Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 10/23/23: US Military Preps For Iran War, Israel Rejects Hostage Release, Justin Amash Family Killed In Gaza, US Majority Rejects Sending Weapons, Gaza Military Nightmare, Sidney Powell Flips, Dave Chapelle Triggers Crowd On Israel

Episode Date: October 23, 2023

Krystal and Saagar discuss US military preps for Iran War, Israel rejects Hostage release, Justin Amash reveals his family was killed in Gaza Church Strike, shock polling shows US majority reject sending weapons to Israel, US warns of Gaza military nightmare if ground invasion occurs, Sidney Powell flips on Trump in GA case, and Dave Chapelle triggers the crowd at his recent live show with Israel Palestine takes.To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/Merch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Happy Monday. We have a great show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed we do. Once again, we have all the latest for you coming out of Israel and Gaza and the risks of that igniting a broader war is what we're starting our focus on today. We also have a little bit of movement in terms of humanitarian aid and the strikes that Israel has been committing on Gaza hitting very close to home for Justin Amash, former congressman, bringing that as well. And there's some new polling

showing how the American people are viewing all of this. And I have to tell you, I was a little surprised by it. Yeah, it's very interesting. Yeah, the details and the divides and all of that are very interesting to get into. So we'll talk about that. We'll also talk about what we know about what the future might look like in Gaza. A lot of question marks there right now, something the U.S. has been pushing Israel on. We also have some updates for you out of Trump world. Sidney Powell and Trump-aligned attorney Kenneth Cheesbrough have both pled guilty, seeming to flip, promising to testify for the prosecution. So we will take a look at what that means. And Dave Chappelle making some controversial comments, I suppose, about

Palestinians and big audience reaction, big fallout from that. So we'll tell you everything. I'm excited to see it. I'm excited to see it. I just wanted to say before we started, thank you to everybody. People have been taking advantage of our focus group discount, but more importantly, we've just been getting so many nice messages from so many of the pre-scribers and others to be able to support work like that. So it's something we're genuinely trying to do here, which is different than everyone else. We put the full thing out as a podcast and on our YouTube channel. If you want to go and take a look, next one coming is going to be independence. We're working on it right now. And if you can help us out with that, we would deeply appreciate it. But we're going to start with the news,

as Crystal alluded to, about the fear of a broader war involving the United States, which is sweeping Washington. Let's go and put this up there on the screen. This is from an inside report of Axios. Headline, quote, behind the curtain, rattle U.S. government fears wars could spread. What they point to is that multiple officials inside of the White House said that this is, quote, the heaviest, most chilling week since President Biden took office just over 1,000 days ago. And what they basically point to

is the very basics of what we've already laid out here, which is that the response to the terrorist attack now at this point is seriously embroiling policymakers in fears of what comes next. Because it's not just about whether the situation can be contained to Gaza and Israel. It's, is Lebanon going to join this war? Is Hezbollah going to join this war? If so, then what? Is Israel going to bomb Iran? If they bomb Iran, is Iran going to join this war? Is Hezbollah going to join this war? If so, then what? Is Israel going to bomb Iran? If they bomb Iran, is Iran going to retaliate against America? And then the United States, by supporting Israel, are we now inviting, you know, jihadists to attack us through anger in the Arab world? And on top of that, what about the Iranians? And this has already come. I brought

everybody the news on Thursday, Crystal, about the United States being attacked, you know, on multiple bases in Iraq and in Syria. One of our civilian contractors actually died of a heart I brought everybody the news on Thursday, Crystal, about the United States being attacked on multiple bases in Iraq and in Syria. One of our civilian contractors actually died of a heart attack during the attack. But worse, really, is that we are officially now engaging Iranian proxies in Iraq and in Syria, and then also off the coast of Yemen, where the USS Carney, a guided missile destroyer, was engaged in an hours-long shoot down of multiple drones and missiles, which they say were headed towards Israel. So all of this is just igniting fear of this is before the so-called invasion has even begun. This is before the ground hand-to-hand combat, which is anticipated,

is happening. At the same time, in fears of a bigger conflict with Iran, let's put this up there on the screen. This is actually, in my opinion, the most significant piece of news from the US military, not the carrier groups, not any of the other stuff. The US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin has ordered additional forces to the Middle East, including the deployment of a terminal high-altitude area defense system, as well as additional Patriot batteries. Now, as Lucas Tomlinson here from Fox News aptly points out, Hamas and Hezbollah, they don't have ballistic missiles. Only Iran does. So, Crystal, the moment I saw the THAAD missile defense system being deployed to the region, I was like, okay, they are very, very

seriously considering this. Just so people understand, these are the types of things that we deploy against North Korea and against very advanced military. So the idea that we would immediately deploy this system to the region, in addition to the Patriot missile defense systems, which the Saudis have used in the past against Houthis, tells us that they are extremely concerned about a broader war, not with, you know, not with Hezbollah, not against terrorism, terrorist groups like Hamas directly with Iran. You don't do it otherwise. Yeah, that is the big concern here in Washington and something obviously we need to be concerned about as well, because this is an incredibly fraught, dangerous situation that was supposedly the point of President Biden's trip to the Middle East was trying to dissuade, trying to deter other actors from getting involved here.

Also, you know, while standing unequivocally beside Israel, apparently trying to talk behind the scenes to Netanyahu. There's reporting this morning that the U.S. has become more insistent on delaying that ground invasion. They are putting it, the way they are urging it is to try to deal with negotiating on the hostages before they push forward with the ground invasion. But this is just an incredibly, incredibly dangerous, chaotic situation. And if we zoom out even from, you know, the immediate threat of a broader war and how that might implicate the U.S., how we might end up getting involved. And again, we talked about how they've already laid out the legal justification that it's not like they'd be asking you or me. They wouldn't even be asking Congress before committing troops if we did go in that direction.

There's also the broader geopolitical picture of how this interacts with, hey, this isn't the only, you know, war that we are somewhat involved with. You also have what's going on with Ukraine and Russia. And you have had attempts from the Biden administration to try to charm the global south. And they are looking at the situation in Gaza and Israel's relentless attacks. By the way, there was another massive barrage of missiles fired into Gaza overnight in a brutal assault on Gaza City in particular. They're looking at this very differently than U.S. policymakers are. And they see a massive amount of hypocrisy. New York Times actually reporting on this this morning and the view not only from Palestinians, but from the global

global south more broadly. They quote a Ramallah based Palestinian political commentator who says when the war first broke out in Ukraine, Palestinians were actually elated by the tough stance taken by Western capitals against one country occupying another's land. But then they go on to say, it seems that occupation is only bad if the guys who are not on your side are doing it. So China and Russia, of course, taking advantage of this situation, consolidating more support among the global South, you know, countries like India trying to figure out how they are going to navigate, you know, a complex situation for them as well. But, you know, the disparate views of occupation, depending on whether it is Russia, our adversary, or Israel, our ally, is once again exposing the, you know, the one consistent of U.S.

foreign policy, which is our hypocrisy. Yeah. And that is why the entire time, you know, on Ukraine, I was like, look, the point, this whole democracy, autocracy and all that, obviously it falls apart at a cursory glance of US interests, which is why the best way to conduct US foreign policy is to talk about what's in it for us and does it benefit us to go into the net effect of how much we are funding this. That's the best way and always has been in order to conduct yourself as a state. However, here in Washington, policymakers and others twisting themselves into knots to try and justify why, if Israel were to be embroiled in a larger war, why it is worth, actually, the United States not going to war with Hamas, not going to war with Hezbollah, directly going to war with Iran. For a perfect example of what real bipartisanship

looks like here in Washington, let's put this up there on the screen. Senator Lindsey Graham was in Tel Aviv yesterday with 10% of the US Senate, as he so aptly noted. He says, I saw things today I never thought possible. On Iran, quote, we are watching you. Destroying Hamas is non-negotiable. I actually find it a bit funny that Cory Booker is there because he was actually in Israel during the attack. So does that mean that he left Israel after the attack, flew back to Washington, and then flew back to Tel Aviv just to prove how pro-Israel he is? Cory Booker is going to find wherever there is a camera. The thing is, let's keep this photo up here because this is important. This people, Susan Collins, Chris Coons, you've got John Thune,

number two Republican in the Senate, Blumenthal from Connecticut, Cory Booker, Katie Britt from Alabama, Lindsey Graham. The point of this is just to show people that is a very good ideological representation of where most people in the Senate are. And so when we look at that, we can understand that war with Iran is very much on the table. And you can, that's especially highlighted if we put this Haaretz up on the screen. An Israeli minister, actually the economy minister, said that, quote, if Hezbollah does choose to open a front in the north, Israel will also attack Iran. Iran's plan is to attack Israel on all fronts. If we realize that they intend to attack Israel, not only on all our fronts,

we will then hit the head of the snake, Iran. He said in an interview with the Daily Mail, he also threatened that opening a front on the part of Hezbollah would result in Israel, quote, wiping it off of the face of the earth. All of this comes with pretty significant military activity on that northern border, which for some reason the media doesn't seem to report responsibly. I mean, we've had multiple IDF soldiers killed. We've had multiple airstrikes all across of the northern border of Israel. We've even seen an evacuation by all citizens, the United States included, urging our people, get the hell out of

Lebanon now. You don't do that unless you think broader hostilities are going to happen, not just us, many other countries that are in the region. And we're watching, Crystal, as probably the most advanced, the actual like military to military capabilities happening so far pre-invasion. It's all Hezbollah and Israel in terms of, or not even just Hezbollah, Iranian proxies in terms of their much more advanced weapon systems. And that's what, you know, really should, we should all be afraid of. Yeah. There's no doubt about it. And, you know, just because perhaps the U.S. is not interested in a war with Iran, they understand it might be biting off more than we can really chew, does not mean that we don't get dragged into this conflict. These things take on a life of their own.

