Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 11/29/23: Israel Hamas Truce Extended, Elon Visits Israel, Bernie Weighs Conditioning Israel Aid, Koch Network Backs Nikki Haley, Desperate Push For Ukraine Funding, Black Friday Spending Reveals Bleak Economy, Ryan Spars With Ted Cruz On Israel And Gaza.

Episode Date: November 29, 2023

Ryan and Emily discuss the Israel-Hamas truce being extended as hostages are released, Elon Musk cozying up to Bibi in and Israel visit, Bernie weighs forcing a vote on conditioning Israel aid, Koch network backs Nikki Haley for 2024, desperate bipartisan push to force Ukraine funding through Congress, Black Friday spending reveals bleak economic reality for Americans, and Ryan spars with Ted Cruz on Israel and Hamas. BP Holiday Merch LIVE NOW (Use code BLACKFRIDAY for 15% off Non-Holiday Items): https://shop.breakingpoints.com/collections/breaking-points-holiday-collection  To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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show. He thinks he's so funny. It's a good book. Ryan said he was going to start the show today. First of all, welcome to Gouter Points. But if you were listening, Ryan was opening the show by looking straight to camera as though he was busy reading his book, The Squad, AOC and the Hope of a Political Revolution. I don't know if that counts as starting the show, Ryan. I'm enjoying it. It's fun to go back through it. Speaking of this book, we're going to have Ted Cruz on the show later today. We promised last time that Ted Cruz was going to join us. We talked a big game. We were really going to nail this guy to the wall.

And maybe he was watching the beginning of the show and he decided he's not going to join us. We talked a big game. We were really going to nail this guy to the wall. And maybe he was watching the beginning of the show and he decided he's not going to make it. He rescheduled for today, so he will be here later. That's what we're told. We make no promises because he controls his schedule, but he says he will be here later in the show. The reason it's relevant to the book is he's currently hanging out at number 13 on the bestseller list. You know what they say about the last person to graduate from medical school? What do they call them? A doctor. The person that's at the very bottom of the bestseller list, bestselling author. My book's out next week. I've got my eye on Ted Cruz. It's kind of a conflict of interest to have him on here because I don't want to help him sell books.

This is so bitterly competitive. It is. I'm going to make it the most boring interview ever. So nobody watches it. Nobody buys the book. It's pretty good. Well, maybe don't do that. I won't do that. It'll be an exciting interview. We do.

Go ahead and buy the book. If you like Ted Cruz, go ahead and buy his book. You know, he's always game to have debates and arguments. So I expect that's what's going to happen by the time this airs. We'll know how it went. But that's my expectation for it at the very least. But Ryan, before we get to that, we do have a lot of news to go over. More hostages were released yesterday.

More negotiations towards a potential extension of the ceasefire. We have elections. Nikki Haley got the coveted Koch brothers endorsement. And Ron DeSantis had an interesting reaction to that. We're talking about all kinds of stuff. Yes. And Congress is now trying to figure out ways to get money to Ukraine. Yes. And so the new strategy that they have landed on is they're going to tighten asylum rules. They're going to add more money for border security. There's a deal being worked out between kind of Ukraine. Yeah, it's sort of kind of like

the kind of hardline immigration hawks don't like it. Obviously, the immigration rights groups don't like it. People who think that we need to wind this war down already don't like it. Nobody seems to like it, but that's how they get things through Congress that nobody likes. That's how we get things done in this country. That's right. Making everybody mad. Since everybody hates it, that means it's likely to become law. Everybody hates it, except for the lobbyists, probably. No, it's great for Northern Virginia real estate. That's for sure. It'll do great for that. We also had some interesting numbers coming out of Black Friday about buy now, pay later functions that have been added to different shopping websites and what that

might say about the economy. After that, we will get to Ted Cruz. But let's start with the hostages, Ryan. More hostages were released yesterday. We can put the A block up on the screen here. The truce, I guess if you could call it that, was extended two days and 11 more hostages were freed yesterday. What did you make of some of this footage that was coming out yesterday of the Middle East, Ryan, of hostages being released? Yeah, and what I think people who are hoping for is that this two-day truce will lead to another two- or three-day truce, which leads to another one and can eventually reach to, you know, get to some kind of long-term truce. Because you're not going to get to a resolution, you're not going to get to justice at this point, because at the same time that this is unfolding, you have the complete

collapse of all civilian infrastructure in Gaza. You've got more than 1.7 million people displaced, you have the water treatment facilities destroyed, you have sewage treatment facilities destroyed, you have people who don't have enough, remotely enough access, let alone water, but food also. The healthcare system is completely destroyed. Doesn't take a lot of imagination to understand where that's going. That leads directly to rampant disease. Cindy McCain actually is now the head of the World Food Program, which I had forgotten, but she's been out warning that Gaza is approaching famine conditions.

There are only about 200 trucks containing humanitarian relief supplies getting in, and that's just not enough for a city of what used to be a city of two million people, but which is now a gigantic pile of rubble on which 2 million people are expected to survive. And we have more from the New York Times. We can put this next graphic up on the screen here. The first round of hostages released as extended truce appears to hold. That's their headline. But if you're looking at this, if you're watching the show, you can see these figures here of the people who have passed away in captivity, the people who are 80 years old in captivity, 80 years and over in captivity,

which we saw actually some of them being released, Israelis, yesterday, getting jeered pretty brutally as they were released. We saw, we see here, people 55 years and older, 18 to 54 and older, 11 Israeli hostages were released yesterday. And according to Reuters, Hamas had said earlier that it received a list of 33 Palestinians that were going to be released from Israeli jails in return for those 11 hostages. People probably remember that the

Israeli stance on this was that they would extend the truce by one day for every 10 more hostages that were released. Ryan, where do you think that stands right now after yesterday? I think that they're sorting out who and how they're going to move forward. I do think that Hamas wants to continue releasing hostages. They certainly prefer that to a bombing rampage. They have essentially signaled that they would release all the hostages if there would be a kind of permanent ceasefire reached. Israeli government is rejecting that, saying that no, they're still committed to completely annihilating Hamas.

The calculations of what that would take though, at the current pace, there are various estimates of how many Hamas fighters they've killed at this point. I've seen estimates between one and 2,000. Others have said maybe up to 5,000. But you're talking about at least 13,000 people being killed and people are saying it's likely significantly higher than that. So in order to kill 30 to 40,000 Hamas fighters

and actually annihilate this, we're talking about hundreds of thousands of killed, and that's violently killed. That's before you get to the number of people dying by disease. But just as these hostage releases are putting kind of a global spotlight on the Hamas brutality of, you know, people over 80 in captivity, people under six. Holocaust survivors. Holocaust survivors in captivity. The Israeli hostage release is similarly putting a spotlight on some of their brutality. And you're seeing children released who are allegedly caught up for throwing stones. Mostly women and children who are being held mostly without charges, some convicted, some charged, but mostly not.

And the way that they're being treated, and maybe we have this here, the way that they're talking about having been treated in Israeli detention is also shocking. غتام النوم طب هذا مين حطلك يا؟ هادي الصليب هلأ يعني؟ اه صبك متصور اسبع كسروا لك ايدك؟ ايده اسبعي ومن هين رضا وظهري وكل شي ولا ايش مكدموا ليش ولا ايشي غتام النوم

طب هذا م أمينة؟ وضع الأسرة ماشي وختاري يبقوا على الأرض يتدعس عليهم قصي مش قصي كل شي يعني أنا شابة تحمل أما هم أيام طلعونا علىسيارة ضربونا ومرضيت شو وقع عوراك ضربونا اخرى قالولي وقع عوراك كنتم بعرفش داكرة ولا كتب ومرضيت شو وقع عوراك ويوم غذونا عالدكتور بس قالولي شو اسمك ضربونا عندي الدكتور

وبتفشل شو بس في الأسرة قاعدين So just horrifying stories that we're hearing coming out of from the detainees. And then we're also winding up with this situation where the detainees or the former detainees are being told that they're not allowed to celebrate, not allowed to meet with people, not allowed to speak to the press. As part of the deal. As part of the deal. Not allowed to celebrate struck me. It's, you know, actually, let's even get into this next clip because we see some of this kind of the sparks really starting to fly on this issue. Sky News, I believe. Right. We understand that a teenager has been shot.

Is this the right way to handle this situation, given that tensions are already rising and emotions are already quite high? Well, we're talking about the release of attempted murderers. You call them children, but we're talking about teenagers who stabbed other teenagers. We're talking about... That's not my question, Deputy Mayor. I totally and fully understand that they have been accused. I understand, but if I can, Deputy Mayor, Deputy Mayor, I'm just going to interrupt you. I'm fully aware.

I'm fully aware of... I'm answering the question. Deputy Mayor, I'm fully aware of what they've been... Part of the deal was that there would be no celebrations. And the reason that these clashes are occurring is because exactly against the deal that there would be no celebrations celebrating the release of attempted murderers in East Jerusalem, in my city, where many people, many of the victims live side by side with the people who try to kill them, part of the deal was that they would not have these celebrations.

And if the clashes are occurring, it's exactly because of that. Well, so that was the deputy mayor, you heard that, of Jerusalem, speaking on Sky News. And Ryan, you know, I do, what you said earlier makes sense to me. It also makes sense to me that celebrations can fuel potential conflict in a way that, you know, she's making a decent argument that that's what happened.

So it goes back to this talking point that we constantly hear that Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East, that that's why it needs to be protected. The only democracy in the Middle East would not insist that you cannot celebrate. Because you have to understand that's also in the context of laws they've implemented in the last several weeks that say you cannot, you know, that there have been hundreds and even thousands of people arrested and jailed for posting just sympathy for people who've been killed in Gaza. Yes. In fact, we talked about a journalist last week on the show who, and those were not sympathetic posts that she ended up being detained over. They were not, I wouldn't

characterize them as sympathetic so much as I would characterize them as sympathetic with Hamas. They're sort of mocking people who've been taken hostage. But yes, she was detained. Right. And then the idea that though, not only can you not celebrate, but you can't have family members come visit you after you've kind of left detention. It just really exposes or asks the question of what kind of democracy are we talking about here? This last democracy in the Middle East or the only democracy in the Middle East. Also, why does Iraq get short shrift on this all the time? Lebanon has elections too. Didn't we create a democracy?

I thought we did that. We did. Yeah. And also they do have elections. Are you saying the mission was not accomplished? It was a mission was accomplished. Clearly. That's what I thought.

