to do that.

Speaker 4 (38:36):
So you have.

Speaker 6 (38:37):
To depopulate entirely the Gaza strip, basically.

Speaker 4 (38:43):
Like if you're going to.

Speaker 6 (38:46):
If you're going to hostily occupy it, how do you
do that without American troops? Yeah, well and even with
the honestly with Americans, by the way, even with US troops,
it would be a disaster and we should have abso nothing.

Speaker 1 (39:00):
To do with that. But I don't think that will happen.

Speaker 3 (39:02):
But Gaza Lago, which is basically what Trump determined, is
the policy. If the US is going to own it,
if it is a US light administration, then we own all.
I mean, we already are funding and are diplomatically running cover,
but it's a whole other thing to actually have actual administration.
And that's what Israel wants. They want our ownership of
Gaza so that they can push off the diplomatic cover

(39:24):
and everything and then make all of US own it effectively.
That's what Trump declared originally in the Oval Office in
his meeting with nets On Yahu about taking over Gaza.
But this basically pairs with the literal expulsion of all
of the citizens taking them over, and there's just no
world where this is going to work out better for
the people and for the Palestinians right where they're going
to be under genuine, direct Israeli occupation.

Speaker 1 (39:47):
In the same way, let's just look at the peaceful West.

Speaker 3 (39:50):
Bank, which we covered yesterday, where people are being murdered
in cold blood by a lot of these settlers. I mean,
how soon do the settlers start coming in behind the IDF,
which is the dream of the Israeli captain.

Speaker 1 (40:00):
They say it out loud much.

Speaker 6 (40:01):
Bend Giver and all those that's what they want. They
want settlers in Gaza uh and to talk, just to
show how kind of corrupt the negotiation process was recently
put up B three here, so the Times of Israel
saying that you know this, there's there's a Saudi report
that says Hamas is under pressure to show flexibility, but
unclear if new talks are in the offing, and Jeremy

(40:23):
Skhill have more on this for dropsight tomorrow. But the
Lamas officials have been speaking publicly, and we have the
paper that was passed back and forth in the negotiations.
According to that, Yahoo and Witkoff, who walked away, that
one of the big stumbling blocks was Hamas was refusing
to disarm. According to Hamas and according to all of

(40:46):
the documents that are public that were swapped back and forth,
that was never discussed as part of the negotiations because
it's it's just it's not gonna happen, so you don't
discuss things aren't going to happen, like Hamas has said,
like we're not asking Israel to like abandon Tel Aviv,
like we'd like them too, if they stay out loud,
they'd like to do, but we're not asking for that

(41:06):
in the negotiations we're trying to Hamas says that they
were on the brink of signing the and they were
moving toward the implemented implementation phase. There was nothing in
there about this army. It was about, you know, the
pace of the Israeli withdrawal from their current positions, the
number of hostages exchanged on each side, and the flow

(41:28):
of aid into Gaza, like that's what that's what they're
talking about and then all of a sudden would cough
and the others like just blow the whole thing up,
and are now talking about a massive occupation.

Speaker 3 (41:38):
And the thing they're blowing it up over Ryan As
I understand it, having read Scales and others reporting, is
about this literal occupation in the terms of because they
don't want them to just like demilitarize and lay down
their weapons.

Speaker 1 (41:50):
They're like, you have to effectively surrender. They're like, all
of Gasa, we will determine what area is ours for humanitarians,
will have a humanitarians.

Speaker 3 (42:00):
I mean it basically it looks like it is right now, right,
which is but I mean last time we had talked,
you had told me that a lot of the population
was even willing to take that.

Speaker 1 (42:08):
Well, where's the population on this question?