And so when you have the Biden administration, I mean, they're not willing to use any of the considerable leverage that the U.S. has to constrain Israeli actions to try to, number one, avoid civilian casualties. Number two, perhaps even more critically, to try to avoid this broader war. And then you've got, sorry, psycho like Lindsey Graham leading this delegation of senators into Israel. And recall some of the comments that we played that this man said. He's like framing this as a holy war and actively, effectively calling for World War III. That's his position. And you've got 10 percent of the United States Senate, Democrats and Republicans, quote unquote, liberals and conservatives

standing shoulder to shoulder with this man who has long been clamoring for war with Iran, I might add. And you come to see very quickly what a precipice we are on and how quickly this could spiral out of control. Yeah, that's right. And Martyr Made, who we mentioned before, Daryl Kupri does that podcast with Jocko Willig. He hopefully will be joining us on Thursday. Let's put this up there on the screen. I thought he did a really good job of laying this out. When we say war with Iran, it just sounds like words, but it's not. And as he points out, quote, a war with Iran would have to be all or nothing, meaning that a draft would probably be necessary. We launch every tomahawk we have in the region and it wouldn't make a dent. All of the

places on this map would find themselves under attack by Iranian missiles. It would be prohibitively dangerous for the U.S. Navy to try and force an opposed entry to the Gulf. Saudi oil refineries would be hit. The Iraqi embassy would probably be overrun. Kuwait and the other places we previously staged invasions would be under continuous missile and drone attack. Turkey probably wouldn't allow us to use that country as a base. Coming from the east means driving over 1,000 miles of barren desert before reaching a meaningful human settlement. Is it impossible? No, but it would be a real war requiring consistent commitment, which I think and hope even the Biden administration knows is beyond us right now. And he points to this map of the deployment of U.S. troops that I've referenced now multiple times, just how many thousands of people that we have in the region. And we got a

very small glimpse of it. When you've got thousands of troops in Syria, oh, in a country which we never declared war on, and for some reason we're continuing to have bases on, well, now they're fair game. They're very, very close to a lot of these proxies and missiles, drones, gets launched at them. Same thing in the Gulf of, in Yemen with our guided missile destroyers and all those. But what he's really pointing to is the extraordinary vulnerability that a lot of our troops have, you know, on these bases, the Baghdad embassy, the bases on Iraq. And that's just, you know, not even to mention Bahrain, which is right there. Remember that case when, what was it, a bunch of soldiers or some sailors like drifted into Iranian water? That's how close we are to Iran. Every single day, we're right there, you know, on that line of where

their waters or their water, territorial waters began and ours, you know, were allowed to operate in the international waters. But that just points out when you can drift into the enemy territory, then it's not that easy for them to fire at you. And this is for all the sanctions, for all the efforts that we have made to degrade the Iranian military, to degrade their capacity. What lesson can we learn from Russia

is that you can do all of that and you can still mount a pretty effective military campaign and you can kill a hell of a lot of people. Now, will you win outright as the US military might? Maybe not. But you can make it very painful, painful enough to kill tens of thousands of people where Americans are going to be like, okay, what's actually going on here? Even in the global war on terror, we never lost the amount of troops that we likely would lose in just the first year or so of a conflict like this. America has not felt anything like this since Vietnam. It's been a long, long time. And I would

say, let's try not to feel it again. There's no reason to. Indeed, absolutely. And just to underscore the level of volatility, put this up on the screen, the U.S. State Department has issued a worldwide caution alert for U.S. citizens due to Israel's war on Hamas. This, again, just underscores how much we are on edge. It advises U.S. citizens to exercise increased caution due to the potential for terrorist attacks, demonstrations, or violent actions against U.S. citizens and interests, you know, the brutality of the Israeli assault on Gaza, the number of civilian casualties that we have already had before they even have begun the ground invasion has really united a lot of countries in the Arab world and throughout the broader East, broader Middle East against us. And as I was saying before, when you combine that with what they view as complete

hypocrisy in terms of our stance on the Ukraine war versus how we are approaching Israel's war on Gaza, it is an incredibly tense, fraught and dangerous situation that could spiral with one incident. I mean, I think we had a little bit of a glimpse of that with this hospital bombing and the way that instantly led to mass protests, anger, fury, not just throughout the region, but really throughout the world. And you can see how one incident could be a spark to a much broader conflagration. Yeah, I think you are absolutely correct to note that. Okay, let's move on to the next part here with some still very, very significant news. Let's go and put this up there on the screen. Israel has confirmed that two American hostages that have been released, they were Judith and Natalie Ranon. They had been in Israel celebrating

a relative's birthday and were at a kibbutz only a mile away from the Gaza border. Now, those hostages were released after the United States brokered some sort of negotiation with Hamas via the Qatari government. So the Times of Israel actually has some of the details if we can move to the next one here. And it's pretty significant. So what he says is that following Hamas's release now of two hostages, one of the pressure points from the US and EU governments is they're trying to get Israel to hold off on the ground invasion, quote, fearing it'll all but scuttle efforts to secure any additional hostage releases for the foreseeable future. The Western governments are currently pressuring Israel. They all have citizens that are unaccounted for and believe that as more time passes, the harder it will be to secure those hostages released. The governments recognize the ground invasion is very likely and are not telling

Israel not to launch one, rather to hold off and try and see if additional diplomatic efforts can succeed. So obviously that was incredibly significant to see the release of two hostages, but this is the issue. We don't even know what the number is. We genuinely have no idea. What is the number of Americans that are currently being held hostage? It could be 20. Are they even alive? I mean, thank God these two are. But, you know, if you got these two out, then there's the other question of where's everybody else? Why these two?

Is it just because they were relatives? Like I'm just not sure what's going on here. Yeah, that's right. The latest numbers this morning in terms of overall number of hostages per the Israeli government is 222. And the other piece of news that came out, because keep in mind, as we've been discussing, this issue of hostages is incredibly emotional for everyone involved, but for the Israeli public in particular. And there's a lot of pressure on Netanyahu to try to secure their release. And also, you know, as this massive bombing campaign is going on in Israel, there's a lot of concern that some of the hostages could be killed in those strikes. So put this up on the screen. This news came out that apparently

Hamas had offered to return two Israeli hostages. Of course, they should return all hostages. These are, by and large, innocent civilians. It is an atrocity that they're being held right now captive against their will. But Israel decided that they would not accept those two hostages back from Hamas, saying they will not address what is considered to be mendacious propaganda by the group. So their view, this is hard for me to understand, frankly, is that they didn't want to give Hamas some sort of a PR victory by making it appear like they were open to negotiations in good faith by accepting these two hostages. But I'm sure if you're the family members of those two individuals

who could have been set free, I'm sure that you feel this was outrageous and insane for Israel to deny the ability of these two individuals to be let go. Once again, just to underscore for you, put a 10 up on the screen of the way that this hostage situation is being handled and what a political nightmare this is for Netanyahu right now. This is an analysis from Haaretz. The headline here is Netanyahu is petrified of the hostage's families. It could impact his judgment. Let me just read all of this because this is actually insane what he has done here. So first,

he gave a statement to the nation on Saturday evening. This was like a week ago. He claimed to have spoken to those who lost their loved ones or whose fate is unknown. No actual family member of a hostage was identified as having spoken to him. Okay, so that's that. The next day, he finally meets with a group of representatives from the Hostages and Missing Families Forum. When suddenly a man who claimed to also be a relative of a hostage entered the meeting, starting praising the prime minister,