Anyway. We need to litigate, relitigate that. But no, I mean, I think it's legitimately a challenge because you do have a serious potential for a security situation to erupt. And obviously want to avoid that as much as possible so that you can get your own hostages back. And that's, I mean, it's no easy feat, but obviously doing it while proving that you, you know, can live up to the standards of the sort of Middle Eastern democracy. I mean, it's important, obviously. Right. And even if you have cut a deal with Hamas that there would be no celebrations, like the people who were released from prison were not part of that deal. They were just told that they were released from prison. And then if you're celebrating the fact

that you've gotten your freedom, the other choice that the Israeli soldiers and the Israeli police have is to not shoot them. You could also just let the celebration kind of wind down and people go home. Like that's an option that exists. Speaking of peace, the number one Washington peacenik, Joe Biden, yesterday posted something extraordinarily

controversial, which he is already walking back. Let's put this up here and I'll read this. Tell me what you make of this. Hamas unleashed, this is Joe Biden, Hamas unleashed a terrorist attack because they fear nothing more than Israelis and Palestinians living side by side in peace. To continue down the path of terror, violence, killing, and war is to give Hamas what they seek. We can't do that. You know, for the most part, this is also, this was my analysis from the very beginning, that Hamas, its brutal provocation was intended to create war,

to undermine the extension of the Abraham Accords, and that Israel should not play into their hands by engaging in, as Biden calls it, terror, violence, killing, and war, and that we can't do that. That kind of, that was, because this was posted on Twitter, I think, and Biden is not used to making news on Twitter, the American press largely skipped over this post from yesterday. The Israeli press sees on it and was like, whoa, what on earth is Biden saying? Because Biden clearly seems to be referring to the Israeli action as terror, violence, killing, and war. Which it is. It's terrifying. It's violent. It's killing. It's war.

It's war. Right. And so the Israeli press is saying, wait a minute, is Biden all of a sudden calling for a ceasefire and end of the war? Right. No, he's not. He walks it back. He's now walking it back in. Well, his aides are walking it back to reporters. Do we have, let me get your reaction and I'll find the, I'll find the exact quote. Yeah, first of all, I mean, imagine it's your job to write these tweets for Joe Biden. And you accidentally called for an end to war. And you don't, and we're going to get into what Netanyahu talked about with Elon Musk recently, and Elon Musk's trip to Israel, because actually Netanyahu was talking about a two-state solution, whether

or not he supports the two-state solution. But it's extremely important. It's very relevant. Yeah, right now, we're going to get into some of that in a second. But it is really relevant right now as we're talking about this post from Biden on X, because that is in contrast with the statement of the government, the stated position of the government, of the country who is reliant on our aid in this situation. I don't mean our money, but certainly our munitions. There are plenty of quotes from Israeli government officials and the Israeli press about how devastating it would be to lose the support of America in the war because, specifically because of munitions and those types of resources, it's less about, you know,

we're about 20 percent. And in a normal year, we make up about 20 percent of their military budget. So significant, not make or break. But the munitions are absolutely critical. And so it's really strange to see that ostensible contradiction between our position and Netanyahu's position. You've made an interesting point repeatedly about how Biden, you made this point on Twitter yesterday, I saw, I think you were arguing with Ben Dreyfus, and you were talking about how Biden, Biden's strategy seems to be a public stance that allows him to pressure Netanyahu privately, but we don't know. I mean, we honestly have no idea. That's what he claims, right? Right. Right. We don't know what's happening behind the scenes. But yes, that's what Biden has been

saying that he's, and he's kind of alluded to it a little bit. When he was asked about conditioning aid, whether you should condition aid to Israel based on whether or not they're committing human rights abuses, he said the other day, that's an interesting thought and it's something we should consider. That's the furthest American president has gone since, well, back in the 80s, the posture even of the Reagan administration was further to the left than we're in now. But in this new era, that's a step that hasn't been taken before. And then Biden said, if I had started by saying that, then I wouldn't have, he basically said that I wouldn't have been able to develop the wiggle room privately to force this kind of truce and this hostage deal. The problem with that claim of his is that Hamas was putting this on the table from the very

beginning. And the president of the United States can, with a phone call, force Israel to take these deals. They did it in 1982 with Lebanon. Biden himself did it in 2021 with Gaza. You can make these phone calls, and by the end of the phone call, the Israeli prime minister agrees to truces. That's how this works. So it could have happened. So he didn't need to actually do this, but that is his claim. Now, here's the cleanup on his peacenik tweet. This is the Jewish insider. This is a White House aide. He meant that we can't lose hope for peace. So we don't want to lose hope. Not that he wants or demands peace or is going to use his power to actually bring about peace. We can't lose hope for peace. So he meant that we can't lose hope

for peace ultimately in the region. So ultimately sometime in the future, that it's still incredibly important that we continue to lay the groundwork for and create the conditions for a lasting peace. And that involves a two-state solution. Yeah. And so let's get to the next two elements here, which are quite relevant to this. First is Ben-Gavir. The far right doesn't even begin to describe him, but he represents a hard right settler kind of block in Netanyahu's government. We can put this one up here. Ben-Gavir, basically he says, if you don't hurry up and restart this war, I'm going to bring the government down. And he's the national security minister. Yeah. And now, now Gavir could leave the government. And if everyone else stayed, Netanyahu would have enough support to stay. But Gavir is not alone in his hawkish approach to this. Now, the counter

argument that Netanyahu has been making to the right, and this is the argument that he's been making for years that we refuse to hear in the United States let's put up this quote from Bibi Netanyahu he said he told his cabinet essentially quote I am the only one who will prevent a Palestinian state in Gaza and the West Bank after the war so that is Netanyahu's argument for why he should be prime minister. That is what he effectively ran on when he became prime minister. This is yesterday. Fresh quote. That's from yesterday. While Joe Biden is posting a tweet that he posted. Right. Saying that Biden insists that everything they're doing is in furtherance of a two-state solution. While Netanyahu has been

very publicly and openly saying he does not support a two-state solution and the reason and he has said this in the Past the reason that he Bucked up Hamas was because Hamas makes it more difficult for Palestinians to get to statehood so We are at a place where we're like, I think the word gaslighting is overused But when you see the contradiction in these public statements, it's kind of staring you at the face.

I think it's appropriate to finally use that. Well, the word quagmire is underused in American foreign policy, and that's where this is headed from my perspective, as again, you know, I know a lot of our audience disagrees with me on the question of Israel. I'm generally supportive of Israel and take a different position on this, although I have plenty of problems with the way they've prosecuted this war and the way that they've chosen to run their country. But even so, we are headed to a situation where you have right now a completely different endgame for the government that Joe Biden is supporting. If their end game is openly on November 27th, no Palestinian state. And Biden is saying on the one hand, you know, I'm two state solution, Mr. Two state solution here, which has long been his approach to this. And it's something that he's touted. Then what does it mean to eradicate Hamas? What does it mean to destroy Hamas? What does it mean to eliminate Hamas? Seriously, tell me, because I don't think we have any answers to that question. What have you done so far? We actually don't know, to your point that you made earlier.

We don't know a breakdown of Hamas and civilians. We don't know the extent of the damage to the Hamas military and government operation, the terrorist operation. It's extremely hard to say. And at the same time, now, because of what Biden has said, there are some people in Israel actually left and right who are looking at it and saying, Ben-Gavir, bring the government down because we can't have a ceasefire right now that's prolonged indefinitely into the future. We will not sufficiently eliminate, we will not sufficiently harm Hamas's military operation. I don't believe that Hamas's military operation has gotten its sort of necessary comeuppance. And I mean that in a pragmatic sense as much as a moral sense

for what they did on October 7th. And so these are huge tensions. The CIA director, William Burns, was apparently he's been taking a leading role in negotiations. He was in Israel talking to the Mossad head yesterday and trying to negotiate further with Hamas. But that only goes so far when you have dramatically different end games. And that, to me, feels like a quagmire. Right. Or, yes. And the folks like Ben-Gavir are very clear that they have absolutely no interest in giving up the West Bank. Absolutely not. They have seized vast portions of it, and they do not plan on slowing down the settlements or slowing down the expulsions or what peace would take, which is actually rolling back the settlements, the land for peace. And when it comes to Gaza, they've been also very clear, like that there are, you know,

significant elements of the Israeli government say, we should just clear it out and turn it into Israeli settlements. And I mean, our government is funding, supporting a war that the government we're supporting has a completely different endgame as opposed to what our position is on this. Our public position, at least. We're not that stupid, though, are we? If our position is a two-state solution and this is the government, the head of the government that we're supporting is saying something basically completely different than that. Camp Shane, one of America's longest-running weight loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. Campers who began the summer in heavy bodies were often unrecognizable when they left. In a society obsessed with being thin, it seemed like a miracle solution. But behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children was a dark underworld of sinister secrets.

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on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear episodes one week early and ad-free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Let's move into the second part of the block because we have Netanyahu talking exactly about this. We're going to start though with Elon Musk because the two of them had a conversation when Elon Musk went to Israel this week and toured. Let's start with some clips and some of the audio here is a little bit hard to hear but

there's some interesting stuff in here. So let's roll this one. Last night, some of them returned home. Not home yet, but they returned to Israel. Most of them were here. The house is over there. They were murdered. In order to breach doors or windows. Obviously, there are three things that need to happen in the Gaza situation.

I mean, there's no choice but to kill those who insist on murdering civilians. There's no choice. They're not gonna change their mind. But, and then the second thing is to change the education so that a new generation of murderers is not trained to be murderers. And then the third thing, which is also very important, is to try to build prosperity. So there's Elon Musk talking to Netanyahu in the first part of the clip, and we actually have more

from a conversation they had that we're going to roll. I think we might as well just roll right into it because it's still very relevant. Here's that clip. The Germans hold themselves up in German cities. Nobody said, well, don't attack the Wehrmacht, the German army, the Nazi army, because you have civilians there. In fact, that's exactly what the Allies did through the cities of France and the cities of Germany. And many, many, many civilians were killed. I don't know what history would be like if you had, you know, the kind of mass communications

that we have today and protests would have been launched against the allies on behalf of the Nazis. Because as the German chancellor who visited Israel and saw these horrors, he said, Hamas are the new Nazis. Hamas are the new Nazis and people are demonstrating either out of ignorance or out of malevolence. They're protesting for the wrong side. I mean, it was troubling to see massive protests in almost every major city in favor of Hamas, or well, they generally characterize it as sort of a free Palestine movement. Ren, obviously, a lot of international law was developed in the wake of World War II,

and exactly what Netanyahu was talking about. We sort of came to a consensus, at least a lot of the West came to a consensus on what was appropriate uses of some of these vastly more powerful new technologies, military technologies. Yeah. The world, including the West, basically said, no, Dresden was not okay, actually. And planes, by the way, are new in Dresden. We take it somewhat for granted now, but planes were within 100 years of their existence. I mean, way less. Yeah, we're talking decades into the existence of airplanes and are being used in completely foreign ways to wage war that humanity had never seen before in World War I and World War II.