Speaker 6 (42:10):
I think still to this day, anything that gets in
aid food and stops the bombs for sixty days or
thirty days, just do it, yeah, because they don't trust
what's written down anyway. So it's like if we can
get thirty or sixty days. So Hamas was you can

(42:31):
look at what they were willing to move on was
being quite flexible just because they knew how much pressure
they were under from their own population, and that's why
it had to end the way it did, with Hamas
thinking that they were about to sign a deal and
move to the implementation phase and Witkoff shocking even the
Cuttery and Egyptian mediators and announcing that Hamas is being

(42:52):
inflexible and the whole thing and the whole thing is off, like,
because it couldn't end with Hamas being inflexible and announcing
that they were walking away because they weren't willing to
Hamas was going to cave on whatever. Yeah, so that's
why you had to have this weird like wait a minute,
Whitkoff is announcing that Hamas is saying though, like, wouldn't

(43:14):
wouldn't Hamas be the one that would say no if
it's true that they were saying no? And then hamask
can other like we didn't say no?

Speaker 4 (43:20):
What are you doing? Bro?

Speaker 1 (43:20):
And so this is all under pressure from whom? Is
this from the Israeli.

Speaker 3 (43:24):
Government on the American government? You know, you know in
terms of the way the.

Speaker 6 (43:28):
Good question, well, the way that in the US and
Israel just starre a lockstep.

Speaker 3 (43:31):
Yeah, it looks to me as if not only lockstep
but basically making it so that Hamas they said they
won't do it, and they wanted occupation this whole time.

Speaker 6 (43:39):
That's what That's how it appears to me. Yeah, and
I mean they've said they want occupation the whole time.
And meanwhile, we can put up before net. Yahoo is
trying to reshape the government in multiple ways. People who
aren't following this clothes they might not realize the man
spends a significant amount of his time in court.

Speaker 1 (43:57):
Bill Clinton the charges starting wars to distract from his.

Speaker 6 (44:02):
Own personal problems, and he's a key and his aides
are accused of being on the dole of cutter, which
is hilarious on a bunch of different layers. So now
he moved to get rid of the attorney general who's
prosecuting him. The Supreme Court has has held this up.
This this this is at the heart of his judicial

(44:22):
reform that kind of blew up the country's politics. Prior
to October seventh, he had all these protesters out in
the streets for a year trying to stop him from
doing this kind of judicial reform that was that everybody
assumed was related to his own prosecutorial problems. And now
he's going after the actual prosecutor. And meanwhile he got
rid of this Edelstein, who is the head of this

(44:47):
committee that oversees basically.

Speaker 4 (44:51):
The army and.

Speaker 6 (44:54):
In a massive fight over whether or not the Haredi
should be subject to the draft and should participate in
the war. And so net Yahoo on the one hand
getting rid of Thettorney General on the other hand doing
everything he can to keep his right wing coalition together
by excluding a huge portion of the population from having

(45:18):
to participate for religious reasons this in this war.

Speaker 4 (45:23):
And so.

Speaker 6 (45:25):
The country is, you know, thoroughly united on the kind
of genocide. Like you look at the polls on that,
it would be it'd be an interesting challenge for a
Polster to try to find a question that was so
grotesque and over the top that it wouldn't get a

(45:45):
majority of Israeli support in this in surveys. So they're
united on that, but everywhere else the society is torn apart.
And that is those are the conditions on which he
thinks he's then going to launch a massive war in Gaza,
while at the same time hugely inflaming tensions in the

(46:09):
West Bank. They're currently If you haven't been following this
that there was a radical settler murdered a a well
known West Bank Yeah, we had activists, we covered it. Yeah,
who's featured in no other land.

Speaker 1 (46:25):
He's free.

Speaker 6 (46:26):
The guy's family is still in jail for no reason
and they're keeping the body. And so you're gonna do
all this and also then launch a massive occupation of Gaza.

Speaker 3 (46:36):
See that's why so many Americans. It's there's so many
ironies going on here. Number One, the israel first years
in America are always like, you're funded by Qatar if
you're critical of Israel, and I'm like, well, the only
people were There's some like direct evidence are being funded
by guitar are Netta, who's closest political advisors who were
under in nightment and bb is using to fund who
he was using to fund Hamas right, And so then

(46:59):
we use it even further. Will Beebe's actually under corruption trial.
Every single time that something happens, he's like, oh, I'm sorry,
we need to pause this because I'm bombing Syria today
or I'm occupying Gaza today, and then slowly but surely
he's fired. I mean, it's literally like the original scandals
back in the day in twenty seventeen about firing COMI

(47:20):
I mean he fired his FBI director, the Shinbet director
over this corruption investigation. Now he's firing the attorney general.
They had the quote judicial reform. I mean it's cartoonish corruption.
And every single point.