saying he trusted any decision that he makes. Well, it emerged after that that that dude is a far-right activist with ties to members of the Netanyahu family, zero known ties to hostages. The man's wife, meanwhile, had organized a counter-protest outside the IDF headquarters in Tel Aviv opposite the family's vigil. Some of the protesters screamed abuse at the forum members. So let me just let that sink in. It looks like Netanyahu, after delaying speaking to any hostage families for quite a while

after these people had been taken, he then finally meets with this group and allows this activist to come in and pretend like he's a hostage family member and talk up how great Bibi is and how he must be doing everything right and of course we should follow his lead, et cetera, et cetera, thinking that he's going to fool them into believing that this is, you know,

a genuine hostage family member. It tells you the lengths that they are going to to try to manipulate this situation because they know how politically volatile the question of hostages is in Israel. Yeah, I mean, that's something I think we tried to flag from the very beginning, the moment that this happened, is that it hits different in Israel, mostly because, as we've seen previously, first, with Israel, they've traded, you know, mass numbers of

militants for a single IDF soldier in the past, Netanyahu, quite literally, because in many cases, everyone has a family member who has had to serve in the IDF or in the past, Netanyahu quite literally, because in many cases, everyone has a family member who has had to serve in the IDF or in the military. Now, some of these hostages are just straight up civilians. So the pressure for them to trade or to do everything they can to get those people out is even more palatable. Also, just to bring the weird math, everyone's always like, oh, X amount of 9-11s. Well, you could flip it around on the hostage situation and say, well, everybody knows somebody who knows somebody who may know somebody who was either killed or taken hostage. So their sympathy, their want, in a small country, a couple hundred people, same equivalent to thousands of people here in the U.S., where somebody would – those their stories and all that are going to have a tremendous amount of sympathy from the overall public. So how the Israeli government is able to, how the Israeli government is, you know, has to navigate this is really difficult. I mean, just recall, you know, America itself,

throughout the entire global war on terror, our hostages, the way that we handled everything completely changed. In the beginning, it was like, oh, we're not going to negotiate with terrorists. And it's like, we, I think, think, believe we lifted the ban on the ability of families and private parties to be able to negotiate some sort of hostage payments. Then in some cases, we said that we wouldn't negotiate at all. But then in some cases, we would send the secretary of state and others before. So this is a very thorny issue. Just recall here in America, people like Otto Warmbier with North Korea or I'm trying to think, several that happened in Iran, I believe, who went hiking on the Iran-Iraq border, something I still don't understand. The people who got captured in Afghanistan, Bo Bergdahl, there's still a lot of controversy around many of those decisions.

So magnify it by like 20 whenever you're thinking about the hostage situation in Israel. Absolutely. So we also have some updates from on the ground. Let's go and put this up on the screen. This was really quite shocking. Justin Amash, I don't know if you all remember, he's a former congressman. He just left in 2021. He had several relatives who were killed

in the bombing of an Orthodox church in Gaza. Let me read you his statement here. He says, I was really worried about this. With great sadness, I've now confirmed several of my relatives, including Viola and Yara pictured here were killed at this Orthodox church in Gaza, where they had been sheltering when part of the complex was destroyed as a result of an Israeli airstrike. Give rest, oh Lord, to their souls. May their memories be eternal. The Palestinian Christian community has endured so much. Our family is hurting badly. May God watch over all Christians in Gaza and all Israelis and Palestinians who are suffering, whatever their religion or creed. He posted another message on Twitter after this one saying, my family and I would like to express our heartfelt appreciation

for the many kind and gracious messages of condolence for our beloved cousins in Gaza. Please remember the thousands upon thousands of innocent civilians in unbearable circumstances who simply want a life of peace. So many of the people suffering are just children. They do not deserve violence and death. The details of this strike, this Israeli strike on this church, which they don't dispute, by the way. They say they were trying to hit a building next door, but they hit this church. It was sheltering displaced people on Thursday night. The church compound, comprising a chapel, seven buildings and a courtyard, was full of Christian families from the Gaza Strip. They said the airstrike happened around 7.30 p.m. when dinner was being distributed. The Gazan Health Ministry, which is controlled by

Hamas, said at least 16 people were killed and many others were still buried under rubble. The death hole could not be independently confirmed. And of course, the fact that you have relatives of, you know, a very recently serving Republican member of Congress just really underscores the devastation in Gaza right now. And also, Sagar, the fact that, you know, they thought a church would be safe. They thought this was, you know, the best they could do in terms of trying to shelter and find a place where they could and their families who were displaced could, you know, at least survive what's going on. And there really is nowhere that is safe in Gaza at this point. Let's put this up on the screen in terms of the death toll. Listen, guys, these are the best

numbers we can get. This is according to the AP. 1,400 in Israel. I think we can be fairly confident about that one at this point. 4,300 dead in Gaza. Those are the latest numbers. Again, remember, journalists are not really allowed inside of Gaza to be able to verify any of this. year that I saw reported in the Washington Post that more than a thousand individuals could be trapped under the rubble in Gaza from these bombings. And as I said before, there was a new massive bombing campaign overnight in Gaza, several hundred strikes, over 300 strikes. So we have yet to learn what the fallout from that is as well. Sagar, I'll get you to weigh in on this. We can update on the aid as well. Well, I think it's important. Yeah, I'm glad that you said that. It's like we can't.

Listen, we are dealing with the Israelis and the freaking, you know, Palestinian health ministry or whatever. Nobody knows what these numbers are. And we would just say that's why we need to allow foreign journalists inside of Gaza. There are American journalists who are chomping at the bit who would love to be able to go in, yes, even at risk of their own lives in order to give people a better update to be able to see things for themselves. Unfortunately, you know, internet access is beginning to decline all over Gaza. Remember, they also don't have electricity,

or they do have it in some parts, but it's still very difficult, the infrastructure and all that. We have to be very, very careful about every single thing that is coming out of there, which is part of what makes it such a nightmare to even try to report on what it is. I think that the church incident just highlights what we have flagged from day one. That's one of the most densely populated areas on the planet. And with the dense population, you can try. No air force in the world, as we all saw during the US drone campaign, you can have good intelligence. You can have world-class air force. You can have JDAMs that cost tens of thousands of dollars a piece. Plus or minus five feet means a hell of a lot whenever, think about New York City or any other crowded metro area that you've ever been in and just think about what plus or minus five feet would mean when you've got buildings that are sometimes together.

And yes, it is true. Hamas uses it to its advantage. The Israelis claim that right across was like a major weapons depot, which is part of why it was happening. However, and very unfortunately, with the church and just like a hospital or any of these other areas where people commune because they believe that they're going to be safe, they're really not safe at the end of the day. And it also, to me, underscores the wisdom of what Jocko said in that segment that we did on our last show, just about the pluses and the minuses, just from a pure military perspective around what this bombing campaign is actually achieving, especially relative to the future goal. We'll talk about that in the Gaza future block because there's still, we really, I want to think we should all be prepared and actually think carefully about what this military campaign is going to look like and what the fallout is. We failed to do that in Iraq. We failed to do that in Afghanistan. We honestly even failed to do

it during the whole ISIS campaign, which is part of the reason why the world was so shocked about what was going on with that. And on this one, we have some time, at least for now, to think about it. And we shouldn't fail to actually take advantage of that. That's right. And we will talk more about it. But let me just say this for now. I mean, Israel, with the complete siege situation of all of Gaza Gaza and with what I would describe as, I know they would dispute this, but indiscriminate bombing. You're talking about churches, mosques, marketplaces, schools, medical facilities, et cetera, with there being really no safe zone. Even after they told people go south and they're still bombing southern Gaza as well,

there's really no place to seek safety. Ultimately, what you're doing, I don't know how effective they're being at taking out Hamas leadership at this point with this sort of like aerial bombing campaign, but you're terrorizing the entire population and I guarantee you're creating more terrorists. I mean, just looking at history and the way this works out, I mean, how many members of the terrorist organization Hamas, how many of them lost family members? And that's part of what radicalized them. And analysis is not justification. But if your actual goal is peace and safety and security, and again, we're going to talk more about this, this is the wrong direction

to go. And I do think that the fact that Justin Amash's Christian Palestinian relatives were killed in this bombing also underscores like, you know, people have, especially because there are very few journalists allowed into Gaza, they have this very caricaturish view of who actually lives there. Yeah, that's true. Or they can just not really think about who actually lives there. And we try to say things like, you know, almost the majority of the population is children. Like they're not, they're innocent. They're the definition of innocence, right? But when you have these details of it's a Christian church, these were Christians who live there as well, who were killed in this bombing, whether it was intentional on Israel's part or not, you get a sense of how many people are caught up in this and, you know, what a

devastating human toll there is here as well. There's a little bit of good news. I don't want to oversell it here, but let's go ahead and put this up on the screen. We do have some aid trucks that were able to move through Rafah Crossing. This is from Egypt into Palestine. Let's put this up on the screen. According to UNICEF,

they did confirm that the first deliveries of humanitarian aid crossed the border, but it's just enough for 22,000 people for one day that was driven through as part of a 20-truck convoy. Water capacity right now at 5% of normal levels in Gaza. And by the way, the water situation in Gaza is never good. So the fact you're at 5% of normal Gaza levels tells you how dire things truly are. I had seen a calculation previously, Sagar, that what you would actually need is 100 trucks every single day to try to meet this need. So it's good that we got a few trucks through, but it is, you know, not even

close to the need that you have at this point, given no food coming in, no fuel, no electricity, very little water. You know, it's quite a dire situation for everyone in the Gaza Strip right now. The U.S., the very latest this morning is because this was unclear, frankly, whether it would just be those 20 trucks and that's it. They're saying that they got some sort of guarantee that trucks would continue to be able to move through this crossing. So that is incredibly vital for just the life of people who are living in this area right now. Yeah, then that's just the insane difficulty of all of this, which is it just seems like every party who is involved doesn't seem to have any interest in any of these civilian lives. Like the Egyptians are making it difficult for like no reason. Hamas, of course, not exactly helping the situation.

Israel helping nobody by firing on the actual crossing where this is all supposed to be happening. And then, I don't know if you saw this, the Israelis accidentally fired on Egyptian military forces and then had to apologize, which demonstrates the fog of war situation, how difficult all of this is. And sure, you can apologize, but who's stopping the ground commander or whatever from being like, oh my God,

we're under attack, and then launching something again. This is the scary situation of all of this. The civilians are absolutely the ones who are caught in the crossfire, and they're paying a big price. I mean, we're still not sure. And this is the unfortunate part. We do not know. We do not know for sure what the hell is going on. I wish that we could get people into Gaza, at the very least, just journalists and cameras, like just let people see. But that's the immense difficulty of all of this. We would be able to report from them instead of having to rely on reports, like we're saying, of a U.S. congressman whose Palestinian Christian family was killed in an airstrike. Instead, you know, we're trying to parse through everything and everyone's looking, you know, videos from Twitter, Instagram and all that. That is not

the proper way that you're supposed to actually be able to learn about these conflicts. We definitely learned that one the hard way in terms of propaganda from everybody all throughout the global war on terror, you know, conflicts that we ended up in. So I just see the same mistakes being made again, Crystal. Yeah. It's really difficult. And the last piece we can put up here in terms of the dire situation on the ground already. And again, this is before any sort of ground invasion has begun. According to the UN, in only 12 days, Israel destroyed 25 percent of the private homes in Gaza and made more than 600,000 Gazans homeless. They put out a whole report with their best intel and insights into what the situation is like in the Gaza Strip. But it just gives you a sense of the level of devastation already. And,

you know, we've seen, you've probably, if you've been on Twitter, seen these images, these drone images of the amount of rubble and just how many buildings have been destroyed. So a quarter of all of the homes they're estimating have already been destroyed in the Gaza Strip. It is absolutely unimaginable. I mean, I can't even wrap my head around what that would look like to experience. Right. Well, this is the issue, is where we rely on drone footage. And, you know, again, everyone's like, oh, well, this one particular image and it's being, I wouldn't say it's being manipulated, but things are spreading either way. They're like, no, this is what Gaza looks like. It's like some guy's house with a pool in the other way. That's

a better way to think about it. Just think about metro area. We've described it before. I think Philadelphia is like roughly the same size, but with multiple times the population in Gaza. And then just think about what it would like to have that housing removed. And then also what an immense task it is going to be, as we all found out in Iraq. When you break it, you buy it. And then you're responsible now for building that up. I mean, it's going to cost untold billions to rebuild at the very least. And that's not even

factoring in the security situation and everything that I guess we'll talk about in the Gaza future. Let's move on to the polling. As Crystal alluded to, some actually very fascinating polling just immediately after the conflict, which shows something I always have believed. You have to have faith in people because people, normal American citizens in most cases, are far more morally clear, understanding of nuance and insightful, practical, understand trade-offs than people who actually do this for a living, especially our electeds in Washington. Let's put this up there on the screen. This reflects this directly. Israel-Hamas conflict. What should the US do now? 76% say we should send humanitarian aid to Israel. 72% say we should use diplomacy with countries

in the region. 57% say we should send humanitarian aid to Palestinians in Gaza. So we have majority support for humanitarian aid to Israel, humanitarian aid to Palestinians, and 72% for diplomacy. You know what doesn't have majority percent? Only 48% send weapons and supplies to Israel. And when you start to dig into it even more, it's pretty shocking. Let's go to the next one, please, guys, because this is on partisan lines. For example, should the United States send humanitarian aid to Palestinians in Gaza? This is by party. 70% of Democrats say we should.

Independents, 60% say yes. 41% of Republicans say that we should. Now, should not. Only 30% of Democrats, 41% of independents, and 60% of Republicans. Now, should the US send weapons and supplies to Israel? Amongst Democrats, it's under a majority. Only 47% said that we should send weapons to Israel. 45% of independents, 57% of Republicans on the should side. But 53% of Democrats say that we should not. 55% say that we should not. And 43% of Republicans. I mean, this is not an overwhelming issue really at all by far on the side of weapons, on the side of all of that. The only ones, Crystal, that really have super majorities are send humanitarian aid to Israel and conduct diplomacy. And diplomacy.

And it's interesting that number two on that one is probably the least discussed because if we were to understand that, then Americans should be outraged and horrified at the Biden administration, really Anthony Blinken too's inept moves in the Middle East, getting his own Middle East summit canceled in the front of his face. It's just humiliating to the United States and the American presidency. Not only that, they should be disgusted, as I am, that from the podium, Karine Jean-Pierre would call talks for diplomacy and a ceasefire specifically repugnant,

and that they would instruct State Department officials, our nation's diplomats, not to use any language about ceasefire, calm, ending the violence, ending the bloodshed. Americans overwhelmingly want us to be engaged in talks, support for ceasefire, extremely, especially among Democrats, which this is a Democratic president, extremely high. So when you think about the media coverage of what Israel is doing right now and the horrific attacks on Israel and the direction of the media coverage and how consistently hawkish they are all the time, platform people like Lindsey Graham are calling for all out, you know, holy war, world war as a basis for World War Three. And you see you don't have majority support for sending weapons to Israel. You have very clear majority support for caring about the humanity of Palestinians. I mean, I just think given the media coverage, especially on cable news, that is absolutely extraordinary and does show you that, you know, you have I mean, I think it in part shows you that this issue is no longer among the the population is no longer as just like

lockstep. We we support Israel no matter what, as it used to be. I think part of that is social media. I think part of that is the rise of independent media, where there isn't just this one uniform view that people see. And I also just think, you know, people have have hearts. They can see these children who are suffering. They can see the entire population being like starved out in this siege and their hearts generally go out to them. They're able to hold two thoughts in their head that Hamas is evil, that they should be held to account, that there is no punishment too severe for them for what they did to Israel, but also that not all Palestinians are Hamas and that they are just human beings and children, in many cases, trying to live. So you see that coming through in the polling. And, you know, I'm pleasantly surprised, I have to say. There's also an interesting poll

from The Wall Street Journal about what direction the American people want the country to go in. And, you know, we talked about the possibility of broader conflict and concern over the spreading into some sort of a hot war with Iran, which is very much on the table right now, given the comments both of the Biden administration and certainly of the Netanyahu administration. Well, American people are not excited about that possibility. Let's go ahead and put this up on the screen. This is from The Wall Street Journal. They say, do you think the U.S. does or doesn't have a responsibility to protect Israeli citizens? OK, you've got a majority that say yes, 42 percent say no. Protect Palestinian civilians, 41 percent say yes, 54 percent say no.

But, you know, you're pretty split on even the question of whether you should support Israel in the war, 52-44. You've got majority support for pushing parties to negotiate. And you have much less support and much less interest, though, for working toward Palestinian statehood 2866. One of the things that came through in this poll, as it did, Sagar, in many of the polls, is just how much the divide is is actually I mean, there is a Democrat Republican divide. But perhaps the bigger divide is actually generational, where you have young people who view this conflict in very different terms than older generations, which do have more of that, just whatever Israel does, we support them. We totally take their side. And that's the end of the story. Voters, especially under 30, but really under 40, taking a much different view of this conflict. Yeah. And this is all before it's 50-50 before an actual major ground campaign has been launched with carnage, with death, with the daily video

of street to street, hand to hand combat before protests, before even an American soldier hopefully has been, you know, hopefully has not been brought into this. That's where it is right now. And that's, again, why I trust people, because people aren't stupid. They can see this. They see the headline about American troops getting attacked on a base in Iraq. And they're like, well, first of all, I didn't know they were there. And second, well, you know, I really wouldn't like to be drawn back into this because my cousin or my cousin went to Iraq and he came back and he was never the same. I mean, who hasn't got a story about something like that? And that is why the younger generation in particular has to be especially

worried. They're either the ones with siblings or directly know people who are involved in the latest conflict. And they're the ones really who also had to pay the price in terms of giving up their entire adult life with no real, with no peace, you know, in their lives. That the boomer generations, as you said, they have a very different view in just in general about America, how it should operate. Well, and it's very, I think it's really Cold War influenced too, of just like, world is black and white. There's the ones that are with us and the ones that are against us and the ones that are with us. We back them no matter what. And I think that's part of why you get this massive generational divide. I just pulled up CNN did a poll, too, and they asked, is Israel's military response to Hamas attacks fully justified?

OK, so their whole response, the bombing campaign, the siege, et cetera, is that fully justified? If you're 65 plus, 81 percent say yes. 18 to 34 years old, only 27 percent say yes. So that's why I say the age divide is really the key driving factor here beyond partisanship. If you're a senior, 65 plus, 81 percent are like, yes, everything that Israel is doing, totally justified. I'm behind them, et cetera. 18 to 34, only a quarter, 27%. And it goes down like a ladder. It's 56% for 50 to 64 years old. It's 44% for 35 to 49 years old. And then it's only 27% for 18 to 34 years old, which is why, I mean, you know, I mean, it's always the youth

that tends to be at these protests, but it's why you overwhelmingly see young people populating these protests calling for a ceasefire in the region and critical of Israel for what they're doing here. Yeah, no, that's well said. So a lot of questions about what comes next after this bombing campaign. What is this potential ground invasion even going to look like? How can they accomplish their stated objective of destroying Hamas? Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin was actually on the Sunday shows yesterday,

sounding some warnings about the difficulty of what Israel has planned. Let's take a listen to what he had to say. They're about to launch this ground offensive in Gaza. You were at CENTCOM, you were the CENTCOM commander when ISIS had control of Mosul. And it took nine months, but you cleared ISIS out of Mosul with our Iraqi and Kurdish partners. What is that? What were the lessons you learned there that apply here? Well, the first thing that everyone should know, and I think everybody does know, that urban combat is extremely difficult. It goes at a slow pace. That was nine months.

Nine months of intense combat. Yes. This may be a bit more difficult because of the underground network of tunnels that Hamas has constructed over time and the fact that they've had a long time to to prepare for a fight. So I think you'll see a fight that's characterized by a lot of IEDs, a lot of booby traps and just really grinding activity going forward. So you hear what he says there. Yeah. So the fight to liberate Mosul from ISIS took nine months. It was brutal. It was bloody. It was incredibly difficult. Americans suffered casualties. Now you're talking about Lloyd Austin here saying this fight may be even more difficult

because of, you know, the nature of urban warfare, because of how dug in Hamas is, because of the tunnel system. And there will certainly be significant IDF casualties here as well. I have some numbers I can read. So I've been doing a lot of research into this. Inside the city of Mosul, there were 8,000 ISIS fighters compared to Gaza, where Hamas has an estimated 30 to 40,000 fighters. Palestinian Islamic Jihad has another 15,000 men under arms. So we're talking about 55,000 fighters versus 8,000. In addition, ISIS was not from Mosul. They just took it over.

These people actually live there. So consider that ISIS did not have the majority support of the people in Mosul. They hated them just as much as everybody else. They were just militarily occupied. Hamas, I'm not going to claim they all support Hamas, but some do. They have more of a support than they definitely did in Mosul. They're going to be way more dug in, in terms of the support from the civilian populace. So honestly, the US, the West, we have not engaged in a fight like this, maybe ever. Even in the war in Iraq during Fallujah and all that, actually, I'm not sure why, but the jihadists let the civilians leave

maybe before they discovered human shields. So we didn't have nearly as amount of a densely populated area to contend with. And because America did not lose that many people in the battle on Mosul, we mostly were in a trade advise and assist. We mostly did not pay attention. I encourage people, if you're able, Netflix has a movie called Mosul, which is an Iraqi movie that was made about it. Wow. You really need to go open your eyes as to what that conflict looked like. Block to block, horrific fighting, absolute savagery. As he said,

IEDs everywhere, can't move. The other problem with rubble is you can just bury an IED in everything and you're picking one thing up and you can blow everybody up. And then also the immense difficulty of the air campaign. The US was involved definitely in the air campaign, but the Iraqi security forces, their casualties were insane in retaking Mosul. And again, they had the support in many cases of the civilian populace who wanted them to come back. This is a whole other situation. This really is – it's unprecedented in modern history, an urban fight like this. That's absolutely right.

And they're already – this was a good pickup by Peter Baker here. Let's put this up on the screen. Susan if we know anything about our experience of misadventures in the Middle East, it's that it always goes longer and is way more difficult than you expect. And of course, you know, in basic many of the objectives that we set out for our military, both in Iraq and certainly in Afghanistan, even, you know, over the course of the long time period that we were there, we failed. I mean, Afghanistan is back in the hands of the Taliban. That tells you everything you need to know about how well our nation building exercises went there ultimately. Let's put this up on the screen. This is from the Times of Israel.

They're reporting here on, you know, what this could all look like. So they say U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken says Israel should be devising a strategy for who will rule Gaza after it completes its mission of toppling Hamas. So keep in mind, the airstrikes right now, for them, that's nothing. That's the easy part. What are they even accomplishing? We don't even know how many Hamas fighters they're actually even taking out or whether it's, you know, largely and I expect it is largely civilians who are being killed in these airstrikes. So that part then, OK, let's say you're able to accomplish this very difficult feat of the ground invasion and rooting out Hamas, which we just laid out for you how difficult that's going to be. Then what? Let me continue to read here.

There are different ideas out there about what could follow. All of that needs to be worked. And it's something that needs to be worked even as Israel is dealing with the current threat. That's what Blinken is telling NBC's Meet the Press. This appears to be the first time that Washington is publicly urging Israel to think about its day after strategy after privately doing so in order to avoid making the same mistakes the U.S. made after 9-11, which led it to being bogged down and dragged out in the Middle East. Israeli officials have said publicly they are currently focused on eradicating Hamas, are not thinking about what might come after. Though the government's newest ministers from the National Unity Party demanded the crafting of a more holistic strategy upon entering the government, Netanyahu's office issued a statement on Friday declaring the

premier's defined goal for the Gaza War is the elimination of Hamas. All talk of decisions to hand over the Gaza Strip to the Palestinian Authority or any other party is a lie. So insisting, no, we really have no plan after this, okay? Netanyahu has come under fire since the start of the Gaza War from critics who have accused him of working to strengthen Hamas over the past 15 years in order to divide Palestinian factions and avoid peace talks with more moderate PA. Asked what Israel's strategy is for who will govern Gaza after the war is over, Blinken tells Meet the Press, we cannot go back to the status quo. They can't go back to the status quo with Hamas being in a position in terms of its governance of Gaza to repeat what it did. At the same time, what I've heard from the Israelis is absolutely no intent, no desire to be running Gaza themselves.

So something needs to be found that ensures that Hamas cannot do this again, but that also doesn't revert to Israeli governance of Gaza. So they've got a lot about what they don't want this to look like. Not a lot of details so far. And in fact, an out and out insistence by Netanyahu that they have no idea what comes after this effort. Yeah, because they don't want to sign up for it. And then that's, again, the major difficulty of this. Well, then who the hell is going to be in charge? Is it going to be Israel? Is it going to be the United Nations? I mean, yeah, the UN is so good at nation building, too. Ask Rwanda how that's going. There are so many examples where, OK, are we going to turn it over to the administration of Egypt and of Jordan? I mean,

they're just going to do what's good for them, not necessarily for the people who are in charge here. Are they going to administer elections? How did that work out for America in Iraq and in Afghanistan? It turns out this is actually extremely difficult. And that's why in general, it's usually better to let the actual party involved decide it for themselves. Unfortunately, you know, in this case and in the past, that usually means a scenario which you cannot 100% control. This really does just come back to so many of the lessons in Iraq. And even when we consider it a couple of different ways, you could say like, oh, we're in this for the elimination of Hamas. And General Stanley McChrystal, he became very famous, designed this

whole JSOC counterterrorism unit in 2006. It became incredibly efficient at killing Al Qaeda terrorists all throughout 2000, I think it was 2006 and 2007. And yet in 2007, the US still had to surge troops to quash Al Qaeda violence and intra-civil war between Sunni and Shia because there was a core problem that just killing terrorist leaders was not getting to, which is you had two basically reconcilable groups that were pushed to the brink of war that was then had the chaos of the invasion backstop. So you can kill probably every single member of Hamas leadership. Will that actually degrade or destroy the entire organization? I mean, basically, no.

Now, you can take away their military capability. That's basically what we did against ISIS. And that, of course, was effective. And we took away the land that they operated in. But it's just not the same situation that we're dealing with. It is far more akin to like a true counterinsurgency campaign where you have the population here that dramatically more supports the group that we're supposedly trying to eliminate than ISIS or even Al-Qaeda in Iraq ever had in terms of the civilian support. It is just going to be absolutely brutal and savage. And my fear is that exactly what the IDF did in 2006 and 2014 will happen. They're going to take a ton of casualties.

They're going to withdraw, and they're going to be like, well, we've got air power. The enemy doesn't, and you're just going to carpet bomb the entire place, which is, as history has also shown us, unless you basically commit to total annihilation, you still can't win, you know, the conflict. I mean, what they're doing right now, and I keep thinking about the comments we played that you guys should go back and listen to if you didn't hear from Jocko Willink. Yeah. Who's like, again, not a lib, not a lefty, commie, pinko, whatever you all think of me. He is someone who actually has experience on the ground. And he's saying, OK, if your objective is to root out Hamas, let's be serious about what that would take. The first thing I would do is to stop bombing Gaza because all you're doing is further radicalizing a population which is already under siege and already, by and large, hates your guts, by the way. So, you know, given the multi-year blockade and the long history of trauma and death and grievance and injury between these two parties,

you're already starting out behind the eight ball here. Your indiscriminate bombing campaign that has killed thousands of civilians and more than a thousand kids and all of this, not helping the situation in terms of gaining some support on the ground that can help you figure out who you need to get at, who was involved in these attacks. So that's number one. Number two, you should be surging humanitarian aid to the broader civilian population

to try to build out that goodwill. And even with all of that, it is going to be insanely difficult to actually achieve the stated objective, which is why I don't think they actually really care about the stated objective, because it's not just him. There was a bunch of military experts who were quoted in Vox who said the exact same thing, that if you actually, if this is your real objective, this is the path to get there, not what you're doing right now with the complete siege and this massive aerial bombing campaign. So there's that. The other thing is, Sagar, and you kind of alluded to this, there's two possibilities here. One is, as Netanyahu is very much insisting,

we really haven't thought about what comes next. We don't know who's going to rule Gaza. We don't know what governance is going to look like. We don't know. We're pushing that off to another day to think about. That's terrifying in and of itself. More terrifying is that they actually do have some idea of what it's going to look like. They just don't want to say it because they know it would be so broadly unacceptable, perhaps to their own population, certainly to, you know, parts of the world, may not be something the U.S. could sign on for. And, you know, in that regard, a lot of people are pointing to a plan that was released by some of Netanyahu's coalition partners with his stamp of approval back in 2017 for what they wanted to do with both the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

Let's put this up on the screen. So the thought leader behind this is this dude who is a member of the Netanyahu cabinet, Smotrich. He's one of the most extreme members of what is the most extreme government in Israeli history. So they say here, Israeli party approves annexation plan to coerce Palestinian departure with a stamp of Netanyahu approval. Right-wing party conference discusses their plan to annex the Palestinian territories and offer a surrender or transfer ultimatum. Basically, this plan, which was laid out back in 2017, is we'll give you three options. We're going to take over the land. You're no longer going to have any right to it. You have to abandon any dream of Palestinian statehood.

This idea of a two party solution is anathematous. We don't want it. We say, and this was the quote from Smotrich, he says, these are the foundations on which Zionism was erected. We do not assume there are two narratives here that are equal. There's one side that's correct and another that is undermining the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish state. We have to engrave in the consciousness of the Arabs in the entire world, there is no chance of establishing an Arab state in the land of Israel. And so the plan here was to give three options. One is you can abandon any idea of statehood, basically swear loyalty to Israel. You can remain living here, but you will have no rights in terms of being a citizen and being able to vote, being able to participate in democracy. That's number

one. Number two, if you won't give up your desire for statehood, we're going to force you to move. And number three, if you don't, if you're unwilling to move, basically, we're going to take care of you in one way or another. So that was the plan laid out by his coalition partners. Is that some somewhat of the direction that they want to go in here after Gaza? To me, that's an even more terrifying possibility is that they actually have thought through what the plan is. They just don't want to actually say right now. And that's why they're so insistent that, oh, we actually haven't thought it through. We have no idea what comes after the ground invasion. Yeah. The defense ministers being more, I guess, reticent about it. Let's put this up there on the screen. They say

they have three phases of the war. First is the military campaign that will take place with airstrikes and later a ground maneuver with the purpose of, quote, destroying operatives and That sounds like military occupation. Good luck because now you're in the administration business, you're in the water business, you're in the police business, as we found out the hard way in Iraq. The third step, he says, will be the creation of a new security regime in the Gaza Strip, the removal of Israel's responsibility for day-to-day life in the Gaza Strip, and the creation of a new security reality for the citizens of Israel and the residents of the area surrounding Gaza. So nobody knows what that means. What does security regime mean? Does it mean full-blown occupation? Does it mean governmental consent to whichever government is in power?

Good luck with that, achieving that. It just shows the extraordinary difficulty in all of this. And then I will just say also, from a military point of view, it is even if they wanted to achieve that thing that you pointed out, do they understand the level of capability and commitment that that would require? I mean think about, for example, the worst bombing campaigns against civilians. And I don't mean that in a moral sense. I mean that in terms of their direct purpose, like the US final days of the war against Tokyo, firebombing and killing 100,000 people in a single night, in the words of Robert McNamara. Even with that, with the full might of the US military, the destruction of Nazi Germany, the dedication of all of these bombs and all of that,

we still were not militarily capable of compelling the Japanese to surrender. Because from a pure just like math point of view, even with all the bombs and the napalm and all that, you couldn't just simply accomplish that. We tried it in Vietnam and it didn't work. I forget exactly. It was like there was a single mission or something like that where you drop all the bombs and equivalent to something like in World War II. Yeah, guess what? Ho Chi Minh still didn't surrender and they are the ones who ended up winning the war. So you cannot bomb your, in general, you cannot bomb your enemy into submission unless, as we did, you're willing to use nuclear weapons and atomic weapons, and that's

a whole other strategic level of the game. And then before you even got to a point where they were doing something like that, the US, Egypt, Jordan, all the rest of the Arab world will be embroiled in a bigger conflict. So it wouldn't even be confined to that. That's the thing overlaying all of this is the idea that they have total freedom of maneuver. They're not a superpower. They're reliant on us. And then the rest of the world also is on, or at least the rest of the Arab world is mostly sympathetic with the Palestinians and then they would get involved. So it's a much bigger problem than I think that they're laying on. They think they can just do what they want. And, you know, whether they should or should not, like, that's just not how it's going to work, period. It's

never been how it's worked previously, especially in a situation we're talking about mass civilian death. It's impossible for them to accomplish this. As you're watching the statements come out from the Netanyahu government, also just keep in mind, like, their audience is the world, their audience is their own domestic populace, but one of their most important audiences is us, the American president, the American people, providing cover for the U.S. to be involved in the way that we are right now and continue our funding. I mean, they really are very much dependent on the massive amount of aid on this new aid package that Biden is trying to push through that will have, you know, Ukrainian aid and Israeli aid and border funding. And, you know, on a side note, a little bit of humanitarian aid for Gaza as well.

And so they are they are eyes on the prize saying what needs to be said publicly to make sure that they can continue to be the recipient of that aid and keep that lockstep bipartisan consensus around support for whatever it is that they're doing in place here in Washington. So just keep that in mind. We always make little notes about what communications come out in English versus what comes out in Hebrew. So, you know, something for you to watch as well as this is all unfolding. Thank God for Google Translate, by the way. Yes. Then we can at least get the gist of what people are saying because, yeah, they're very, sometimes, and Al Jazeera is the perfect example. Al Jazeera Arabic is nothing like Al Jazeera

English. And that's for a reason. They have very different audiences. Very different audiences. That you're looking at. Same in Israel. You know, Hebrew TV is very different than English Israeli TV. Yes. All right. So let's talk a little bit of domestic politics here because this was really significant. We didn't want it to get lost. You had two major figures involved in that Georgia Fulton County case against Trump and a whole raft of other indicted co-conspirators, part of the RICO charges, two significant individuals who took plea deals

and appear to have flipped and are now working with the prosecution. Let's put this up on the screen. First, Sidney Powell, former Trump lawyer, Sidney Powell, known for her release the Kraken antics and general insanity in terms of being the like most, she was the most willing to offer the craziest stop the steal analysis, Venezuela, whatever. She was willing to go there. Okay. She is now pleading guilty in Georgia in that election interference case.