Right. And so, yeah, to go back and say that the things that the world, like, they were actual, like, the Germans were actual Nazis. Like, you didn't have to the world, like they were actual, not like the Germans were actual Nazis. Like you didn't have to stretch the, like some, some weird comparison to say that all Hamas are Nazis or, you know, actual Nazis. And even, even in that situation, the West was like, okay, if we had it to do over again, Dresden is, you know, firebombing Dresden and killing how, how many tens of thousands of, of civilians with of thousands of civilians for the sake of sowing terror was not actually necessary for the military end goal. That was Elon Musk with Netanyahu on X, right? They were doing a spaces conversation on X. So this was a public back and forth. That's

the audio that you just heard. Yeah, I mean, I think it's, again, putting Elon Musk in this strange situation, or I guess he's putting himself in this strange situation where we've seen the power that he has in Ukraine with Starlink. And then the tour with Netanyahu is also extremely interesting because it's, I think, underscoring the power that he has with X. And so he has this sort of multi-front. On the InfoWar front,-front on the info war front, the info operation front. He controls one of the most important, one of the largest platforms

for social media, for media now, period. It's the public square. He controls it. And on the other hand, he also controls and has the potential to control when it comes to, at least in Ukraine, and I know there's talk about how Starlink can function in the future and be expanded and used, the means to even engage in that discourse. Yeah, and his point, Elon Musk is a very, very smart guy. And so when he says like really dumb things, I always wonder like what on earth is going on so he talked about the basically we need to reeducate people in in Gaza and And then we need prosperity. I'm all with him on prosperity like basically the way that the the troubles in Ireland, you know what wind up is that the the

Ireland was given basic dignity, but also economic growth and opportunity. And so the costs of joining Sinn Fein were higher because you had actual economic opportunities. The cost of joining Hamas for a 19-year-old kid in Gaza is zero because it's like a 75% unemployment rate. Now it's close to 100%. And so what else do you have to do? Like if you give people other options they're gonna take them. That's why you see kind of prosperity and and peace in the end to conflict Moving in tandem. So I think he's right on that the education point was just absurd I interviewed a guy who went to school in Gaza a couple weeks ago, and I actually asked him about What what you hear about all the propaganda that Hamas and before

them, you know, Fatah, was giving to children in Gaza schools. And you read some of it, you're like, yeah, this is gross stuff. There's no doubt about it. He made the point, he's like, you really think that in a situation where you're living under a blockade, where you have four hours of electricity a day, where your access to food and water is heavily restricted by the Israeli government, that you're unable to travel to visit your family in the West Bank or visit your family in Saudi Arabia or Jordan. You can't leave for college. You get sick. You need treatment in a hospital. You can't leave Gaza. He's like, under those conditions, you think you need a teacher to create resentment in you for the Israelis? It takes only one step backwards

to think. And so after Israel produces a famine of biblical proportions, makes Gaza uninhabitable, what kind of education curriculum are you going to bring in and make the people who went through that believe that actually it was all okay? I mean, there doesn't seem to be a, it's again, it's, it's very hard to know how the public has reacted in Gaza to Hamas in the wake of October 7th, because obviously it's different. It's not all, it's, it's, Gaza is not a monolith. The Palestinian people are not a monolith. At the same time though, there's a completely legitimate argument that they should be blaming Hamas for putting themselves in this. Hamas knew what it was going to trigger on October 7th and understood the response that it was

going to trigger and it does always understand the response that it was going to trigger on October 7th and understood the response that it was going to trigger. And it does always understand the response that it's going to trigger. It's intentional. And that, I mean, in terms of where the blame is laid in the last couple of months, in the last, at least the last, you know, since October 7th, that has to be part of the equation. And I think that a lot of the indoctrination is to prevent that and it's not to say that there aren't Obviously there are legitimate grievances that people have in Gaza against Israel. There's no question about it, but I mean, that's an important part of this puzzle And I think that's why the Hamas propaganda comes in and tries to sort of be the the block Right, but the Palestinian

Palestinians have seen this movie before in, in some ways. And so they, they know where this is going. So back in, back in the early eighties, when, uh, Israel invaded Lebanon to clear the Palestinian liberation organization, the PLO out of, out of Beirut, you know, after, you know, indiscriminate bombing of, of Beirut after massacres, after huge numbers of civilian casualties, PLO basically waved the white flag and said, we will leave Beirut. And the Lebanese population at the time was good, because this has brought this massive catastrophe onto us. And so there were a lot of Lebanese who kind of turned against the PLO. The

PLO asked the United Nations, the United States to bring in kind of, you know, peacekeepers and an international force to protect the civilian population. The U.S. at the request of Israel said, no, we're not going to do that, but we will take Israel's word that if you leave, there will not be, you know, civilian massacres. And the PLO took them at their word. As soon as the PLO shipped out of the port in Beirut, all of the foreign monitors left. Israeli forces came in, leveled the place, like horrifying civilian massacres and a decades long or almost decades long occupation followed. And so as this started going on, the Lebanese people started thinking, hold on a second, maybe we don't actually want the only people who are capable of fighting back leaving. So I think that is also something that's playing out in Gaza.

A lot of Palestinians obviously are finding themselves in a situation of hell on earth. But if Hamas just leaves, do they trust that Israel is going to come in and just peacefully rebuild the place? No, they don't. And again, that's where we get into Quagmire territory. And it's where we get into this question of like, how have they proven, how has anyone in the United States proven that the eradication, the destruction of Hamas is possible here? I mean, in all sincerity. And so we, without having that, it looks like, you know, it's, it's headed for, there's, there's nothing that's going to happen right now. That's breaking any cycle. It's just not going to be, it's not breaking the cycle, it's perpetuating the cycle.

Nothing here is going to change and we have no plan to anything that will change because you're not eradicating Hamas, you're not destroying Hamas. And if you do, say you do that, what comes into the vacuum, we also have absolutely no plan for except for more violence. The only people that seem to have a plan, the only faction that seems to have a plan are the ones who say, we're just going to lock this completely down and we're going to basically empty out the population one way or the other of the Gaza Strip, which will then only leave a handful of West Bank regions to just keep under perpetual lockdown. Like that, that's the only endgame that seems to make any sense.

And I'm using the word sense in a neutral way, like not as something that anybody ought to support. But anything else, any other endgame does not seem plausible given what's being done. Right. No, I agree. And what's worse is that we're not being given anything clear anyway. And that's because they know. I mean, it's like it's a completely futile exercise to say like, oh, yes, we have this very clear path to peace. We have very clear path to a better situation. There isn't one. And that's why we're not hearing. Right. And roughly even populations between Israel and the Palestinian territories means that you'd have to have a huge either outflow of population elsewhere

into other Middle Eastern countries or the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people in order for Israel to be actually able to carry out an occupation. Because if you have a population of seven, eight million trying to occupy a population of seven to eight million, you can't do that sustainably and indefinitely because you also need those seven million people to run an economy and to be a country. You can't just be a prison. It's no minor difference between Biden and Netanyahu. Biden's saying two-state solution, two-state solution, and Netanyahu's saying, I'm not budging on this, period. There's no

two-state solution. Basically, to have the two leaders say that within such close proximity to each other on the same day, again, it's not surprising if you follow both of these governments, but it should be shocking to the sort of conscience of where this hot war, hot conflict is going in the near future. And to finish up with Elon Musk, we can put this last element up. Musk had suggested that he was going to make Starlink available to Gaza humanitarian outfits. The Israel pushed back and said, no, do not do not do that because Hamas will end up using Starlink. And so Israel has now told Elon Musk that Starlink can only operate in Gaza with its approval. You know, their quote is basically, you know, any operation of Starlink within Israel, you know, must have the permission of Israel and that includes Gaza, which contradicts their earlier claims that Gaza is like independent and that they've left it.

Right. Well, I mean, just the, you know, we're almost two months into this hot conflict. We're coming up on the first week of December, which will make it two months. And, you know, the New York Times had a staggering, again, not particularly surprising, but a staggering report on the first week of December, which will make it two months. And, you know, the New York Times had a staggering, again, not particularly surprising, but a staggering report on the proportion, the apparent proportion of civilian deaths in this conflict. Because women and children are making up like 80%. From, yeah, I mean, from several different ways that people have sort of crunched these numbers. And analysts have looked at them, and it is, by the information we have available right now,

it does not compare favorably to other conflicts. It does not compare favorably to Fallujah, the US prosecution of the Iraq war in Fallujah. Even there, where there's high civilian casualties, what we're seeing right now appears to be a really, really, a much worse proportion of civilian deaths to militant deaths to fighter deaths. It's hard to know. I get it. These numbers are difficult. Although, Ryan, you guys at The Intercept have actually, earlier in the conflict,

you were able to validate some of the numbers that were coming out. But all that is to say, when you have that situation juxtaposed with the lack of direction from these governments, the lack of clear sort of paths forward, it's just, it's a disaster. And we might find, and how horrifying is this, that the proportion of civilian casualties carried out by the Israeli assault on Gaza will be higher than the proportion of civilian murders by Hamas on October 7th. And that is not at all to defend or minimize what Hamas did on October 7th. But what it does do is it puts in context the brutality of what Israel is doing here. If Hamas even had a lower proportion of civilian deaths in what we all agree was a horrifying atrocity, then what does this count as? Camp Shane, one of America's longest-running weight loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results.

Campers who began the summer in heavy bodies were often unrecognizable when they left. In a society obsessed with being thin, it seemed like a miracle solution. But behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children was a dark underworld of sinister secrets. Kids were being pushed to their physical and emotional limits as the family that owned Shane turned a blind eye. Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie. In this eight-episode series, we're unpacking and investigating stories of mistreatment

and reexamining the culture of fatphobia that enabled a flawed system to continue for so long. You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week early and totally ad-free on iHeart True Crime Plus. So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today. I know a lot of cops, and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun?

Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multi-billion dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission.

This is Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes 1, 2, and 3 on May 21st and episodes 4, 5, and 6 on June 4th. Add free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I'm Clayton English.

I'm Greg Lott. And this is Season 2 of the War on Drugs podcast. Yes, sir. We are back. In a big way. In a very big way. Real people, real perspectives. This is kind of star-studded a little bit, man.

We got Ricky Williams, NFL player, Heisman Trophy winner. It's just a compassionate choice to allow players all reasonable means to care for themselves. Music stars Marcus King, John Osborne from Brothers Osborne. We have this misunderstanding of what this quote-unquote drug thing is. Benny the Butcher. Brent Smith from Shinedown. We got B-Real from Cypress Hill. NHL enforcer Riley Cote.