Speaker 6 (47:35):
Escalation in the war in Gaza, and or with Iran,
and or with Syria is linked low and behold to
developments with his corruption trot.

Speaker 3 (47:44):
It happens like clockwork. But people here are so illiterate
that they don't even know even the pro is trail
groups about what's actually happening in the country that they're
supposedly passionate about is that he's obviously using his foreign
policy to protect himself for political per First, it was
October seventh, I remember, we all well talk about October
seventh after the war in Gaza has finished. Never end

(48:06):
the war, Never have to talk about it. Wait for
people to wait for people to forget. It's like nine
to eleven. By the time of the nine eleven Commission
report were bogged down in Iraq, Everyone's like, ah, whatever,
you know, it's three years ago. You know, it's the
same thing right past, right, It's all in the past.
Why are you so harp Why are you harping on
the past. You mean the event that literally got us
into the war. Yeah, that's the that is the difficulty

(48:28):
of all of it. And then finally B six Ryan
tell us what happened.

Speaker 4 (48:31):
Yes, this is just utterly tragic, outrageous.

Speaker 6 (48:36):
Ode Nahala el Karreine, nurse at Alaxa Hospital, just days ago,
posted a video talking about how humiliating, uh, these aid
drops are that what are you doing? Like, why are
you dropping aid out of airplanes when you have all
of these land crossings just right there. If you want

(48:56):
to bring in aid, put it on a truck, put
the truck in first gear, hit the gas, and bring
it in like it is not complicated at all. And
bring in enough trucks so that starving people aren't looting
them the second they get in.

Speaker 4 (49:10):
Like quite simple.

Speaker 6 (49:12):
This nurse oday killed by a falling aid drop yesterday. Wow.
And many of these air drops have killed a lot
of people still, and we covered it, and the US
dropped eight the same thing happened. And meanwhile, the head
of nursing at Nasser Hospital was killed by a targeted

(49:33):
strike yesterday in his tent with his family. So they
killed this nurse accidentally with air dropped AID. And they
still continue to target top medical professionals, not collateral damage
as part of some targeted operation at some militant or something,

(49:56):
but identifying top medical staff and killing them in their
tents with their families.

Speaker 4 (50:03):
Wow, Like, what are we doing?

Speaker 3 (50:07):
Moving now to the conflict with India, Donald Trump has
gone off on the Indian government, raising tariffs on them
to twenty five percent. However dramatically now escalating said tariffs.
Why again, not because of any of the business or
non tariff barriers in the country, but because of their
policy on the war in Ukraine and buying Russian oil.

(50:29):
Here he is just this morning from an interview with CNBC.

Speaker 1 (50:32):
Let's take a listen with India.

Speaker 5 (50:34):
What people don't like to say about India. They're the
highest tariff nation. They have the highest tariff of anybody.
We do very, very little business with India because their
tariffs are so high. So India has not been a
good trading partner because they do a lot of business
with us, but we don't do business with them. So
we settled on twenty five percent. But I think I'm

(50:56):
going to raise that very substantially over the next twenty
four hours because they're buying Russian oil, they're fueling the
war machine, and are they going to do that?

Speaker 1 (51:03):
Then I'm not going to be happy. I'm not too happy.

Speaker 3 (51:07):
So dramatically increasing tariffs on India for the war in Ukraine?

Speaker 1 (51:12):
Got it?

Speaker 3 (51:12):
This is genuinely a Lindsey Graham fever dream of the neocons,
and we've covered it here for years now, since twenty
twenty two. Is everyone's furious with India and with China
for But by the way, yeah, interesting, China is not
listed in that, isn't it, even though they're on a
pause right now. The two largest buyers of Russian oil Russia,
of course able to sell oil out on the market.

(51:33):
In fact, the Indians and the Chinese are getting a
discount on the oil because the rest of the world
is not buying it, and they're using those profits to
fund the war machine. Now, okay, I mean you can
be upset about that, but everyone should ask should US
trade policy with its tenth largest trading partner, which is
what India is if you look at overall bilateral trade
be subject to the war in Ukraine.