As part of the plea deal, she has to testify about any co-defendants in the case. She is one of 18 co-defendants, you'll recall, in this particular election interference case in Georgia. So she's pleading guilty to six misdemeanor charges. According to the agreement that was read in court Thursday, she'll get 12 months of probation for each count and a $6,000 fine. As part of the agreement, Powell must testify truthfully about any co-defendants involved and provide all documents to the district attorney's office relevant to their case against the other co-defendants, according to Fulton County Judge Scott McAfee. Now, she was in some of the key,

like, Oval Office meetings. Yes. She would almost, like, elbow her way in, and there were other people who were trying to keep her and some of the other, like, Mike Lindell types out of the Oval, but she would find her way in.

She was also involved in some of the, like, craziest press conferences that happened during that time. At one time, Trump said she was his lawyer. At another time, they kicked her off the team. She also was implicated in, I don't know if you guys remember, I was talking about that Coffey County situation in Georgia where Trump team members, herself included, came and committed allegedly actual election interference by getting into the computer systems there and their attempts to prove that there was election fraud. So now Trump has come out and he's, of course, pretending like Sidney Powell, who I've

never heard of her. She had nothing to do with me, et cetera, et cetera. Let's put this up on the screen. He's claiming Sidney Powell was never his attorney in a social media post on Sunday, three days after she pleaded guilty. He wrote, Sidney Powell is one of millions and millions of people who thought and in ever increasing numbers still think, correctly, that the 2020 presidential election was rigged and stolen and our country is being absolutely destroyed because of it. Ms. Powell was not my attorney and never was. In fact, she would have been conflicted. That's what he wrote on Truth Social. Okay, so that's what he's trying to say is like, I don't even know who this lady is.

She just believed the claims, but, you know, she really had nothing to do with anything. That, of course, is total nonsense. Although I will say, I mean, I think there are some questions about how much of on the inner circle she really was in terms of formulating the plans and like really crafting the behind the scenes concept of the fake elector schemes and all of that, which is why in some certain respects, this next individual, even though he's less well known, may actually be more significant to the case. Let's put this up on the screen. Lawyer Kenneth Cheesebro, Trump-aligned lawyer, pleads guilty in Georgia, became the second lawyer after Sidney Powell in two days to plead guilty in a criminal racketeering indictment that also names Donald Trump. He agreed to cooperate with state prosecutors in Fulton County, have accused him, Trump,

and 17 others of conspiring to overturn the election. He pleaded guilty to a single felony charge of conspiracy and was sentenced to five years probation. He was originally in charge with seven felonies, including one charge under the state racketeering law. So it seems like he got a pretty good deal here. Emails obtained, they say, show that Mr. Cheeseburger was considering not only the legality of various maneuvers related to the elector's scheme in the weeks after the election, but also their political

ramifications, potentially undercutting arguments that he was merely offering legal advice. One email chain included messages from John Eastman, another conservative lawyer who has been charged in the Georgia case. Okay, so a couple of things why this is significant. So he is the first person with real inside knowledge of this alleged fake electors scheme. I was not elected, really alleged at this point. We all say it's not playing out to plead guilty and agree to cooperate. So in theory, he may know some of the nitty gritty details, how involved Trump was, what Trump really thought about these things. It's also significant because as they were pointing out here, one of Trump's potential defenses is like, I was just acting on the advice of my attorney.

Like my lawyers told me this was legal. I was going with what they were saying. And so the fact that you have one of those attorneys talking about not only the legal implications, the political implications and cooperating with prosecutors. Not good in terms of that potential Trump defense. The other thing here that they point out in this article, Sagar, which I hadn't really thought through, is Cheeseborough and Sidney Powell had both exercised their right to a speedy trial, which is why their thing is on a faster track than everybody else. Jury selection was set to begin like imminently when these deals were struck. And if they had moved forward with these cases, then because they're all caught up in these

racketeering charges, the prosecution would have had to reveal a lot of what their case was. And it would have been a huge advantage for Trump and the others to be able to see, okay, what evidence do they have? What case are they really making here? How are they approaching this in court? So the fact that this has short-circuited those trials really undercuts the ability of the Trump team to see what they're going to throw at them when that case ultimately comes to trial. The big problem for Trump is that he tweeted in November of 2020 that she was one of his, quote, wonderful lawyers. So he can't say that she wasn't his lawyer. I mean, maybe they didn't formally, you could say it, but like, unless you formally,

if you signed like a letter of engagement or whatever, then that's definitely one of your lawyers. So I think you're right, which is that from the point of view of who was the most involved in some of the schemes that he could find himself in the most trouble, it's definitely Kenneth Cheeseborough. It also bears big questions about Rudy Giuliani. Would he ever turn as a prosecutor the level of people who are flipping, quote unquote, against Trump? And in terms of Trump's defense, it's going to be a lot more difficult in Georgia because we're dealing with state election law. This is something we've always tried to highlight here. The federal charges on Trump regarding January 6th and all that, personally, I just don't think it passes even close to the First Amendment test in terms of what free speech is, how you would have to prove incitement, all of that. That's going to be extraordinarily difficult.

I'm not saying it won't pass a D.C. jury, but in terms of whether it makes it to the Supreme Court or not and how it'll pass there, we'll see. But remember that the state of Georgia and in our federalist system, states themselves are the ones who administer their own elections. So for Trump, when he's being charged with trying to disrupt official proceedings in the state, they actually have the ironclad jurisdiction over their secretary of state, manipulation schemes, on all of that. I think the best case for Trump is just, you know, I don't know, try and make it as political as possible. And of course, you know, on that front, like why did it take so three years or whatever to charge

him? Oh, you happen to charge him like right before the year before the election. Yeah. Who can deny that? Doesn't it doesn't look ridiculous, but after it's been charged now, it's a legal fight that you're embroiled in. You're not in a political fight anymore. It remains to be seen yet how it will turn out. I genuinely don't know. Like what political defense can they mount on the Georgia – or sorry, a legal defense can they mount? We talked with Brad Moss. He's like he's just got to blame his lawyers.

But if your lawyers are not cooperating against you, it's going to be extraordinarily difficult. Yeah. That's why the Cheeseboro one in particular is very difficult. Now, they say actually they did not officially sign an engagement letter with Sidney Powell. But if you're out on Twitter or True Social or whatever announcing like, she's my great lawyer, then, you know, obviously there was a connection there. It's not this like, oh, she was just one of millions who also agreed with me that the election was stolen.

So put that aside. I mean, if I had to rank the cases in terms of their sort of legal strength, the documents case, I mean, it's pretty open and shit. Like I genuinely don't see any defense that they have there because it's not only that you kept all this documents, but they asked over and over again, you're moving boxes around, you're caught hiding them, all of that. I mean, it's just that one. I don't see how you're getting out of that one, okay? Next, I would put this one, because as you said, state election law,

it's a much more clear-cut case against him. And now that you have these relatively high-level, high-profile individuals who are flipping and are cooperating and they're undercutting your defense about like, I was just doing what my lawyers told me. That one seems very difficult. And then but, you know, I view the Jack Smith one here in D.C. very differently because he wasn't arguing in that indictment that Trump was inciting January 6th rioters.

It really was also about these fake elector scheme, which, you know, so that's kind of gets around the free speech issues. And he crafted the indictment specifically to try to avoid those questions. The other thing with the Jack Smith case, of course, is that you've got a D.C. jury, which D.C. being not exactly super friendly Trump territory. So the jury pool matters there as well. But I do think that this makes things much more difficult for him in the state of Georgia. It's hard for me to see how he gets out of this.

To me, it's a question of timing. And I will say it's just always important. Yes, the indictments haven't really changed. You know, they've, if anything, strengthened him in the Republican primary. They haven't really changed his approval rating with the American public. It is still possible that when you have an actual trial and you're facing actual prison time and you've got, you know, this courtroom drama playing out, that it does sit differently with the American people. And the last thing that I'll say on this is, you know, I do think that there's, it has been instructive to me to watch the way the civil case in New York for business fraud has been playing out, because I feel like we're all working with

a little bit of an outdated analytical framework when it comes to Trump and his ability to wriggle out of things, because he's not wriggling out of the civil case in New York. Now, he's not going to go to jail for it, but he's already lost his business licenses in the state, could be in very significant financial trouble. You know, they're really not debating at this point whether there was fraud. They're debating how severe it was, what the penalty is ultimately going to be. And so for me, it has been instructive to see the difference between how things play for him in the political realm versus how they actually play for him in a courtroom when you've actually got to like back up what you're saying with some evidence and some

facts. And you can't just, you know, post on True Social that, oh, you didn't actually know Sidney Powell and that's somehow going to fly. The big question is, the big thing is the wildcard factor of what happens should a conviction occur? How does that affect the political system? Nobody knows. It's completely unprecedented. What if Trump strikes a deal and he's like, okay, I won't run. And that leads to some sort of, you know, I mean, what does that mean's like, okay, I won't run. And that leads to some sort of, you know, I mean, what does that mean? Like, well, you have a last minute effort to plug somebody in. And if you think these types of things can't happen, try telling us all a month ago that the United States would have no speaker of the house for two weeks and no foreseeable path

to actually fulfilling the number three slot in the government that cannot do anything. These things do happen. And when they happen, first it's a little bit crazy. Then the frenzy dies down. And now it's just a matter of routine. Who knows? And each specific case is a major problem that faces Trump. Sure, he certainly could wriggle his way out of it.

