Bad Hasbara - The World's Most Moral Podcast - 224: Licorice Sweets, with Max Blumenthal
Episode Date: August 4, 2026With Matt on assignment, Daniel and Producer Adam welcome Max Blumenthal of the Grayzone to talk the Atlantic’s red string-festooned conspiracy cork board, Marco Rubio’s latest revision to Emma La...zarus, and the dangers of leaving DHS on read at the border.Visit https://halapalestine.com/ and use code BADHASBARA for 10% off. It helps the show! Products made in Palestine and delivered to your door.Please donate to Playgrounds for Palestine: https://playgroundsforpalestine.org/Join the Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/c/badhasbaraSubscribe to the Substack at https://badhasbara.substack.com/Get a Youtube Membership at https://www.youtube.com/@Badhasbara/membershipTICKETS: The Bitchuation Room LIVE in Minneapolis August 20: https://dice.fm/partner/tickets/event/92keno-the-bitchuation-room-live-20th-aug-the-parkway-theater-minneapolis-ticketsTICKETS: Matt Lieb and Francesca Fiorentini October 15 in Brooklyn, NY: https://bit.ly/octoberbellhouseThe Grayzone: https://thegrayzone.com/Goliath: https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/max-blumenthal/goliath/9781568589725/The Management of Savagery: https://www.versobooks.com/products/834-the-management-of-savageryBad Hasbara Merch: https://estoymerchandise.com/collections/bad-hasbara-podcastWhat’s The Spin on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/50JoIqCvlxL3QSNj2BsdURWhat’s The Spin on Tidal: https://tidal.com/playlist/3cec7963-1fc5-42bc-ab7d-64fb420eb50eWhat’s The Spin Album List: https://bit.ly/whatsthespinlistSkad Skasbarska playlist: http://bit.ly/skadskasbarskaSubscribe/listen to Bad Hasbara wherever you get your podcasts.Spotify https://spoti.fi/3HgpxDmApple Podcasts https://apple.co/4kizajtSubstack https://substack.com/@badhasbaraSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/bad-hasbara/donationsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
Transcript
Discussion (0)
Half no fury like a centric Democrat storned.
And welcome to Bad Hasbara.
The world's most moral podcast.
That's right.
I'm Daniel Mate.
I am your first co-host today.
And I'm producer Adam Levin.
Forgot to turn on my ringlight and your second co-host today.
Nice to see you, Adam.
Thank you for joining.
We weren't sure if you were going to be able to slot in on this episode
because that sinus squirrel still fucking with your internet connection.
Yeah, the internet man came just while we were starting to record earlier, and luckily I was able to join in today.
That's awesome. So our guest interview will just be me with the guest, but nice to have you bookending the show.
Nice to have you for the intro in Matt's absence. Once again, we are without Matt.
Matt is off being a family guy, which I'm sure involves a lot of non-sequitur.
pop cultural references in little throwaway scene gags.
Gigging and so on.
Yeah, exactly.
Doing surfing bird.
I'm sorry, Adam.
I thought you were aware that the bird was the word.
Yes, we wish Matt a wonderful continued vacation with his family.
Good family time.
Good stage time with his wife.
But it's just us today.
and we have an amazing guest, very excited to share them with you.
But before we get to the guest, we've got to go through our usual business.
Number one, subscribe to us right there on YouTube.
If you're watching this right now, there's nothing stopping you from hitting that button,
that subscribe button.
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You already know because you're probably already there.
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That's right.
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You can have all of the perks right there without having to toggle between different subscription platforms.
And who doesn't want that?
I know I have an account on your only Dan's.
Very good. Yeah. Very, very, very good.
I'm trying to come up with some kind of hole on Maine.
If I was, if I lived in a town that had a main street and I had a hole in the wall, you know, restaurant or bar, I would call it hole on me.
Sure.
Well, speaking of things nobody wants, there's still a genocide going on in Gaza.
And ultimately, what is happening there and the suffering, the people there is the reason behind everything we do here.
It's the only reason this podcast needs to exist, which we continue to lament even as we enjoy each other and enjoy your listenership and your company.
And so we have a sponsor today, which is to say an organization we want you to sponsor, and that is Playgrounds for Palestine.
Playgrounds for Palestine is a nonprofit that brings playground equipment to Palestine as an expression of solidarity with the plight of Palestinian children.
The playgrounds they build are free to use and open to boys and girls, affirming their right to childhood amidst unimaginable horrors.
And that is a concrete, probably in more ways than one, a concrete thing you can contribute to the lives of people suffering things most of us can't even imagine.
Playgrounds for Palestine.org is the place to donate playgrounds for Palestine.
that's F-O-R-Palistine.org-G.
Indeed, and Daniel?
Yes, sir.
What's that span?
Well, the span today, it's nice to hear someone besides Matt ask me that question.
Well, see if you can find the common thread.
I mentioned Kim Mitchell.
I featured Kim Mitchell, the Canadian balding, long-haired rocker from the 80s in a previous spin.
here's him in his band
Max Webster
Max Webster with their album
Two first names
But only one that forms the theme of this spin
Universal Juveniles
And apparently guess who else plays on this album
Besides the band Max Webster
Also playing with the websters are
Neil Perth
Alex Lifeson and Getty Lee
I'm in no rush to pick that up
That's Rush, my friend
Ah you got me
You got me
So yeah, that's a Toronto group with their Toronto buddies.
Max Roach, amazing jazz drummer and percussionist with his album percussion,
Bitter's Sweet.
He was also a political radical.
He has the Freedom Now Suite.
He was always a progressive, leftist civil rights agitator.
You ever listen to the Rich versus Roach record?
I don't have that one, no.
It's a goody.
Buddy Rich always makes me think of the bare-nicked ladies for, as a lot of.
another Canadian reference because in their stupid cover of public enemies fight the power,
they go, Elvis, was a hero to most, buddy Elvis was a hero to most, buddy Rich, was a hero to
most, buddy Ebson, was a hero to most, buddy Hackett, anyway, etc. This is tricky, the British
trip-hop artist affiliated with Massive Attack, with his album Maxin Quay, Max Inquay,
Okay.
Really cool album from the mid-90s.
This one's a little maxless, but on purpose.
The Art of Noise, Invisible Silence,
really cool art, pop, synth, whatever group from the 80s.
And they have a song on here called Paranoemia,
which was a minor radio hit when I was a kid.
They also did a cover of the Peter Gunn's soundtrack,
a theme, you know, down, down, down, down, down, down.
But paranoia...
So may not as the theme from the spy hunter video game.
Exactly.
Paranoemia, the song, the radio version featured...
Here's another Canadian reference.
Max Headroom.
Remember that Matt Fruher character?
Absolutely.
Yeah, so he's...
And the subject of a famous pirate TV takeover, I think, in Chicago.
Sounds right.
Yeah, I think he did some stuff with Ad Busters, too.
Anyway, Max Headroom, missing on the album version of...
the art of noise, but still.
We've got
the Jazea, genius,
Liquid Swords from Wu Tan Clan,
aka Maximilian.
That's one of his nicknames.
His Wu Ganino nickname.
There was in the college radio station
where I cut my teeth
behind those storied boards,
there was a genius in Jizzah,
that Liquid Swords poster
that as a
cosseted, you know,
18-year-old idiot,
I thought were two different guys who I thought were named genius and gazaa.
And we talked about it to no end on the radio.
Gazza.
Genius and Gaza.
Well, okay, great.
When you said cossita, I thought for a second, I thought you meant, for a second,
I thought you meant corseted university student.
And I was like, you were old school.
You know, ensconced in cotton and soft-handed.
swaddled. Yes.
Yeah. Yeah.
Nicely swaddled.
Sheathed in...
Do you know the word Gauze and the word Gaza?
Sure, comes from Gaza.
Yeah, it comes from Gaza. Incredible.
Every... Your favorite Beatles' least favorite Beatles' song,
unless your favorite beetle is Paul McCartney,
Maxwell's Silverhammer off the Abbey Road LP,
which somehow I hadn't featured on the spin yet,
but they're a lovely album.
And finally,
this is the soundtrack to a Miramax
motion picture
Jackie Brown
one of whose lead characters is named
Max Cherry
played by Robert Forster in the film
I listened to the Elmore
Leonard novel
Rum Punch on which this film was based
in the car on my road trip, the audiobook.
Great read
and the book is, the movie's quite
faithful to it. A little
less Tarantino-ish, as you can imagine, but
Tarantino did allow himself to be
informed by Elmore Leonard
excellent narrative writing and gift with criminal dialogue.
So, you know, we don't love Tarantino around here for a whole bunch of reasons,
but boy, oh, boy, is this a, it's a great movie.
Might be my favorite of this movie, actually.
It's almost disciplined.
Fantastic.
The least subject to Tarantene-esque whims, Bridget Fonda's feet, notwithstanding.
That is the spin today.
Thank you, Adam, for holding court here in the end.
intro and I'll take it from here.
Sounds good.
Very excited to bring on this guest. I've been wanting to have him on the show for a long time
and many of you have been telling us the exact same thing.
So I'm very happy by popular demand and just fantastic to welcome an independent reporter,
the founder of the Grey Zone.
That's right.
We are getting Blumen-Mogged today.
We are Max Maxing.
Please welcome to the Bad Has Barre podcast.
Max Blumen.
all everybody.
How you doing, Max?
Good to see you, too.
Yeah.
How are things in the zone?
The gray zone.
Exciting.
You know,
haven't had many dull days
in the recent weeks,
especially since I got off,
since I got off the bench and
went to Iran into enemy territory,
it's been very interesting.