Speaker 1 (51:55):
The war in Ukraine. Just so everybody understands here.

Speaker 3 (51:58):
Now we have two separate instances, is of Trump using
tariffs to enforce foreign policy goals which have no impact
on any of us. First is Canada. If you'll recall
when Trump put out his tweet where he said something
along the lines of Wow, Canada just raised or just
recognized Palestine. That's going to impact our trade. What so

(52:21):
our raid on maple and lumber.

Speaker 4 (52:24):
Lumber is going to.

Speaker 3 (52:26):
Be impacted by the Canadian governments enter and oil, yeah,
great example, is going to be impacted by the Canadian
government's position on Palestine. So in this case, because Trump
has unsuccessfully been able to wind up the war in Ukraine,
something he said that he would do before he was
even in office, is now tariffing India at a very

(52:46):
very high rate because they're buying Russian oil.

Speaker 1 (52:50):
Something.

Speaker 3 (52:50):
By the way, that his own vice president and others
when the Biden administration was considering doing this, spoke out
against that very policy using the full force of the
empire and punishing more important allies for the purpose of
protecting Ukraine and trying to quote force peace over there. Also, guys,
let's all be honest here, we've punished the Russian economy

(53:12):
into the ground right, supposedly from the way that the
Western sanctions. They're doing fine their GDP and all that.
It's not also, by the way, not just because of oil,
it's because of their own domestic war production and more.
I'm not saying this wouldn't hurt, but we're all like,
let's think about the consequences, Like if you import something
from India, or if you have some business relationship, whatever,

(53:32):
do you really think that you should have to pay
more for that or have a shortage of it because
of the war in Ukraine.

Speaker 1 (53:38):
This is a Biden policy.

Speaker 6 (53:40):
And if you think about it, our sanctions, our sanction
policy has created the circumstances that you're talking about that
the Russian economy is doing well ish, but significantly because
of the war. It's this Keynesian situation where war production
and production for that effort is driving economic growth. So

(54:04):
we've put them in this position where if they unwind
the war, which is what they want them to do,
then they will suffer a short term economic setback. So
our own sanctions policy actually incentivizes them to keep the
war going. If our economic policy towards Russia was to

(54:27):
balance out their economy so that the war machine was
not such a central part of it. That would actually
then free up the Russian kind of political calculation on
which Putin rests to be able to then leave the
war without the economic ramifications. Now maybe he still wouldn't

(54:50):
because he just wore war mad lunatic, but he would
have the opportunity to be able to do so without
the short term political hit of an economic crash. Like
just like nt Yahoo, like just wants to go from
Monday to Tuesday and keep himself alive, keep the war going.

Speaker 1 (55:06):
You know, if if it's easier to do A than
B for a.

Speaker 4 (55:09):
Politician, that politician is usually going to do a.

Speaker 3 (55:13):
Yeah, and just broadly, I mean somebody they're like, you
only care about this because you're Indian.

Speaker 1 (55:19):
Yeah, that's definitely the only reason.

Speaker 3 (55:20):
It's not that I haven't said anything similar about Vietnam
or about the Philippines or any of the other critical
allies in Asia which are non Chinese. A classic thing
that you would want to do, let's say, some Kissingerian
style real politique would say, Okay, our global whatever you
want to call it, competition, adversary, etc.

Speaker 1 (55:39):
Is China.

Speaker 3 (55:40):
So what do you do all the countries around China.
What would you want. You would want some decent relations,
which is why we should maybe not hit Japan with
a fifty percent tariff, or Korea or I mean, I
can go down to the Philippines, India, any of these other
powers and we would say we want all of these
people to have great economic relationships there. US manufacturers can
still better fit from trade in Southeast Asia and in

(56:02):
Asia without having to rely on bolstering the Chinese economy,
and to make sure that the US maintains whatever its
economic giant power. There By the way, this is a
Trump administration policy. As you all might recall Apple announcing
that it would move production from China to India. These
are strategic goals which I'm very okay with, Okay, and
that has nothing to do with my heritage or whatever
I'm saying. Broadly, they could move to Vietnam for all