Marine Corvette. MMA fighter Liz Karamush. What we're doing now isn't working, and we need to change things. Stories matter, and it brings a face to them. It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

And to hear episodes one week early and ad-free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Ryan, on this question of a ceasefire, there's new reporting in The Intercept about how Democrats in Congress are handling the question of where we go from here. Take us through a little bit of what you guys have learned from Bernie Sanders yesterday when he was questioned by Daniel Boguslaw. Yep. Senate Democrats yesterday met and discussed whether or not to condition aid to Israel. My colleague Boguslaw talked to Bernie Sanders ahead of time and Sanders said that, you can put up this element here, I think it's C1, said that he was considering forcing a vote onto the Senate floor

conditioning aid. Now, this comes as Senator Peter Welsh, the other senator from Vermont, has called for an indefinite ceasefire. Representative Becca Ballant, who's the only member of the House from Vermont, has called for a ceasefire and has signed on to that resolution, leaving Bernie Sanders as the only elected official from Vermont who has not called for a ceasefire. And so the question then becomes, what would Sanders do with regard to this vote on conditioning aid? Now, if Sanders is watching this, or if any of his staff are watching this, there actually is only one way that I know of to force a vote on conditioning aid, and that's the Foreign Service Act subsection 502B. I think it's only been used once in 50 years, and it's different than the Leahy Law. The Leahy Law says that the United States government cannot give military assistance, security

assistance to units that are engaged in human rights abuses. But that's only enforceable by the State Department and the State Department obviously has no intention of enforcing that at the moment. There is a provision under 502B that would allow any senator, and so we're not just talking to Bernie Sanders or anybody in the Senate, we'll ask Ted Cruz if he wants to introduce this when he comes here later today. Any senator can put a privileged resolution on the floor that it has to sit in the committee for 10 days. After 10 days, it can come out of the committee, and then you vote on it. If it passes the Senate, it would force then the State Department to take 30 days to conduct a study

of whether or not Israel is engaged in a pattern of human rights abuses. And if they are, then a congressional resolution of disapproval would be privileged, would get a vote on the floor. So Sanders actually does have a path. He can do this if he is serious about wanting to put people on the record on the question of funding unchecked human rights abuses. So the day after Thanksgiving, he said he told reporters that conditioning aid is, quote, a worthwhile thought and said, I don't think if I started off with that. This is Biden. Oh, this is Biden. Yeah. OK, great.

So he said we'd have ever gotten to where we are today, which was to your point earlier in the show about Biden's argument for what he said publicly versus what he said privately. It seems like Bernie's not willing to go further than Biden, it seems like. But I think that also reflects Bernie's stance on this, that he thinks this is sort of a tactical, I don't want to say neutrality, but almost this sort of neutrality in the question of a ceasefire, not a neutrality in the conflict, but this question of a ceasefire that it's helpful to have a public stance that allows you some more wiggle room privately. Yeah, I think Bernie has just really dug in. And he's not someone who is, you know, who really takes pressure from the left well. Like, right. I mean, he doesn't take pressure well from anybody. He's very, he's an independent minded person. You talk about some of that in the book

that you have right here in the squad. Go, go get the, go get the book. And, uh, you know, he, a lot of his family was wiped out, uh, in the Holocaust. Uh, he, he, he took, you know, from people close to him, you know, he took the October 7th massacres, you know, extremely hard. As I think, it's easy to say that we all did, but, you know, I think for some, you know, who have that experience and that heritage, you know, it hits even harder. Incredibly visceral. And so it was visceral for him, and he is is not like I said He's not somebody that responds, you know to well to pressure from the left So you you've you've just seen him kind of digging in and then you've seen and the left

You know pushing harder and harder on him because there's such a dissonance between the Bernie Sanders that people think they know and the Bernie Sanders of this moment. So this is a live question now. He says he's considering the bare minimum, which is to say our security assistance should not be used for what we all acknowledge are human rights abuses, international war crimes. That shouldn't be a difficult step for him to take. Now, you've been following John Fetterman very closely throughout his young

political career, but especially over the last couple of months. We're going to put this next element up on the screen here. Obviously, people have seen the images of John Fetterman. Oh, not this one. I think we got the VO. Oh, right. So this is John Fetterman. Ryan's going to get into this in a second. But if you're looking at the screen right now So this is John Fetterman. Ryan's going to get into this in a second. But if you're looking at the screen right now, this is some background, some really helpful context and background on John Fetterman's approach, the question of Israel, super PAC support, AIPAC support, and all of that. So let's take a look at this VO. And then Ryan, you can walk us through some of the background. This is John Fetterman's office where he has,

speaking of incredibly visceral reactions that a lot of Jewish Americans, Ryan, you can walk us through some of the background. This is John Fetterman's office where he has, speaking of incredibly visceral reactions that a lot of Jewish Americans especially have had to October 7th, this is pictures of the hostages on the wall of John Fetterman's Senate office. Now, John Fetterman, as we've talked about a little bit here, is definitely, Ryan, a man of the left, has been. He has absolutely been. Supported Bernie in 2016, right. Sort of populist left. This is, he's not just sort of cautiously like Bernie, staking out a different position from the left on this. He was draped in the Israeli flag at the demonstration, the pro-Israel demonstration here in DC recently. And he has done that not just literally, but rhetorically and with his votes throughout the course of the last couple of months Give us a little bit more background about as people just saw up on their screen the Conor Lamb

Dilemma the super PACs that came into the race. What's what explains John Fetterman? In fact, we can put the tweet up in Ryan because Ryan has been following this on Twitter Yeah, this right this comes from my new book that's out next week. And so during the 2022 campaign, when he was running for Senate, you know, he had to fend off not just a primary challenge, but also a Republican because it's a swing district. And so I'll just read a little bit of that. Fetterman was locked in what threatened to be a tight primary race with Representative Conor Lamb for the Senate nomination. Lamb's campaign was openly pleading for super PAC support to put him over the top.

Early in the year, Jewish Insider reported Mark Melman, who was the head of the MFI, had reached out to Fetterman with questions about his position on Israel. That's the Democratic majority for Israel. Democratic activist Brett Goldman told Jewish Insider, quote, he's never come out and said that he's not a supporter of Israel, but the perception is that he aligns with the squad more than anything else. So Melman said the Fetterman campaign responded to his inquiry and quote, came with an interest in learning about the issues. Following the meeting, the campaign reached out again. Then they sent us a position paper, which we thought was very strong,

Melman said. But it wasn't quite strong enough. Jewish Insider reported that DMFI emailed back some comments on the paper, which, quote, Fetterman was receptive to addressing in a second draft, unquote. In April, Fetterman agreed to do an interview with Jewish Insider, quote, I want to go out of my way, he said, to make sure that it's absolutely clear that the views that I hold in no way go along the lines of some of the more fringe or extreme wings of our party. I would also respectfully say that I'm not really a progressive in that sense. Fetterman, unprompted, stressed that there should be zero conditions on military aid to Israel, that BDS, which is the boycott movement toward Israel, that BDS, which is the boycott movement toward Israel,

that BDS was wrong, and so on. He said, quote, let me just say this, even if I'm asked or not, I was dismayed by the Iron Dome vote, he added. As a result, DMFI and AIPAC stayed out of his race. Now, I think some of this goes to explain where he has wound up on this issue. Because he has both a Democratic primary to worry about at the time, and now he has a general election to worry about next time he runs in Pennsylvania Senate. But I do not think it explains everything. Because he's been kind of the most vocal advocate of Israel. It's clearly a sincere...

There's something more going on than just this. And I can imagine, you know, the pictures of the hostages, for example, we were just talking about how incredibly visceral the witnessing what happened on October 7th was for a lot of people who descend from Holocaust survivors whose families, as you mentioned, Bernie Sanders, where a lot of his family was wiped out. The hostages here are a really, I completely understand him putting their pictures up in his office. I mean, that is the enduring, not even symbol,

because it's beyond symbolic. I mean, it is symbolic, but it is the enduring symbol and the enduring example of Hamas's specific culpability in October 7th. John Fetterman, on the other hand, though, for the sort of the way that he's handled this, it is really, really interesting that he seems to almost relish being anti-populist left when he so relished being pro-populist left in the rest of his campaign. He really wasn't shy. And I actually think that's why he won. I think he's the sort of model electoral populist. And I don't mean that in any, I mean that in a sort of like literal sense that the path for populist victory as I see it is you're not pretending you aren't in favor of

Medicare for all, not pretending that you have a more centrist position on any of these issues. So for Fetterman, it is particularly interesting for him. Right. And right. I think, you know, calling for the hostages to be released, I think, is something that basically everybody can agree with, like release the hostages to be released. I think is is Something that I basically everybody can agree with like release the hostages. Yeah It's it's the inability. It seems or the unwillingness to Say anything about or anything significant about the catastrophe in Gaza, right? That's the part. I think that That has people kind of shaken that like wow like okay, you want to wear an Israeli flag at the rally?

Okay, you know, you want to, you know, you want to, he even, he saw anti-war protesters on the street, a bunch of veterans getting arrested, and he waved an Israeli flag like in their face as they were getting arrested. Like all right, that's a little bit over the top, but I get it. But if you, but if you couple that with at least expressions of concern for the Palestinians facing a slaughter, uh, that is kind of orders of magnitude greater than, than what happened on October 7th, uh, then, then at least you, you, you, you can sense the humanity in the situation. Yeah, I mean, Hamas should release the hostages. There shouldn't have to be a negotiation.

Hamas should release the hostages. You can condemn Hamas, but also condemn collective punishment of two million people. This is, you know, so the Hasser representatives took a vote last night on a resolution that was billed as basically just a pro-Israel resolution and an anti-Holocaust resolution, a very just like sort of symbolic gesture that the House does every so often. Two votes were not for it. One was a present vote from Rashida Tlaib. The other was an outright no from Thomas Massey, who took issue, reasonably so, with a part of the bill that reads, it rejects, or it recognizes, the House of

Representatives recognizes that denying Israel's right to exist is a form of anti-Semitism. Massey said, I'm voting no on the resolution because it equates anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism is deplorable, but expanding it to include the criticism of Israel is not helpful. And the reason I brought that up is just because two things can be true at the same time. We can have two different positions or two positions on different issues at the same time and acting like they're constantly mutually exclusive. I get having priorities. I get that the priorities and, you know, I think the priorities here should be the hostages. Again, that's why I understand Fetterman having them on his wall. That can be true. And it can also be true that as the New York Times documented this week, the proportion of civilian casualties is disgusting and

unacceptable. You don't have to pick one or the other. Camp Shane, one of America's longest-running weight loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. Campers who began the summer in heavy bodies were often unrecognizable when they left. In a society obsessed with being thin, it seemed like a miracle solution. But behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children was a dark underworld of sinister secrets. Kids were being pushed to their physical and emotional limits as the family that owned Shane turned a blind eye. Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie. In this eight-episode series, we're unpacking and investigating stories of mistreatment and reexamining the culture of fatphobia that enabled a flawed system to continue for so long.

You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week early and totally ad-free on iHeart True Crime Plus. So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today. I know a lot of cops, and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes, but there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that taser told them. From everyone was convinced it was that simple cops believed everything that taser told them from lava for good and the team that brought you bone valley comes a story about what happened when a multi-billion dollar company dedicated itself

to one visionary mission this is absolute season one taser incorporated I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes 1, 2, and 3 on May 21st and episodes 4, 5, and 6 on June 4th. Ad-free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts.

I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Lott. And this is Season 2 of the War on Drugs podcast. Yes, sir. We are back. In a big way. In a very big way. Real people, real perspectives. This is kind of star-studded a little bit, man.

We got Ricky Williams, NFL player, Heisman Trophy winner. It's just a compassionate choice to allow players all reasonable means to care for themselves. Music stars Marcus King, John Osborne from Brothers Osborne. We have this misunderstanding of what this quote-unquote drug thing is. Benny the Butcher. Brent Smith from Shinedown. We got B-Real from Cypress Hill. NHL enforcer Riley Cote.