Right. No more cheering on
anti-humanity regimes from the sidelines.
You went in it right on the court and did it.
And then we'll talk about that.
But on the way back, you were given sort of a rude reception back home.
And you're taking legal action.
You want to tell us a little bit about what happened with DHS or whoever it was who stole your shit?
And what's going on with that?
DHS.
DHS.
Yeah, yeah.
Right.
Well, right now we're suing the Department of Homeland Security on my behalf, the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee and its new president, Janine Eunice, who's an actual free speech warrior, are suing on my behalf.
The Department of Homeland Security Secretary Mark Wayne Mullen, not only for having two first names as one, or for, and also not for, and also not for,
faking his military service and pretending to be a U.S. military veteran when he was simply a
plumber and M.A. fighter, but for violating my constitutional rights, particularly my Fourth Amendment
rights, I also think it's a First Amendment case, but my Fourth Amendment rights, by conducting
an advanced search on my phones after I came back from Iran where I was on this reporting trip,
not only covering the largest funeral in history of Ayatollah Ali Khomeini, but also, you know,
going to the sites of U.S. and Israeli war crimes and documenting what took place, interviewing
witnesses, interviewing officials and academics about this very pivotal week in the history
of this war and of U.S.-Iran relations. So, yeah, I mean, it was a straight-up violation of my rights,
which a federal judge, we had our day in court on the 29th, a federal judge, Leonie Brinkama,
has essentially confirmed that they did violate my Fourth Amendment rights, and she's granted us
discovery. And so we're going to go ahead with that, and the government has to explain on some
level what they did with my phones. What constitutes an advanced search, Max?
Well, yeah, when I came in, they said, just open your phones for us. And they do this to a lot of people.
Yeah. And as you know, a lot of activists, you know, are experiencing this. But just they do this
randomly to people as well. They ask you to just open your phone for them. And they say, oh, we're just
like looking to see if there's any criminal activity or... We're just looking to see if there's any
bands we should be following, like any hot new... But it's like, you know, Barack Obama's, like,
playlist. We're just looking for some tips on pop culture. Yeah. I mean, we're just looking for, like,
I mean, imagine what they could find if you weren't really prepared.
So it's a straight up violation of privacy to begin with.
But that's considered a basic search.
If you give them your passcodes, it's considered a basic search.
If you give them a passcode which deletes the data on your phone, as we now know,
through the persecution of a cop city activist or anti-cop city activist from Atlanta,
If you do that, then your data deletes itself through a feature on the graphene operating system, you go to jail, you face a felony.
He's out on $10,000 bond.
Fucker-
For using digital mace, essentially.
Yes, or for actually invoking your Fifth Amendment rights.
Yes, exactly.
And I refuse to give them my passcodes.
and so they took my phones for an advanced search in which one of the C, Customs and Border Patrol agents said,
we're going to hook up your phone to machines.
And they're going to torture your phone.
Exactly.
Yeah, like we're going to quarter them or like pillory them.
It's like some inquisition.
They're going to bring in like the digital torquimata, which I understand to be the Israeli technology celebrate.
And that's that they conducted very advanced search.
I mean, they tried to gather metadata.
They tried to gather deleted messages, go into, like, location services.
So.
Celebrate good times.
Come on.
There is a precedent.
I mean, hold on.
Cardozo case, phone.
I'm shocked you don't have this encyclopedia stored.
Encyclopedics stored in your memory.
U.S. versus Belmonte Cardozo, which is a very recent case.
Actually, it preceded my case by like two weeks.
The Fourth Circuit ruled that manual phone searches by customs agents are routine
and do not require a warrant or individualized suspicion.
But they didn't rule that advanced searches are routine.
So the Fourth Circuit basically distinguished between,
manual thumb scrolling where if you give them your pass codes and a deep forensic
forensic extraction. Forensic extraction requires suspicion of criminal activity. And there was none
in my case. If there was, they could have gone to a judge and gotten a warrant. And so what
took place while I was in Iran was basically Israel activated its asking.
to try to create the specter of criminal activity on my part in order to get this seizure
without a warrantless seizure. And it looks like they succeeded. And the person at the forefront
of that was Laura Lumer, but you also had Canary Mission, which a lot of people watching the show
are familiar with because they docks Palestine Solidarity activists on campus, try to
really- Including us finally. We got on there finally.
You got, you did. Yep. How'd that go down?
That was great. It was just one of the best days of our entire podcast life. We woke up one morning and all of a sudden we were famous.
Well, yeah, they tried to make me famous by saying I was there in Iran to honor Ayatollah Khomeini and pay homage to him and that I was like marching through the streets with a red flag of revenge and sort of de-journalize me.
But, you know, Canary Mission, they're not American. They're basically a bunch of, a bunch of
Israel First or American kids who went and made Aliya and worked through a foundation front in Jerusalem
called Megamach Shalom, which happens to be, there's an Epstein connection there.
One of their major funders has been the Wexner Foundation of top Jeffrey Epstein associate
Les Wexner, and Jeffrey Epstein, like until his untimely death was a trustee of this foundation.
And they were funding Megamad Shalom, which is the front for Canary Mission, which had no listing,
No one knew where they were based.
And I guess drop site exposed them.
So they were doing this another site called Vice Grad 24, which is this Polish, like anti-woke maga site that's obviously been adopted and is obviously sponsored by Israel was attacking us in the same way.
And then they got a reply from Elon Musk, you know, wow, which he does just to kind of amplify anything he wants people to see.
and Elon just hosted Netanyahu at a Tesla plant,
so it all kind of makes sense now.
Based, very based.
Yeah, very based and very libertarian and anarcho.
And then Laura Lumer was just leading the way,
saying I should be hauled off the flight.
The DHS should order U.S. Marshals to arrest me.
She serves her clients very well.
Yes.
You know, calling for Marco Rubio to strip me of my U.S. passport,
of my U.S. citizenship.
Well, speaking of Rubio,
hear from him because he recently, you know, broadcast some sort of the DHS's overall philosophy
towards this. It's been misquoted in some of the clickbait captions as him saying.
So it's the State Department, right. It's been misquoted as him saying, if you criticize Israel,
we won't let you in, but he'd be perfectly happy for you to infer that. It's clearly the implication.
It's not in the words. Here's what he said. Under President Trump, the United States
will stand with the Jewish people.
We have implemented a vigorous new visa.
It's nice to hear, isn't it, Max?
Finally, an administration's going to stand with us.
We don't like to stand.
I had a bag packed, and then I saw...
Where were you going to go, though?
There's nowhere safe.
You're going to go to Montreal?
Fuck that.
They're burning down kosher restaurants.
It's, you know, it's anti-Semitism.
Lollapuzza everywhere.
Where is Galsad going to go?
Yeah, Gad.
Gad sod or whatever.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
The guy whose AI books get boosted by Elon.
Yeah, the homicidal genocidal author of suicidal empathy.
The policy that will prevent foreign nationals from coming to the United States to foment hatred against our Jewish community.
Yikes.
Our Jewish community?
I know that you want to be white, but has he had a bris?
Well, maybe he just means the Miami Jewish community.
Not that you need one.
Yeah.
We are holding international organizations and nations.
Although it doesn't hurt.
You know, Tony Docapil got two of them.
Accountable for rhetoric against Israel that resurfaces in the manifesto of monsters, like Iran and Sarah's killer.
Manifesto of monsters.
It's my...
Like Iran and Sarah's killer.
What is Sarah's killer?
Is that like a book?
I've never heard of it.
But manifesto of monsters is like my favorite separatorial.
Like Iran and Sarah's killer.
We shouldn't be mocking whatever it is, but we don't know what it is.
But we do see an eventual light at the end of this long tunnel of suffering.
At the end of this long, what?
Tunnel of suffering.
I thought we weren't so into tunnels of suffering.
I thought the tunnels of suffering, I guess he sees a light at the end of the Hamas.
The Jewish people are in a Hamas tunnel.
We see an end to this Crown Heights Tunnel of suffering.
One can imagine the Middle East in which the airs,
Abraham Accords eventually rain.
Oh, good.
So thank you for the opportunity to address you.
So, yeah, I'm actually not even sure if that's the ultimate clip there,
but he did say something about, yeah, if you come to this country to demonize Israel
or to foment anti-Israel, whatever.
So, you know, as a Canadian, I need to pay attention to that kind of stuff.
But anyway, so they did a deep root canal extraction on your data.
You're suing them.
It seems like you're making some headway.
Are you optimistic?
Yeah. And I just realized what he's referring to with Sarah's killer, which is, you know,
these things kind of like go down the memory hole.
This was 2025.
So it's not a recent thing.
This is where he was declared.
He was basically saying that if you oppose Israel, you can't get a visa to come in the U.S.
Or if you criticize Israel.
He didn't say anything about opposing the U.S. or hating America.
but Sarah was one of the two Israeli embassy employees
who were killed by Elias Rodriguez
and I guess she was married to an Israeli guy
and she was one of those American Jews
who becomes Israeli and works for Israel.
So that's one of those clips that's recirculating.
It's not new.
Fortunately for me, go ahead.
Factoid, it's almost impossible
to search Elias Rodriguez's name on Twitter
and there's almost no, there's very little reporting or detail about him that's searchable.
Sounds like there's a rabbit hole we could go down but won't.
Fortunately for me, every time I enter the country on my 01 visa, my alien of extraordinary
visa, so far all they ask me is, oh, wow, that's a visa for special people.
What do you do?
And I don't say I host an anti-Zionist podcast.
I say I write musical theater, but so far there hasn't been any issue.