(56:24):
I care. I don't care, all right, just get it
out of China. My point is just that this is
completely counter to the europe first mentality that the Biden
administration had, with this religious obsession with NATO, punishing nations
like China, India and subjecting our entire foreign policy to
the war in Ukraine, which again has nothing to do
on any impact on any life of an American. And

(56:46):
by the way, if sanctions or any of this could
solve it, it would happen a long, long time ago.
And in fact, every single day that the war continues,
Ukrainian people are suffering. They're raising their age to sixty,
which we'll get to in a little bit. And now
you're isolating an ally again or fine, a trading partner,
which I think is very critical in maintaining.

Speaker 1 (57:07):
Strategic balance in Southeast Asia. So with that, go ahead.

Speaker 6 (57:11):
Just the line that you only care about this because
your Indian would actually make a lot more sense if
it was you only care about this because you're American.

Speaker 1 (57:19):
Yeah, yeah, that's true. I mean, I love they're a
huge trading partner. Do you like do you like generic pharmaceutic?

Speaker 3 (57:25):
I would say the same thing about time. I would
say the same thing about any of these countries. And
by the way, Taiwan is even more important trading partner.
Guess who also got hit with the tariff if you
want to know under these this is the point is
that the policy makes no sense. It's computed stupidly, and
here explicitly the original twenty five percent is about non
tariff bearers.

Speaker 1 (57:40):
Fine, it's true.

Speaker 3 (57:41):
By the way, India is an insane economy, the way
that they shut out Western like Western investment. I don't
blame them per se because if I were them, might
probably do the same thing.

Speaker 4 (57:50):
We still exporting poked up fifty billion.

Speaker 1 (57:52):
Yeah, it's a lot. Well, okay.

Speaker 3 (57:53):
Their theory is we want total control of our economy
because we don't trust the West and we don't trust China.

Speaker 6 (58:02):
Also, aren't they two out things we're supposed to care about,
like the things that countries are supposed to do for us,
as they're supposed to support Bolts and Arrow would be mad, right,
I forgot that he was not able to carry his
coup out. They're supposed to support Israel, and I think
Modi is like check and check. Finally, but three, you
also have to hate Russia and love Ukraine, right.

Speaker 4 (58:22):
Okay, got it?

Speaker 3 (58:24):
So we should definitely that's the way that we should
be conducting it. So we wanted to give you guys
a view into how this is being received in India.
We've got a clip here from Republic TV or Indian
viewers may know what it is. It's kind of hard
to explain Fox. I guess, I mean, it's not exactly
the same media environment, but this is our knab Goswami.
He's I guess the Tucker Carlson ish of India, very

(58:46):
popular podcast, very very popular voice. We'll say that on
Indian national television. Here's how they are reacting to it.
A nationalist India.

Speaker 8 (58:54):
Trump escalates the tradif war with India. Trump says he's
going to substantial increase tariffs on India. Trump puts out
an aggressive post saying We're going to be further further
slapping more tariffs on India, and he's linking it to
India's friendship and our business with the Russians. We have

(59:14):
no response to Russia yet, but it's quite clear that
we are caught in the middle of this Russia versus US,
you know, trade battle, that we've become the lynchpin of
this battle. So it hed it serves Trump both ways.
He targets Russia and of course he squeezes India at
a time when we were ahead of the other countries

(59:35):
in terms of negotiating a tariff deal with America. He's
sending I think mister Whitkoff in the next week to
negotiate with Russia. So he's opening up a line of
conversation with Russia, increasing the threat and pressure on India,
opening a line with Russia, and then saying, using his
advisers to say that India and China are together raised

(01:00:00):
the pressure, raising part of the part of the machine
that is supporting the Russian economy. Now, these are all
last minute gambits by Trump. He's not liking the noises
coming from India, or rather he's not liking the lack
of a response from the Indian government.

