Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 2/28/24: 100k Michigan Uncommitted Votes, Trump Skyrockets With Youth And Hispanics, Starbucks Caves To Union, Dems Force IVF Vote, Biden Ceasefire Collapses, Students Troll Lockheed Exec, Jon Stewart Torches Biden Russia Israel Hypocrisy, Schumer Demands Ukraine Border Protection, Assange Brother Reveals Dire Stakes

Episode Date: February 28, 2024

Ryan and Emily discuss Starbucks caves to union, 100k Michigan votes for uncommitted, Trump defeats Nikki in Michigan, Trump skyrockets with young and Hispanic voters, Dems force vote on IVF, Biden promise of Monday ceasefire collapses, students troll Lockheed executive over war crimes, Jon Stewart thrashes Biden over Russia Israel hypocrisy, Schumer demands Ukraine border protection ahead of shutdown, and Assange's brother joins to discuss where his extradition stands.   To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show AD FREE, uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/   Merch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Hey guys, Ready or Not 2024 is here and we here at Breaking Points are already thinking of ways we can up our game for this critical election. We rely on our premium subs to expand coverage, upgrade the studio, add staff, give you guys the best independent coverage that is possible. If you like what we're all about, it just means the absolute world to have your support. But enough with that, let's get to the show. Good morning and welcome to CounterPoints. Emily, thanks to you and Crystal for picking up the slack last Wednesday. How was the ladies' show?

It was great. How was the fish show? Shows. The fish shows were wonderful. Might be a little weepy today. The reentry is difficult, the serotonin depletion, but I think we'll get through this. So you've got this. If you do see a tear or two, it's got some other stuff going on. Yeah, he's working through things. Yeah. All right. So we're going to have an interesting show today. We've got the results out of Michigan, both in the Republican primary and in the Democratic primary.

Democratic voters sent Biden a brutal message with more than 100,000 of them telling him they are uncommitted at this point. Republican voters sent Nikki Haley a pretty brutal message, too. Well, I mean, that's been an ongoing story for the last couple of months. Think she's going to get that message? I think I'm rooting for the comeback, Ryan. She's the real underdog here. Anything's possible. So we're going to talk about 2024 polling. We're also going to have updates on the negotiations toward a potential ceasefire in the Israel-Gaza war. My colleague, Maz Hussein, was on Jon Stewart this week debating Israel-Palestine with Yair Rosenberg. We're going to talk about that for a little bit.

And what else we got? We might have a shutdown. I think we will. A partial shutdown by the end of this week. Yeah. I think we will have a shutdown by the end of this week. Yeah, I think we will have a shutdown by the end of this week. So we're going to go through, there's a bunch of clips from yesterday,

people coming in and out of the White House, Speaker Mike Johnson, Chuck Schumer, talking about their perspective on how to keep the government open, but it seems really unlikely that the government is going to stay open. So we'll break down some of those dynamics as they stand today, Wednesday,

and we're really excited to have Gabriel Shipton back in here for an interview. Filmmaker and Julian Assange's brother, he's in the United States this week. He'll be in studio last week, as you guys talked about. Julian Assange had potentially his last extradition hearing over in the UK. The next step would be yanking him over here and throwing him into some maximum security prison for the crime of publishing documents. Let's start, though, with Starbucks, Ryan. Yes, some huge news on the union front. So Starbucks announced yesterday that it has reached an agreement with Starbucks United, which is the union that has been going around organizing Starbucks coffee shops around the country,

it has been one of the most intense kind of battles between labor and capital that we've seen in the United States. Schultz, the CEO, the founder of the company, just despises this union with every fiber of his body. He takes it so personally. He does. And what we learned from the American prospect, actually, is that these negotiations began after, and I'd reported this in The Intercept, that Starbucks decided it was going to sue its union for using a Starbucks logo while opposing the war in Gaza. So all of this actually started with the Starbucks workers' protest against the war in Gaza. That lawsuit then led to

some negotiations between the union and the company. And over the last week, as the prospect reports, those negotiations evolved into actual talks about the union itself. And so the result, and what we're hearing is that this is actually potentially more significant than it seems. The result is that there's going to be an agreement on an organized and fair process toward forming unions in Starbucks coffee shops. And Starbucks is going to negotiate collectively with all of those shops rather than what they've been doing is kind of individually trying to crush every union. And what I think this reveals is that Starbucks is recognizing, A, they have a huge image problem in the wake of the Gaza war. And also that their workers are overwhelmingly in support of a union.

So it sounds like, I mean, Starbucks is one of the more interesting union tribes from my perspective, just because it also affects more than, it's hundreds of thousands of workers in the United States, basically on every street corner in major cities, and everyone's town at this point almost has a Starbucks, and last year, you know, lived in a pretty rural area. So there's just a lot going on with the dynamics culturally with Starbucks. There are people in major cities. One of the reasons, there was a great Jacobin interview from a couple of years ago, people felt like they were being forced to work like untrained social workers because of some of the new policies about bathrooms that have since been rescinded.

But there's just, I mean, Starbucks workers have a very interesting, and I hate to use the word unique, but it is kind of a unique, I guess, case to make for unionization. Meanwhile, relatedly, a Mercedes plant in UAW, the workers there announced that more than 50% of them have signed cards asking to be, to organize with the UAW. So the UAW is absolutely on fire, just like rolling up these plants. And whether they can actually turn just over 50% of cards into a union remains to be seen, but it shows extraordinary momentum. The IG Metal, which is maybe the biggest and strongest union in the world, a union in Germany, is going to pressure Mercedes and is pressuring Mercedes to be fair and to treat this union drive fairly. Meanwhile, of course, Chinese EV cars are threatening to destroy the entire American auto manufacturing industry. So we'll see if the UAW's

revival comes a little bit too late. Well, Ryan, that's a great transition to the Michigan primary election results. There we go. Look at that. It really is perfect, especially with the electric vehicle point. Not just the UAW, but specifically the electric. I think it's the wave of euphoria. That's right. The jam really flowed. So in Michigan last night, Donald Trump won the Republican nomination 68 to 27 percent.

So 68 percent for Donald Trump, 27 percent for Nikki Haley. One of the big stories, though, although you weren't hearing a lot about it in the media this morning, is that 13 percent of Michigan voters selected uncommitted. So Joe Biden got 81 percent of the vote. 13 percent went to uncommitted. So Joe Biden got 81% of the vote, 13% went to uncommitted. If you're doing the math there, that's because also another five percentage points, as one of our great producers pointed out for us, went to Dean Phillips and Marianne Williamson. So 100,000 votes, more than 100,000 votes went to uncommitted. You add 22,000 for Marianne and 20,000 for Dean Phillips into the mix. And you're almost getting to one out of every five voters.

One in every eight went for uncommitted. But Michigan is a state that Joe Biden barely won. I think it was around three points. He eked out a victory in 2020. So a huge battleground state for him. And if you're doing the math, Ryan, in a primary election, which is generally low turnout, and in fact, 40% more voters turned out for Republicans than Democrats last night. So if you're doing the math for Biden come November, this is a very, very bad sign. We

know that they were expecting potentially a bad sign because they've dispatched all of their aides, not all of them, but an army of aides to Dearborn and the Muslim American communities in Michigan. So they understand that they have a problem on their hands here. But I think that problem might be bigger than even they realized. Yeah, the low turnout is key because you have to combine the two things. Yes, 100%. The 100,000 plus people in Michigan turned out to the polls to vote uncommitted. Like they walked to their polling place, they got on a bus, they drove. In many cases, they registered that day just to register the fact that they wanted to reject Biden, that they were not willing to vote for Biden,

a complete rejection of what they were being offered. The rest that represent that gap of 40, 50% between Democrats and Republicans rejected the status quo by just staying home. And that hurts Democrats just as much in November. Ask Hillary Clinton what happens in Michigan when people are so unenthusiastic or opposed to your campaign that they just don't bother to show up on election day. Yeah. And you know, it's funny because I was reading a news report, I think this was in the New York Times this morning about how, you know, if the Arab American vote swings 30% to Donald Trump in Michigan, it could be enough for Joe Biden to end up losing. They had a poll that showed something like that in the works, potentially a Time Sienna poll. But to your point,

just talking about a swing towards Trump is wildly insufficient. I mean, turnout is equally an important part of the equation there. So when you have 40% more Republican voters turning out the Democratic voters, yeah, no, I mean, I think that's not a great sign for Joe Biden, who, if you understand that there's a battle over uncommitted happening, you really want to make your mark for Joe Biden, you go turn out in the polls. So to have low turnout, even if it's, you know, a pretty obvious outcome, right? You know that Joe Biden ultimately is going to prevail, but you would want to stamp down talk of quote uncommitted. You can show up to vote. Yeah. And I think that the bigger problem for the Biden campaign is that they and their enablers in the media harbored this genuinely kind of racist view

that it was only Arab and Muslim voters that cared about this genocide going on. The idea that there is universal concern for women, children, elderly, innocent people getting killed is just kind of anathema to this increasingly, I guess, identitarian politics that has taken hold in the Democratic Party, where you would have people saying, you know what, only 2% of the Michigan population is Arab. So this isn't actually a problem. It's like, you really think that it's only Arab people that care about children getting killed by the hundreds every single day? And secondly, because the way the census works, it's not 2%. It's significantly more than 2%. But what these results showed is that racist assumption was utterly flawed. Basically,

everywhere around Michigan, at least 10% of the electorate voted uncommitted, places that have close to zero Arab American population. Now, in Dearborn and places like that, you saw absolute blowouts for uncommitted. But in, say, Ann Arbor, you had something like 30% of people coming out and voting uncommitted. So we can put this up on the screen, by the way. And it's also not just young people. You also hear young people and Arab Americans. Like that is the way that people have generously started to expand it. Oh, yeah, you know, those soft-hearted young people, they also care about genocide.

That's also not true. Like the penetration of opposition to genocide is across the demographic board. Now, how many people are going to come out and express that varies, but it's not just isolated. So, yeah, and if you were just looking at that map, you saw, again, that Dean Phillips and Marianne Williamson had more than 40,000 votes between them in addition to the more than 100,000 votes. And those are protest votes. Absolutely. Nobody walked into the polling place thinking that if they voted for Marianne that she was going to win or that they voted for Dean that he's going to become the nominee.

That's sending a signal. And both of those candidates were deeply frustrated that all of the kind of social media energy and the kind of public on the ground grassroots energy became organized around voting uncommitted. And no doubt, like back in 1968, you had McCarthy to vote for. It's easier for organizers if somebody is running on a popular banner of peace and it becomes the one that you're going to vote for to send that signal. That's much easier. But the population wants to express its democratic will and is gonna find a way to do it.