And, well, he's being prosecuted for terrorism and facing the death penalty right now.
And he stated that the genocide drove him insane, that not, not like clinically insane,
but just watching children be slaughtered all day and that he wanted to make a stand and that he
attacked this event because it was the country that had committed genocide and he thought
that there should be a price to pay.
and he's being accused not only of terrorism, but of hate crime or like targeting people because they're Jewish,
but he was specifically targeting them because they were, in his view, involved in a genocide.
So I think it doesn't matter.
If he hates genocide, according to Jesse Brown, that's a hate crime.
The hatred against the loathing of mass killing of groups of human beings is a kind of hatred,
and it needs to be combated with hate crime laws.
Yeah, so, I mean, I'm glad we got into it.
because it's a fascinating, it's a, it's a pivotal case. It's another pivotal case where the government
is trying to conflate all Jews with employees of a genocidal Israeli government in order to
further retrench the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism into law and use it to actually even authorize
the death penalty. So watch that case. But in my case, you know, we had a, which is not as
consequential and where I am not the criminal or not accused, I'm not accused of any crime or
no, you're the plaintiff. The government is on the defensive and I think it's a really
positive result because a lot of journalists are getting their phone seized, especially under
this administration. And we just saw yesterday or two days ago, Matthew Cole, who's like a way more
mainstream journalist than me, who was freelancing for the New York Times. And he published his piece
about a 2019 raid by Navy SEAL Team 6 in North Korea, a secret raid in which they were to plant an
electronic surveillance device on the shores of North Korea. They got found out accidentally by fishermen.
And so they decided to kill all the fishermen that were there in order to cover their tracks.
They killed them, they shot them, and then they punctured their lungs with knives so they would
go to the bottom of the sea so no one would find them. And he helped expose this in the New York Times.
And now the Trump administration, the DOJ, they sent FBI agents to his door to subpoena him for
his sources on that story. And it also happens that he's writing a book about Jared Kushner's
web of corruption in the Gulf and Israel. So I think that might be a motivating factor as well.
But, you know, you are seeing.
And the judge in my case, Brinkama, cited another case where the Trump administration issued subpoenas for the New York Times reporters who exposed all these security flaws in the $400 billion gift to Donald Trump from Qatar that's now known as Trump Force One and how there were all these cost overruns.
And they, you know, the Trump administration is claiming, oh, they put the president in danger by showing that the, you know,
that this jetliner wasn't as well secured as the 1990s era Air Force One, they had to withdraw
the subpoenas, but clearly there's like an escalation in the attack on the press and that anyone
who interferes with their objectives is getting the fifth degree or getting their first,
fourth and fifth amendment rights violated in my case.
It looks like it's because I pissed off Israel, which really is the true force behind the
thrown here. We're seeing it with breakthrough news too, right? The attack on Rania's outlet.
And yeah, but I'm glad you're pushing back and getting some, making some headway.
But speaking of being employees of a foreign regime, sir, I have to hold you to account
because in preparing this interview, you know, I wanted to find out who is this Max Bluenthal
character. Never mind that I've known him for over a decade and have been following him closely.
I want to see what other people had to say about you. And I found this little item in a nice little
local seaside rag called the Atlantic, which I just assumed was sort of a, you know,
a fisherman's paper like, you know, lobster season reporting and tide charts and all that.
And they had this article here by a guy named James Kirchick, who maybe you can tell us about,
called the American commentator making excuses for Iran.
Max Blumenthal fits into a long, disreputable tradition.
Who is James Kirchick, Max?
Jamie Kirchick, I'd like forgotten about him
since I've been in this
this game or whatever you want to call it
it's been like 15 years
since I started
15 years 17 years
I've been writing I've been
heavy in the game heavy in the games
well 25 years I've been in journalism
for 17 years I've been like openly
criticizing or
or exposing the state of Israel and Zionism in a very direct, sustained way.
And he was one of the first people to come out from Commentary Magazine,
which is just this like has been neocon rag that produced like the pedorices,
to call me an anti-Semite and recycle all of the typical smears,
along with Jeffrey Goldberg, who is a former Israeli prison.
guard who is probably the most influential or prominent, you know, Jewish American journalist in the
print world. And they were both, you know, going at me constantly because they saw me as a threat.
And it's really, you know, I'm Jewish. So you can, you can be a left Zionist. You can be a liberal
Zionist, or you can be a kahanist, as Jeffrey Goldberg was in his youth, and advocate for the
ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, but you can't be an anti-Zionist and work in the media. So their job was to
me out of the media. They totally failed. They tried every trick in the book possible. And now
Jeffrey Goldberg has turned the Atlantic into his own personal Hasbara playpen. And he's recycling
Jamie Kirchik. More like a has-been-a-play pen. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, well, sure. And
they brought Jamie Kirchick back. I don't know where he's been. He spent like 10 years writing
some book on how, like, on gays in D.C., which
got like big blurbs, but actually no one read. And he, uh, and everything else he writes is like
why Iraq was the right move by George W. Bush in 2008 or like Putin's imaginary Nazis.
There are no as a, there are no as of Nazis in Ukraine. Like every single single thing he writes
is just so transparently laughable to anyone who's paying attention or anyone with any critical
faculties. And so, you know, he pumps out this piece about a talk I gave at busports and
politics. Actually, it's crazy that like those, like, that's like sucking off a dead horse.
Like, you know, the, you know, still like trying to, trying to rehabilitate the Iraq war,
the grounds of the Iraq war, or at this point claim that ultra-nationalist bandarists
beating off a dead horse, very good. Thank you, Adam. That's the mixed idiom I was looking for.
you know, that Nazi banderas or the Azov Battalion aren't a major part of the Ukrainian military
or the post-Mydon coup. Anyway, crazy. Yeah. So, yeah, I had forgotten this guy existed. He's like
an unrehabilitated, unreconstructed neocon from the second term of George W. Bush.
Even David Frum or, you know, the most inveterate,
neocons kind of tiptoe around some of their, like they sort of want to leave that ship behind.
This guy sounds fully unreconstructed.
Now, I think he's speaking for David Frum, who's also allowed to infest the Atlantic.
You know, all of these people should have been run out because they're so consistently wrong.
And the consequences of them being wrong is that so many American troops were named
and killed in Iraq.
None of them were killed.
and that the U.S. is now in the most economically devastating geopolitically catastrophic war, possibly in its history.
Yes.
And it's a failing war for Israel that these fuckers have been advocating for decades.
I mean, Jeffrey Goldberg published this bogus piece at the Atlantic back in like 2011.
Was it the Atlantic?
wherever he, I think it was the Atlantic, and it was a cover piece on how Israel was going to
attack Iran imminently, and therefore the Obama administration had to attack before Israel did,
or it would have to follow on Israel's heels. And we saw how that's, that's Rubio logic before Rubio.
Exactly. I mean, we've seen that, we've seen all their logic exploded in the open in the Trump era,
which for whatever reason, they were all against Trump and David Frum as well.
one of these never-Trumpers.
And Jamie Kirchick called for a military coup
against Donald Trump in 2016 in the column
at the LA Times, I believe.
And yet Trump is fulfilling their greatest fantasies.
And it's all blowing up in their faces
and has made them completely hated,
along with Israel, which is sort of not just, you know,
their central political project,
but forms the central pillar of their identity.
Americans have turned against them.
Yeah.
Less than one third of Americans support this war
that they've been clamoring and lobbying for for years for their entire career.
And now they're trying to, this weasel, this former college Republican leader from Yale University,
who's been wrong about everything, is trying to take it all out on me with an article-length tantrum
about a talk I gave at Bus Boys and Poets on 14th and V Street in Northwest around the block from where he lives.
And he didn't even come to my talk.
and he said that he approached me for comment,
I can't find anything anywhere in any email.
No, he claims here, he claims he couldn't stay away.
When I saw that commentator, maybe he was undercover,
maybe you didn't notice him under the fake mustache.
Maybe he was playing.
Well, then why, I mean, we did an hour of Q&A.
We did an hour of Q&A.
Yeah.
And he didn't, I didn't see that, that,
I didn't see any like chipmunk face,
neocon in the crowd get up and ask a question.
Right, let's see what he said.
Where was this hysterical?
neocon chimpunk when we did an hour of Q&A, like confront me to my face.
Yeah. Yeah. I'm looking for an elven in the chipmunks pun. It's not coming to me.
Adam, you're on assignment. When I saw that the commentator, Max Blumenthal, was going to speak in
Washington, D.C. about his recent trip to Iran, I couldn't stay away. I have long been fascinated
with Americans, especially privileged, well-connected Americans, who out of alienation from their
own country show an admiration for distant authoritarian lands.
That's just bad writing.
Oh, it very much is.
You know, these are supposed to be the elite writers and editors at the Atlantic authoritarian
lands.
Like, don't you mean like a regime or a government?
No, there's something inerrant in the, you know, in the, it's in the, it's in the,
it's in the geology of Persia that lends itself to authoritarianism.
It's just the gourmet sobsy is authoritarian.
Alvin, Shimon Perez, and Theodore.
Nicely died out of it.
Thank you so much.
So it is an article length.
It's way overstated.
It's welcome.
I just highlighted a few low lights.
Blumenthal has become part of an ignominious tradition.
He's trying to connect you to someone like Walter Durante,
the Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times correspondent who denied the famine in collectivist
Stalinist
Ukraine
back in the 1930s.
I don't have anything
to say about that
because I know
nothing about that history.
Maybe you do.
He's talking about
the Holodomor
and there's like a
Holodomor monument
in D.C.
Which, you know,
is,
it's like
the neocons
love this monument.