Speaker 3 (01:00:16):
Man, okay, no offense Indian TV. I don't know what
is going on with the motion tracking there over on
those cameras. All right, let me call me, all right,
we could talk. But the Indian Foreign Ministry has also
put out the statement. 's put it up there on
the screen. They say India has been targeted by the
United States and the European Union for importing oil from
Russia after the commencement of the Ukraine conflict. India began

(01:00:36):
importing Russia because traditional supplies were diverted to Europe after
the conflict. Interesting the United States at that time actively
encouraged such imports by an infra, strengthening global energy market stability.
India's imports are to ensure predictable and affordable energy costs
to the Indian consumer. They are a necessity compelled by
the global market situation. However, it is revealing that the
very nations criticizing India are themselves indulging in trade with Russia.

(01:00:58):
Unlike our case, such trade is not even a vital
national compulsion. The European Union had bilatal trade of sixty
seven goods billion in goods with Russia. In addition, it
had trade and services estimated Euro seventeen billion in twenty
twenty three. That is much more than India's total trade
with Russia that year. Subsequently, European imports of LNG in
fact riched record sixteen point five million tons, surpassing the

(01:01:20):
last record of fifteen million tons in twenty twenty two.
Russia trade includes not just energy but fertilizer, etc. Where
the United States's concurns. It continues to import Russian uranium
hexafluoride for its nuclear industry, palladium for its ev industry,
fertilized as well as chemicals. In this background, the targeting
in India is unjustified. And unreasonable, and interestingly enough, actually

(01:01:40):
Mody this morning basically is like, Yeah, we're just gonna
keep buying Russian oil and we'll see you guys on
the other side, they're not taking this all that seriously,
and increasingly with the conflict with Russia, you're watching all
of these crazy belligerent actions which again are straight out
of Lindsey Graham. Let's put C four up there on
the screen. So, for example, there was this more recent

(01:02:02):
development from the Russians in response to Trump's deployment of
nuclear submarines, where former President Medvedev said that NATO countries
have abandoned there has blamed NATO countries and says that
Russia will now quote abandon a moratorium on short and
medium range nuclear missiles and said Moscow would take further
steps in response. This was after Trump went after him

(01:02:25):
for making belligerent statements about the conflict and deployed nuclear submarines,
publicly saying that if we need to, of course, we
have the ability to strike Russia back. Well the same time,
what's happening in Ukraine. Let's go ahead and put C
six police up on the screen. The Ukrainian Army now
opening its ranks to the sixty plus club to volunteer

(01:02:48):
for military service. Contract terms say one year enlistment, medical clearance,
and no upper age limit. This was after a revelation
a couple of years ago. Now at this point that
the average age of the Ukraine military at that time
was in the forties, and they're already losing thousands of
people on the front line, they're losing territory. This is
despite the fact that Trump administration has accelerated weapons going

(01:03:10):
to the country, including patriot missile batteries which we massively
depleted for another country called Israel. It's just all so preposterous,
and just to cap it all off, Ryan, at the
same time, we're supposedly defending democracy in Ukraine. Let's go
ahead and put the next one up there, see seven
please up on the screen. Is that Ukrainians recently took

(01:03:32):
to the streets to protest Zelenski for cracking down on
corruption watchdogs quote for writing, corruption has been a central
issue for Ukrainians, and new curbs on watchdog agencies have
alarmed many. So Zelensky and his top people quote granted
the General Prosecutor control over Ukraine's main anti corruption bodies,

(01:03:55):
which quote, many citizens fear will roll back reforms introduced
after a pro interesting pro democracy revolution more than ten
years ago. The demonstrations were the country's largest since twenty
twenty two invasion. Were peaceful, but the crowds simmered with
rage after a population that survived nearly three and a
half years of war, drone attacks, loss of loved ones,

(01:04:17):
et cetera. And now you know, supposedly the grand master
democracy champion, Zelenski himself, is cracking down on the very
anti corruption institutions, which were modestly pointing out the billions
of dollars of money laundering and others that have been
wasted on this conflict.

Speaker 1 (01:04:36):
By the West.

Speaker 3 (01:04:37):
That's who we're all supporting, and that's why we're now
tariffing India and putting our relationship with them subject so
that Zelenski and his cronies can continue their anti corruption
you know, crackdown in their own country. That's what we're
all paying for. And we're paying for, you know, Ukrainian
yarn shops and pensioners while people here are going to

(01:04:58):
lose Medicare and snap makes a lot of sense.