Marine Corvette. MMA fighter Liz Karamush. What we're doing now isn't working, and we need to change things. Stories matter, and it brings a face to them. It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real.

Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear episodes one week early and ad-free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Let's move on to Nikki Haley. Nikki Haley scored the coveted Koch brothers endorsement yesterday when the conservative group Americans for Prosperity came out and gave her their seal of approval in the 2024 presidential election. We can go ahead and put the first element up on the screen here. So this is a headline from the New York Times. Koch Network endorses Nikki Haley

in bid to push GOP past Trump. All right, Ryan, this is actually pretty interesting. Let's roll DeSantis' reaction here. This is another tear sheet. The DeSantis camp reacted by putting out a press release immediately that said the DeSantis campaign congratulates Donald Trump

on securing the Koch endorsement. Congrats to Donald Trump on securing the Koch endorsement. Like clockwork, the pro-open borders, pro-jailbreak bill establishment is lining up behind a moderate who has no mathematical pathway of defeating the former president. Every dollar spent on Nikki Haley's candidacy should be reported as an in-kind to the Trump campaign. That's from the DeSantis Coms director, Andrew Romeo. And I will add, Ryan, it is pretty interesting for a couple of reasons. One, it's a Pete-Amy 2020 move. It's an attempt to consolidate the field because in a state like New Hampshire and actually even in Iowa, if you put together the anti-Trump votes for other candidates,

that will generally, in polling, that means Trump will have a much harder time. You don't have Trump over that 50% threshold in early states. So if you can consolidate the votes, then you can have this last gasp attempt to get in and potentially undermine Trump. Nikki Haley is a hawk. The Kochs are not. Americans for Prosperity and Stand Together, the broader Koch network, are not hawkish on foreign policy. They have this very sort of traditional libertarian approach to foreign policy and to immigration, as the DeSantis campaign slammed the pro-open borders Americans for Prosperity.

And that brings me to the third point, which is that this is highly sort of unusual, but not in any way surprising, because over the course of the last 10 years, Americans for Prosperity went from being a really consensus, celebrated Tea Party group to being what now is decried by one of the leading presidential campaigns as pro-open borders, blah, blah, blah. The DeSantis campaign seemed quite salty there. Were they hoping that they were going to get the Koch endorsement? I don't think so. And I actually don't think anybody really wants it. But on the other hand, the New York Times lays out how it could be helpful for Nikki Haley, who has this somewhat of a surge in New Hampshire, where she's basically overtaken DeSantis in some polls in New Hampshire.

And she's, you know, feels like she's on a surge in states like Iowa, South Carolina, obviously, now that Tim Scott has dropped out, that's extremely helpful to her in early states. So that comes with AFP's infrastructure. And so the one thing that Nikki Haley didn't have, you know, it doesn't matter that much if the polls are going, you know, five points in one direction or the other if you don't have a ground game. So this matters to the extent that it can give her a ground game. DeSantis really already has that in some of these early states, especially in Iowa. How did the Kochs square the foreign policy question there? They just don't like Trump so much?

They say that they'll take someone who's 180 degrees opposite of them when it comes to American adventurism abroad? I think so. This is a memo. They say, in sharp contrast to recent elections that were dominated by the negative baggage of Donald Trump and in which good candidates lost races that should have been won, Nikki Haley at the top of the ticket would boost candidates up and down the ballot. Haley is, quote, the key independent and moderate voters that Trump has no chance to win. I think that means the key to independent moderate voters. The moment we require is to face a tested leader with governing judgment and policy

experience to pull our nation back from the brink. The country is being ripped apart by extremes on both sides, which basically... The Kochs are saying that they're upset that there are extremes on both sides? Yeah. After spending the last three decades funding the extreme element of the Republican Party? It's kind of interesting because the extreme... They're all trying to find who did this? Yeah, they were huge Tea Party funders because in the Tea Party, the question was limited government, quote, limited government.

And so their hope was that, you know, I don't think they got behind like a Christine O'Donnell, but, you know, you can find any number of people. Their hope was that these sort of cultural conservatives would keep the social conservatism, the cultural conservatism on the back burner. And would, you know, they would be able to convince people, you know, to do gang of eight stuff. They would be able to convince people, and that's a reference to immigration. They'd be able to convince people to do all of the pro business stuff, get those tax cuts. They got those tax cuts, in fact, by the House and the Senate in 2017, the president, I don't know how much money they put into the presidential election, but they got those tax cuts. Not much, so that's why Trump hates them.

Right, yeah, they got those tax cuts in 2017. So it depends. I mean, they're pro-business extremism. Sure, on other issues, they are totally moderate, which is why it's much more easy for DeSantis to come in now and say, to try to drive a wedge because Nikki Haley has a Coke endorsement. And I actually think running ads connecting Nikki Haley to the pro-open borders Coke network

is not helpful to her whatsoever in Iowa or New Hampshire. And we also have a very bizarre debate coming up between two people who sort of are running for president. One of them is an official candidate for president, Ron DeSantis, who I think most people have forgotten is kind of still running. Yeah. But he still, he hasn't dropped out. This is the next element, by the way. The other one is Gavin Newsom, who is not an official candidate for president, but I think people kind of take his candidacy at this point more seriously than they take Ron DeSantis' on the other side. Newsom's not going to do anything unless Biden

either fades out, decides he's not going to run at the last minute or drops out. We have like weeks left for that to even be remotely possible. And so to position himself in this kind of war for the kind of second tier position with Kamala Harris and with others, there's going to be this debate, I guess. Why are they doing this? Well, an economist journalist, you just saw that economist element on the screen, the presidential matchup that isn't referring to DeSantis and Newsom. They asked Newsom why people should watch this debate between a presidential candidate and a governor who is not currently running for anything. And he said, quote,

I don't know they should. And are they doing this? You know, it's supposed to be on Thursday. It has been scheduled before and it has been nixed before. And it's obviously a kind of a question for the RNC too if you want one of your presidential candidates participating in this sort of extracurricular debate in the middle of debate season. There's another debate obviously coming up next week on the 6th that's going to be in Tuscaloosa

at the University of Alabama. So it's just a strange situation. I don't think anybody really wants it. I'm sure it'll be interesting because Newsom in particular is a showman. DeSantis really is not a showman. But if you want to see a clash of the sort of younger standard bearers of the centrist Democrats, I guess he tries to be a sort of progressive in spirit. So if you want to see the clash between a spiritual progressive. And I think what he really channels is like the id of the Democratic resistance that wants to see kind of Republicans rhetorically punched in the face.

Agree. Probably actually literally sometimes. Yeah. And so people loved his interview with Hannity where he really gave it to Hannity. It doesn't matter what the response is in some of these debates. What I'm realizing is that people just want kind of mean and clever things said to the face of the opposition. No matter what the opposition, like the opposition can have a great retort or not. But as long as you kind of throw that first punch then people are like yeah yeah i mean i want these

sort of ideas to clash in public as much as as humanly possible and i've talked about this before like the famous john stewart moment where he told tucker carlson and paul begala that crossfire was like ruining america and everyone sort of clapped and cheered and said this is exactly what we needed. I've always disagreed with that. I think that it's not helpful to push these conversations and to not be able to model public debate, even among people who disagree with each other, who hate each other, and even among people

who get really theatrical with it and make it into a show. I mean, I think that's important for the public to see. I think it's important for people in politics to be able to do, like even just going through the motions, I think is important. And to see the clash of ideas, I think is important. So I'm glad that they're doing it, but it's extremely weird. And I think it just speaks to the fact that Gavin Newsom knows that anything could happen to Joe Biden at any given moment. Ron DeSantis knows that. He knows the same thing could be true of Donald Trump, who is facing for indictments.

That's true. Everyone's just hanging out, hoping. And people are, yeah, people are desperate. Hoping for the worst. Desperate to find anything that just completely removes Donald Trump from the race, at least his name from the ballot, even though he would still loom heavily over the race. So that's where we are right now.

Nobody likes the situation between the presidential matchups. And where we are right now. Nobody likes the situation between the presidential matchups. And I really also don't think anybody likes the situation between Newsom and DeSantis. So that's, but this is what we get. The United States Senate is trying to find money for Ukraine. And to do so, Emily, they're turning to immigration policy. Tell us what's going on with these negotiations. Yeah. So again, obviously when we were covering what happened with Kevin McCarthy and ended in the speakership of Mike Johnson, again, he continues, we will bring you updates week by week on whether Mike Johnson continues to be a real person. He is in fact a real person. We can confirm that as of this week, we'll bring you an update next week if that changes. But Mike Johnson is now in the situation of basically negotiating

against the government shutdown. He wants to do sort of a tiered omnibus system, what they call ladder, which is new. You've never seen that in all your time covering Congress, I imagine. Yeah, it's sort of a legislative parliamentary innovation. But one of the ways that Republicans are trying to force Democrats to the table is making them pass what was HR2R. 2 in the House, a very tough immigration bill that I think actually probably would have been a consensus left-right type of legislation 20 years ago, but no longer is because we have massive waves of migrants like we've never seen before coming up through Central America and into Mexico.

And so it's now a political football in a way. It wouldn't have been before it reforms the asylum system There may be a bargaining chip and I say that in a way that it's a tragedy then I'm saying it but there may be a bargaining chip with DACA Immigrants which is con who would get a pathway to citizenship, but nobody else would write but will Republicans let The pathway to citizenship for the DACA kids who are not really kids anymore Become 30s and 40s now. Yes. So all that is to say, Republicans think rightfully, it's pathetic that Democrats support the Biden administration's immigration policy. And a lot of this does need to go

through Congress because the Biden administration is just acting with executive authority that can be reformed via Congress. And so they're saying, this is our demand. This is our bargaining chip. This is our condition for passing your omnibus budget deal to avoid a government shutdown. Mike Johnson wants to push it into January. There's not a lot of time to figure this out, basically. Right. And so Chris Murphy is the Democrat leading the negotiations on the Senate side. Murphy, though, his priority is Ukraine funding. Right. And so you're hearing a lot of anger from folks, particularly Pablo Manriquez, has been reporting this on Capitol Hill, saying that the Hispanic senators are not happy with having Chris Murphy kind of giving away the farm on immigration in order to get Ukraine money. At the same time, though,

you've got then the Republicans on the right in the House thinking that there's not enough in the Senate immigration provision. Right. So where is this going to head? Yeah, I mean, that's one of the big remaining questions. And actually, we can put the element of the next element up on the screen here. This is the Associated Press's coverage. Republicans want to pair security with aid, border security with aid for Ukraine. Here's why that makes the deal so tough. It's about also immigration enforcement. So funding. And this is where Biden has definitely come to the table. And this is what's really upsetting some of the Republicans in the kind of Freedom Caucus circles and conservative movement

circles. Biden is saying basically that I'm going to come to the table on funding CBP. I'm going to come to the table. I'm going to fund Border Patrol. I'm going to fund all of these security measures. Buy more four wheelers. Right. For the border. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And so that gives Biden a huge rhetorical win. He can say that he struck a deal with Republicans because you need a filibuster proof majority in the Senate for this to pass. Obviously, Republicans control the House. So you would obviously Democrats have a huge contingency in the House, but you would need a lot of Republicans. It would have to be a bipartisan deal in the House

as well. So Biden can strike a deal with Republicans that lets him say he supported tougher border, a tougher border policy. And all of that comes without reforming asylum law, which if you follow the immigration issue closely, whether you're on the left or on the right, without changes to our asylum law, there will continue to be a humanitarian crisis at the border. That is the bottom line. That's game over. There's no period. There's no other question that you can even bring up in that space. So the sort of Freedom Caucus people that pushed out Kevin McCarthy and are sort of, you know, begrudgingly swallowing the Mike Johnson pill are furious because it gives Biden a rhetorical win on border security without

actually doing a damn thing for the border. Now, let's put this quote up on the screen. This is exclusive to us here at CounterPoints. Breaking points, this is from a senior Senate staffer who told us last night- Republican side, right? Republican Senate staffer. It's not about the border. It's about a fig leaf for funding Ukraine. And that's how Mitch McConnell, I kind of joked with the source. I was like, I'm just going to attribute this to Mitch McConnell, because Mitch McConnell is probably saying that in private. This is our fig leaf for funding Ukraine. It's transparently obvious. That's what they're doing. Right. They want money for Ukraine.