They're so into it
because it allows
them to like
implicate
Russia
as
something on par with Nazi Germany and engage in a form of Holocaust revisionism
where Stalin and Hitler were essentially equal.
All the neocons believe that.
And it's part of their narrative about Ukraine and Russia now.
Timothy Snyder wrote this book called Bloodlands, which channels that narrative.
But in any case, it's so played out to compare.
journalist to Walter Durante. It's so played out. And who is this guy? But Julius Stryker propagandizing
for genocide in Gaza, just look at his Twitter timeline. He's declaring that Palestinians are
responsible for their own genocide openly, and he's trying to claim the moral high ground over me.
Well, because you went out and founded your own outlet whose roster of, whose quote,
roster of contributors includes alumni of Kremlin-backed media outlets.
What are you doing hiring alumni of Kremlin-backed media outlets?
Like who? I didn't click on the hyperlink.
Well, like, my wife, I mean, my wife used to work for RT.
So did my co-host and his wife?
Well, yeah.
No, no, no, no, I'm sorry.
That was AJ Plus. I apologize.
But I'm sure he thinks AJ Plus is Kremlin back.
But go to the previous line.
He appears regularly on Russian, Chinese, Turkish, Iranian, and Venezuelan state-funded media.
Like, is there any content analysis there?
Because I haven't been, I have no problem with going on any of those media outlets.
I consider them counter-hegemonic.
And, you know, it's important to build bridges.
And, you know, someone in my position or I think anyone who's, you know, not expressing a hegemonic
or a neocon position has to often take any platform they can get.
But I haven't been on RT, but maybe like less times than I can count on my right hand this year.
I don't remember the last time.
Like everybody goes on CGTN shows because it's basically, it's a very kind of like mainstream content.
So like I have been on maybe once.
I went on once this year Turkish, like TRT.
But this guy doesn't care if someone goes on.
I-24, you know, or an Israeli state.
I'm just saying it's just factually false that I appear regularly.
I mean, I appear regularly on maybe Judge Napolitano, but that's it.
And my Wikipedia page, it says I'm a regular contributor to RT and Sputnik.
Like, there's no basis for that at this point, but it's like, I'm past the point of arguing.
It's just like they're lazy.
Well, it seems like you're past the point of even commenting because Blumenthal did not respond
to a request for comment on this very, very, very.
On this very serious, fair-minded article, there was no requests for comment?
No, and if he went to my event or he said he couldn't stay away,
then why didn't he approach me at the event where I stayed and I talked to every last person at the event who spoke to me?
I mean, there was a line of people asking for book signings, and I talked to everyone.
He was hiding because he's a coward.
He's always been a little coward, a sniveling little coward.
Maybe he issued his request for comment to the ceiling as he was falling asleep, Max.
If you're here.
Like, I love getting up at events in D.C.
And humiliating neocons with just a question that, like, throws them on their back feet.
But he couldn't even get up and ask a single question.
Right.
And then accusing you of ducking his, his questions.
This is really funny.
I love this little, this little faint at, faint, with an E, at nuance.
Blumenstahl presents himself as a courageous truth teller whose work is too daring for the corporate
media. But mainstream outlets abound with criticism of every aspect of the war, including Israel's
role in it. Indeed, outside the precincts of Trump-friendly media, the daily coverage of the
conflict has been almost uniformly negative, but there's a market for a darker and more insidious
explanation as to how the world works. How true is that? How much do mainstream outlets
abound with criticism of every aspect of the war? What have been the parameters of critical
reporting on the
Iran war, let's say,
inside, you know,
corporate mainstream media acts?
I mean, they sold the war.
So the Atlantic is
a mainstream outlet which has sold the war
for years and years.
Does it abound with criticism of every aspect of the war?
It abounds with criticism of every aspect,
of the only of the aspect of the war
in which,
basically the Atlantic has abounded with criticism of those opposed to the war.
And the mainstream media in January abounded with propaganda painting riots backed by foreign
intelligence services in Iran, which were designed to spur a war or a military intervention
as peaceful protests. They fabricated death tolls.
And, you know, obviously, Kurchick and everyone else who supports this war took interest with me.
But then, you know, he's saying that I am actually pushing a much darker agenda here, which is that a conspiratorial account of Jewish power, American malignity, and the Islamic Republic's righteousness.
Well, I mean, I guess if you want to call that conspiratorial, fine.
But there are conspiracy theories and there are conspiratorial facts.
Yes.
And I don't think anyone can deny that Jewish power was a factor here in the sense of, at least as limited to Zionist influence.
I mean, there are probably more Jews if you poll everyone who identifies as Jewish, then there are probably a high number of Jews who are opposed to the war.
But we're talking about Zionists in the Trump administration.
Yes.
The U.S. has been a maligned force in the region.
How do you deny that?
Yeah.
And the Islamic Republic's righteousness, I really can't go that far.
And this is obviously like neocon drivel.
But Iran as a nation is standing up against a hostile empire that has the most powerful
military in human history.
Yeah.
is the U.S. Israeli Zionist axis, and it's defending its sovereignty.
And there is something righteous about that.
And they do deserve our respect.
And in many ways, they're fighting the same enemy that we are.
And they have their respect of their supposedly, you know, diehard, oppositional populace, right?
So the claim of 40,000 dead in the, was it January protests?
You don't dispute that there were protesters killed.
You have questions about the nature of those protests and who funded them,
and you've spoken about them as riots against police and security and other things,
which there's documentation for.
But when you were at the funeral of Hamini, right,
and you have massive numbers of people, including people,
I've heard them quoted, who oppose the quote-unquote regime,
who nonetheless are proud of the righteous,
stand their country, their nation is taking against the world's hegemon.
Yeah, I mean, they're fighting in many ways the same force that has hacked our government,
the same force that Jamie Kirchik represents and the Atlantic represents.
Jamie Apparachic.
Yeah, which is widely hated in our own country.
I would say most Americans despise, which most Republicans under 40 despise,
which is not advancing any coherent American interest in this war,
and which is destroying our economy.
I mean, I just filled up my tank with gas.
And it was astronomical.
What I paid, Randy Fine, one of the biggest tools of this Zionist apparatus
just was on Newsmax saying,
you know, I know it stinks to pay more than a dollar,
more per gallon at the pump, but we have to wage this war because we can't allow a nuclear
bomb to go off in Washington or Philadelphia.
Like, who believes that?
Nobody believes this shit anymore.
So they don't even know why.
He can't even explain why we're at war.
It's all about just killing the messenger, someone who has become a conduit for opposition
to the war, which I was at Bus Boys.
The room was packed.
It was an overflow crowd.
The owner, Andy Shalel told me, you know, it was one of the longest book signings he's
had. And if Jamie Kirchick was there, I could imagine him like shitting his like little khaki pants
and AEI shirt or whatever foreign policy institute, sweating through his foreign policy
institute shirt. Like that must have been mental torture for him. But I don't even know if he was
there. Again, I didn't see any hysterical neocon chipmunks in the crowd. Well, someone else who
commented on your appearance, I doubt she was there, is this woman. Hasif,
Alinajad, who will watch your video,
but she claims he says,
my flower should be drenched in blood.
And I had no idea what she was referring to.
Like, I'm not deep in Masi, Alinajad,
aka the Persian sideshow Bob, sidehow babet,
you know, lore, excuse me.
Just my phone went off, just a second.
Turn that off.
Sorry about that.
Yeah. Yeah, I'm not deep in the lore of Masi, Alinajad, aka Sideshow Babette,
but he says my flower should be drenched in blood. I'm like, that sounds like a really nasty thing.
Like, what do you mean your flower? Like, is he talking about your virginity? But we'll see what
you meant, because apparently they'll tell us about Massey and her flower.
I'm trying to send you something in the chat on her. But yeah, I mean, she presents it like I'm saying,
she, you know, like, she's obvious, she obviously knows what I'm saying and is trying to spin it
in order to paint it as a call for her assassination or for her to be like viciously brutalized,
which is absurd.
Like, someone asked me a question, I think, about her.
And let's see what you said.
Here's the video.
All right.
Saw so many of the people who were pushing women life freedom as a kind of regime change vehicle,
not like an authentic expression of Iranians,
but as a CIA regime change vehicle,
we saw them discredited with this war,
in particular Masi Alinajad,
who was basically, you know, the lady with the hair,
she's basically a CIA asset,
her whole career and the flower, yeah.
This flower should be drenched in blood
if she were to be truly represented for what she...
So what was the flower?
She was wearing a flower in her hair at the protest?
Well, it also doesn't, like the full context.
is missing, but she always wears a stupid flower in her hair.
Okay, so I'm clearly referring to the stupid fake flower she wears in her hair, which
is probably made of plastic.
And when you say it should be drenched in blood, you're not saying someone needs to
spatter it with her live blood.
No, I'm not saying that she...
If it was to be adequate, if it was to actually be a representation of her actual
views and their consequences, it would be splattered in blood.
It's clearly what you said.
Yes, that like the consequence.
of her advocacy for this war, which is that Iran should be bombed at any cost that she's
constantly calling for the U.S. and she also called for Israel to bomb Iran repeatedly, her former
country. And she got what she wished for and on the first day of the war. And as I said in this
clip, I don't know if she published some deceptive version of the clip. 168 schoolchildren
and their teachers were killed. And in one separate incident on the same day in Lamurid, Iran,
that was in Mina, but in Lambert, an entire group of girls who are about 12 years old playing volleyball were killed when Lockheed Martin tested for the first time its precision guided, new precision guided cruise missile.
And this is what she asked for.
And then Donald Trump came out and said, tonight a great civilization will die, as he called for bombing Iran's oil plants, its bridges, its infrastructure, civilian sites.
And Masi Al-Linajad said, you know, actually we're not calling for killing Iranian civilization.
She had to pull back.
And it was at that moment that she was discredited.
She stopped appearing on CNN with its resident Jewish supremacist, Zionist,
Enforcer, Jake Tapper and Dana Bash.
She sort of disappeared.
And that was, and so, yes, she should be wearing everywhere she goes, a bloody flower
with the blood of the children of Mina, with the blood of the,
residents of this West Tehran neighborhood that I visited that had been completely bombarded.
And like a very long city block I visited was completely destroyed and it was all residential
homes. And the people told me that one family of 12 was killed in one strike.
40 people were killed there. One building was just like a ravine, an apartment building.
An entire gym was blown up. I mean...
Can you tell us about the synagogues you saw bombed?
Well, I'll tell you about that after I finish my point about her.
Sorry, yeah.
This is, you know, she's reappeared to attack Zoran Mamdani, which means she's like on the kind of like, more the Israeli payroll.
Traditionally, she'd been funded through Voice of America, which is the U.S. government's, you know, main broadcast arm and, you know, radio free liberty, radio, radio Europe was initially set up by the CIA.
So there isn't a U.S. intelligence tie in.
She was described in a 2009 State Department intelligence cable as strictly protect when she was working as a journalist in Iran,
which means she was a U.S. government informant or asset.
And Jamie Kirchik attacked me in his piece for calling her a U.S. intelligence asset.
But that's what she's been.
But now she's kind of been burned out.
She's like a spent force.
So she reappears in this hysterical and kind of in an unintentionally hilarious video screaming
about how city bikes are not being well maintained by Zoran Mamdani.
And she looks like a mentally unwell person on the street corner of New York.
And then she recently showed up in Spain to attack Pedro Sanchez, which is also part of
Israel's agenda right now to attack the Spanish government, whether through a hybrid warfare,
attack of migrants via Morocco or through her. So it's pretty obvious what's going on here. And
she took my words out of context intentionally. And I think everyone saw through it just as, you know,
look at the replies to the Kirchik article. Look at the replies to the Atlantic, which didn't even
use an image of me at this talk. They used an image of me from like 12 years ago because I like
maybe looked more radical or more like a militant in the picture they used, which just shows
how deceptive they're...
Is this the one they used?
The one there?
No.
No.
I just wanted to show you a few other reactions you might have missed.
I thought these were kind of sweet.
Every time Max Blumenthal tweets, Gerbil's gains of follower.
It's kind of, I got, it looks like a Morris Sendai.
I mean, it's clearly AI, but it does look like it's hand drawn by like a children's
illustrator.
I don't know what that thing on the side says.
drink the E-E-E-D?
Is that just an AI typo?
This is some AI bot.
Yeah.
Israeli bot thing, but it looks kind of anti-Semitic.
Also, I never cross my legs like that.
Doesn't it look like it's right out of where the wild things are, though?
It does kind of have a Sendak quality to it.
Or Max in the Night Kitchen, actually.
There's a Morris Sendak thing with your name in it, a book.
Where the Wild Things are, he was named Max.
Oh, Max. I'm sorry. That's right.
This is like one of the more like
Mori's sendback
Oh my God Adam fantastic
Yeah it's one of the more like off-Broadway
Sendak titles like
Presto and Zesto and Limbo Land
And here's
This is fine
First we had Hanoi Jane
Now we have Tehran Max
Well I can't wait for the Grey Zone
Jazzercise videos
Wait you know what
Notice how they
I can't remember that
That photo
But they took a photo
of me from a long time ago because I'm wearing all black, so it makes me look like an Iranian
official. Right. Yes. Like they're really trying, they've gone through like my entire history of
photos in order to find something that implicates me. Like when Canary Mission put out, it's,
it's bulletin on me being in Iran. They managed to find some photo of me from like 15 years ago or
14 years ago at a protest against one of the assaults on Gaza. And I was wearing a,
shirt that has like Felix de Katt going like that and it says Palestine is real. And it's like
one of the only examples of me wearing like Palestine paraphernalia. So they had to use that to make
me look like an activist. But they're clearly like they're trying and there's clearly like
a team working on this. Yes. ISIS and Hamas and Al-Qaeda, famous for wearing Felix the cat
paraphernalia. We're going to take a quick break.
in just a second, but I want to ask you before you, because I sort of jumped the gun on this question,
but you did make this incredible trip to Iran, which you've spoken about elsewhere on the gray zone.
I really recommend your recent live streams with my brother Aaron. The last one in particular was
fantastic. What did you see on the ground in terms of, you know, places, well, let me just ask you
straight up. You saw some bombed synagogues. This fact just blows my mind when it comes to
Israel's commitment to Jewish life in the Middle East.
Yeah, yeah, I saw the evidence of a major anti-Semitic attack, a hate crime.
Jesus.
Called the ADL.
It's called the Rafinia Synagogue.
It's in central Tehran, which is, you know, an area which historically has had many Jews in their,
I've visited, for example, one of the leaders of the Jewish community there in 2025,
Dr. Hamayun Samea, who is a member of parliament in Iran.
The Jewish community in Iran is guaranteed one seat in parliament.
And this was a 50-year-old synagogue, which you could see remnants of it still had its wooden ceiling intact, but most of it had been bombed.
And I don't know how you bomb that synagogue or claim that you weren't targeting it and didn't know that that synagogue.
was right there where you wanted to drop a 500-pound or larger bomb, which Israel did.
It was in a very densely populated area, and there was an apartment building next to it
in which two university professors were killed.
But it was unclear to me what the target could have been except this synagogue.
And it's very clear to me, this is my view, that Israel,
wants to frighten the 10,000 strong Jewish community in Iran into leaving the last stable
and relatively intact Jewish community in the Islamic world and go to Israel, where they have
been basically paid and incentivized to leave. I mean, members of the Jewish community in Iran
told me, you know, they get offered tens of thousands of dollars through the Jewish agency and other
like wealthy American Jews to leave, but they don't want to do it because they love being there.
Did you say it's a minority of 10,000 people?
It's about 10,000.
Well, then you would need 10 Iran's to make up for the shortfall of 100,000 Israelis leaving
this past year.
But of course, this is not new for Israel.
We know from Avishalim and all kinds of reporting that they did this in Iraq in the 50s
in Morocco.
I mean, there's a 0% chance that they do not have a comprehensive map of every Jewish
institution in the Middle East. They know where these synagogues are. Totally. Totally. And Kurchick
in the Atlantic said that, you know, he just said, Max Blumenthal dared to say that this was an
intentionally targeted strike. He dared to say that Israel would bomb a synagogue. Like, yes,
have you heard of what Israel did in Iraq in the early 1950s? Did you know that Israel bombed
intentionally the only synagogue in Beirut in 1982, which the Palestine Liberation Organization
was protecting and which was sheltering Lebanese, Jews, and Christians at the time?
I mean, what is Israel's response to any attack on Jews outside of Israel?
Like, for example, the attack on the kosher supermarket in Paris in 2015, Netanyahu shows up and tells Jews to leave,
leave your country.
They enjoy any anti-Jewish violence.
They lust for it because it's the only way to advance Zionism
and legitimize or justify Israel as a sanctuary for Jews
when in fact Israel is the most dangerous place in the world for Jews to be.
As I've said, Israel is an anti-Semitism.
And maybe you've said it too.
I've heard you say similar things.
It's an anti-Semitism factory that runs on its own effluent.
So it creates, you know, its runoff is anti-Semitism.
And that also becomes the fuel for it.
So they produce the thing that they then consume.
It's a human centipede of Jew hate.
Absolutely.
I mean, what would it do without the specter of anti-Semitism or anti-Jewish hatred?
What would its supporters do?
What would its supporters do without an occupation?
What would its supporters do if Israel were suddenly somehow at peace,
which contravenes everything we know about the logic of Zionism?
They wouldn't have anything to do.
They need to keep all these American Jewish boomers who have racist attitudes about Palestinians and Muslims.
They need to keep them engaged, donating money.
They need to give them something to do.
And if they don't have anything to do because Israel is no longer embattled
or there's no longer the specter of anti-Semitism
and Jewish life is normalized,
then their identity just begins to melt away
and they have nothing
because so many of them aren't ultra-Orthodox.
They're not reading Torah.
They're not celebrating Simha Torah.
This is what makes them feel Jewish.
Bill Akman, he didn't rap Tafelan
until after October 7th,
not once in his life.
You know, does Jamie Kirchik go to Shoal?
I don't think so.
So this is what gives them some sense of identity and meaning.
And Israel, therefore, has to be at war constantly.
Yes.
Fear is the, well, fear is your only God, as Zach Delaroca said.
But our other God on this podcast, besides fear, is sponsorship or at least paying the bills
or at least whatever, the ins and outs of fucking ad breaks.
So we have to take a quick break here.
everyone please stick around we will be right back this episode is brought to you by hala palestine that's right guys we finally did it we got an ad and i'm i'm very excited about this one because uh this is a great company the people of palestine
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And speaking of welcome when we were in Jordan, the hospitality of our Palestinian
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And now back to our regularly scheduled program.
And we're back. Welcome back. It's Bad Hasbara with me, Daniel Matte, here,
co-hosting with myself. I am my own co-host today and my special guest, thank God, is Max Blumenthal
from the Gray's On News. How you doing, Max? Good to see you. Good to see you. Again, you're looking
well since I saw you 30 seconds ago. I know. Time flies, right? Feels like just the same minute.
I got a just a grab bag of a few things to react to. I know you're short on time. We really
appreciate your time. Just some, there's been some incredible stuff, including
something in the English language from Yoav Galant. I've never heard him speak English before. I thought
he was like Smotrich and doesn't speak English, but he actually does. And here's him telling a
touching story. I don't know if you've seen this. He's telling his origin story, really. This is the
story of his childhood in Jaffa. And I wanted to get your commentary on it and what it reveals.
I was born in Jaffa, in Ajami and Jabilia, old Arabic places. But I'll tell you an interesting story.
How old?
Like, how recently Arabic were they?
I don't think I told it to any kind of media in the past.
So this really feels like a confession.
And if you look at like the lighting too, that light overhead,
you want it to be swinging, like in a police interrogation room or something like that.
I don't know what compelled him to tell this story.
But it's like...
I didn't see this.
Okay, this is, I'm excited for you to see it.
My father finished the first phase of the war.
His family was supposed to arrive to Israel after the declaration of independence.
So he went to see if he can find a place for them to live.
He went to Jaffa together with his commander.
He was a sergeant, he went with his lieutenant.
And they are walking in the streets.
because they were directed by the IDF at the time
to find some places
because this was the situation.
Most of the Arabs left the area, like 100,000.
They just left.
100,000 people just left.
They were scared.
They were frightened.
Their leaders told them to leave.
They were skittish.
5,000 or so were still living in Jaffa.
And his lieutenant said to him, he pointed to him and he said, you see this house?
The second floor is yours.
He just forgot to tell him that in the house, in the second floor,
there were living two Arabic brothers that older family escape,
but they stay to preserve the shops that they have in the market.
So for the first five, six years of my life, my...
Do you know who he's talking to?
That's Dan Signore.
Who's that?
He's like one of the Israel lobby's main media personalities.
He's been involved with APEC.
He was an advisor to Mitt Romney.
He's married to Campbell Brown,
who is the former CNN personality.
Wow, okay.
So what do you make of this story so far
before we continue with the touching...
Okay, I just keep it going.
Okay.
When parents and their family were living in the same place, in the same apartment.
So sort of like Yaakov, the settler, and Mohamed al-Kurd's family.
Just kind of, you know, splitting it down the middle and sharing, sharing and sharing alike.
It's like a one-leased solution.
Together with two Muslim Arabic brothers.
And they turn to be good friends.
And we were sharing the same kitchen and the same toilets.
Everything was shared.
They have their rooms.
We have our rooms in their home.
They have their rooms.
We have our rooms in their home.
It's kind of a good metaphor.
It really is.
Now, this is where it gets really literally sweet.
Brothers used to sit me on his knees and give me a licish,
sweets. One of them died after a while, and the other one asked my father to take him to
Romala after the Six-Day War, so he came unified with his family. That's the story.
So, yeah, I never knew that the soft side of Yoav Galant, who slaughtered 20,000 children in Gaza,
many of them the great and great great-grandchildren of the 100,000 who are ethnically cleansed from Yaffa,
who were literally thrown into the sea under Haganak canons.
This is an insane but very representative story of the cognitive dissonance of the mainstream Zionist mentality,
especially those who are closer to the founding generation.
Yes.
And Galant is telling this story because he is an ICC-wanted war criminal.
There's a warrant for his arrest.
He wants to show that he's less genocidal than the current Israeli leadership.
He's no longer part of the government.
Israel Katz, the defense minister now is just openly genocidal.
So he's trying to rehabilitate his image and he winds up revealing,
I mean, anyone outside of the hermetic scientist world
and the deranged mindset that upholds it
will see this as disgusting and shocking.
Like they just gave the second floor of this family's home
to a Jewish family, and they were nice enough to let them live there,
but they really have no claim to the title.
What happened was in 1949 or 1950,
the Knesset passed a law called the absentee property law,
and anyone who happened to leave their home during this war that was imposed on them in 47-48
immediately loses their title to their home.
Same thing with Palestinians who weren't in their homes in June, 1967.
Yeah, they pass a law also that anyone who becomes a refugee is no longer allowed inside the...
the so-called borders of Israel and they passed a law of return, which means that you and I
have more right to any piece of property between the river and the sea than a Palestinian who
has lived there since the time of, I don't know, the apostles. So I spent, I lived continuously
in what is now known as Jaffa for like a month and a half or two months when I was working.
on Goliath. I learned a lot about the place. There are still, like, there are the ruins of
homes that were destroyed in the Nakhpa that are still kind of present there, but most of them were
buried in an area once known as Manchia. That was the main residential area by dunes. There are these
grassy dunes, and that's to conceal the ruins of the homes that were bulldozed and detonated
after Yaffa was ethnically cleansed. Jaffa was the main kind of port
area and economic engine of mandate era Palestine. And it was incorporated into the Tel Aviv municipality
in order to make it like a ghetto and a backwater. And the Palestinian population has been
largely reduced to selling hummus to Jews who come in on the weekends. The Abu Lafia family,
they run a lot of the stands, the like food stands and restaurants there. And they, you know,
have to be as apolitical as possible.
There's a guy named Sami Shahada,
who's part of the Balad Party,
which is fairly,
I think they've basically been banned by the Israeli Knesset.
He would give Nakhpah tours.
And, you know,
I really recommend anyone who can go there
to take a Nakhvah and learn this history.
And you'll see that there are these homes that are very luxurious now.
They're like villas.
And these were the original,
Palestinian homes that were taken over by the Galant family,
and they have been renovated by international French-Jewish architects
and sold to millionaires because they're these seaside homes.
They're basically ethnically cleansed homes.
Even homes of Palestinian artists, their art studios, have been taken by Jewish-Israeli artists.
And one thing I learned from Sami Shahara on this tour was that
the Chuck Norris film
where it's supposedly based in Beirut
where he mows down PLO terrorists
and it was one of these like it was made by Israelis
it was actually filmed in Jaffa in the 1980s
because so much of the area in the 80s was still destroyed
from the Nakhpa that it actually resembled civil war era
Beirut.
So that's that's what produced
in ICC wanted genocidal war criminal
of Yoav Gala.
Well, the licorice sweets line about, you know,
one of the brothers used to
bounce me on his knees and feed me
lycorish sweets.
I think I, I think I detected a lycarish
sweet in his mouth when he talked about
ain't chasmal,
ain't o'hel,
ain't maim,
a coal, sagur.
Everything is closed, no water, no electricity.
But it's like uncannily,
like a former member,
a former leader of the clan
being like, yep, mammy, you know, we, she bounced me on my knee.
She was, you know, I suckled it at the teat of a, of a colored woman.
And, you know, I had a very good relations with her until I, until I got grown enough to
say the N-word.
And then that seemed to bother her a little bit.
But before that, we got along real great.
Like Hillary Clinton was, remember when she talked about having servants at the governor's
mansion, like Black slaves in Arkansas.
Which explains why she wasn't in no ways tired because she didn't do any of the work.
So that's Galant.
I keep hot sauce in my purse everywhere I go.
Exactly.
That's Galant treating us to a touching story from his childhood.
Let me play you one more thing.
It's very, very quick.
I would love to get your commentary on it.
We have a Mazel Tov to go out to a European who's just been given a massive.
honor in the West Bank, or I should say, Shomron.
Here's Gert Wilders, who I hope you can tell us a little bit more about who's being
giving a massive honor.
An appreciation.
So this is Yossi Dagan of the government of Samaria.
You know?
I can't hear, I can't.
Yeah, go ahead.
At this point, he looks like, he's got like a, he's got like a.
a popadour.
Yeah.
Yeah, he looks like David Lynch.
Yeah, he looks like an albino, David Lynch.
Well, check this honor out.
David Lynch never got Gert Weldon out.
Yeah, exactly.
My citizens, the pioneers who built Samaria.
The pioneers who built Samaria, my citizens.
Right, citizens.
to present you with this honorer citizenship, with deep love and appreciation.
Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Gilgwriters, the honorary citizen of Samaria.
So there's Girt Welders holding his plaque, a bouquet of flowers.
No doubt, fresh cut, freshly cut from a Palestinian garden that morning,
and receiving an honorary citizenship to what I guess.
guess, apparently I didn't realize, is a sovereign state with its own citizenship papers,
Samaria, the northern part, I believe, or is it the southern part of the West Bank?
Well, I mean, it's all, it's, the sort of Islamophobic axis is cemented through Israel.
And Wilders and his party have always been supported by Israel,
Wilders was, or by pro-Israel elements in Europe,
and Wilders was sort of like the first generation of European anti-Muslim leaders who,
you know, they basically took the tradition of the far right in Europe and channeled it
into pro-Israel support.
You saw the same thing happened in the UK with the EDL.
Like in the UK, traditionally the far right was actually anti-Semitic, and the British
National Party was pretty, what's Nick Griffin? I mean, he's pretty openly anti-Jewish.
They were banned, and then the EDL comes in, the English Defense League, and they're waving
Israeli flags, and they're getting support from wealthy pro-Israel figures. The same thing was
happening in Holland with Wilder's PVV, which kind of came on the heels of the assassination
of Pim Fortune, who was emerging as a, like a potential.
leader, a potential Dutch leader until there was this very strange assassination.
He was openly gay.
He was an immigration restrictionist, but he was also anti-NATO and was taking on an anti-EU,
more anti-EU.
He was a Euro-Sceptic and he was more of a threat to the prevailing order and he took on a lot
of the-
I too am agnostic on the question of whether or not Europe exists.
I'm very skeptical.
Yeah.
Oh yeah.
Well, in any case, Wilders, you know, he just comes out.
of nowhere and becomes like kind of a kingmaker working through various coalitions and put but
always putting Israel at the center of his anti-Muslim hysteria. He called for banning the Quran,
like basically banning that as a book went through all sorts of scandals and now he's sort of
like on the margins. He helped collapse the last government in 2025.
and I had forgotten about him.
There was one,
the last time I really paid attention to him
was when he appeared at this really strange event in Texas.
Do you remember that?
The draw Muhammad contest in Garland, Texas.
Draw Muhammad contest?
Yeah, well, it's kind of like you're not supposed to draw,
you're not supposed to, it offends Muslims.
Right, right, right, right.
If you, you know, show the Prophet Muhammad as like a person.
Right, just sweet Charlie.
Yeah, and people,
were drawing him as a very profane figure at this gymnasium in the middle of Texas,
and they were trying to provoke Muslims and get Muslims to anger them.
Gert Vilders was the speaker there, and so he ensured that there would be like tactical level
security, like basically teams of armed cops outside this gym.
Pam Geller was also appearing there, and the FBI reaches out to two,
mentally disturbed former prisoners who were...
Hold on. This is getting very Sumerian now.
This is getting very West Bank.
Yes. And they reach out to them and they...
And these are guys who are talking about, you know, they're into ISIS.
They're interested in ISIS. They want to do something.
They basically tell them, in the words of the FBI agent, tear up Texas.
And they tell them to go to this gym and to shoot it up.
The FBI actually follows them.
in a car to the gym.
I'm sorry.
An FBI
an FBI
sends me my instructions.
Mess with Texas.
Mess with Texas.
If you're watching this right now
and you don't believe me,
just look it up.
Garland, Texas,
you know,
tear up Texas FBI.
Even 60 minutes covered this.
The FBI follows them in a car
to make sure that they reach the point.
They get out.
It sounds like the tactical SWAT teams
were waiting for them.
As soon as they get out of the car and open fire, they're both gunned down.
And then Gert Wilders and Pam Geller kind of consolidate their phony reputation as free speech heroes, free speech warriors who are just standing up against this religion of hate.
But the whole thing was like a state security operation, almost a false flag you could call it.
And that's that that kind of intrigue has followed Wilders everywhere and behind it is Israel.
guiding his career and propelling him forward
to divide Europeans who are facing one common enemy,
which is the banker class.
Well, congratulations to him for getting his honorary citizenship
in the country and society to which he obviously rightfully belongs.
Well, they consider him more of a Jew than us.
Absolutely.
I mean, that's what happens if Zionism wins,
the Israeli interior minister decides who's a Jew.
Wow.
That is fucking grim and dark and true.
And that's why we have this podcast,
and that's why we're so grateful to guests like you.
Max Blumenthal from the Grey Zone News,
thank you for joining us.
Where can people find you?
Your books are Goliath and the management of savagery.
I'm forgetting anything else?
Well, we have a lot of material at the Grey Zone
for people who enjoy for free.
without ads.
You don't have to subscribe to anything.
And everybody watching this probably knows to find me at the Grey Zone,
except for Jamie Kirchick, who didn't apparently send me a single email asking for comment
and knew to find me at this Bus Boys and Poet event but didn't approach me.
But everyone else can feel free to approach me at whatever the next event is.
And how's that Mattee kid working out for you over at the Grey Zone?
I know he's a new hire.
He's good. Well, he's a new author. He's a new author. So we, you know,
he has. We will be very happy to have him back on, but only when he fucking finishes and puts the book out.
You're on notice, bro. Got to get it done. I've read some of it. It's fantastic. And I appreciated your, it was very touching the way you, you shouted them out on the last. I could tell you were proud of him too.
Well, now everyone can see, like, it's about Ukraine and everyone can see it's part of the same program.
Yes.
Like the Ukrainian government under Zelensky's openly trying to expand the war to get the U.S. directly involved by attacking Iran and to merge this war on Russia with the war with Iran.
So those are the stakes.
And if you want to know the background, read Aaron's book whenever it comes out.
Their blood are bullets.
It's called.
Max, thanks again so much.
We'll put all the links in the description below.
Really appreciate your time.
Thanks a lot for having me.
Good seeing you.
And that was our interview with Max Blumenthal.
What'd you think, Adam?
I mean, just a guy who has been in places that I will never set foot and has a deep understanding of the actual motivations that often get misconstrued willfully or otherwise in the press.
Yeah, and it's funny because people call him a conspiracy theorist.
One thing he has is the conspiracy theorists' encyclopedic knowledge of the connections between different, you know, government cutouts and their representatives and who journalists used to work for and funding and all that.
But that's also known as deep journalism.
You know, Cy Hirsch knows that kind of shit.
Yeah, I think it's a cabal of shadowy Jews that are conspiring to say that he's a conspiracy theorist.
I think that's right.
it's mostly shadowy Jews who are saying it, shadowy Zionists who are casting shadow on this
upstanding Jew.
Yeah, no, I really appreciate his breadth of knowledge, his sense of humor, and yeah,
also just the fact that he will go places, whether it's Iran or whether it's a fucking
courthouse to sue the trumpet administration, he pushes the story forward with his journalism.
I think that's the key.
I mean, there was a clip of him on Pierce Morgan recently
where Pierce tried to nail him on, you know,
I don't think your objective.
And Max said, of course I'm not objective.
Of course I'm not objective.
And neither are you.
I'm just explicit about my views.
And the reporting he does sometimes becomes part of the story,
but always it pushes the story forward.
And like Jasper, who we had on last week,
someone who's not afraid to
who wants to make an actual difference with this journalism
and what's objectivity just
giving cover to the villains of the story
that's right it's it's policing
and imposing a
strict regime or regimen of nuance
upon critics of power
and a strict
regimen of
softball
allowances and
lenience and
anything goes when it comes to
mealy-mouthed platitudes
and repetitions of the things
that power needs to keep saying
mindlessly in order to keep people
subscribe to it. That was a run-on sentence
and a half.
It's okay, I'll insert some commas
in the transcript.
Excellent.
What's up next?
What's up next? Well, I had other things
I wanted to play today, and I'm really glad
you're here because we can't.
There's some things I, you know, when Matt's away, I think to myself,
oh, should we save this for when Matt's back?
Fuck that.
You snossed, you lost, bitch.
You're gone, all right?
You prioritize time with your daughter.
You're not going to get to see Alan Dirtuitz blaming Jews for all these problems.
Here we go.
I have to tell you that the real problem is our Jews.
All right.
Now, that's a bumper in itself.
I have to tell you that the real problem is,
are Jews. I mean, that's, come on, that's evergreen. That's an evergreen Hanukkah Bush right there.
I want to know who's styling him. It's quite a fit. Yeah. You know that picture of Max in all black
that we showed? Sure, yeah. They look like they have the same stylist. He's looking pretty,
yeah, he's looking pretty tight. His personal shopper at Nordstrom's is doing something.
Yeah, Nordstrom's rack, probably.
Jews in the Upper West Side, Jews in the Upper East Side, Jews in Park Slope, the Jews who voted for Mum Dani.
Remember, 7,000 Jews voted for Adolf Hitler in 1932. Most of them ended up in the gas chambers.
And these idiot Jews, they have no idea what they're doing.
That's another bumper, these idiot Jews. So he's comparing the Jews of the Upper West Side, Upper East Side, and Park Slope, all the places where Jews went from Mom
Donnie, he's comparing them to the 7,000 Jews who voted for Adolf Hitler in 1933.
Wow, look, we know how to pick a winner.
What can you say?
You know, our bookie loves doing business with us.
Actually, hates doing business for us because our bets always pay out.
What do you make of this so far?
It's just this sort of sour grapes from a certain subset of like wealthy boomer stock market Democrat Jews that have accepted as orthodoxy this this organization of who votes for whom and you know if you're Jewish you have to vote for you.
the establishment Democratic candidate, and the Democratic candidate of record will always have this
set of views. And he's seeing that orthodoxy and that order start to crack apart as his generation
dies and as there's more media available to people. So, you know, the things that used to be
taught all the garbage of like, you know, a land without a people for a people without.
of land, there was nobody there, we made the desert bloom, all of those sort of marketing
pieces of Hasbara have started to fall away in the face of seeing soldiers from the IDF
celebrating with Palestinian hostages blindfolded in the background and, you know,
flipping birds and the photos.
Yeah, and posting like retirement videos where they reflect nostalgically on the
highlights from their service.
This one woman posted, I saw it.
I don't have it here.
I don't want to show it to you.
But, you know, basically, it's like an Instagram real of, like, the best of, you know,
like, with, like, I don't know, like Green Day time of your life playing or some stupid
shit like that.
Oh, no, you know this?
It's like a sped up version of the, that stupid Miomyo, West Virginia, Pekin Pie, you know,
Stomp Klanm makes me want to fucking die song.
you know, with the whistling.
Oh, Alabama, Arkansas.
Yeah.
Your mom is your paw or whatever.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, I mean, I think, but what it really represents is this anxiety and upset that, you know,
it's like, can it just stay the same until I die?
Like, it's kind of offensive to me that, like, I should have to learn the new math, that I should
have to stop living in a world where Hasbara is the watchword of the entire country.
It's this upset that anything would ever change.
Like just give me my one last stock market rally and Netanyahu until I die.
And then things can change after I'm gone.
Yeah, absolutely.