He could become the president. Then we have to go through all kinds of novel interpretations of what that means. It could mean a major political backfire. As we said, the RNC could replace him. He himself could drop out. There's simply no way of knowing like what will actually happen in this entire scenario. And that's why, you know, as I think as tedious as some of the legal coverage on this can be, you have no choice but to look for it. Because you just know what the stakes could be in the future. The details of this singular case could decide the American presidency in 2024. That's not an exaggeration.

It absolutely could. Absolutely. And so, you know, when there are major developments, like, we would be, we would really be failing if we didn't pay attention to them because it is an extraordinary set of circumstances. It is a place we in the country have never been before. And so, you know, these were certainly some major developments in the Georgia case that are not good for Trump whatsoever. For me, a lot of the question of all of this and how it plays out is timing. I think this one is, this trial for Trump is set to start like beginning of next year. How long does it take for that to play out? You're talking about all these other co-conspirators

in terms of a RICO case. Then there could be an appeal. So none of this is going to happen in short order. And for me, that's the real wild card is just what is the timing on this? When, if he is actually found guilty, when does that hit? What does that look like?

Where are we in the political cycle? And there's just no way to know right now. Absolutely correct. Last part here. I guess we're trying to bring back a little bit of fun to the show, although even on this one, there's not a lot of fun. It's lighter than the rest of the show, we'll just say. Let's go with that. Let's put this up there on the screen. Dave Chappelle, it appears, has drawn the ire of a Boston crowd after criticizing Israel. This was a kind of a very sparse Wall Street Journal report. And what they say is that it appears, based upon multiple reports, that Dave Chappelle at a comedy show in Boston on Thursday criticized Israel's bombing of Gaza at a performance in which the comedian said that the U.S. was aiding the slaughter of innocent

civilians. That was at the TD Garden. Chappelle condemned the October 7 attack on Israel by Hamas militants, but then criticized what he said were war crimes in Gaza, according to people in attendance. Quote, the comments came up when Chappelle said that he didn't think students should lose a job offers for supporting Palestinians and audience members command for the comedian to quote, shut up, drew an emotional response from Chappelle, who then criticized the Israeli government for cutting off water and other essentials to Gaza and accused of killing innocent peoples. Some audience members cheered Chappelle and shouted free Palestine. Others yelled, what about Hamas? Some in the crowd got up and left. Quote, towards the conclusion of his show, he said of Israeli policies and Hamas attacks, that two wrongs don't make a right. Now we have

one report from an individual who apparently did attend this show and described it for all of us. Let's put this up there on the screen. They say, quote, I saw Dave Chappelle last night at the Boston TD Garden. It was sold out. So I would say 22,000 people I saw Dave Chappelle last night at the Boston TD Garden. It was sold out, so I would say 22,000 people were there. Three-fourths into the show, he said, I wanted to address what's going on in Israel-Palestine. He specifically said Palestine and said it before Israel. He said what happened on October 7th wasn't right, but what's going on isn't right and not just. You can't kill innocent civilians like that, and the whole world stood silently and watches. Someone shouted at him from the crowd, said, shut the F up, Dave. He went nuts and yelled back, no, you shut the F up. You don't take tens of billions of dollars from my country to go kill innocent women and children and then come and tell me to

shut the F up. He said, don't come begging for my money for my country and then go drop bombs on kids and cut off innocent people, water and electricity. You have the audacity to pay to come see me and then tell me to shut the F up. No, you shut the F up. The crowd started clapping and cheering for him and saying, yes, Dave, chance of free Palestine. It said, damn right, free Palestine. He went on a 15 minute rant about being Muslim and the Israelis are projecting what's wrong with them on Muslims. And the crowd kept on cheering. It was surreal. Crowd was a typical Boston demographic, 80% white, 5% black, quote the rest Latin and others. So that's a eyewitness report.

Yeah. We can't confirm this report. This is just floating around on social media. But I will say that does sound like Dave Chappelle, doesn't it? It does. Absolutely. Yeah. And yeah, I mean, for the inevitable of like, why are you reporting? Listen, Dave, and this is always a difficulty, he often veers in the direction of social commentary interspersed with his comedy. That's what he does. That's what he, and there's nothing wrong with that. That's what he's always done. I mean, remember, he did that entire special

after George Floyd that he put out. Like, was that comedy? Like, not really. You know, it's a piece of silver. And that's fine. I have no problem with that. My point, though, is that it's clear that this will become a major lightning rod,

not just for audiences, but how comedians and others are going to handle it because it just highlights like, we're all trying to process something together as a culture at the same time. And it invites, you know, a lot of controversy. This is where I'm sure Dave is happy for the fact that nobody was recording or watching the show while it was happening. Good for him, honestly. I support that policy. But yeah, I do think it shows the difficulty. And also, Dave is not a person to keep his mouth shut. He's going to say what he thinks, which I support. I support him 100%. Yeah, he's a free man.

He's going to do and say what he thinks. Whether you agree or disagree, that's certainly been his style from the beginning. I mean, if you go back and watch the very first Chappelle show and some of the stuff that he put on air, how many times, oh my God, this was your first episode. So even when he was under the like corporate brand, Dave Chappelle, always very much a free man. For me, the reporting is that, you know, this one individual says that there were chance of free Palestine and the audience was mostly backing him up. We have no way of knowing without being in the room. There are also reports that there were people who are really angered and left because of the commentary and his response to the audience. And obviously somebody reportedly said, you know, shut the F up, Dave, et cetera, et cetera.

I think it's a reminder of how hot and how incredibly emotional this issue is and how dangerous it, I mean, talk about third rails in American politics, getting on, you know, saying the quote unquote wrong thing, or as the ADL dude said, not getting the story right on what's happening with Israel and what they're doing to Gaza right now. There now, there is no cancel culture like this kind of cancel culture. And we've seen it in, you know, there have been multiple Palestinian conferences canceled now, one here in Virginia, very close to D.C., one down in Texas, I believe, in Houston. You've got Starbucks actually suing their union, Starbucks Workers United, because they put out some pro-Palestinian thing. You got people getting fired. You got some high level,

like very well-known, powerful agent in Hollywood who posted some pretty innocuous, reposted actually some pretty innocuous stuff on Instagram. And she apologized and still got fired. So yeah, this is a little bit of a glimpse. Dave Chappelle is wealthy and famous and whatever. He's going to say whatever the hell he wants and no one is going to tell him to shut up and he's going to be just fine. But I do think it is a visceral illustration of how intense, how fraught,

how emotional this issue is and how for people who aren't Dave Chappelle, even someone who was a high level agent in Hollywood, a CAA, how much saying the quote unquote wrong thing on this issue can have massive implications for you, your personal life, your career, etc. Yes. Well said, Crystal. Also, just for people who are wondering, if you even try and mention Israel to me in the DM on Instagram, I'm not going to see it. I've already had it filtered out. So I just wanted to put that out there. Yeah. I highly recommend it, Crystal. You can block like any certain words or any of that. so I just have a list of things. Israel and Palestine have now been added.

I didn't even know that. I'm in blissful ignorance, so I'm living my life, folks. That's the way to live. I'm posting stories about the Museum of the American Revolution and George Washington's war tent, and that's the world that I've decided to live in. Anyways, we just want to say thank you for all your support over the last two weeks. It's been very difficult to report on the story. We're still keeping our eye on, as you saw, with Sidney Powell and the Trump news, not taking our eye off that. We're working very hard on the focus group, working to bring you guys the best possible news.

We're on call, waiting, making sure that we keep everybody as up-to-date as possible. And we thank you all again for your support, and we are going to see you all tomorrow. Actually, Ryan will be in for me tomorrow. Oh, that's right. I forgot about that. So Sagar will see you, and Ryan will see you, and I'll see you guys on Thursday. Camp Shane, one of America's longest-running weight loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. But there were some dark truths behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children. Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie. Enter Camp Shame, an eight-part

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