Often they find that way to do it by just not voting and just not showing up. This gave people an opportunity to say, okay, I can actually show up and be heard and have my frustration against this shown. So let's put A2 up on the screen. This is some notable, quote, uncommitted slash no preference vote shares

from Obama's uncontested 2012 primaries. So again, this happened in 2012. Those were very low turnout primaries because satisfaction with the candidate was a lot higher than it is with Biden. So Kentucky was at 42%. Michigan itself was at 11%. North Carolina, 21%. And then you had some other states, Rhode Island, Tennessee, people were organized. And Ryan,

you probably covered that at the time. Mobilized enough people to come out to uncommitted to the point where it was 42% in Kentucky. But again, that was a totally different context. And bigger raw numbers here. Yes. Like the number of well over 100,000 is the one that they're going to have to take home. Satisfaction with Obama on behalf of Democrats in 2011, relatively high compared to. Although Bernie was calling for, to his eternal kind of electoral chagrin, was calling for a primary challenge to Obama because he was embracing austerity at the time. By the time of the election, he had gone into kind of populist mode, painting Romney as the plutocrat that he was. And so the left was, and there was no primary challenge.

They're a little back behind that, but yeah. Yeah, it's not like everyone was, oh, Obama is the savior of know, the savior of the working class. But it was, yeah, dissatisfaction with Joe Biden is on a dissatisfaction with Joe Biden's on another level in this case. So let's go ahead and pivot to this conflict that bubbled over on CNN last night. We knew that cable news was gonna have a measured, sober response to the Michigan public declaring its opposition to this genocide, and they delivered for us. They sure did. Yeah, let's show a friend of the show, Nina Turner here, walking into the lion's den and trying to actually talk substance with a CNN horse race panel.

Let's see how well that goes. And I think sometimes as we talk about this issue, we're centering President Biden. We are centering former President Donald J. Trump when the uncommitted effort is to center the people closest to the pain. And that is the Arab American community. That is the Palestinian community. That is communities that care about peace. And so while this president was in the ice cream shop saying, I think there's going to be a ceasefire, 30,000 people have been slaughtered. People are living in famine.

They can't get medical care. So it can't come soon enough for them. And that was really the weight that I picked up on when I was in Dearborn. So we get to be comfortable and talk about this like these people are widgets when they are in fact suffering. And I am young enough to remember, colleagues, when Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib and also Congresswoman Cori Bush called for a ceasefire very early on on they were called abhorrent Now fast forward to all of these bodies land in the wake and people who are living through this every single day There's also been slaughter in Israel

Lecture on the problem, but I'm talking the the politics of this tonight how what to you would be a victory as somebody was calling for this uncommitted vote what to you would be a victory tonight on to get that message i'm not denying that pain all i'm saying that at a certain point after october the 7th it becomes clear i, you have a right-wing prime minister... Right. We don't need to read the issue. But you understand what I'm saying. I'm not denying anybody's pain. What I am saying is that this president

and our country has the power to say to Netanyahu, we need a permanent ceasefire. The only time hostages... Wait, one more point. The only time hostages were released is when we had that brief ceasefire. That is another reason why we need a permanent ceasefire. I also have to remind people we had a ceasefire prior to October 7th.

Well, that was uncomfortable. And let me say something in defense of Nina Turner there that people might not recognize. So in that back and forth there, so when Anderson Cooper jumps in, he's like, hold on, there's pain on both sides here. And then tries to move it back to the horse race. And he's like, give me your view of the politics here. And then she takes it back to the pain. Like he gets upset with her, like, hey, I told you to take this back to the horse race. But if she hadn't done that, she knows that she's constantly getting hit as hostile to Israel and maybe even anti-Semitic. And that if she didn't respond to that, then that would be the thing that people would hit her for. That's the story. So she has

to then. So he kind of forces her to respond to that and then gets upset with her that when she does, you know, actually respond to that. But it was interesting to see the panel just so reflexively unable to even kind of think about the substance of the issue. Like what is, why are people voting the way that they did? Yeah, the, I don't, we don't need a lecture on the problem line is come on, not collegial. So it tells me that Anderson Cooper must have. And that felt directed at the voters, too, in a way, like frustrated at the voters that they're like going to lecture about. Like you saw people getting saying that these these voters and who want their moral clarity, like more clarity. And what a lot of them are demanding is not actually that much. You're just saying, just call for a ceasefire.

So on this point, we also have an exchange between Jake Tapper and Debbie Dingell to roll. Let's watch that. And what is it? You have with about 16% of the vote in? So it's going to be a sizable, uncommitted vote. Is this a surprise to you in any way? And what do you make of this potential impact? Will the White House change course in any way? So, first of all, it's not a surprise to me. I've been telling people that we have a campaign called Listen to Michigan with people that want to be listened to. But, you know, as everybody started acting surprised

tonight or looking at figures, I said to multiple people over the course of the last month, my district, Washtenaw County, which has got Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti, and everybody really ignores me when I say Ypsilanti too, I bet have more uncommitted votes than Dearborn. And as you're watching, I'm going to be right. And I expected it because it's not just the Arab American Muslim community. It's young people who, you know, want to be heard, are concerned, have the same concerns about, they know what Hamas did was a terrorist act, but they are watching innocent civilians be killed and the kind of damage that's there.

We've gotta talk about that issue, but we've gotta talk about a lot of other issues too. So actually sounding a little bit like Nina Turner from one of the most moderate members, one of the most centrist members of the House of Representatives. Now, Tapper doesn't shut her down, like Cooper shut down Anderson Cooper, I think because she delivered it in a way that strikes your average CNN anchor as being a different angle than listening to Nina Turner, who's someone on the left. But if it comes out of the mouth of a centrist, it's exactly the point you're making, right? She's talking about Ypsilanti. She's talking about Ann Arbor. She won a bunch of credibility too, because she was the person in 2016 who was most loudly yelling at the Hillary Clinton campaign. Like Michael Moore.

Telling them that they were misunderstanding what was happening in Michigan and that they were on the brink of losing it. And she was doing that publicly enough that when it actually came to pass, everybody was like, oh yeah, Debbie Dingell was saying that. So now when she talks and makes an electoral argument, people listen. One of the kind of, I think, hard to swallow pills for people is the Biden line that comes out where he says, well, this is not about electoral politics. This is about doing the right thing. It's like, well, that's almost worse. Like the idea that you think that you look at your handling of this assault since October 7th, and you look at the 30,000 dead, plus,'s just recent projections that you're looking at, even if there's a ceasefire right now, you're looking at tens of thousands more.

You're looking at the Israeli civilians in coordination with the IDF setting up bouncy castles and having carnivals outside of the fence into Gaza and at those carnivals protesting and blocking aid from getting in. While children have now gone from the brink of famine, the brink of starvation, to actually starving to death. And so you look at that and you say, you think you're the one who's ignoring electoral implications and doing the right thing, then you are a moral creature of like such disrepute that we don't mind seeing you lose. The sanctum. No matter what the consequences are. So another note, I mean, again, Debbie Dingell was talking about this not being isolated to Dearborn. And that was a point that you made, Ryan, which means that this translates outside of Michigan. That's a really important point.

They're moving to Minnesota, like Minnesota's next, and you're going to see people pushing to vote uncommitted or whatever. I don't know the exact what you can vote on the ballot. Michigan has the uncommitted line, but in Minnesota, they're going to be pushing for something similar. You know, New Hampshire, they've said write in ceasefire. You know, you have to do something different in every state because we've got these federated electoral systems. So literally as we were talking, one of the candidates that we mentioned here, someone who got 22,000 votes in Michigan last night, unsuspended her campaign. And that would be Marianne Williamson. Again, this happened as we were discussing this on air and taping this very segment. Let's take a listen to what Marianne had

to say. Hey, I have an important announcement to make. As of today, I am unsuspending my campaign for the presidency of the United States. I had suspended it because I was losing the horse race, but something so much more important than the horse race is at stake here, and we must respond. Ryan, Marianne Williamson unsuspending her campaign, the uncommitted movement now with a little bit of momentum going to, like you said, Minnesota, California's got a primary coming up. We're rolling right into Super Tuesday. It looks like Biden might be facing a seriously mobilized protest vote movement in this primary now. Yes. I mean, across the Democratic Party, the opposition to his unconditional support for Israel's war effort is overwhelming. There was a poll recently that showed that there's double digit opposition from Jewish Democrats and significant double digit,

not like 10 or 12. I don't remember the exact number, but it's significant opposite. And that stretches across the board. There's basically no demographic in the Democratic coalition that supports what Biden is doing. And so they're going to be looking for any channel to express that opposition. And just before we leave this block, I know we didn't cover much Trump-Haley ground because basically the results are really similar to what people expected. So 68 to 27, again, that's the breakdown. There was a 538 polling average.

So 5% uncommitted, right? If I'm doing my math right. Somewhere around there. But there's a, and Nikki Haley, to your point, is kind of a protest vote to Donald Trump. There's not a lot of people who are like, I just love Nikki Haley. There's some people. There are Democrats that love her. There's some.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. But again, there was a 538 average that I saw getting a little bit of traction on the Internet last night. And I went and looked at it. It was like a few polls over the course of the last couple of months. And so Trump did underperform that by about 10 points. It had him in the mid to high 70s.

And again, he ended up at 60. That's been a pattern, right? He keeps underperforming his polls. He keeps underperforming, although I don't necessarily know that that's a huge, again, when the polls are in state levels, I mean, polls just aren't always, if you have a polling average of a couple polls in Michigan,

I don't know what that means, but it's still, obviously, the quote that I wanted to read from this Axios report was about Nikki Haley. They said, but a sizable chunk, Nikki Haley's performance. So again, 27%. And Nikki Haley, when she was in South Carolina, her home state that she poured way more money into than Donald Trump poured into South Carolina.