They have to figure out a way that they can get Republicans to feel good about voting for it. And so go after immigrants a little tiny bit. Right. And this is again from the AP piece. They were saying Biden's emergency request to Congress included aid for Ukraine, Israel, and other US allies, along with $14 billion to bolster the immigration system and border security. So again, it's about the Israel emergency request too. And that was a huge sort of dust up with J.D. Vance on the Senate side, who was specifically saying they're trying to tie Ukraine to Israel because they know that there's support for Israel funding and that support for more and more money in Ukraine is really becoming difficult for them to sell back home. Right. So they're just trying

to find things that you can rope to Ukraine funding and kind of drag it through Congress. Right. Already you've got Heritage Action. We can put up this third element here. You've got Heritage Action, a right-wing organization saying HR2 is the only solution to securing the border. It's the kind of a preemptive shot at these negotiations. And they're warning that what the Senate Republicans are coming up with is too moderate and should not be kind of enough of a carrot to drag Ukraine funding across the finish line. Yeah, and I want to read this article from The Hill just as of yesterday. They say no government funding bills are scheduled to hit the House floor this week. And their headline is actually GOP faces ominous signs in effort to avoid January shutdown. Basically, so this is the emergency funding request, but it's all tied together because

these are all different chips and they're all different pieces of the puzzle to get to a funded government. Because if Mike Johnson is gone in the middle of this negotiation, which is totally possible because there's still one person motion to vacate, then you go into a shutdown. And I don't think Democrats, I mean, the incentive for Democrats is, shutdowns are a gift to them politically. So they don't have a ton of incentive. It doesn't look great for Biden. They obviously want to avoid that, but Republicans always get blamed for shutdown, sometimes reasonably so, because Republicans say, please blame us for the shutdown. Like, look at us, we shut down the government. So the incentives to actually make a deal on this, both politically and on the policy front,

are basically zero. Right. And this is all happening as we've gotten new revelations over the last few days that the negotiations that were taking place in Turkey between Ukraine and Russia in March of 22 were actually as close to reaching a peace deal as some people suspected at the time, later torpedoed basically by the US and by theK., that famous Boris Johnson visit to Kiev, in which he pushed Zelensky to, you know, to not sign any truce agreement. The question of whether, you know, Russia was serious about it and would have been willing to actually reach a truce at that point remains open. But what we're hearing from, you know, a key leader in the Ukrainian negotiations is that it was extremely, it was extremely close at the time, that Russia at the moment was looking for a way out.

Now here we are almost two years later with the U.S. trying to figure out how to kind of jam up Congress to push through tens of billions of more for a war that has seen so many people killed on each side. And yeah, I mean, we can just kind of end with this quote from Mario Diaz-Balart. So the Hill writes, as the funding fight drags on, senior appropriators worry that the House GOP will be on weak footing in inner chamber negotiations if the conference continues to struggle with clearing its conservative spending bills. Diaz-Balart says, my goal is to move the most conservative bills we can out of the House to put us in the best possible negotiation position with the Senate. But if we can't pass, we don't get the Republican votes to do conservative bills. H.R. 2 was a bill that the House Republicans passed earlier. That's one of those bills that

kind of fits into that strategy. So this is all connected and it's all a disaster. That's basically all you need to know. There you go. Camp Shane, one of America's longest running weight loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. Campers who began the summer in heavy bodies were often unrecognizable when they left. In a society obsessed with being thin, it seemed like a miracle solution. But behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children was a dark underworld of sinister secrets. Kids were being pushed to their physical and emotional limits as the family that owned Shane turned a blind eye.

Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie. In this eight-episode series, we're unpacking and investigating stories of mistreatment and reexamining the culture of fatphobia that enabled a flawed system to continue for so long. You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week early and totally ad-free on iHeart True Crime Plus.

So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today. I know a lot of cops, True Crime Plus. So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today. the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multi-billion dollar company

dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season One. Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes 1, 2, and 3 on May 21st

and episodes 4, 5, and 6 on June 4th. Ad-free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Glod. And this is season 2 of the War on Drugs podcast. Yes, sir. We are back. In a big way. In a very big way. Real people, real perspectives.

This is kind of star-studded a little bit, man. We got Ricky Williams, NFL player, Heisman Trophy winner. It's just a compassionate choice to allow players all reasonable means

to care for themselves. Music stars Marcus King, John Osborne from Brothers Osborne. We have this misunderstanding of what this quote-unquote drug thing is. Benny the Butcher. Brent Smith from Sh Osborne. We have this misunderstanding of what this quote-unquote drug thing is.

Benny the Butcher. Brent Smith from Shinedown. We got B-Real from Cypress Hill. NHL enforcer Riley Cote. Marine Corvette. MMA fighter Liz Karamush. What we're doing now isn't working

and we need to change things. Stories matter and it brings a face to them. It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

And to hear episodes one week early and ad-free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. And we have covered a couple of times, for example, credit card delinquency spiking. It was one of those really frightening indicators of where the economy could be going. We got more of that just from Black Friday data. Yeah, some interesting contradictions in this economy. Most people who are experiencing it or in the economy are telling pollsters that they feel like it's much worse than it has been in recent years. Yet we continue to keep getting data points, you know, suggesting that people are feeling good about it. One of them is, you can put this up here, some business insider, Americans broke a record

for spending on Black Friday. But it's just hiding a bigger problem for the economy. Now, consumer spending is often looked at by economists as a gauge for how people are genuinely feeling about the economy. 2008, 2009, 2010, people really pulled back their dining out and their spending in general because they felt much more precarious than they had 2007, 2006. And they're squirreling money away for potentially getting laid off and for other calamities that they see coming as a result of the economy.

You're not seeing that at this point. You're seeing spending remain robust. But then there are these other problems underneath the economy. What do you make of those? Yeah, I mean, this is—so the data is actually from Adobe. And there's this new—I mean, it's not entirely new. People have seen it for years probably, the Buy Now Pay Later function on websites. Yeah, it's digital Lightway. So this is from Business Insider, they

say, according to Adobe, which tracks online sales, online shopping on Black Friday totaled $9.8 billion, which was actually up 7.8% from last year. That's kind of part of why this is concerning. Adobe estimates U.S. shoppers will further spend as much as twelve point four billion on Cyber Monday, though that said, they continue, while the increase in spending was predicted for the holiday season, what is worrisome is how Americans are paying for the items. Many are paying via buy now, pay later platforms such as Klarna or Afterpay, which you see when you're online shopping, obviously, when you're checking out. They say compared to last year, Klarna observed nearly a 30% increase in orders placed by U.S. shoppers on Black Friday this year on items such as food mixers, TVs, and coffee makers,

and that's according to data that they shared with Business Insider. That's a 30% increase. Now, according to Adobe, they say buy now, pay later financing was up 47% overall this Black Friday compared to last year in 2022 about 10% of purchases on the day after Thanksgiving used buy now pay later now Obviously that could be because these options have gotten easier to use. There's no question about it. They're they're easier. They're Quicker they're more efficient the sort of digital layaways become much more seamless So much more fun to do it that way. You're like, oh, wait, I just have to pay $100 a month for a little while.

A TV, right. That seems better than this. Right. You can get a nice TV. But you keep doing that and then boom. Yes. And that's so one of the interesting things is they said Black Friday spending may have been higher because spending prior to Black Friday was lower, meaning people are looking specifically to shop deals because they feel like they need to shop deals. And obviously, Black Friday deals

are great and Cyber Monday deals are great. But it's definitely an indicator if that's shooting up and you have slower spending in the run up compared to other years. And then the spike, both in credit card delinquencies and a spike to 47%. I mean, that efficiency alone does not explain that. I think one of the best insights into what's going on in this economy comes from this new report by Lydia DePillis, highlighted by Jeff Stein of the Washington Post. If we can put up this element here for people who are just listening, it's what the economy looks like to Biden voters in swing states. I want to zero in on the breakdown of by age. And so the question is, on the one hand, do you think the economy is excellent or good?

On the other hand, do you think the economy is poor or only fair? People age 18 to 29, 11% of them call the economy excellent or good, while 89% on the other side saying it's poor or only fair. Almost unanimous from people 18 to 29. Slightly different for 30 to 44, but it's only 19% versus 80%. So still, overwhelmingly, people under 44 consider the economy to suck. People 65 and over, meanwhile, say 62% of them say that the economy is excellent or good. 37% say it's bad. You saw some flip idiots on Twitter saying that this was all about TikTok. Yeah.

But if you look at homeownership, it also correlates here. And if you look at who has purchased a new home in the last couple of years, the average age, I think it was 58 or something like that. The wealth exists at the top. In an environment- The age top too. Right. In an environment where you had interest rates crash in 2020, a lot of people who own homes refinanced in 2020 down to 3% or less. And so they are now sitting on 30-year loans with basically free money for the next 30 years.

Interest rates are now in the 7% to 8% range. So in order for somebody to buy a house in 2023 compared to 2020, for the exact same house at, say, $500,000, you can do the math, but you might have to pay an extra $1,000 a month. And it depends on the size of the house, the size of the mortgage. Each one of those points above 3% adds hundreds of dollars a month. And so you have all of these people who are under, you know, and even 45 to 64, 57% of those say the economy is poor. Yeah. So everyone under 64 thinks the economy stinks. And I think it's an expectations versus reality meme come to life because we have an expectation that the American dream is attainable to everyone. Upward mobility is attainable to everyone.

And the very specific rungs of that ladder are a college education and then homeownership. And homeownership comes if you look at reasons people feel like they're not getting married. Homeownership is actually listed as one of them. Student loans are actually listed as among those things. There's a ton of uncertainty this year about payment on student loans. And so you can understand why in that uncertainty people might turn to things like buy now, pay later because you're still paying. It's not that you're not making the purchase. It's just that you're managing your finances incrementally in ways that maybe make you feel more comfortable.