Speaker 6 (01:05:00):
Obviously, Yes, you would think that sending billions of dollars
to Ukraine and canceling the elections would root out the
corruption there. Turns out there's still work to be done,
but that work will not be done by the anti
corruption group that Zelenski is getting rid of. By the way,
one amazing quote from Trump on Sundays he said, you know,
if he gives month long ultimatum to putin, then he's like, actually,

(01:05:24):
it's ten days, because I don't trust that he's going
to do anything. And if you don't do it or out,
you know, you make peace or else. And they said,
what else he's going to I'm going to sanction them?
And then Trump said, well, there will be sanctions, but
they seem to be pretty good at avoiding sanctions.

Speaker 4 (01:05:40):
Yeah, real, real tough talk.

Speaker 1 (01:05:42):
And so that's basically where we're at.

Speaker 3 (01:05:44):
I mean, the Indians have effectively called the bluff and
they're like, okay, fine, let's go for it. And their
theory is, yeah, we'll sign a trade deal and all
of this will go away. And so actually, you know,
even the Ukrainians are basically if that's true, or being
used as a pawn in negotiations with India or trade.

Speaker 1 (01:06:00):
It's not like any of it all matters.

Speaker 3 (01:06:02):
But you know, inside of India, this is not being
met well, just from what I can see in terms
of looking at public opinion and the way that the
Biden administration previously treated them. They thought it would be different,
but it turns out that the new boss is actually
crazier than the boss.

Speaker 4 (01:06:16):
I'm curious for take, but I think ye.

Speaker 6 (01:06:17):
What Trump doesn't understand here is that when you are
starting at twenty five percent tariffs, that's an unserious tariff
rate because it would decimate trade between India and the US.
If it stayed at twenty five percent like it, it
would seize it up. It's well over the rate at

(01:06:38):
which companies are able to just absorb this hit usually
and keep moving. So therefore anything above that is meaningless
because twenty five is already killer. So they're at twenty
five now and Trump is like, I'm going to make
it significantly higher. It's like, well, it's are you It's

(01:06:58):
like the difference between twenty five fifty we talked about
this with China to most and fifty Modope, no difference.

Speaker 1 (01:07:05):
It's like you're that's it.

Speaker 6 (01:07:06):
You're not you can't, You're not making money at twenty
five or at fifty, so both of them are prohibitive.
So that's why I think India can be like all right, bro,
well like talk to us when you're not at twenty five.

Speaker 1 (01:07:20):
Well, we'll see.

Speaker 3 (01:07:21):
I mean, you know, just broadly, it is their foreign
policy right now, our our trade policy, our economic policy
is focused on Israel and on Ukraine and has nothing
to do apparently with the rest of us.

Speaker 4 (01:07:32):
Or can't you can and crack the top?

Speaker 1 (01:07:34):
Sorry? Yeah?

Speaker 3 (01:07:34):
And Bolsonaro, Yeah, that's that's apparently why we should pay
more for coffee. By the way, as a coffee fanatic,
I don't know if everybody knows this, the coffee prices
right now are out of control. Go and take a
look at coffee futures, largely because of these Brazil tariffs,
and there was some horrible storm or something like that
that killed a bunch of the coffee crops. So yeah,
if you like to drink coffee every day, even if

(01:07:56):
low rate coffee, all of that, well, I have bad
news where it's probably gonna go up by twenty thirty
percent based upon the futures markets that I was looking at.

Speaker 1 (01:08:03):
Res you people need to sacrifice for Bolsonarow.

Speaker 3 (01:08:06):
Yeah, you're right, Yeah, you're right. I should pay more
for coffee for a Bolsonaro. It makes a lot of sense.
Thank you guys so much for watching. We appreciate it.
Ryan and Emily and beyond tomorrow.

Speaker 4 (01:08:14):
Thank you Ryan.

Speaker 1 (01:08:14):
It's great to see you man, and have a great
Counterpoy show tomorrow.

Speaker 4 (01:08:17):
I see you later.