She actually outspent Ron DeSantis and Trump in Iowa. She wildly outspent Donald Trump in New Hampshire. So she's pouring a lot of money into these states, getting 30, 40% of the vote. Again, we saw that happen last night, significant in a place where Donald Trump has always felt at home. It's done a lot of stuff in Michigan. Axios says that the vote for Nikki Haley shows that, quote, but a sizable chunk of Republican voters may never be on board with Donald Trump. Yeah, it's 2024. We've known that since 2015. We've seen it again since 2016. We saw it in 2018. We saw it in 2020. We saw it in 2022. We did not need Nikki Haley coming in 27% in Michigan to show that a sizable chunk of Republican voters

may never be on board with Donald Trump. But thank you, Mike Allen, for pointing that out. But meanwhile, an interesting new YouGov economist poll finds that he's picked up sizable ground basically since Biden was sworn in. Now, we can put this tweet from Adam Carlson up here. But you have to remember that this represents sort of a nadir of Trump support. This is a moment, we're talking just a little bit after January 6th, where the guy's mob ransacked the Capitol. Right. And he's facing impeachment. So from this bottoming out, he's seen a 45-point gain among black voters, a 40-point gain among people 18 to 29.

Let's go back to that in a second. Interestingly, a 27 percent gain among people who make more than $100,000. And then he's picked up about a fifth of the electorate with basically everybody else, moderates, people living less than 50%, even liberals and Democrats. That comes, I think, from how he was down in probably single digits among some of those liberals and Democrats. Polling finding the shifts in black voters, young voters, and Hispanic voters should terrify Joe Biden. And another thing I just want to point out, because you won't hear it in the corporate press, is that this is just about Donald Trump. And I'm not particularly a fan of Donald Trump,

nor are most people that work in journalism professionally. But this is only happening with Donald Trump. You would not see these numbers with Nikki Haley. You would not see these numbers with other Republican candidates. For some reason, Donald Trump is making inroads with black voters, young voters, and Hispanic voters that Republicans who put out in 2012 their RNC autopsy saying the only way that we're going to win Hispanic voters is by moderating on immigration. The only way we're going to win young voters is by moderating on culture war issues. For some reason, Donald Trump is making inroads with those voting blocs that other Republicans are not, and other Republicans have never figured out how to do it. And again, so much of this is just unique to Donald Trump.

Donald Trump, you can't really replicate Donald Trump and Doug Mastriano, or even in Ron DeSantis, as we've seen many different times play out with many different candidates. So it's not like this is some boon of the Republican Party. I think it would be easy to read these numbers and say, wow, Donald Trump, he's the future of the Republican Party. The Republican Party is now the party of the young and Hispanics and the working class. It doesn't translate to other Republicans.

But it is something that Donald Trump is doing and these are huge gains in ways that should definitely terrify Joe Biden. We can put B2 up on the screen here. This is another one of the polls. This is from an Axios poll. They found, again, Gen Z and millennial voters key to Biden's 2020 victory. They turned out in huge numbers, favored him by 20 points back in 2020. His support for Israel, Biden's support for Israel, is hurting him with young voters.

Biden got 52% to Trump's 48% in a new Axios Gen Lab survey of voters between the ages of 18 and 34. 49% of 18 to 29-year-olds supported Trump, compared with 43% for Biden in a New York Times Siena College poll. So that's Axios and New York Times finding Donald Trump making huge inroads on Joe Biden with young voters in the midst of the October 7th fallout. And Ryan, another part of this that's interesting is that's not just people saying neither. That's people actually gravitating towards Donald Trump. Yeah. And there was a vision in 2022 of a democratic coalition that would consist of young people, then people with college degrees, people of color, that could get, that could, that was broadly behind a progressive agenda that if, if with enough depth to kind of work

inside the coalition could be weaponized toward a kind of working class agenda, child tax credits, other support for the working class pro,-union stuff, that turns the Democratic coalition back into a genuinely progressive force. They only won, say, Georgia, for instance, because of the overwhelming support from voters of color and young people. And there's a huge overlap between those two because the younger generation is the most diverse that we've had. That was a kind of hopeful vision of a Democratic Party that could actually do something good for everyday people around the country. They threw that all away with over support, unconditional support of this genocide in Gaza and for a prime minister

in Benjamin Netanyahu, whose mission is to see Biden lose. Absolutely just incredible lack of concern for their own electoral kind of success. Absolutely mind blowing. And so now with Trump, even with young people, that blows up that potential coalition that they had. Unless you can get that back, which is possible because like you said, without Trump, those young people are like, these guys are creeps and freaks. And we're actually going to talk about that pretty soon. Yes. So it could come back. But if you don't have that, if you don't, because in order to win young people, and also in order to win a lot of black voters, you need policies that are going to benefit the kind of working class and progressive people kind of generally. If you're not going for young people, then you're just,

you know, playing Clintonian triangulation games and just trying to, you know, win 50.1% by picking off, you know, center right voters. And that's not a coalition that certainly gets me excited. So we saw Trump make huge inroads in the Rio Grande Valley, and Sagar has talked about this. He's a Texas guy, so he understands Texas politics. But Donald Trump's margins with Hispanic voters in the Rio Grande Valley and Texas were very, very important to how close he came to defeating Joe Biden back in 2020. I mean, these margins in certain states are just absolutely critical, especially the battleground states in a place exactly like Michigan.

But that's why this 45% jump, again, that is a very important point. It's from February of 2021 until now. So absolute low point for Donald Trump. But it's a 45-point jump, not a five-point jump, 10-point jump, 45-point jump. So it's significant no matter what, 40 with people aged 18 to 29, 27 with Hispanic voters. That's a huge deal. That's a five alarm fire type deal. The media is even covering this and they don't like Donald Trump, but it should be an even bigger story given how huge these advantages are. Again, for Republicans,

though, the Rio Grande Valley is a great example. Mayra Flores was, and she was redistricted, but was one of those Hispanic candidates. She was elected to Congress. I think she was elected in 2020 and then lost again in 2022. But either way, with the redistricting, she ended up losing her seat. And some of the candidates down in the Rio Grande Valley that Kevin McCarthy kind of handpicked to win did not win. There's something when Donald Trump is not on the ballot that doesn't translate for Republican voters necessarily with those same groups that have come to really like Donald Trump. And the Republican Party keeps trying to push Donald Trump away. That was one of his issues with Ronna McDaniel is that she just

didn't kind of get Trumpism. She didn't want to necessarily have the RNC being used in ways that were helpful in the legal battles here. I mean, money is fungible and I think they're not technically allowed to use. He can't use campaign funds for paying off the legal battles. So what the RNC can do for the campaign then becomes a big question. But the point is establishment Republicans in Washington are still very uncomfortable with Donald Trump. But Donald Trump has political instincts that resonate with people. And eight years later, Republicans still can't quite grapple with that in a way that translates

to other candidates. Ryan, Trump right away came out and said, we're protecting IVF. That's a second point of this block that we want to get to. Because when you're looking at Donald Trump specifically making gains with young voters, with people who consider themselves liberal, he has a 20-point bump from February of 2021. That can go out the door with other Republican candidates. Donald Trump, though, came out right away saying, yeah, this is and this, I think, is the key problem for the Republican coalition, because the one thing that kind of Trump and the

anti-Trump Republican establishment agree on is that a lot of the kind of Republican cultural positions are terrible for them in general elections. Yes. And probably, I, probably nothing more so than, than the, than the IVF issue. Abortion in general. Right. I mean, which, which is, it's, it's within the sphere of, of abortion rights, but it's probably even, even worse for them. Yes, significantly. But, so let, let's, so, so So today, the Senate is going, two Democrats in the Senate, Tammy Duckworth and Patty Murray, are going to try to force a vote on the Senate floor that tries to put Republicans on record that will say, you could put this element up here,

that will say IVF is protected on a federal level. This flows out of the kind of shocking to the public Alabama Supreme Court decision that declared that embryos that have been produced through the IVF process are children. And through the entire kind of Alabama IVF system into complete chaos. All of the people who've been hoping and praying that they're finally going to have a chance to raise children and spending enormous amounts of money. Tons of money. Taking this, a lot of people do this on credit and otherwise making extraordinary sacrifices because they want to build a nuclear family,

are now all of a sudden told that it's not happening. Now Alabama is trying to give some type of immunity, legal shield to doctors. And other states have done it. Walk us through, and actually tell us a little bit about how big a part of the kind of pro-life movement is this IVF faction that wants to go all the way to the wall for this. So in pro-life circles, you basically never hear this talked about. It's not a top-of-mind issue, especially after Dobbs. It's a lot of conversations just about states and abortion in particular although if you believe and crystal and I talked about this and actually like kind of debated it a little bit last week if you believe that You know

Conception is the moment of that life begins obviously most people in pro-life circles push comes to shove End up on that side of the myself included end up on side of that, but there are other states I think Louisiana is one of the, myself included, end up on side of that. But there are other states, I think Louisiana is one of the examples, that have protections for embryos that have not upended the entire IVF system in this way that, I mean, the politics of it are bad, and we'll get to this in a bit, but the morality of it is awful. I mean, NPR profiled a woman who is now like, my embryos are at this clinic, but the clinic will not give me my embryos and the clinic can't do anything with my fertilized embryos. It's just heart-wrenching. People's hopes and dreams and livelihoods are on the line because of a ping-ponging sort of

legal question. It's awful. Because you end up losing the moral thread there. It feels like if the purpose is life and family, just leaving an embryo in a freezer indefinitely doesn't seem to even be kind of in service of their own agenda. No, not at all. Yeah. I think that's a great point. And so Tammy Duckworth picked up on the politics of this Donald Trump Trump right away said protecting it. But Tammy Duckworth and Democrats immediately, there's a lot of headlines that always say Republicans pounce whenever there's a politically convenient issue for them. Well, Democrats definitely pounced this time. Let's listen to Senator Duckworth, whose children, by the way, were born via IVF. One in four married women have difficulty getting pregnant or carrying a pregnancy to term. One in four. That doesn't even include single individuals and other families also trying to conceive. So to my Republican colleagues, please think about how many that one in four represents in your state. Women willing to go through expensive, painful treatments just for a chance to experience the most banal moments of parenthood. Just to have a newborn to swaddle, a toddler whose shoes needed to be tied, and if you believe that they should have the right to be called mom without also being called a criminal, then all you have to do to

prove it is help us pass this should be obvious legislation. Because in this nightmarish moment, it's nowhere near enough to send out a vaguely worded tweet suggesting that you care about women's rights despite a voting record to the absolute contrary. Instead, if you truly care about the sanctity of families, if you're genuinely, actually, honestly interested in protecting IVF, then you need to show it by not blocking this bill on the floor tomorrow. It's that simple. And she said that because we can put this next element up on the screen. This is from Newsweek. It's a headline that says, Republicans call Alabama IVF ruling scary. And if you're watching this, you see the picture of Matt Gaetz up on the screen, because Matt Gaetz is one of the Republicans who came out right away and said, nope, Republicans should be protecting IVF. He said there was something, quote,

totally wrong about the situation. You also had Byron Donalds, another Freedom Caucus guy, come out in that direction. And then some establishment people like Kristen Nunez. Even Tommy Tuberville, again, who is seen as like now a pro-life champion based on his stand that we covered a lot here last year on Pentagon and abortion. So even Tuberville is... Even Tuberville. And so if this gets to the floor, will this be a thing where Republicans just kind of cave and it gets unanimous support? I don't know because Duckworth did something really clever.

It's basically, like she's basically saying it would establish a federal right to IVF and other fertility treatments that are at risk in the post-Roe era. That's what, like she's basically saying it would establish a federal right to IVF and other fertility treatments that are at risk in the post-Roe era. That's what, according to The Hill, is on the line in the bill that she and Patty Murray puts on the floor. So if it's a bill with really sweeping implications that Republicans don't necessarily want to sign onto at a federal level, then she might have a bunch of Republicans. And you heard that in her quote at the end of the statement there. She might have a bunch of Republicans in a real pickle voting against

a bill that they feel is- Because what are the sweeping protections? It would undermine Louisiana's, whatever they're doing. Yeah, right. And I'm not saying that that's the right interpretation of it, but you could see how legally Republican interpretations of the federal right to IVF might, yeah, exactly. Like go after certain state protections or whatever, or it might just be something that has implications for other abortion legislation, because if you're, or like birth control legislation, some really, I don't know. Where they get even more tangled up. Yeah. Because then they're like, well, I would love to support this protection of IVF, but I'm worried it might protect birth control.

Exactly. And then voters are like, wait a minute, you're seriously against birth control too? Exactly. And Speaker Mike Johnson's response to this, I think, was indicative of the problems that Republicans have, where he immediately came out and was like, this is bad what the Alabama Supreme Court did. And then people are immediately like, you sponsored a bill that would basically do this. Yes. And it feels like the Republican implicit response is,

yeah, but I just did that for political purposes. Like I don't actually intend that to become law. And then the public is like, well, we kind of heard you say that for like 50 years with Roe v. Wade. And we sort of were lulled into complacency. Right. you say that for like 50 years with Roe v. Wade. And we sort of were lulled into complacency. Right. And then all of a sudden you overturn Roe v. Wade. So this like, well, this is just cynicism that we're doing here.

We wouldn't actually do this. It doesn't work after they overturned Roe. Well, yeah. And again, you have Tammy Duckworth saying, if you're serious, you need to vote in favor of this bill. And so I think, again, yeah, that's what Democrats have learned is like the big political lesson post-Roe is to tell Republicans to put their money where their mouth is if they're going to come out in all of these things. So I was on Megyn Kelly's show this week, and among the sort of Republican politicians that we just discussed, Megyn's a huge supporter of IVF. And again, I've talked to, debated with Crystal about this and

others. I have a wildly unpopular position on this, but it's just sort of the logical consistency. If you believe that life begins at conception, this is where the problem for Republicans- You across the board against? No, not at all. And that's what the clip actually gets to. So let's roll the conversation. Megan gets into how unpopular she thinks this is going to be for Republicans, dangerous it is for Republicans, and then pushes me on one thing as well. There is a huge difference between looking at a woman and saying, you do not have the right to kill your own child and saying to her, you do not have the right to have your own child.

That is just a completely different message, politically, morally, religiously, take your pick. And the latter's not going to fly. It's not gonna fly with Republicans. It's not gonna fly with the very group that Trump is trying to win over, as we discussed earlier, in particular, young, moderate women, right?

That's who he needs to win. So he took the right position on this. Before we go, can you expand on what you're saying, Emily? Because it who he needs to win. So he took the right position on this. Before we go, can you expand on what you're saying, Emily? Because it's been a long while. My youngest child is now 10, so I haven't really been following the latest IVF developments. But what is the more moral, humane way of doing it that you're referring to? So targeted. Yeah, like what you were saying about to minimize situations where people have 10 extra embryos that they have to make decisions on. So like just, just put the number of eggs in

the Petri dish that you're willing to have. Like it's really the eggs that will control the number of children. Right, right, right, right. And then figuring out what these clinics do with extra eggs too. I think that's a big, big, big, big legal question as well, because now we have people like the woman on the daily caught in the lurch when a court decision comes down. So as this stuff sort of flip-flops or ping-pongs through the legal system, you're going to have people's lives sort of caught in the balance and that there should be some way that there's clarity. So people aren't in those situations. So Ryan, Megan is picking up on an important point, which is similar to what Tammy Duckworth said, that you should have the right to have your own child. The problem with the way that I believe IVF should be done is that it's extremely expensive to do that.

It is basically unfeasible for a lot of people. So I don't pretend that that's like an easy answer to the question, but I think, you know, Republicans are starting to realize post-Roe how bad the environment is for them, especially if Megan pointed out young women. Probably another reason Tammy Duckworth and Patty Murray jumped on this right away because, you know, Donald Trump is saying one thing about IVF, but down ballot candidates, that can get really tough for them. Right, and because the problems are many it's you know, it's not just money. It's also time, you know You're you're getting older every single month Yes, and one reason that they do, you know more than the more than one is so that one takes yes

Sometimes six take yeah, and you know that could be fatal for for a woman trying to that. The other problem comes with the, some of it is around genetics. Like there might be some genetic problems in the family that would create practically an unviable pregnancy. And so they can then create an embryo and genetically test and make sure, okay, it did not get that gene. And so, therefore, you know, we're not going to use this one. Yeah. Because that could, you know, that just simply won't work. Now, you can imagine where you can get into some ethical complications where then you start to do genetic engineering, but that's not what's going on. Or unless the government wants to come in and say, like, no, this is like, we're going to dictate exactly how this goes down. And the point that she made about the painful nature of it, I think, is also important to underscore. For some reason, the medical community, when it comes to women, just can't figure out ways to do these procedures, you know, without them being extraordinarily painful.

And so every time that a woman tries this and fails, they went through all of that pain coupled within this hope, coupled within the heartbreak of it not working, followed up by, oh, you're back in for this, like, excruciatingly painful process, something that I imagine most men would never be able to even remotely handle. And then Snell told, oh, you can only do one again because the Republicans don't want you to do more than one. You get your hopes up again, your heart breaks again, you're back in the painful situation. And time, like you said. Right. You're back at square one, but you're a year further ahead. And you lost $100,000 to this. And you financed that. Now what? And the physical toll on your body.

Yeah, absolutely. No, I don't disagree with that at all. And just it's what's happening to people, the uncertainty that people in Alabama are dealing with right now. Again, NPR profiled this woman whose fertilized embryos are in a clinic. And, you know, if you believe that that's life, that's human life. It feels like kidnapping. Christopher Hitchens. I'm sure it feels a woman like her like her future children have been kidnapped.

Yeah, I would commend everybody. There was a great Christopher Hitchens essay that he wrote in 2003 for Vanity Fair, just sort of talking about the implications of technology and the left sort of idea about when life does begin and the kind of difficult places that that can take us to. These are questions that are worth thinking about. But in Alabama right now, there are a lot of people who are in dire straits

and just desperately worried about these lives, from my perspective at least, and from their perspective. Again, the woman from NPR said those are, it feels like a death in the family. So it's, yeah, it's awful and there needs to be solutions to it. And the politics of this are absolutely brutal for Republicans. Let's talk about the ongoing ceasefire negotiations over in the Middle East. President Biden kind of supplanted himself as one of the most, if not the most hated presidents

in the Middle East by announcing that there was going to be a ceasefire while licking an ice cream cone. An image that will, I think, live in infamy for decades to come. Worse still, it seems like it wasn't even true. he may have been doing this on Monday right before Michigan was supposed to vote to try to depress the uncommitted vote is a thought almost kind of too cynical to even contemplate. I'm going to tell myself that it was just his addled mind that allowed him to kind of lie about this. Or his spokesperson, John Kirby, was lying, one or the other. Let's play John Kirby's response to Biden's claim that he expected a ceasefire by this coming Monday. Just to follow one or the other. Let's play John Kirby's response to Biden's claim that he expected a ceasefire by this coming Monday. Just to follow on Weijia's previous question, though, we've learned, according to an Israeli source, that Netanyahu was quite surprised by the

president's comments about his expectations that there would be a ceasefire by Monday. So that doesn't bode a lot of optimism that one of the key parties was surprised by that timeline the president had set. So why did he say Monday? I can't speak for the surprise that foreign leaders have or don't have with regard to things that we're saying. The president talked to y'all after staying completely up to speed, and he has been kept up to speed on how these negotiations are going, and he shared with you some context, and he certainly shared with you his optimism that we can get there in hopefully a short order. Ryan, can I just say how weird it is that he felt the need to confirm that the president

has stayed, quote, completely up to speed on the negotiations? That's a strange thing to say. And then lied, if that's what Kirby is saying. Right, right. So yeah, he was up to speed on the negotiations. But then he said something that shocked the people who were actually engaged in the negotiations. But it almost felt like a tell. Don't worry, we're keeping them in the loop. Yeah, it was weird. So Matt Miller over at the State Department was also asked about this. Let's roll his response. Back up the assertion that you just made in response to one of Said's questions, that we're closer today than we were yesterday. Just that we continue negotiations, and I can't unfortunately—

Well, fine, but continuing negotiations. So they haven't broken down. Is that why— Unfortunately, I can't really answer that without getting into the underlying substance of the negotiations, but the talks continue and we think we continue to make progress. You said, we think we continue to make progress. That is the basis of my statement. You said we are closer today than we were yesterday. Continuing to make progress. There isn't anything you can give to us now or present to us or tell us that would actually back up the idea that a ceasefire slash hospital deal is closer today than it was yesterday. I can never show you definitive progress in talks that by their very nature are secret. I mean, okay, I get the logical point he's making. Yeah.

That there's secret talks. He's not going to say anything about them. And so therefore he can't back up what he's saying there. Yeah. But the context is that the president of the United States just said that he expects a ceasefire on a very specific timeframe, one week from the day that he said it.

And then he had specifically said, we're closer today than we were yesterday. So those are very reasonable questions. Okay, great. Why? Like he tells anything. Right. Because we're hearing from sources in Hamas and from sources in the Israeli government that they're not very close at all. Qataris too, yeah. And they're saying they're not remotely close. Yep. So anyway, there you go. That's what the American government's going to share with us. And again, that's why I think it's really noteworthy that Kirby said the president has

been, quote, up to speed, kept up to speed in the negotiations, because it actually seems like Biden, and I know this is fraught, but it seems like Biden might not have been up to speed. And so when they say that he's been kept up to speed, that's sort of the tell. They're projecting the opposite of what the truth is to say he's totally up to speed. Maybe he's not up to speed because he's not lucid enough to be a significant part of these negotiations. Yeah. Unfortunately, everything we keep hearing is that Biden is driving this policy. Or Biden's lieutenants understand the Biden policy well enough to drive it for him. I would, I don't know. You would, you would hope that, I mean, and maybe that represents a lack of lucidity, that Biden is just so kind of locked into his ideological, unconditional support of Israel that he's unable to absorb new inputs.

Even when people are seeing like this five alarm fire in Michigan, like you have to, you have to start reconciling your Mr. Two-State solution, decades of two-state solution, with what Netanyahu is doing as Mr. One-State solution. It's wrecking you. And he's changing nothing. Like he went on Seth Meyers the other day, right? And Meyers presses him on this. Meyers, who's Jewish-American, by the way. Biden responds by saying, I'm a Zionist. You don't have to be Jewish to be a Zionist.

And I believe that no Jew in the world is safe without Israel. Talking to a Jewish American, like telling him that he's incapable of keeping Seth Meyers safe in his own country. What a failure on his part. If that's true, if there are so many Nazis running rampant in this country, then go do your job and make this country safe for everyone. The idea that you can outsource your job as American president to keep all Americans safe by saying, well, we've got some other country. Can you imagine if he said, no, no Nigerian is safe here in the United States without Nigeria? They'd be like, well, how about you keep the Nigerians in the United States safe? Now, that's a nationality question rather than a religion question.

But the entire premise of it is just so convoluted. But this is one of the other reasons that I read these leaks in a different way, coming from the right than people on the left, because I do think it's a frustration. We know that like Biden's own staff is kind of split on this, that there's some people that are hardcore with him on that question of Zionism and the two state solution. We know there are other people in the administration that are less comfortable with that. Karine Jean-Pierre herself wrote an op-ed about the problems with that. What was this, like three years ago? I think it was HuffPost.

So, I mean, these divides exist in the administration. Go to newsweek.com. Oh, it was newsweek.com. The new weird Newsweek. Oh, there you go. But actually, that's... I think it was Newsweek, yeah. We have another clip of Matt Miller

getting pressed on some of these problems for the administration. We can roll that. There have been now at least six documented instances depicting members of the IDF displaying or rifling through women's underwear. And of course, that's just on camera. Soldiers have, as we've seen, stripped and tortured Palestinians. There have been a reported history of soldiers abusing children that they've detained even

before October 7th. And of course, investigations need to be pursued. But still given all that we've seen from Israeli forces just up to this point, what's the U.S. government doing in response now, given the U.N. experts' alarm at credible allegations of human rights violations and sexual violence committed against Palestinians? MR. We make clear to the governor of Israel that we expect them to behave consistent with the laws of war and consistent with their own

rules of engagement. And we have seen the Israeli military come out and say it is conducting its own investigations into reports of soldiers who have failed to comply with either of those two sets of rules. And that's appropriate, and that's what you expect a professional military to do. And we expect those investigations to proceed. And if appropriate, hold the responsible parties accountable. Yeah. And this is in response to the new TikTok trend among IDF soldiers to kind of steal lingerie and other garments. I saw canes. Palestinian women, canes. One guy curled up in a crib and put that on TikTok.

Nobody knows where that child is. Has that child been killed by the IDF? Is that child starving? Obviously the child has been pushed out of his or her home because the soldier is now like, you know, having a good time, like sleeping in the kids, in the kids crib. The one though correction that I would make to Miller's point here, he says that, you know, we expect the Israelis to abide by international law. The U.S. government actually has given Israel until middle of March to sign a document saying that they will abide by international law in order to continue to receive American weapons.

The irony is that within the U.S. government, that represents a victory for the people who have been pushing for some sort of accountability and some sort of reckoning with the human rights abuses that Israel is committing with American weapons. But it also puts on display a rather glaring problem, which is that, wait a minute, you're giving them until the middle of March to follow the law? That's insane. And in the meantime, saying, you know, we expect our partners in Israel. Right. You've been saying that you expect them to follow. Why do you expect them to follow it if it's going to take them until the middle of March even to decide whether or not they're going to put their signature on a meaningless document asserting that they're

going to follow the law when they haven't been following the law for months and years, actually. Yeah, absolutely. Let's put this next element up on the screen just to wrap up this block, a Reuters report inside the Democratic rebellion against Biden over the Gaza war. We covered earlier in the show today, Ryan, what happened in Michigan last night, which, you know, I think really was worse than what the Biden administration even expected. If you put the protest vote together, you're somewhere near 20% of voters coming out against Biden. He lost, or I'm sorry, he won Michigan in 2020 by 155,000 votes. He, the protest vote itself was around 122,000, no, 140-something thousand votes just last night in a low turnout primary for Joe Biden. We played Debbie Dingell earlier in the show saying this was

even Ypsilanti. It wasn't just Dearborn. This is kind of across the board in places where there are concentrations of young voters, of American voters, and people across the board are concerned about this issue for Joe Biden. And that may translate into how people vote. It does seem, and according to this Reuters report, people were caught off guard in the White House. That might be the most shocking part. What do you mean you were caught off guard? Right. The Reuters report tells us that the Biden campaign really did believe that this was isolated to Arab and or Muslim voters. And that once the campaign really heated up and the contest was between Biden and Trump, that it would fade as

a concern. Like that was the, that, that was according to this article, the, the actual belief of grown people who looked at this situation, analyzed it and came to a conclusion. That is rather shocking. Yeah. It's, it seems like at the very least they would be aware. You can prosecute your policy, but to have the blind spot about what this is doing is somewhat shocking. If you would say, look, we're happy to lose over this. If they want to say that, okay. That's an immorally principled position. Right. want to say that, okay, that's an immorally principled position. But to say we're going

to engage in this and people are going to forget about it because Trump is so out of touch that it is genuinely shocking. But this is where actually, and that's an interesting point, this is where Democrats and especially establishment Democrats laser focus on Donald Trump since 2016, a guy who is super polarizing and absolutely will get them votes in battleground states that are critical to winning reelection. There's no question about it. But if you just bank on that without also advancing an agenda that people, a lot of other people feel, because on the margins,

if you lose other people, the marginal math against Donald Trump doesn't work. So you can't do one and not the other. You can't just say Donald Trump is so toxic that as much as we talk about him, so long as it's a binary choice between a Democrat, Joe Biden and Donald Trump, a binary choice between Amy Klobuchar or Pete Buttigieg and Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. As long as we have that binary choice, we can do what we want policy-wise. That's just stupid. Yeah. And you know what? Biden might still win, which is the craziest thing on the planet. He might. Well, again, I mean, like the binary choice is not good for Republicans. They're not wrong about that.

Trump might lose is the more accurate way to put it. They're not wrong about that. Again, it is not helpful to Republicans to have the binary choice on the national level, even though we talked earlier in the show about Trump making gains with certain demo blocks that are helpful to Republicans. It's still, you know, the binary choice isn't great. Imagine if Biden wins and he's still president in 2028. He would leave in 2029, January 2029.

I can genuinely not imagine Joe Biden in 2029. It's going to be something to see. Actually, Ryan, something the White House might want to take a look at is this video of Students for Justice in Palestine at the University of Texas in Dallas doing some work here, trolling a top executive of Lockheed Martin. Let's watch it right now. You have a very impressive resume. During 18 years that you spent working on the F-22 jets and the years since that you

worked on the F-35, if you were to give an estimate, how many children do you think you've killed? I don't know how to answer that question. No, we're lying to the shop. Thank you. Hey, boss. As a business major, company culture is a big factor when looking for internships, especially

at a project manager position where you can spend most of your time working with others. What can you share about company culture and working with a team of genocide supporters and murderers? That's another one I'm not going to answer because that's not who I work with. and working with a team of genocide supporters and murderers? That's another one I'm not going to answer because that's not who I work with. And I'm just wondering, as, let's say an intern working on, like as a systems engineer or a software engineer, I don't know if you'd be able to speak on this,

but would you be working on a small part of those systems? Are you working on projects with business impact? Would I be kind of doing a small little side project, or would I be able to directly contribute to the murder of Palestinian children? That was a really well-done protest. Having dealt with these types of protests significantly, that's one of the most well-done that I've seen. Subtle, but stinging.

And unstoppable. And it forces you to think about the implications of the work that you're doing. And you know what? There are a lot of good people working for companies that are doing horrible things. The United States of America has wrought so much. The number of people the US has killed since the global war on terror was launched is well into the millions. And you don't do that without the backing of basically the entire kind of industrial base.

And so it's very hard not to be complicit in it. Some people are more complicit than others. If you're a software engineer on an F-22, now you may have gone to work hoping that you're working on a 747, just trying to get people from one place to another. And then you wind up working for an F-22. And you hope that that F-22 is going to do some type of Tom Cruise thing. I was just going to say. That's just taking out an unnamed country's evil system, unnamed evil system, and just making the world a better place. You find out that in real life, you're just splaying children against the walls the crumbling walls of

Gaza top-gun like many many movies made with significant Pentagon. Oh, yes Unable to be make unable to be made without you know, the Pentagon's Cooperation and support and to Debbie Dingell's point and to your point that was at the University of Texas in Dallas So this is not just Dearborn as people in the White House might want to think it is. All right, let's move on to Jon Stewart, who Ryan hosted a debate with your colleague, Murtaza Hussain, and who was it? Gary Rosenberg. Gary Rosenberg was on it. But Jon Stewart basically covered this issue more broadly on his show.

Kind of zeroed in on that, yeah. Yeah, in a way that really seemed to resonate with a lot of people. Let's roll one clip of that here. Dear God. If you insist on this plan, if you think that ends Hamas, I believe we in the United States have a banner you can use. It's a little wind damaged, but equally delusional. Look, the United States is Israel's closest ally, Israel's big brother in the fraternity of nations, Israel's work emergency contact. Maybe it's time for the U.S. to give Israel

some tough moral love. This is shameful. There has to be accountability for these war crimes. No targeting civilians in war. Stop the war crimes and the atrocities and end the war today. It could happen right now. Right now! Thank you! These atrocities must be... Sorry, I'm being told the administration

was talking about Russia bombing Ukraine. I apologize. Also a war crime. But I'm sure they're giving equally stern advice to Israel. The Biden administration is urging Israel to be much more careful, to be more cautious. How Israel does this matters. Israel must do more to protect innocent civilians. We want to see the government of Israel take steps to minimize civilian harm.

Be more surgical and more precise. Be more careful. Hey, Israel! Take a turn of nuts! Could you please be more careful with your bombing? It's good advice. But really, couldn't the United States have told Israel that when we gave them all the bombs?

They're our bombs! This is like your Coke dealer coming in with an eight ball and going, don't stay up all night. Sleep is very important. You got to sleep. So the problem, funny, good stuff, biting. Like this is this is the Jon Stewart that we love. The problem I had with this is that when he came out later and hosts this debate between Yair Rosenberg and Maz Hussein, Maz, and people should go watch the whole thing,

it was among the most kind of obtuse and dense I've seen Jon Stewart be in an interview. Maz was making the point that the U.S. should either be a fair broker between the Palestinians and the Israelis and actually get towards peace rather than what they're doing now, which is basically unconditional support for one side and not even talking to the other side except some Abbas figures who are not remotely creditable among Palestinians. So we're not engaged in any kind of fair, serious way leading to it. He said, so either do it fairly, which we're not going to do, or step aside, get out. And Maz's argument is that if the United States kind of withdraws its blank check, withdraws its unconditional support for Israel, that could actually help Israel. That would enable Israel's need to compromise with its neighbors rather than enabling its worst impulses, which are never to compromise and continuing to annex, create more settlements, more conflict, manage

the conflict so that you can appease the kind of far right, which wants complete control of the West Bank, the far, far right that wants complete control of the Gaza Strip, although that element is now creeping well across the entire Israeli spectrum on the heat of this moment. With the U.S. offering unconditional support, that political element within Israel is kind of buttressed and is able to then push aside any elements that say, no, why don't we compromise? Because, you know, we live here. Like, we're going to have to live with these neighbors for hundreds and thousands of years. So let's find a solution here. You don't need a solution if the U.S. is going to support you. So Maz's argument was, U.S. backs away, then they're forced into actually doing some sort of compromise here. Jon Stewart and Yair's response to that was to kind of make these

dumb, stale 20-year-old jokes about how the United States can't wave a magic wand and influence world affairs everywhere in the world. They never addressed his very specific point about why, in fact, they could, which is beside the point that all of the kind of money and weapons that we're giving are making the entire thing possible. Like we talk about a magic wand. We're not giving them magic wands. We're giving them exploding wands all the time. And they keep dropping them on people. And that is the thing that is driving them forward. At the same day that this was happening,

Bibi Netanyahu posted a statement bragging about a completely absurd Mark Penn Harris ex. You know, like he's the last guy on earth who actually thinks Mark Penn is doing like real credible polls. But so Mark Penn posted, posted this poll. Clinton acolyte. Yeah. Just the worst person on the planet, uh, objectively speaking. And so I want to see you rate your worst people. Actually, that'd be a fun. There's good Mark Penn stuff. And I think most of my books. books. But anyway, so the poll that Mark Penn claimed to have come up with said that the American people are actually more supportive of Israel than they are of the Palestinians.

American public opinion is strongly against this war and strongly for a ceasefire. But set that aside. Pretend it's true. Netanyahu pointed at this poll and said, look, this is a result of my PR campaign that I've been doing in the United States. I have gotten the U.S. public support for this war effort. That U.S. public support will enable us to continue this war until complete victory. That's what he's telling the Israeli public. So if Netanyahu believes that American support is essential and American public opinion is essential to continuing the war, why do Jon Stewart and Yair Rosenberg think that he's wrong about that? Like, why does he think that the U.S. is enabling war crimes in one place and condemning them in another place.

But then when it comes to having the actual conversation, he just felt obtuse about the whole thing. I've always found Jon Stewart to be inflexible in debate. I think it's his weakness, whereas when he can write or work on a really clever scripted monologue, he's more biting. And I think his arguments are more finely honed or finely tuned. But in debates, you know, actually speaking of which, Tucker Carlson just yesterday went on Lex Friedman's show. The interview dropped yesterday. And Tucker Carlson said Jon Stewart was right in that infamous Crossfire interview. It was one of the, there's a super interesting interview that Tucker did with Lex Friedman, but it was one point that Tucker said, and I disagree with that actually, but it's one point Tucker said, you know, Crossfire was

fundamentally toxic because it was just about Democrats versus Republicans. It was this binary, partisan binary between Dems, Republicans, not so much even like left and right, independent. It was just Dems and Republicans. And that was fundamentally harmful to the country. So Jon Stewart was right. So maybe that's a moment where Jon Stewart thrived in debate. How did Maas find the experience of going on the show? I think he thought the questions were a little bit not well-pointed, I'd say. And if you go, I think you should go watch the interview. You see him, you see that Stewart's questions. You're like, how do you even answer that? Like, what is, what kind of question

is this? It wasn't, it almost felt like Jon Stewart was pretty nervous and was kind of retreating to more comfortable tropes. It's a hard thing to do. Oh, for sure. Yeah. I mean, you know, when I go on, let's say, like CNN or something, and I'm asked to talk about, like, the most sensitive stuff, I'm like, I get a little nervous. I'm like, am I going to say the wrong thing here? Like, I don't blame him for that.

For some reason, I'm not nervous here, even though these clips also go out to the world. Right. They sure do. Sometimes you've got Russian state media. The other dirty secret, by the way, to back up what Tucker said about Jon Stewart being right, is that most people in media, and I bet you would, I bet this is is your experience to most people in media who participate in that circus Think that it's a sham and yes, I think that it's actually bad for the country Yeah, and are frustrated like yeah, I used to be an MSNBC contributor back in the mid 2010s And it was it was frustrating you'd get on and you'd have like 45 seconds

Yeah, it's an answer and you'd have another 45 seconds to do an answer and then you'd have another 45 seconds to do another answer and then like that's it. Like this is so much more. Now, 45 seconds is better than none, so that's why I'd do it. Right. But I prefer this format much, much better where we can just go on and on and on and never shut up. Although sometimes we have, you know, people, guests in studio like we have right now that we're going to get to. We've got to shut up and bring them in. But yes.

No, it's super interesting. And I look forward to watching the full debate because even if Stuart's questions were lacking, hosting a debate in that format is why I disagree on crossfire. I think that's fundamentally a good thing. So I look forward to watching it. Let's talk government shutdown. All right. So we are just two days away from a Friday government shutdown of 20% of the government. If we don't reach a deal, and spoiler, it does not look like we're going to reach a deal, that does not make Mitch McConnell happy. Let's roll this clip from the Senate Republican leader. Good afternoon, everyone. As you know, we were four of us were at the White House with President Biden earlier in the day. And I think it's pretty

safe to say we all agree we need to avoid a government shutdown. The Speaker was optimistic that they'll be able to move forward first with the four bills and under no circumstances does anybody want to shut the government down so I think we can stop that drama right here before it emerges. We're simply not going to do that. So we're going to come close, I hope, to having an orderly appropriations process. Obviously not by the time we should have done it, but better than we've done some years by getting this four through and then doing the balance of them as a minibus a little bit later. A little more than 10 years ago, Mitch McConnell pushed, kind of was part of a government shutdown that went absolutely terribly for Republicans. And when the kind of right flank of the Republicans came back shortly afterwards, trying to shut the government down, he said, there's no education in the second kick of a mule. Since then, he has been kicked by that

mule over and over and over again. And there is no education in it. He's still of the mind that a government shutdown is terrible for Republicans, and yet it still looks like he's going to get kicked. What's your read on poor Mitch McConnell and that mule? First of all, speaking at a, you could say, tortoise-like pace, just glacially slow. Hope everybody sped that one up. Yeah, that was really something. Mitch McConnell's word is not going to mean a whole lot on the House side anymore. And actually, even as became clear last month, on the Senate side, it's starting to hold increasingly less water because there's a mutiny brewing that is being led by people like Mike Lee, but also being joined by people like

Ted Cruz, others that have, you know, been sort of faithful McConnell deputies to, you know. Oh, he led that shutdown I was talking about. He did. He did. But in like the last- Went very well for him. Five years. Yes, it went great. But that's what I was just going to say, actually, is if you're talking to Chip Roy, who is leading the mutiny among Freedom Caucus Republicans on the House side, they know that their constituents want them to shut down the government. They will not be punished in their districts for shutting down the government. But nationally, Republicans will

certainly be punished for shutting down the government. But nationally, Republicans will certainly be punished for shutting down the government. Chuck Schumer was in a meeting with Hakeem Jeffries, Mike Johnson, Kamala Harris, Joe Biden at the White House yesterday. And Mitch McConnell. Yeah, the whole gang was there. So let's take a little listen to what Chuck Schumer said outside the White House after the meeting yesterday, and then we'll hear from Mike Johnson as well. Here's Schumer. What made this meeting one of the most intense you've ever had? The urgency of supporting Ukraine and the consequences to the people of America, to America's strength, if we don't do anything and don't do anything soon.

I was so, so shaken by what I saw at the border. I was strengthened by the strength of Zelensky and the Ukrainian people and the Ukrainian soldiers, but shaken that here they are fighting without arms against a brutal dictator who will just do anything to kill them. And the intensity in that room was surprising to me. But because of the passion of the president, the vice president, leader Jeffries, Speaker, Leader McConnell and myself. So he seemed to have a little Freudian slip there. And Chip Roy- When you mentioned the speaker? Mitch McC- I'm sorry. Chuck Schumer seemed to have a little Freudian slip there when he said, the urgency of supporting Ukraine. I was shaken by what I saw at the border.

Chip Roy jumped on that and said, I think reasonably implied that Schumer was talking, the only border he could have been talking about in that context is the Ukrainian border. That is a very tone deaf way to defend this government shutdown. There's a much better way for Democrats to defend this government shutdown. Saying that you were shaken by what you saw at the Ukraine border is about as bad as it could get for Democrats messaging on this. This is their big issue right now. And Mitch McConnell too. McConnell said that, you know, McConnell privately in that meeting, but also publicly pressed Mike Johnson directly to say, look, take our Israel, Taiwan, and Ukraine funding

bill up separately and let your 100 Republicans who support it and the 200 Democrats who support it kind of push it through. But he's, you know, Mike Johnson's under intense pressure not to support it. You noticed that Chuck Schumer was talking about all the people who were so passionate and supportive of the Ukraine money there. And he briefly said Speaker, and then he took that back because Speaker Johnson is the one who was not energetically supportive of that. So this entire thing ends up kind of being caught up in the war spending as well as the fight around all of the government spending.

People are curious, by the way, the agencies that would shut down would be agriculture, energy, transportation, VA, Veterans Affairs, which is a big one, and HUD, which is also a big one. If that's shut down for like 30 days or so, then Section 8 checks stop going out. Section 8 checks stop going out. Section 8 checks stop going out. All of the people that rely on either that housing or those checks, those people are at significant hardship. All of it matters, but that's just one example of it. I believe it's, what, March 8th? March 8th. Where the rest of the government would then shut down. Because this was Speaker Mike Johnson's kind of way to get out of the last jam that he was in.

He said, well, here's my solution. It's going to be a two-tier thing. Yeah. And it's like pixie dust that you throw up. Two-tier. And you're like, oh, okay, well, that sounds interesting. Cool. Let's try that.

Knowing all the while that the first tier was just going to be blown through. Yeah. Like that this 20 percent is going down. But the next one then is the Pentagon and, you know, the rest the rest of the government. But, yes, it's all tangled up with Israel, Ukraine and this money for a potential war in Taiwan over China, over Chinese claims of sovereignty, etc. That one just kind of gets brushed aside, but that's a big part of this as well. Meanwhile, you've got Israeli officials who are saying, we need that money yesterday. I think that was what Ron Dermer, Netanyahu's top lieutenant, said. So yeah, it doesn't look like it's moving, though. So, Mike Johnson, Chuck Schumer talking about the Ukrainian border, ostensibly talking about the Ukrainian border. Here's what House Speaker Mike Johnson said when he came out of that meeting. We believe that we can get to agreement on these issues and prevent a government shutdown.

And that's our first responsibility. You also heard, I'm sure, that there was discussion about the supplemental spending package. And I was very clear with the president and all those in the room that the House is actively pursuing and investigating all the various options on that. And we will address that in a timely manner. But again, the first priority of the country is our border and making sure it's secure. So Ryan, a Gallup poll that came out, I think it was actually even just yesterday, found immigration was the issue, the most important issue for people who are asked in this Gallup poll, what is the most important problem in the country right now? 28% said immigration, that was higher than any of the other options, government, economy, inflation, immigration.

Again, 28 percent. That was an eight point jump from the month before. So and Trump and Biden are both actually tomorrow, Thursday, going to the border, making trips to the border. So it makes it easier for Republicans to have that conversation. Obviously, Democrats wanted and Mitch McConnell actually allowed them to have that little talking point when they worked out a bill with James Langford and said, here, we tried to fix the border, Republicans rejected the plan to fix the border. And so then they put the Ukraine-Israel spending by itself up for House Republicans to vote up or down. House Republicans don't want to vote anything up or down unless it includes border security.

And their members are not worried about a shutdown because they don't think they're gonna be punished in their districts on the house side For a government shutdown obviously their case is made easier when you have Chuck Schumer talking about Ukraine His biggest thing is thinking about Ukraine at the same time though They continue to cover by governed by a continuing resolution I mean This is just a pathetic cycle that I think speaks right into our inability to govern as a country, period, to keep on funding the government by a continuing resolution.

Mike Johnson, though, the reason that he's between a rock and a hard place, as people remember, one of the most important parts of the rules package in the House was passed in order for Mike Johnson to become Speaker. They ousted Kevin McCarthy. They couldn't land on any consensus Speaker candidate because their margins are so slim. And Mike Johnson agreed to what's called the motion to vacate. And people have all become familiar with this little aspect of parliamentary procedure in the last year because it's what allowed Republicans to get rid of Kevin McCarthy. He didn't want the motion to vacate to be in the rules package that after 18 tries got him elected

speaker. It was. It was his downfall. Then you have Mike Johnson agreeing also to the motion of vacate. So basically one member, one member who's unhappy with this shutdown can bring a vote to the floor to vacate the chair. But Democrats could save him at that point. Democrats could. Which they've floated that they might actually do if he's being helpful to them. They can get some stuff out of that, although then it becomes difficult for Democrats, and it becomes difficult for Freedom Caucus guys the moment one of their members, a rogue person, says- Because they have 219, and you need 218 to pass legislation. They lost George Santos. It's even a thinner, it's even a slimmer majority now. So that's why

Mike Johnson is in a very difficult position. And Ryan, I am hearing that Mike Johnson does continue to be a real person as well, not a lab-created Republican. Mike Johnson, five years from now, if you ask me who the speaker was for this brief period, I'll be like, Mark Thompson? Something. And when somebody's like, no, I think they'll Google it. It was Mike Johnson. Like, that's right. It was Mike Johnson. Yeah. But we do like, that's one of the duties that we take seriously is continuing to update the viewers on whether Mike Johnson continues to exist as a real human being. And my, my read on why we're likely, it seems like to potentially get a shutdown is that I think Biden would love to change

the topic of conversation from how his support, unconditional support of the genocide in Gaza is costing him potentially the presidential election to look how incompetent these Republicans are. They're shutting down the government for no discernible reason. Democrats are just salivating over the possibility of being able to say that again. And Republicans may just be dysfunctional enough to allow them to go ahead and say it. So Democrats are gonna do absolutely nothing to get out of Republicans' way on this thing. They're gonna make sure that Republicans have every opportunity to trip over their shoelaces. Yep. And shut down politics if you're the one that's in the way. And the media

always puts Republicans as being the ones in the way, even when they have a case that I think is popular with the public. Immigration is certainly a case that's popular with the public. But even so, voters, even if they're not even paying attention to the media, they see Republicans shut down DHS. DHS is interesting because that's the border. It's that fundamental contradiction in your messaging that says we're so concerned about the way that the government is handling the border that we're going to shut the government down. And regular people then are like, don't think that's gonna help things at the border. Well, and also the media immediately will start talking about the VA

with good reason. So you are always going to, as a Republican, you're always gonna get blamed for the government shutdown because the media is not gonna be sympathetic to your cause. And also because if you're the obstructionist, the public just reads obstruction as the blame. You can never have that nuanced discussion about the negotiations that you've been having with leadership behind closed doors because those dynamics are complicated. And actually, even when you follow the dynamics closely, like if you read Playbook every morning and whatever, even if you talk to people in those circles, sometimes you don't know what the truth is about how much leadership actually screwed you over. Did you screw leadership over?

Who agreed to what? So that's just never really a winning argument outside a district where you can say, I'm doing this to stick it to Mitch McConnell. Well, we'll see. It's going to be interesting. I don't know, Ryan. I feel like this one might actually happen briefly. So that's my- The reason it wouldn't happen is there's so little upside for Republicans. Well, the reason that it wouldn't happen is the same reason I think it could happen. And that's what's complicated here, which is that they don't have any good options. So that's why we've been funding the government via CR for so long, is that they're just like,

screw it, we're obviously not going to get a deal. So CR, like poison pill, you can have like your protest vote, but that's, it's, there's no way that if we vacate the chair, this goes to a place where we can fund the government because there's literally no deal to be made. And so I think that's the best case that the shutdown doesn't happen just because there's really nowhere to go afterwards, but they feel like they've exhausted their options. They vacated the chair. They got mad over the debt ceiling negotiations and they vacated the chair. And now they've pushed Johnson as far as they feel like they could push him. So that's where you get a motion to vacate. But everyone knows, even if you do that, it doesn't fund the government.

Yeah. Our entire, you know, 200 plus year old system relies really on consensus because of all the choke points that are in it. And consensus is slowly breaking down. You know, it peaked, say, in the 1950s with that monoculture. We still have something of a monoculture around, despite people thinking that we're all just a bunch of divided niche subcultures. But it's fraying. And the more it frays, the more we're going to have these kinds of problems. And I think the system is going to have to respond somehow because there's two built-in idiotic things, which are like when you can't get consensus, there's a potential global financial

crisis over defaulting on the debt for no reason. And the government just shuts down and stops working and everybody goes home and then comes back a month later and gets paid for things that they didn't do during that month. And in the meantime, lots of people suffered. And I feel like as the system continues to break down, they're going to have to be some kind of redundancies built in that say, like, all right, if you don't get the consensus, you still get section. Your Section 8 check still goes to the landlord or whatever. We're still paying these basic things at some basic level. And I think maybe at some point, lawmakers will produce that system because it's so irrational. But we're certainly not there yet. And I think we need some, the system is going to need to create a lot of pain for people before that eventually

happens. Whether it's this time or at a future time, remains to be seen. It's like a Kissinger, let's heighten the contradictions in Chile, make the economy scream. Make it scream, yeah. Then we'll get a revolution. Yeah, yeah. Well, we'll see what happens by Friday. A lot on the line, and it's not looking good. So we'll continue to follow that story for everyone. We have a great guest here in studio, Ryan. That would be Gabe Shipton, the filmmaker, brother of Julian Assange. Can't wait to have a conversation with him.

All right, stick around for that. All right, we are joined now by Gabe Shipton, who's a filmmaker and also the brother of Julian Assange. Gabe, welcome back to the program. Thanks for joining us. Yeah, good to be with you again. And so you're an Australian, but you're here in Washington, D.C., kind of drumming up support for your brother in the wake of his most recent hearing, which we talked about last week on the program. We had Chip Gibbons on. People can go back and watch that interview if they want. You saw him at the hearing, I gather.

Yes. How was the hearing from your perspective, this two-day affair, this kind of final battle before the decision on extradition? My impression was that the high court judges were really feeling the pressure. They were on their best behaviour and trying to really engage with the arguments in a different way that I hadn't seen before when Julian, you know, faces these British judges.

Usually they're very closed and very terse towards the defence, but this time they were engaging with the arguments and also engaging with the prosecution arguments, you know, making statements like, oh, so if Julian is extradited, does that mean any journalist in the UK could be extradited? And the prosecution essentially had to answer yes. So, you know, the judges making

these sorts of points, I found quite interesting in a different vibe sense. Yeah, that's huge. And I'm curious, Ryan mentioned you're here to drum up support for Julian's cause in D.C. When you talk to maybe skeptical lawmakers or staffers, you're really putting a human face on this issue. But also, what are the arguments you find that have, you know, over the course of the last almost, you know, years and years, that have been most persuasive? I mean, you just mentioned the judge and the journalism question. That's a pretty persuasive one, especially to us journalists. But if you're talking to skeptics, and as you're talking maybe even the next week to

some skeptics, what's the most powerful argument you found? Well, you know, it sort of changes. Everyone sort of comes at this from their own, you know, political perspective. And, you know, on the Democrat side, press freedom resonates a lot with people, particularly exposing war crimes, you know, of the military-industrial complex, you know, state criminality.

Those sorts of arguments really resonate, you know, with the Democrat side. And then, you know, state criminality. Those sorts of arguments really resonate, you know, with the Democrat side. And then, you know, with the Republicans, it's always First Amendment, you know, freedom of speech, First Amendment, First Amendment rights. And that argument carries a lot of weight, particularly with people like Rand Paul, the libertarian-leaning folks on the Hill.

But there is a resolution now, Resolution 934 before in the Judiciary Committee, and we're asking lawmakers to sign on to that resolution. It's got co-sponsors like Jim McGovern, Thomas Massey, and I think there are about eight in total, and we'd like to get that to 20. So that's my real aim While I'm here in Washington The 20s the 2016 reporting that Julian Assange did has nothing to do with these these charges like this is all

You know Chelsea Manning Related stuff about the you know, the cables collateral collateral murder Yet Democrats still hold a huge grudge against your brother for, you know, the reporting he did on the, on the DNC and on Hillary Clinton in 2016. How often does that still come up now? Like what's seven, eight years later, uh, when you're talking to Democrats, is it, does it go unspoken? Do you address it? Like how do you confront that kind of political obstacle? Yeah, that's a big one for Democrats.

And we always, you know, we're always talking about what's actually at stake and sort of reframing it in that sense, saying that this is a unprecedented espionage act prosecution that could be turned against, you know, Democrat media in the future, like the New York Times or the Washington Post. Do they acknowledge that it's Democratic media when you make that point? I mean, I think it's pretty... I think they get it. Yeah, yeah. I think that it's pretty, you know, that they're sort of, you know, cultural... Cultural allies. Yeah, yeah. So I don't think anyone really denies that that's the case. Yeah.

And having the New York Times actually writing to President Biden, which they did, I think, at the end of 22, calling on him to drop the charges, that really helps focus that argument. Because having them saying, hey, look, this is a threat to us. Right. You know, when we're approaching lawmakers, we say, well, you know, if there's a Trump administration down the track,

do you want them to have this precedent, you know, to potentially use against these other media organisations? So I think sort of moving around that 2016 argument and really getting to, you know, what's really at stake here and what this prosecution means for other media around the place. And also one other argument that cuts through is that the global support now for Julian, particularly with Australia that is one of the US's closest allies, has making this prosecution

very obviously scandalous around the world. And really talking to lawmakers here about that, how it's seen by allies or even not allies like China or Russia who use it often. Right. When they're confronted with their human rights abuse. They can do anything they want then with the press and just point to, well, you guys are trying to lock up Julian Assange. Yeah, exactly. Or you are locking him up. Yeah, and so it reduces the U.S.'s standing when they want to advocate for human rights

causes with these countries, but also with their allies now, such as Australia. And just a couple of weeks ago, the Australian Parliament put through a resolution that passed the Parliament, over two-thirds of the Parliament voted for it in favour of it, and that was calling on the United States to let Julian go home. So I think those these steps are really significant speaking with lawmakers because there's not really an understanding of how this affects the image internationally of the United States. And actually again on the human level your family has been very clear

that you're worried about your brother's health and that his very life is on the line in these legal proceedings. The other thing I wanted to add to that, I wanted to ask you, you know, any updates on Julian's health since the hearing, how he's doing, but also just how worried are you

about a second Trump administration, given that during the first Trump administration, I think it was Michael Isikoff reported in Yahoo that Mike Pompeo contemplated an assassination plot against your brother. That has to be surreal. But where's your head when you think about how this could, where this could go in the coming years? Yeah, well, if Mike Pompeo sort of ends up in this new, in a potentially new administration, I think that's really worrying, not just for Julian but for many, many people. And, yeah, those were very difficult times for Julian

when, you know, Pompeo called WikiLeaks a non-state hostile intelligence agency. They were able to use clandestine operations without congressional oversight against Julian and against WikiLeaks, then that's where we saw those plots to kidnap Julian and to even kill him. And that's where this prosecution has come from.

I think people need to understand that Pompeo was talking to the Justice Department and they said, well, what are you gonna do with him once you kidnap him? You know, you can't just put him in a black site. Just wait and we'll get some charges ready and then you can take him from the embassy. So we can see the prosecution actually stemmed from this, you know, Pompeo going off the deep end and pursuing WikiLeaks.

So it's really politically motivated and I think that's a really good argument for the Biden administration to bring this to a close because it was a you know Pompeo fueled prosecution The there's been reporting in Australia that there there was some hope over the last several months of some type of a deal because he is An Australian citizen and what businesses of the United States? It's like be like Pakistan like extraditing me to Pakistan for violating Pakistan's media laws.

Don't give them ideas. I mean, I think it is a real problem going forward for journalists who write on things around the world. Carolyn Kennedy, who's our ambassador to Australia and who met with a bunch of Australian officials, and there was some hope that there could be some deal that would come out of that where Australia would say, look, this is not your problem. This is our problem. He's our citizen.

Let us handle this. Yet they seem to be pushing ahead with this attempt to extradite him here. What's your understanding of the latest in those talks between Australia, this real essential ally of the United States and the US? We're always pushing the Australian government to do more. And I think that's why this resolution that was passed through parliament is important, because now the prime minister and the diplomats have the backing, you know, not just the Australian people who 90% want Julian to come home,

but also the Australian parliament. That's every single minister, you know, single minister, defence minister, home affairs minister, all the ministry, cabinet, have all voted to bring Julian home. So I think that's a real escalation, if you will, or like a next step for the Australian government to push their allies, the US and the UK, to bring this to an end.

In terms of these rumoured deals, I think what would... I'm not sure what a deal would... You know, would Julian plead guilty to journalism? I think is, you know, is that a potential deal or outcome that the Department of Justice would be happy with? I'm not sure. But I think any sort of deal, Julian, we know that if Julian comes here that he could potentially face a death penalty that was part of the proceedings.

The judge asked the prosecution, could you rule out death penalty if Julian's extradited? And he could say no. He couldn't say yes. Why not? What's the capital crime? Espionage? Yeah, so under the Espionage Act there is this Rosenberg's did room for the death penalty So the potential for it to be expanded and you had the Schulter Sentencing just recently where they have an all-of-life

Sentence so no parole And and bringing that under the terrorism, you know, under the Patriot Act. So there is potential for it to expand, for other charges to be brought against Julian, for other publications, like the Vault 7 2017 CIA leaks. So that's a real concern. And any sort of deal would, you know, we would say Julian cannot travel to the U.S. So now before even going to the U.S., there are still, there is still at least one other appeals process depending on how this hearing goes. Could you talk to us, Gabe, just a little bit about what the options might be going forward to prevent the extradition after the hearing? Well, so Julian has, so the judges are now taken leave to make their decision on whether they'll approve an appeal or reject an appeal. If that appeal is

rejected, Britain could move to extradite Julian quickly. They will order the extradition, but Julian could apply to the European Court of Human Rights to have an emergency stop on that extradition and then put a case to the European courts. But that is you still have to make an application that still has to be approved and I think there were 63 applications in the previous year for this sort of thing and only one only one was approved by the European Court so that is not a guarantee that it will stop stop his extradition. But interestingly, the European Courts heard Agnes Calamant from Amnesty International say,

just they had a briefing on the Hill on Monday, and she said the European Courts were able to order Russia after Navalny was poisoned with Novichok, that they were able to order Russia to return him to Germany for treatment. So that's the sort of power the European courts have. And I don't think the United States would want the European courts interfering and ordering the UK to return Julian to Australia.

I think that would be extremely embarrassing for the Department of Justice. One of the key questions in the appeals was whether or not Assange would be tortured by being placed in solitary confinement here in the United States. And the U.S. had made, you know, after they realized that was a problem for them in their case, they made some representations that they said, well, we won't do that. Those representations included a clause that said, unless we decide that we need to do that. So what was the reaction from the judges to how the U.S. would treat Assange if he was extradited? And how important is that at this point in the decision making? So those weren't really gone into a great deal in the court and didn't form a big part of those assurances or so-called assurances that are caveated, didn't form a large part of the hearing. It was really more about the political nature of the charges against Julian.

There's a clause in the treaty with the United Kingdom and the US that says you cannot be extradited for political charges and espionage is inherently political. So there was a lot about that, but the prison conditions that Julian would face didn't really come up. It was more those expanding of the charges and potential death penalty sentencing that were brought up in that hearing.

Did you think that judges were kind of covering what would be a future negative ruling? Like, you know, being more open and being more reasonable people so that when they finally extradite him, they'll seem like more reasonable people? Or was your gut telling you that maybe the pressure was actually getting to them and they might actually kind of do the right thing? Well, yeah, you know, yeah, I think a lot of it is having that external, you know, that external facing engagement and looking to be engaged. I think that is a very big part of it. I think you're right.

And the pressure and the monitoring has led them to to have to do that you know previously they didn't have to because you know we didn't you know Amnesty International was there we had people from the UN observing as well as the German embassy Australian embassy a lot of eyes are on that court more so than in previous hearings so yeah that there is that that element to it as well, that they were just entering into this sort of performance to make it seem like that they were really going to consider it and consider it properly. But I mean, we'll see down the track when they make their decision. The defence has until the 3rd of March to give more information, and then they can make their decision any time after that.

So we'll see what appeal points they may allow or whether they reject then. Last question on my end is just what can average people do to help? Lawmakers obviously play a big role in this. The court, fate is in the hands of a court right now. But if average people want to lend their support to the cause, help the cause, what can they do, Gabe? We've been asking people to contact their representatives about this resolution, 934, and ask them to sign on to that resolution, ask their representatives to sign on to that. You can also go to sanjdefense.org, join our subscriber list, and you'll receive emails about what's going on around the country, different actions that you can take,

donations, things like that. So assangedefense.org is a good place to go for that sort of info. Excellent. Sounds good. Absolutely. Thank you for being here and best of luck as you make your case to lawmakers in the next week or so. Thanks for having me. Thanks, Gabe. Cheers. So again, that was assangedefense.org. Go check that out. Join their mailing list. And tell your member of Congress, sign 934. That's right. That's the resolution. 934. Put some pressure on the Biden administration for the ones in their lives to do the right thing. That does it for us on today's edition of Counterpoints, though. Ryan will have had almost two weeks by next week's show

to re-acclimate to the non-fish universe. So, Ryan, we'll be back here next week, and maybe you'll be a little less out of sorts. We'll see. There's no way to be sure. We'll see you then either way. This is an iHeart Podcast.