People say, now this is from the Business Insider article, that 83% of respondents' studies have found pay off their buy now, pay later programs on time. Although as they note, 17% do not. And I think that also shifts the worst the economy gets, or I would expect it to shift. They write, compounding the problem is that people tend to spend more when using Buy Now, Pay Later programs, suggesting overconfidence in what they can afford. A second research paper from the Social Science Research Network found that consumers spent 20% more when Buy Now, Pay Later was offered, especially on retail items. So combine that with the fact that you're seeing car and credit card loan delinquencies spike in recent

months, not homeowner loans, which is so interesting to the point that you made, because the people who are buying homes right now are not in any, it's a very different financial situation. The economy is so uneven. I shouldn't say they're not under any financial duress, but it's a completely different bubble, basically, like economic bubble that people live so if you're if you're able to buy a home Right now you're probably also not experiencing the economy in the same way that other people are where we're seeing Delinquencies and spiking it's actually really troubling time I think yeah and the one one thing homeowners are facing is increases in property taxes because of

Reappraisals because you've got this situation where when you have home values rising, but you're not going to sell your home because nobody can buy it. Right. But then you end up paying higher property taxes as a result of that. Everybody's getting squeezed. The economy is kind of broken. The housing market is like broken because of the fast move in interest rates. And when you have a crunch, a shortage of housing, and you make it harder for people to purchase housing, what you also do is then decrease the number of starts. It's counterproductive to driving down

the cost of housing, because in order to to do that you need to create more housing. Yeah, but the interest rate policy incentivizes fewer Housing starts. Yeah. No, it's I mean it's it's and on that note I think it's also just that going back to expectations versus reality The economy is broken broken compared to what people understood the sort of social contract in America to be. So it's broken in a lot of different ways that you have these variables totally out of whack compared to where they used to be. But that also creates a situation where people say, I'm paying my taxes. I'm paying a lot of money in taxes, especially depending on where you live. And what I'm getting

in return is insane costs of college, these lingering tens of thousands of dollars. The average college student graduates with around $40,000 in student loan debt and then takes that with them in their first 10 years of adult life into the workforce. So what the hell do you expect people to do? Of course, they're using buy now, pay later. All right. Well, up next, we're going to be joined by Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz slinging a new book called Unwoke, something about cultural Marxism. We're going to maybe find out what that is. It's how to defeat Ryan Grim's cultural Marxism.

That's right. Good luck to you. It's actually a book about how we can take the Lenin book off the shelf. Never, never happening. I like how he's lit up by the red, as you pointed out, the Christmas red. Nobody loved Christmas like Vladimir Lenin. You had Lenin staring at Cruz.

Excellent. Love it. All right. We'll see you after this. Camp Shane, one of America's longest-running weight-loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. Campers who began the summer in heavy bodies

were often unrecognizable when they left. In a society obsessed with being thin, it seemed like a miracle solution. But behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children was a dark underworld of sinister secrets. Kids were being pushed to their physical and emotional limits as the family that owned Shane turned a blind eye. Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie. In this eight-episode series, we're unpacking and investigating

stories of mistreatment and reexamining the culture of fatphobia that enabled a flawed system to continue for so long. You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week early and totally ad-free on iHeart True Crime Plus. So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today.

I know a lot of cops, and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multibillion-dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission.

This is Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes 1, 2, and 3 on May 21st and episodes 4, 5, and 6 on June 4th. Ad-free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Lott.

And this is Season 2 of the War on Drugs podcast. Yes, sir. We are back. In a big way. In a very big way. Real'm Greg Glod. And this is season two of the War on Drugs podcast. Yes, sir. We are back. In a big way. In a very big way. Real people, real perspectives. This is kind of star-studded a little bit, man. We got Ricky Williams, NFL player, Heisman Trophy winner. It's just a compassionate choice to allow players all reasonable means to care for themselves.

Music stars Marcus King, John Osborne from Brothers Osborne. We have this misunderstanding of what this quote-unquote drug thing is. Benny the Butcher. Brent Smith from Shinedown. We got B-Real from Cypress Hill. NHL enforcer Riley Cote. Marine Corvette. MMA fighter Liz

Karamush. What we're doing now isn't working and we need to change things. Stories matter and it brings a face to them. It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

And to hear episodes one week early and ad free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on ApplePoints. It's great to be with you. Thank you for having me. All right. So I want to start with a question that you've probably heard from critics. You were on Bill Maher recently on the left over the course of the last couple of months. The book is called Unwoke, again, as we just mentioned. And I'm curious, for example, when Elon Musk banned from the river to the sea on Twitter, is that an example?

Or what do you say to critics who would argue that's an example of conservative wokeness? Do you support banning that from Twitter? Look, I don't support banning really anything. I believe in free speech. And I think that there's a real difference. It's one of the things I talk about in the book between the left and the right. The approach of the radical left, the approach of the cultural Marxists is to use power and force Sanders or AOC silence. Frankly, I want to have people hear what they say more because it's so idiotic. Look, I agree with John Stuart Mill. The best cure for bad speech is more speech. But at the same time, we need to understand the reason I wrote this book

is what has happened in America. Look, millions of Americans across this country are looking at the state of the nation going, what the heck happened to the country we love? And what has happened is every major institution in America has been captured by the radical left. And what this book does is it explains that. And each chapter in the book focuses on a different institution. So it starts off with universities. I call universities the Wuhan lab of the woke virus. It's where it was created. It's where it mutated. It's where it spread. From universities, the book goes to K through 12 education, then to journalism, then to government, then to big business, then to big tech, then to entertainment, Hollywood, TV, movies, music, sports, then to science. And the last chapter in the book focuses on China. And I

describe China as a central nexus that is intertwined with all of them. And what the book does is really two things. Number one, it explains how and why these major institutions in America got captured by the radical left. But then even more importantly, it lays out a positive, proactive battle plan for how we take these institutions back. Because I think if we don't take the institutions back, we're going to lose our country. The taking of these institutions back, though, sometimes seems to people like reverse cancel culture. Like my former colleague Glenn Greenwald has become this kind of big supporter of the right's free speech kind of advocacy over the last several years. And I'm sure you've seen him recently.

He's been extremely disappointed with the way that the right has responded to the Israel-Palestine catastrophe. He wrote, for instance, conservatives pushing this safety rhetoric, which isn't due to violence but words, should either apologize to the minority groups they mocked all these years or realize they're suddenly endorsing such flamboyant victim narratives because a group they like is claiming it. So why hasn't there been more kind of public support for free speech in this, the last six weeks? So, so look, I, I think free speech is, is the right approach and I support free speech for everyone. I support it for radicals. I support it for leftists who hate me. I support free speech for Hamas. Now I also support killing the terrorists so, so they can have free speech while they're in the grave. But if you engage in acts of terrorism, I emphatically support Israel's right to defend itself and its stated objective is they're going to eliminate Hamas.

But when it comes to the U.S., actually what's happening in universities in particular is a powerful illustration of what I explain in this book. It is cultural Marxism. And, you know, I've had lots of conversations in the last two months, actually, with just several weeks ago, I was talking with a very successful Silicon Valley entrepreneur who's a man of the left. He's been a Democrat his whole life. And he was expressing complete bewilderment. Where is all of this vicious anti-Semitism on the left coming from? Whether it's in the squad in Congress or whether it's on college campuses. And I explained, I said, look, if you look at, and the book Unwoke explains this, Marxist, it started out with Karl Marx writing the Communist Manifesto. And he had a worldview that the world is in constant conflict.

And it's in constant conflict between oppressors and victims. And Marx viewed things in a socioeconomic lens. And so the oppressors for Marx were the owners of capital. And the victims were the proletariat, the working men and women. And the solution that Marx advocated for was the violent revolution of the proletariat, of the victims, to overthrow the oppressors and use government to forcibly redistribute the wealth. Now, what I describe in the book is how Marxists starting in the 1960s began infiltrating the universities and becoming tenured professors, becoming administrators. And from there, we saw Marxism begin to mutate. It started off just plain vanilla Marxist.

Then it mutated on other axes. So you had, for example, the same frame of oppressor-victim, but it to, to race. And that's where critical race theory came from. Same idea, constant battle, but based on races, they shifted it to gender and sexual orientation and gender identity. That's where things like queer theory came from. And, and what I explained to this fellow I was talking to, as I said, look, what is happening is very simple. For the radical left, they have coded Jews as oppressors and they have coded Palestinians as victims. And therefore, for a cultural Marxist, they support the violent revolution of the so-called victims against the so-called oppressors. It is part of what's been indoctrinated. And you look at universities, at these leftists who are radically protesting in support of terrorists who are committing

atrocities that are unspeakable. That is a manifestation of the sickness that has taken over our institutions. Do you distinguish between opposition to Zionism and anti-Semitism, or do you believe that those are the same thing? I think anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism. What do you say to so many different Jewish groups who say that they are anti-Zionist. So the ones that are are radical leftist organizations that look, there are 50 some odd Muslim nations on the face of the planet. There's one Jewish nation, the state of Israel. The modern state of Israel was formed coming out of World War II, coming out of the wake of the Holocaust. And it was formed on the premise that never again means never again, that we would not allow 6 million Jews to be exterminated by genocidal racist maniacs. I think the Jewish people deserve to have a homeland that is theirs. Israel was historically

a Jewish nation going back thousands of years. I've walked in the city of David. I've walked on the streets where Jesus walked down the streets. And anti-Zionists, look, when you see leftists chanting from the river to the sea, that means from the Jordan River to the sea, it literally means obliterate the modern state of Israel because they hate Israel and they want to eliminate the only Jewish nation in the world that is racist and genocidal. Now, you asked earlier, would I ban that statement? No, I'd allow people to say it. You know, members of the squad have tweeted out from the river to the sea. But the answer, I'd allow them to say it, but I wouldn't sit there quietly. I'd point out that you are

calling for once again the extermination of millions of Jews. As I'm sure you know, though, in Likud's platform, it says, you know, from the river to the sea, there will only be Israeli sovereignty. You know, are they suggesting genocide of all Palestinians? Of course not. Exactly. So if they're, if they're not, why is the other suggesting genocide? Because that's what Hamas supports. You know, I started yesterday morning. Because that's what Hamas supports. You know, I started yesterday morning. But that's just restating it. But hold on.