And in this case, you know, even voting for the Democratic Party candidate wasn't a good
heuristic because you're supposed to vote for the disgrace democrat who's running as an
independent to try and as an emergency uh you know as an emergency way of cutting off the actual
democratic nominee zoran at the at the knees um vote blue no matter jew very good you know people say
jews are smart yeah they're smart jews some of the dumbest people i've ever met are jews from
park slope and upper east side and upper west side all right hold on hold on i'm sorry
I'm sorry, it's time for this.
There's no anti-Semitism in the United States.
A-2, Norm, A-2.
Did you see Norm's appearance on Hassan Piker, by the way?
I did.
Speaking of Fits, Norm looked like he's about to hit a key party in that outfit.
He was looking, him and Stavv could be like two wild and crazy guys.
Yeah, Norm, Stavv, John Gabris, the
the, you know, Aloha shirt brigade.
Yeah, yeah.
I haven't watched the whole thing.
I need to, but I tweeted about it.
What did I say?
I thought it was pretty smart.
Let me read it.
Let me read it.
See what people think.
Of, you know, talking about how he says,
I'm kind of ruining the fun.
The fun now is everyone thinks they're so brave and courageous attacking Israel.
Well, I think it's perfectly obvious.
it takes exactly zero courage right now to attack Israel.
We have to be clear about the nature of our own society
and not pretend as if if Israel hadn't come along,
we would have been on a virginally white path.
Yeah, yeah, like, fine, you went to the Fugazi show
when it only costs $4.
That's what I'm saying.
And everybody else isn't punk anymore.
That's what I'm saying, right?
I tweeted this.
I increasingly sense that Norm, bless him,
is falling short of his own analytical,
analytical factual discipline standard.
He's talking about people,
to remain analytically and factually disciplined.
He said that, right?
And I think he falls short of that standard.
While always provocative and entertaining,
conclusions like this strike me as reverse engineered
from subjective misgivings and dismay
about the shifting currents of Palestine discourse,
perhaps coming from a personal place he's not being candid about
or might not even realize his operating.
So saying, I was doing it when there was no audience for the message
would be perfectly accurate and fair.
I mean, he's earned to that.
But saying it takes literally no bravery,
and that's perfectly honest, perfectly obvious, sorry,
as if no one, even relatively invulnerable figures like Tucker,
faces major consequences,
is broad-brushed dismissiveness that amounts to what exactly?
What's the call to action beyond taking things with a grain of salt?
I just really felt like...
Norm is the velvet underground of Jewish anti-Zionism
in that everyone who saw Norm went out and started their own anti-Zionism,
and maybe not going to get the credit.
Right.
And some of them might, depending on your taste, have made improvements or elaborations upon the original template.
Like, you go back and listen to Velvet Underground and it's cool.
You know, it's great.
It's epic.
It's the foundation.
But that doesn't mean that, you know, REM didn't add valuable things or the New York Dolls didn't add valuable things or whoever the fuck else claims Velvite.
I was going to say young and hot, you know, Hassan.
is sort of the Lana del Rey of anti-Zionism to Norm's Velvet Underground.
That's, that is a stretch that I can't even make because I don't know Lana Del Rey well enough.
I will say that my favorite part of it, though, I mean, the part where, you know, Norm always comes through,
especially in a long interview.
And when Hassan's trying to talk about how, you know, Zionists are making it harder to combat the scourge of anti-Semitism,
Norm just essentially does his, there's no anti-Semitism in the United States.
it's bumper, but elaborated and he, you know, and Hassan is visibly uncomfortable because
part of what Hassan has had to do in order to remain plausibly respectable with the people
who mean him nothing but bad faith is to profess, and I'm sure it's sincere, I think
Hassan's a very sincere guy, that he really cares about anti-Semitism, sees it as a problem,
and discounts it and disclaims it, not discounts it, disclaims it, and denounces it.
And Norm just isn't having it.
Norm just like, what anti-Semitism?
It's not an obstacle.
It's also you experience the world
in the context of your own life.
And if you're thinking about the level
of sort of institutional instantiated anti-Semitism
of 50 years ago,
it is a lot different and a lot more structural,
you know,
than now where it, you know,
you might see some dipshit podcast or shooting his mouth off.
Right.
Always will be a man by the,
way on you know on youtube like yes that is a different and uh less structural sort of anti-semitism
it's not about like not being able to get a job at a white shoe law firm or something but uh well and
ironically still anti-semitism there is still such a thing as anti-semitism well there's anti-jewish
sentiment there's anti-jewish beliefs thoughts and rhetoric but i what i one of the things i
I appreciate about Norma's he wants to retain a definition of anti-Semitism
that has something to do with structural impediments.
And what he's saying is, you know, the kind of anti-Semitism that Hassan's concerned about
might be more in your daily face because your phone is in your daily face too much.
You know, like you might be seeing a lot of online bullshit.
But in terms of like what is going to stop a Jewish person from participating fully in this society,
nothing. And in fact, there are some cases in which being Jewish is an asset. And I think that's a,
I think I like that making that point that, okay, if you want to talk about like online
sentiments and resentments, sure, but why, why is that a primary concern? I, you know, I don't
know that I was prepared to answer that. So that's why there was sort of a, no, it's a rhetorical. Yeah, it's a
rhetorical question.
Fair.
I'm not trying to challenge you.
Let's see what else Dershowitz had to say.
But it's appropriate that we're talking about Norm when we're talking about Dershowitz
because of their history.
I understand where their own interests lie.
Amain an needly, mealy, if I am not for myself, who will be for me, if I am for myself alone,
what am I?
That's Hillel.
You don't need Hillel to understand that any Jew who votes from Mandami is a self-hater.
I'm surprised he...
Mondavi,
Robert Mondavi.
The caption said
Mondavi,
he said Mandami.
Let's see.
It's so easy to get this right
and they just refuse.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Let's see what he actually says.
Then that any Jew who votes from Mandami is...
Yeah, Mandami.
I am surprised
that he included the second part
of Hillel's
injunction or Hillel's Maxim
that Zionist love
if I am not for myself who will be for me
but the second one is if I'm only for myself
what am I
I? I really only know him
from his work in the sandwich field
the Hillel sandwich?
Yes. That's when you take
the matzo with the
Moror, the horser, the horseradish and the
Choroset, the apple walnut thing.
Yeah, exactly. I know
his sandwiches and I know his
campus Jewish organizations. Otherwise, I'm not as familiar with his work. Yes, I know, I know his sandwiches
and his, uh, his, we are scared small being vigils.
The self-hater. You can't do that. You can't vote, uh, for somebody who marginalizes Jews,
discriminates against Jews, hates Israel. Yes, you can. Falls Israel a genocidal state falsely.
Uh, no self-respecting. I, sorry, this one thing, uh,
This one little thing.
But when people deny the genocide,
what's the word for what's going on right now?
Right.
What do you call it?
What is the difference between a genocide and this?
Well, boy, George answered your,
Boy George answered your question, Adam.
It's right, it's the first lyric of his song.
You say genocide.
I say war.
Tomato?
Exactly.
It's a tomato.
Adam, it's clearly a motto.
It's a potato.
Well, then call me Tom Brady, and I'm again, nightshades.
No, you're right.
I've always said that.
Like, fine, let's grant.
Let's grant that it's not a genocide.
Let's outlaw the word genocide.
Just let me just not fix my mouth to form those phonemes.
What should I call it then?
What's a few rungs?
What's one rung?
low genocide on the crime of crime scale.
If it's just a one-sided ethnic cleansing slaughter, you're for that?
Yeah.
Yeah.
And Dershowitz is, of course, telling us that no self-respecting Jew should allow anyone
to speak about Israel descriptively or accurately or in any way other than whatever the
fuck was in his stupid-ass case for Israel book that Natalie Portman probably wrote for him.
Although, no shade to Natalie Portman, because she's turned out to be relatively decent when it comes, you know, as far as on, when you grade her on the bell curve of Israeli-born American celebrities, she's now advocating for the, you know, some joint Jewish Arab party and in Israel and the election, she's advocating for stepping outside of the Zionist mainstream, certainly, when it comes to her positions on.
on that country in that region.
So I'm not trying to, I'm not trying to slag her.
But she did, she was a research assistant back then, wasn't she?
You know, I really only know her work in the prequels.
Yeah, well, this is a prequel to the prequels.
Oh, no, actually, that's not true.
It happened after the prequels.
What am I saying?
I'm just fucking, I'm just spinning out of control.
That's the spin is the truth.
When that's not here, I get nervous.
I get nervous being in this seat, you know, the number one seat,
having to
moving to move things along
and all that.
Respect to you, Lieb, for what you do.
Yeah, there's nobody sitting in
dad's well-worn easy chair
and it gets a little nervy.
I know.
My beer cans don't quite fit
on his beer stains somehow.
Although no beer stains for Matt,
17 years clean and sober.
We love you, Matt.
Keep it up.
I think that's all we've got.
I'm pretty happy with it.
that as an episode. Are you? Oh yeah. I think that we did the thing. We did the dang thing.
Very much with the help of our guest, Max Blumenthal. Thanks again, Max. Check out his work at the
gray zone. Check out all the links in the description below. And we will be back on Friday for one
more Once Upon a Matlas episode before he gets back next week. If you want access to that
episode, go to patreon.com slash bathasbarra. That is where you.
you find us for your bonus content or become a YouTube member or a substack member,
all kinds of ways to get everything that's coming to you, world's most moral podcast-wise.
Bad Hasbara at gmail.com for all your questions, comments, and concerns.
Badhasbara.com is our homepage. All right, everybody, that's our show. Thank you so much for
listening and watching. And until next time, from the river to the sea, like a rich sweet.
But it's a gild free.