Let me say, yesterday morning I started the day by watching a 46-minute video of the actual atrocities that Hamas committed. And about 50 senators watched it. You know, as you guys know, I do a podcast every week. It's called Verdict with Ted Cruz. I do it Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Today's podcast is all about that video. Because yesterday morning, and right about this time, I sat in a room and I watched 137 people be murdered. And most of the footage was taken from body cams or cell phones that the Hamas terrorists were carrying. And they were gleefully murdering civilians. They were murdering women. They were murdering children. And look, Hamas, I got to say the most disconcerting thing I turned 53 in December

in 53 years of life on this planet I've never had a day where I watched 137 people be murdered that's what I did yesterday and when you watch people the most disturbing thing was the joy, the glee

from these terrorists I'll tell you there was a moment on the video where the glee from these terrorists. I'll tell you, there was a moment on the video where one of the Hamas terrorists called his parents and the Israelis intercepted the call. And we've heard of this one. And he calls his dad, first of all. And he says, Dad, I killed 10 of them with my bare hands. And he's like so proud and he's celebrating 10. I killed 10. And he said, I want to talk to mom. Can I talk to mom? Yeah. And he's like so proud and he's celebrating 10. I killed 10. And he said, I want to talk to mom. Can I talk to mom? Yeah. And his mom gets on and he says, I killed 10 Jews. I murdered them with my bare hands. And she, she begins crying with joy.

The, the twisted hate. Can you imagine calling your mother in celebration that you just murdered 10 people and you're proud of it and your mother in celebration that you just murdered 10 people, and you're proud of it, and your mother is proud of you for doing it? And I know Emily wants to get a question, but on this point, real briefly, whenever we've had critics of Israel on, we've kind of insisted that they condemn that. Because while we disagree with a lot on the show, we also try to find kind of moral common ground. And we can all agree that those types of atrocities need to be fully condemned. And with that in mind, I want to read to you a couple of things that we've been hearing from the Israeli government.

We've had Defense Minister Galant. We will eliminate everything. An IDF spokesperson. Our focus is on damage, not on precision. Agriculture Minister Avi Dichter. We are now rolling out the Gaza Nakba, Gaza Nakba 2023, that's how it'll end. Israeli Heritage Minister Amahai Elihu said a nuclear bomb is quote, one of the possibilities. Finance Minister Basil Smotrich, we need sterile zones in the West Bank.

Israeli President Isaac Herzog, it's an entire nation out there that is responsible. This rhetoric about civilians not aware, not involved, it's absolutely not true. They could have risen up. They could have fought against that evil regime. Another former connessant member, there is one and only solution, which is to completely destroy Gaza before invading it. I mean destruction like what happened in Dresden and Hiroshima without nuclear weapons. Would you join us in condemning that as well? So I condemn nothing that the Israeli government is doing. I stand with the people of Israel. And let me explain. There is a qualitative difference. The Israeli government does not target civilians. They target military targets.

The Israeli government has so bad at their targeting. So they're actually not that they are. So then they are targeting. No, they're exceptionally good at. So, so for example, a couple of weeks ago, we had stories all over the world that Israel bombed a hospital in, in, in Gaza and killed 500 Palestinians. Now it turns out that was a blatant lie. It was Hamas propaganda. And if you break down literally every element of the story was a lie. So number one, Israel doesn't target hospitals. Why have so many hospitals been targeted? Because they haven't. Because it's false. Hold on. Let's actually look at the facts. So Israel uses precision guided munitions. They don't target hospitals. What ended up, we discovered was the

case, it was the hospital. It was not an Israeli missile that took it out. It was a rocket from, it actually wasn't Hamas, it was Palestinian Islamic Jihad. And you got to understand the terrorists in Gaza, they fire thousands of rockets. They have no guidance systems on them. So they literally put rockets. The rockets have some propulsion. They have an explosive. They have typically ball bearings or nails or something designed to kill as many people as possible. And they fire them in the general direction of Israel, but they can't steer them. Once they fire them and about 20% of them end up hitting Gaza. So it's the terrorists that are actually bombing Gaza. So it was, it was a terrorist missile that hit, but number one, it wasn't from Israel. Number two, it was a terrorist missile that hit, but number one,

it wasn't from Israel. Number two, it didn't hit the hospital, hit the parking lot. Number three, 500 people were not killed. All of that was a lie. And that, and yet what happened, and I talk about this in the book, but that's journalism, but, but, but look, so, so I can tell you there is no military on the face of the planet, including the U.S. military, that goes to the lengths that the Israeli military does to avoid civilian casualties. So I'll give you- But the IDF said our focus is on damage, not on precision. We keep hearing different- Yes, damage to Hamas, damage to Hamas, to terrorists. And I am all for- No, they have said the opposite. They keep saying that what they're doing is what they're

intending to do. And here in the United States, we say that's not what they're doing. That's simply not true. They are targeting the terrorists. Are they lying? No, my focus is on damage. Good, damage Hamas. I want to utterly eliminate Hamas. And I'll tell you something Israel does, for example. So why are there Palestinian civilian casualties? The reason is because Hamas uses human shields. Hamas wants Palestinians killed. Look, you look at the Hamas headquarters. It's in the basement of a hospital. They put it in the basement of a hospital. Why? But they didn't find it there. They put it there because they want Palestinian mothers, children killed. They put missiles in kindergartens. And the reason is it's part of my podcast. I did an

entire podcast that I, that was entitled CNN is Hamas's air force. So as MSNBC, so as ABC. And I went through about a dozen stories where the corporate media just repeated Hamas propaganda. And look, Hamas is not strong enough to defeat Israel, but they're counting on the useful idiots in the media, amplifying their messages. So I'll tell you something that the IDF does. So for example, if there's a building that they know they're Hamas terrorists in, they will drop initially what are called dud bombs. They'll drop a bomb on the top. They've done this in previous wars. That doesn't have an explosive and the dud bomb will thud on the roof.

And they do it to tell the civilians, get out. They also, by the way, they have every cell phone in Gaza. So they will text civilians, leave. By the way, when Palestinian civilians try to leave, Hamas keeps them there. They want Palestinians to die because it is useful for propaganda. There's no military. By the way, the U.S. military, when we're attacking our enemies, we don't drop dud bombs telling people to evacuate. It's only the IDF that does that. And so on that note, because we have to wrap, hot conflict now in the Middle East again. Is it time to endorse Donald Trump,

negotiator of the Abraham Accords? Look, I will say, President Trump, we had peace in the Middle East and Joe Biden inherited peace and prosperity. And he utterly screwed it up. We went from peace and prosperity. We now have two wars. We have the biggest war in Europe since World War II. We have the worst war in the Middle East in over 50 years. And it's because having a weak and ineffective commander in chief is a train wreck. It doesn't work. And so, listen, we're wrapping up, but I do want to encourage your viewers. The book is designed to, number one, it's interesting and fun. It's filled with stories. It's not some abstract academic work. It's an interesting read. I want to encourage folks right now today, pull out your phone, go online, go to Amazon, go to Barnes and Noble,

go to Books A Million, buy the book. And I'll say this, look, Christmas time is coming. So I'm going to encourage you, buy more than one. And in particular, it makes a great Christmas present. Buy one for Ryan. That's right. Yeah, look, I mean, literally buy one for your mom, buy one for your best friend, buy one for your crazy left-wing neighbor. Cultural Marxism will triumph if we don't. That's exactly right. Don't let Ryan win. And let me give you one more example, which is buy one for your kids or your grandkids, because they need to understand the poison that they're being indoctrinated for. And I wrote this book, I wrote this book for the same reason I do the podcast, that we've got to engage in the battle

of ideas. We've got to engage in substance. And this book is designed to empower you to fight back, to take these institutions back. Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, thank you so much for joining us. We're being told you have to wrap. Welcome to Come Back Again. I look forward to it. Thanks so much. All right, that was Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, thank you so much for joining us. Yeah, we're being told you have to wrap. Welcome to come back again. I look forward to it. Thanks so much. All right, that was Senator Ted Cruz, and the book is This Squad, AOC and the Hope of a Political Revolution. You guys are both.

That's actually my book, which is out next week. Consummate sales book. That's right. He's on here to move those books, but if you buy mine instead, we can knock him off the bestseller list. Wouldn't that be fun? That was one of the conversations that I have been waiting for. So we had this interview scheduled for a couple of weeks ago. We had to cancel his book tour. Book tours are crazy, which you know, obviously you've done it before. But

that was actually one of the best, I think, clashes of both sides that I have seen in public debate throughout this entire conflict. And he was on a really tight schedule. So it was sort of, we were navigating that, this shortened timeline. But at the same time, Brian, I was content, honestly, we had a lot of questions for him. I was actually content to listen to your back and forth. I thought that was actually very helpful. I didn't mean to bigfoot it, but he just throws out so much different stuff. And we were being told he had to run. If people are like, why don't you respond to every single thing? He said, that's why, because, you know. We could do an hour with him easily. Yeah, I know. And hopefully he'll come back for longer.

Yeah. Well, we appreciate him being here. We certainly appreciate it. What did you make of, he said, there is absolutely nothing Israel could do that he would condemn. I think when you read, and the damage versus precision thing, again, those are great questions because that's not saying damage Hamas versus precision. Because if you were saying precision, you would be saying precision in reference to Hamas. So that doesn't make sense to me. I think those points are extremely problematic. I do think it's unhelpful, as we talked about Thomas Massey, a Republican from Kentucky, saying earlier today to conflate anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism.

So yeah, I mean, I thought that was like a very useful. At the same time, I mean, I think condemning Hamas and demanding Hamas release the hostages unconditionally is entirely reasonable. Sure, do it. Yeah, release the hostages. By the way, we just appreciate everyone who subscribes. If you subscribe to the premium version of Breaking Points, you get this whole show early. You get the video totally uncut. And we don't just get the clips. You get the whole full show. So outros, just like this one.

But you'll also help make interviews like the one that we just did possible. Having some of the most powerful senators sit down for interviews with new media, just a really important thing. And we appreciate all of your support so much. Yeah. And his book was called Unwoke, Something About Cultural Marxism. And you heard him, perfect holiday present. Perfect holiday present, but not as perfect as the squad out on December 5th. That's right. But you get it now. I've heard you do it so many times, I can do it.

She knows what's coming up. All right. See you guys soon. I actually will be out of studio because I'll be in Los Angeles next week. So I'll be remote for the show next week. But I will see you guys. From there, I'll actually be out

at Hasan Piker's for his stream. Oh my gosh. So be sure to tune in for that. I'm sure that's going to be a lot of fun. Do you even know how to play video games? I mean, I did in the 90s. There you go. All right.

Do they still play Mario Kart? We'll find out. Tune in next week. Over the years of making my true crime podcast, Helen gone, I've learned no town is too small for murder. I'm Catherine Townsend. I've heard from hundreds of people across the country with an unsolved murder in their community. I was calling about the murder of my husband.

The murderer is still out there. Each week, I investigate a new case. If there is a case we should hear about, call 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Stay informed, empowered, and ahead of the curve with the BIN News This Hour podcast. Updated hourly to bring you the latest stories shaping the Black community. From breaking headlines to cultural milestones, the Black Information Network delivers the facts, the voices, and the perspectives that matter 24-7 because our stories deserve to be heard. Listen to the BIN News This Hour podcast

on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I've seen a lot of stuff over 30 years, you know, some very despicable crime and things that are kind of tough to wrap your head around. And this ranks right up there in the pantheon of Rhode Island fraudsters. I've always been told I'm a really good listener, right? And I maximized that while I was lying. Listen to Deep Cover, The Truth About Sarah on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast.