Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 3/11/24: Bibi Rejects Biden Rafah Red Line, Biden 'Illegal' SOTU Debate, MSNBC Drools Over Biden SOTU, Israel Fans Freak After Oscar Protest Speech, Trump Against TikTok Ban, Kate Middleton Edited Photo Conspiracy, Pentagon Admits Troop Risk At Gaza Port, CNN Confronts Israeli Aid Protesters, Israel Tortures UNRWA Staff

Episode Date: March 11, 2024

Krystal and Saagar discuss Bibi humiliating Biden on Rafah 'red line', Krystal Saagar debate Biden illegal SOTU comment, MSNBC drools over Biden SOTU, Israel fans freak after Oscars Gaza protest speech, Trump comes out against TikTok ban, Kate Middleton conspiracies after edited photo, Pentagon admits troops at risk for Gaza port, CNN confronts Israelis protesting Gaza aid, and new report shows Israel tortured UNRWA staff into false confessions.    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, everybody. Happy Monday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Many things to discuss this morning. So first of all,

after Biden's State of the Union, he laid down a red line for Israel, which Bibi immediately said he was fully intending to cross. We have additional fallout from the State of the Union, including some polling about how exactly the public felt that Joe Biden did. And we all know how the liberal pundits felt he did. Tour de force, says Joe Scarborough. So we'll get into all of that. Last night was the Oscars. We have some highlights of some celebrities who were speaking out against Israel's assault on Gaza, which apparently triggered a complete freakout. We'll take you through that.

We're also going to be discussing a new bill that targets TikTok. Sagar and I will have a little discussion, potentially debate on that front. Where is Princess Kate? A new photo has raised many questions among many people and sparked a lot of conspiracies. So, well, this is a story I don't even know. It is crazy. CNN had a shocking report about those protesters who are blocking aid. We're also getting new details about this temporary port situation. So we'll break all of that down for you. I'm

taking a look at how Israel tortured UN staffers in order to coerce confessions. Crazy story. So we'll dig into all of that. There you go. Thank you all to everybody who signed up during our State of the Union live stream. We deeply, deeply appreciate it. If you didn't get a chance, we still have a discount going on. So breakingpoints.com, you can help support our work. And we really enjoyed that AMA that we did afterwards and just hanging out with Ryan and Emily. So if you want to see more stuff like that, you can support us and we can pay for it. So there you go. So thank you all so much for signing up. But let's get to the Biden interview. Yeah. So Joe Biden, after a State of the Union, seemed to be pretty excited, feeling energized. He actually gave a rare interview, of course, to a friendly over at

MSNBC. But some interesting news was made nonetheless. Specifically, Jonathan Capehart of MSNBC asked him whether he had any red lines for Israel. Listen closely to the response. What is your red line with Prime Minister Netanyahu? Do you have a red line? For instance, would invasion of Rafah, which you have urged him not to do, would that be a red line? It is a red line, but I'm never going to leave Israel. The defense of Israel is still critical. So there's no red line. I'm going to cut off all weapons so they don't have the Iron Dome to protect them. But there's red lines that if it crosses, it cannot have 30,000 more Palestinians dead as a consequence of going out. There's other ways to deal, to get to, to deal with the trauma caused by Hamas. It's like, well, the first time I went over,

I sat with them and I sat with a work cabin. I said, look, don't make the mistake America made. America made a mistake. We went after bin Laden until we got him. But we shouldn't have gone into Ukraine. I mean, we shouldn't have gone into the whole thing in Iraq, in Afghanistan. It wasn't necessary. It wasn't necessary.

It wasn't necessary. It has caused more problems in the race than it's cured. After what happened in World War II and the carpet bombing that took place, what happened was we ended up in a situation where we changed the rules of the game, our constitutional legitimate rules of war. And they should be abided by. So a lot there. On the red line,

just to recap. So K-Part asks specifically about Rafah. Biden says it is a red line, but then he immediately says, but I'm never going to leave Israel. He says there's no red line where he would cut off all weapons. And then he says,

we can't have 30,000 more Palestinians dead. So your red line is 60,000 dead Palestinians. I mean, it's a muddled mess. And interestingly enough, Sagar, I thought the chyron they had up on the screen with MSNBC was actually accurate, which said Biden says no red lines for Israel. I agree, actually, because that's the only honest way of reading the text. In fact, I saw many tortured attempts. The Wall Street Journal, for example, said Biden has red line on Israel. And I was like, well, but if you read the quote,

that's not what he says at all. It also goes back, I mean, there's a lot of debates around red lines, et cetera, but the famous one is like Obama and Syria, and some presidents actually learned from that. I actually remember asking Trump once what his red lines were on a particular issue, and he's like, I don't do red lines.

That's what Obama did. I don't do red lines. And I think that's exactly why, because if you say that it's a red line, there has to be consequences. Whereas with Biden, he's like, but there is no scenario where I'm going to take my maximalist power in order to shut off weapons or any of that. It's like, well, then you have a strongly held inclination, but that's not the same thing if there's not going to attach any consequence. So it fits with the broader pattern of the Biden administration as they have rhetorical criticism for the press, for the media, PR purposes.

But action wise, policy wise, there has been no substantive change. And in fact, this I assume that's really what he's telegraphing to the Israeli establishment. Yeah. Yeah. Don't worry about it. I mean, I think we've seen what the red lines are and they're non-existent. I mean, we've had all of these, you know, previous desires stated through leaks to the press about, oh, we don't want a full wholesale invasion.

Well, that happened. We need you to scale back the bombing. Well, that didn't happen. You know, every wish that the U.S. has sort of like floated to the Israelis, they've immediately dispensed with. And I'm going to tell you in a minute what Netanyahu responded to this sort of red line that he talks about with Rafa before immediately saying, but I'm never going to leave Israel. There was another moment that really caught our attention as well,

where Biden was asked about that uncommitted vote and about voters feeling that he is aiding and abetting a genocide. listen closely to this response. One told Charles Blow of the New York Times, and I'm quoting, as bad as Mr. Trump's rhetoric was and him putting a travel ban on five Muslim countries, he wasn't overseeing and actively arming a genocide. Those are tough words. What's your response to that widely shared sentiment? It's not widely shared. You guys make judgments you're not capable of making. That's not what all those people said.

What they said was they're very upset, and I don't blame them for being upset. Their family's there. They're people who are dying. They want something done about it. And they're saying, Joe, do something. Do something. But the idea that they all think it's genocide,

that's a different situation. Look, I can fully understand. And can't you? You have a family member there, a family member of families that come from a family that is still isolated there and may be victimized. It's understandable they feel that way. And that's why I'm doing everything I can to try to stop it. So I am going to chalk this answer up to delusion because we know the polling. Fifty percent of Joe Biden voters from 2020 think it is a genocide, number one. Number two, he really wants to ascribe the protest movement and the uncommitted votes just to people who potentially have family members who have been directly impacted. And you just can't look at the numbers in terms of, you know, the voters who are voting uncommitted, in terms of the mass wave of protests who have made it so that Joe Biden cannot go anywhere without facing protests that have made them terrified to go to college

campuses, for example, and think that this is just limited to people who have a direct familial connection to the Gaza Strip. And I think that was perhaps the thinking maybe a few months ago among the Biden campaign and Biden administration. I mean, their first thing was just like, oh, people don't really care that much. They'll get over it. The second thing was like, oh, maybe Arab Americans and Muslim Americans, maybe they've got a little bit of an issue, but, you know, we can we can deal with it by making up with suburban women. I mean, what we've seen is that this is a very widespread sentiment that even outside of this sort of activist protest movement,

the young people in the Democratic Party have really won the argument that came out in a poll that we shared with you last week, that older voters in the Democratic base now agree with young voters in terms of their position on this conflict and vis-a-vis a ceasefire, even a majority of Jewish Americans support a ceasefire. So the idea that this is just, you know, this very limited demographic or that a majority of Democratic voters don't think it's a genocide is just wildly delusional, off base, a lie. It's totally inaccurate and disconnected from reality. I think his biggest problem, I mean, it's Biden, like the bubbles that they swim in and they're in. But I think he genuinely believes a lot of the analysis that says that this isn't

going to be a problem for him. He thinks that it's highly localized. Now that we've had actual votes cast, we've seen problems in Hawaii and in Michigan. You know, the Hawaii number, if anything, is most interesting to me because Hawaii is the bluest of all states, right? I mean, it's like Washington, D.C. level of blue. So it's like, well, if you have that many blue voters who are coming out against you, you can extrapolate that maybe to some of the national coalition. And we don't have to – I've said this a million times, but if you just have the same number of people who voted in 2012 and 2016 in the state of Michigan, then Hillary wins the election. Same in the state of Pennsylvania. So you have very, very critical parts of your coalition where you're not able to lose one

or 2%. Now we combine that with RFK Jr., Cornel West, and Jill Stein, the three of them making up a decent percentage of protest vote. Every poll that we've looked at, Crystal, says that Trump is going to come out on top. Not only does he lead Biden in the head to head, but specifically with the protest votes in there, they disproportionately bleed, not RFK Jr. per se, but definitely Cornel West and Jill Stein there on the ballot. And now I've seen some discussion of RFK potentially being on the libertarian ballot, at least on in some states. That would be absolutely devastating, I think, for Joe Biden. Yeah, I think so, too. So, I mean,

just a completely delusional response. I think you're right. I think you can see from the fact that he and his team believe that these little PR stunts, like we're going to talk about later, the aid drops, which, by the way, killed five Palestinians and provide, you know, woefully inadequate levels of aid, this floating temporary pier that may get constructed 60 days from now. I think they really believe that's going to be enough to change the messaging and just co-opt the language of ceasefire, even though you don't actually want a permanent ceasefire, you want this little six-week pause. They think that'll be enough. And I think they have dramatically miscalculated. And that answer reflects an astonishing level of delusion and disconnect

from just how upset so many people are and the impact that's going to have electorally come the fall. So Bibi was asked in an interview, this is with Axel Springer and Politico, about some of the comments that Biden made, in particular the hot mic moment where he said he and Bibi were going to have a quote unquote come to Jesus moment. Bibi said, I'm Jewish, I'm not coming to Jesus. And also asked about Biden's comments that asserting that Israel's actions in Gaza are doing Israel more harm than good. Let's take a listen to a little bit of his reaction. Well, I don't know exactly what the president meant, but if he meant by that, then I'm pursuing private policies against the majority, the wish of the majority of Israelis, and that this is hurting the interests of Israel. Then he's wrong on both counts. Number one, these are not my private policies only. They're policies supported by the overwhelming majority of the Israelis.

They support the action that we're taking to destroy the remaining terrorist battalions of Hamas. They say that once we destroy the Hamas, the last thing we should do is put in Gaza, in charge of Gaza, the Palestinian Authority that educates its children towards terrorism and pays for terrorism. And they also support my position that says that we should resoundingly reject the attempt to ram down our throats a Palestinian state. Mr. Prime Minister, so you took the decision, you're 100% sure that you go into Rafah? Oh, we'll go there. We're not going to leave them.

You know, I have a red line. You know what the red line is? That October 7th doesn't happen again. Never happens again. And so you can hear there the purported Biden red line of going into Rafah that he responds, yes, that is a red line before he immediately says, but I'm never going to leave Israel. Netanyahu just dismisses that out of hand. You know, no, we're going in. We're determined to do it. Our only red line is October 7th is never going to happen again.

The comments he made prior to that were also interesting because in a sense, he's correct that, you know, the policies, we've seen the polling coming out of Israel, the policies they're pursuing of all-out war and total annihilation are broadly popular. Now, there is dissent.

We're seeing it very much in the streets of Tel Aviv with regards to the families of hostages who want much more to be done to strike a deal to bring those hostages home. So there is dissent in that regard. But on the other hand, Sagar, it's also very disingenuous because he is claiming a mandate from the Israeli public that also does not exist because as much as they may support the overall war aims, they are absolutely disgusted with the leadership of Benjamin Netanyahu himself. So it's this sort of very politician-y, carefully crafted answer that does have a grain of truth, but is also very highly misleading. Yeah, absolutely. Can we put the next one up there, please, on the screen too?

Because there's also these comments about a Palestinian state, which I think is important. He says, when asked about the European view that there cannot be peace without two-state, he says, yeah, they would say that, but they don't understand that the reason we don't have peace is not because the Palestinians don't have a state. It's because the Jews have a state. And in fact, the Palestinians have not brought themselves recognized except the Jewish state. So consistently, basically batting back against the Western-held position, including the United States, the official position, at least of our government, that we support a two-state solution, and that's the only endurable path to some sort of lasting peace. Also, very difficult, I think, now at this point, because their overall strategy for attaining peace after the war and not

becoming a geopolitical pariah is having the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the other Gulf Arab states, including Egypt as well, de facto recognize or have their relations with Israel be totally normalized, which is what they were pursuing ahead of this. However, the Palestinian now question, they're making it such that that is almost certainly impossible, just leaving them in a very difficult position in the future. You see some of this in the ceasefire negotiations happening right now too. Yeah. I mean, Saudi came out and pretty directly rebuked some comments from the Biden administration. Remember, we covered that previously where the Biden administration was trying to say, no, no, Saudi normalization still on the table. And Saudi came out and was like,

no, it is not on the table barring an actual progress towards a real Palestinian state, not just some fake lip service bullshit. So that is certainly reality. I mean, I think Bibi's comments, first of all, saying, listen, the domestic populace is behind me. And again, there's a lot of polling to back this up. This, not behind him as a leader, but behind the direction of the war, you know, only a tiny, tiny percentage thinks that the IDF has gone too far as an example. In any case, that just underscores the fact that Biden meekly asking for certain things, oh, please don't go into RAFA or whatever, is not going to do anything.

The only way that you're going to change the course of this war is if you, in fact, use the tremendous power and leverage that the United States has. And so these little rhetorical shifts are not going to do anything whatsoever. And then it's also, you know, that's also really underscored by the fact that this purported sort of kind of red line that Joe Biden lays out in that MSNBC interview. I mean, Bibi thinks nothing of just immediately being like, no, I don't care. I'm going to do what I want to do. And do any of us have any expectation that Joe Biden is going to do anything more than like meekly protest and then accept whatever Bibi wants to do and whatever Israel wants to do? No, of course not, because we've seen how this has played

out time and time and time again throughout this conflict. To your point, Sagar, about those supposed ceasefire negotiations, let's go ahead and put this up on the screen. Interesting note from Times of Israel and Wall Street Journal originally reported this. Qatar is apparently threatening to deport Hamas chiefs if they don't agree to a hostage truce deal. As far as I can tell, the biggest sticking points are a really crucial one. Hamas wants a permanent, lasting ceasefire. And Israel wants to go back to all-out assault and annihilation in, let's say, six weeks' time. So that's a pretty hard gulf to be able to close. You know, there have been reports previously that there were some disagreements between the political leadership of Hamas, which is based in places like Qatar, and the military

leadership, which continues to be in the Gaza Strip, the military leadership more interested in the full lasting ceasefire and the political leadership, you know, more open to a short-term ceasefire. So I don't know how those things will play out. But this is also a critical moment, Sagar, because we are now officially in that month of Ramadan. This was something else. Remember back when Joe Biden was worried about the uncommitted vote in Michigan and he came out and licking his ice cream cone and was like, I think we'll have a ceasefire by Monday. Total bullshit. And he had laid out before that his goal was to get there before Ramadan. Well, here we are at Ramadan and no progress. Yeah. And there's also some pretty inflammatory images coming out of Jerusalem. Let's go and put this up there on the screen where you can see this happened yesterday. There

were some major clashes actually at the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, where police appear to be banning anyone from under the age of 40 from actually praying at the mosque. This is, look, in a previous life, Crystal, this, you know, before the war would have been a major international incident because I believe, now you could try and correct me if I'm wrong, that it's in violation at least of the general understanding and or treaty that governs Al-Aqsa, the mosque, and the security zone that's there. I've actually been to the area as well. It is very confused as to who exactly controls what. But in general, and this goes back to some of the uglier moments of violence in Israel, like messing with the Al-Aqsa Mosque and control and access to the mosque is itself one of the most inflammatory incidents in the past,

especially then during the holy month of Ramadan for Islam. Right. It's in East Jerusalem. It's occupied territory. Some of the most extreme, you know, Israelis, including some who are in the government, always are looking for intense provocations here. This is a classic, you know, consistent flashpoint, very high emotions around Al-Aqsa Mosque. And so, you know, this is a potential additional escalatory point, additional potential conflagration here. So something we definitely want to keep our eye closely on. The same point, also in that interview with Jonathan Capehart, Joe Biden made some news about these comments he made off the cuff in the State of the Union speech about a quote-unquote illegal killing Lakin Riley.

Let's take a listen just so we have the context to that moment in the State of the Union speech, and then we'll show you on the other side how he tried to clean it up with Jonathan Capehart. Take a listen. Lakin Riley, an innocent young woman who was killed by an illegal. That's right. But how many thousands of people being killed by legal to her parents? I say my heart goes out to you having lost children myself. I understand. OK, so of everything's face there. Yeah. I mean, listen, we'll talk more about it on the other side. But there was a tremendous Democratic pushback here. Nancy Pelosi said she didn't like that language.

Of course, they don't talk about the policy, just the language, typical Democratic stuff. So in any case, Joe Biden was asked about this in this MSNBC interview. Let's take a listen to what he had to say. During your response to her heckling of you, you used the word illegal when talking about the man who allegedly killed Lakin Riley. An undocumented person.

And I shouldn't have used illegal. It's undocumented. And look, when I spoke about the difference between Trump and me, one of the things I talked about on the border was the way he talks about vermin, the way he talks about these people polluting the blood. I talked about what I'm not going to do, what I won't do. I'm not going to treat any, any, any of these people with disrespect. Look, they built the country.

The reason our economy is growing, we have to control the border and more orderly flow, but I don't share his view at all. So you regret using that word? Yes. Yes, I regret using it. I mean, it's just perfect, like, Democratic Party theater. Because most of them, there are a few outliers, I think Julian Castro among them and a couple others who were upset by the direction of the Biden administration on immigration, of the policy choices that they made, of the reaching out the hand to Donald Trump after, I mean, you remember the reaction against Trump era immigration policies when he was president and Democrats were in the opposition. And now they, you know, Biden decides we're basically going to adopt a lot of their policy. We're going to reach out our hand to Donald Trump directly and say, hey, how about we do your border policy? And the objection isn't to that. The objection in the

speech isn't to the portion on Gaza, which had, you know, is insane, like the port situation and even the whole framing of that. Instead, it's to the use of this one word, which again, I don't love that language either. But that is like the language is so far from my top priority that it's absurd. But again, it's a classic Democratic Party. I mean, yeah, for me, it's just like, oh, this is the political correctness battle that we're fighting. I mean, yeah, the policy actually is where the argument that you should be having. And we talked about it in our post show. We've done our debate here as well. I do also think, you know, the optics of it are terrible. It's like, well, you can apologize for saying illegally. You can't apologize for, you know,

not saying Lake and Riley's name correctly. It's like, well, which one? You know, it's like, if you believe, quote unquote, no human being is different and, and or not illegal, it's like, well, you're supposed to treat them the same. So I was bothered by that. But overall, I just think that the freak out on it by the Democrats, I mean, look, nobody is buying this. It all is going to come back to. And we've talked about this ad nauseum, Crystal, about at the end of the day, like if you care about the border and it's your number one issue, which it is for the vast majority of Republican voters. And there's some polling out there that shows that it's at least number one or number two for a lot of general election. They are not paying attention to Biden saying

illegal there up on the state of the union. They are like, okay, what are we gonna do about the six to eight million migrants that have come into the country since? And is that an acceptable policy? What's the number that we should have? Are we actually gonna have a controlled border? What does security look like? What is the overall consensus going forward as to what we accept for overall levels of immigration, etc cetera. So, you know, focusing here on the political correctness on it is ridiculous. I mean, that said, I don't think there's anything wrong with the term of the use of illegal undocumented actually personally drives me insane because it doesn't, it's a meaningless term. Whereas at least here we have a clear

delineation because somebody who entered under a legal process and or not that said, you know, with Biden and the way that he's handled this, I just don't think he believes anything. I don't know if you saw this. I sent this to our group DM for our show. I mean, people should go and watch. Maybe I wish I'd cut it. Biden's response for the State of the Union to George H.W. Bush. I mean, it's a Republican. He's like, I wish that we had longer jail sentences. I wish I didn't have to call my mom and worry that somebody's going to beat her up. I wish that we could control. He actually advocated, I had no idea, in the late 80s for striking drug cartels in Mexico using the US military.

All of this on camera. Oh, and by the way, if anyone's wondering, there was no stutter miraculously in that 80s response. He doesn't believe anything. And personally, that really bothers me. That is what he actually believes. I don't think so. What you're describing is what he actually believes. That's why he's so willing to, you know, the instant there's a little bit of political pressure on immigration, he reverts back to where he has been his entire career. And, you know, you see it. It is a little bit of like a mass slip moment

when he tried to sort of reform himself in the modern Democratic era. And we remember those debates with the high school Spanish and whatever, you know, back in the Democratic primary, trying to fit in with where the Democratic base and where the Democratic party had moved. But no, I mean, him being like, yeah, she's killed by an illegal, that actually is the way that he relates to this issue. And again, it's consistent across decades of his career. That's why it's always so preposterous and why it never landed when the right tries to paint him as some like, you know, open borders, communists, just taking his order, marching orders from Bernie and AOC because he's never been that

politician. And you see it also, I mean, he has a certain stubbornness around certain issues. You see that with Israel too. It's like, you know, he is locked in with, he's going to give Israel whatever the hell they want and it really doesn't matter what they do. So I wouldn't, you know, when you say he doesn't believe anything, he has these sort of reflexes in place, I guess, is what I would say. Yeah, and that comes out here, and it shows up in a variety of ways. Occasionally, it's a good, it's actually good, like when he withdrew from Afghanistan over the objections of everybody else. But, you know, yeah, so in any case, that was that was the area where he got the most pressure is over the use of this one word, which I think is very telling to

me. I mean, that's that's what and that's why I would say I don't think he believes anything, because, I mean, he did drop a lot of what he supposedly believed on immigration. This is a man who voted for the fence and made the case for basically a border wall in 2007 and then completely flipped on a dime. So then he rhetorically. Yeah, I agree. But that's my thing is with him, it's just all over the place. And then whenever he, I mean, look, let's be honest. Whenever he came into office, he did rescind a lot of Trump era policy and there have been a ton more migrants that have come across the border under him. Now that is not 100% of his fault. A lot of that is preexisting. But in terms of allowing it to fester, I think that it has been a tremendous disservice.

And that's part of the reason that you see some of the major flip-flops is the situation became so untenable and insane and politically toxic, specifically with the migrant crises in the blue cities, in the sanctuary cities, such that he was compelled to at least try and do something with this, quote-unquote, bipartisan border bill. All of that has now come to the place where he doesn't know, he doesn't have a consensus that I think is politically sustainable going into this election. Trump, you can criticize it or not. Trump has an answer. He has a coherent answer as to what it is, which is we should shut it down. We should deport people here who are illegally. Biden, he's all over the place. He actually kind of, I think you noted that in his Lakin-Riley answer. If we had the full one, He was trying to try and make

a point. He's like, well, actually, this is like native born people create go commit more crimes. It's like he called us legal. Yeah. So, by the way, maybe that's not the right time. And also, I mean, there is a substantive difference between somebody who shouldn't be here committing a crime and not committing a crime. But it's like he's very tortured in the way that he's trying to talk about this. And I don't find that politically, I don't find that a political answer. I agree. In its coherence at all to Trump. It's not coherent. It's not coherent. And as I've said a million times, you are not going to win the border cruelty race with Donald Trump. Not going to do it. If your answer, quote unquote, is to accept the Republican framing, that the whole situation comes down to how much of, how hard ass can we be at the

border? How cruel can we be at the border? How much enforcement can we do at the border? If you accept that framing, then you are laying the groundwork for Donald Trump's arguments to fully land. The reality is actually, you know, immigration, legal immigration is good for this country. Now, it should be controlled. It should be that we don't have chaos at the border, that we're able to know who's coming in, etc. But the fact that he completely abandoned that argument, which, by the way, has even at a time when there has been a large surge in migration, there is a lot of concern about, you know, the level of of migration coming across the border. Those are still core values that land with the American people because people are

complicated. Like they feel like, OK, we should know who's coming in and we should have a handle on this. They also feel like this is a nation of immigrants and that has been a benefit to our country overall. And to totally abandon that argument and just cede the ground to the Republicans, I think is politically foolish. And we've seen this. There was that study of a bunch of different countries in Europe where the quote unquote center left politicians tried this path that Joe Biden is right now trying, and it didn't work out for them for exactly the reason that I'm saying. And not to mention, you know, it really demoralizes the base of the party that thought you meant it when you had a very different line back in 2020

than you do now. And Lord knows the Democratic Party already has a big problem with the base. So politically, I think this direction is very foolish, you know, putting aside the morality of it, which obviously I disagree. I just wish he would. Look, it's like you need a coherent answer. And if you really believe in the open border stuff, I mean, then run on it. Like, say it. Fine. I mean, I think you'll get your ass kicked at the ballot box and you should be. I think there's big debates to be had about immigration. I'm not saying open borders. Well, Joe Biden has never been open borders. Well, if you're, if you, okay, well, then it's about the definition. If you think that six to eight million people here who are coming basically illegally and taking advantage of asylum loophole and they get to stay here for months, years on end

with no orderly process and most of them aren't gonna leave, then I think that's an open border. I mean, that's just objectively- But that's not what I'm, I mean, that's a polar opposite of what I've argued for. Well, no, first of all- which is that we should actually have a huge surge in resources to be able to appropriately adjudicate asylum claims like that. I fully support that. But to only have enforcement and to only have cruelty. And I mean, you support net zero migration like I am wildly opposed to that. And it would be devastating for the economy. You know, we just have gotten reports about how actually part of the reason why we avoided a recession and why we have higher GDP than expected, et cetera, is because we have had so many migrants. Migrants have been a benefit to the country. Now,

there's a limit to everything, right? Of course, if you flood the zone with too many people, it causes friction in terms of getting people adjusted and the job market and all of those things. But net net, immigration is a net positive. And I think Joe Biden should be making that case. And by the way, a majority of American people agree that migration has been a net positive for the United States. Well, the GDP argument is a deeply neoliberal one because it's one where increasing GDP because you have a bunch of unskilled people you can pay wages are going up faster than

inflation. But wages also going up faster than inflation. But wages also dramatically increased in the Trump administration because we specifically had far less immigration, which is what increased. Yeah, no, it's true. We can go, we could pull all that out if we want to. All of the wage increases from 2017 onward came from domestic wages. If you look at the studies, migrants do not diminish wages. No, no, no. This is completely not accepted 100%. That is absolutely accepted by almost every mainstream economy. If you look at the overwhelming majority of studies that have been done in this area, increased migration does not diminish wages. It helps to spur the economy. Again,

I'm not saying open borders. I'm not saying completely unlimited. But I think that there is a strong case to be made that increasing migration is good for the country. We can see it in economic numbers that are coming out right now. And I think Joe Biden was on stronger ground when he was willing to make that case. Much of this comes back to conflating people who are high skilled migrants, people who are Indian, specifically H-1B visas, using their wages and are drawing them into low cost. If you look at the sub $15 per hour level, it is very, I mean, look, this is basic supply and demand.

If you have millions of people who are coming here who are unskilled and you have a domestic population who has to compete against them for wages, what's gonna happen? No, but that just assumes that the economy is this set thing and the number of jobs is this set thing, which is not the way that an economy actually works. The thing that does, can depress wages is if you have a large undocumented population being paid subminimum wage with no labor protections under the table. That is a problem for native born workers who have to compete with, you know, with that situation. But that's why you should have a path to citizenship and you should have a legalization

process so that people aren't working in the shadows and are subject to the same competitive landscape as every other worker. Well, okay. But again, we're talking about rewarding bad behavior, which is coming here illegally. This all comes down to seeing people as widgets and units instead of citizens. Citizens are the ones who get first grabs and should have the benefit of the economy. They are the ones who should have the first shot at anything. Then we can make a coherent decision. We can take actual analysis.

Right now, the current status quo is outrageous. It has been for 25 years or so. There are probably, nobody knows the number. It's probably between 25 to 30 million. That's as high that I have seen of the illegal population in the United States. I mean, you can't say with a straight face, it's not going to have a huge impact on the economy, especially when the most- Yeah, positive one.

No, but we have no idea whether, we have no idea as to the actual benefit of that, as you just admitted. Yes, we do. No, no, because, okay, if you are- Yes, we do. If you're a construction foreman, you're going to pay a guy $10 an hour under the table,

whereas you have to pay another guy $21. That's why they should be legal. Well, no, they shouldn't be here in the first place. That's why they should have a pathway to citizenship. Why? Because that's- Because they came here illegally and they should be rewarded for that? No, because the problem is when you are paying people under the table, that is actually the issue. When you have a significant amount of legal migration, by the way, that also cuts down on the

quote unquote chaos at the border because people have a way to get in. People are going to flee desperate circumstances. The circumstances that many of these individuals are fleeing are so desperate, they're going to do it no matter whether it's Trump or Biden, what sort of border cruelty there is. They are determined to get here, right? Yes, that's true. Migration is a fact of human history throughout all of mankind. I agree with you. We're not going to stop that, OK? So do you want an orderly process where we have a significant amount of legal migration that we are able to track and we're able to control and, yes, benefits this country as

previous waves of migration clearly have? And as, by the way, again, majority of the American people believe in and support. Our country depends on immigrants. Like to deny that is insane and has tremendously benefited from previous waves and currently benefits from the legal migrants and the undocumented population that's here. So I just have a wildly different view of the morality and what is actually beneficial for the country. There's no morality in saying that people from El Salvador should not be allowed to come into America just because they're fearing for their life. And by the way, El Salvador is doing a lot better. It turns out that these people can make determinations for themselves and keep

themselves safer. That's not my argument. My argument is it's good for us. I mean, maybe, but then this is a Democratic question. Woe to us when we are a place that immigrants don't want to come to. That's when we'll be in trouble. Maybe. I mean, that's not necessarily. That's when we'll be in trouble is that we can become a country where people do not want to go, where there is not opportunity for people. Then we're going to have a problem. I mean, you can see it, but you know, it's it's a little bit of a different situation. You see it right now in Israel because they have blocked so many Palestinian workers who they really relied on. their economy is in shambles,

right? If we deported all of the immigrants here, if we had net zero migration, it would be catastrophe for our economy. People made those arguments in the 1920s and it turned out we were completely fine. Like, this is what I'm saying. You see this when it comes to like our birth rate, right? You're concerned about our low birth. We need more people. We need, you know, more Americans. We need a higher birth rate. But somehow, you know, immigrants then are bad. Like more people when they're born from native born citizens are good, but then more people when it's immigrants are bad. That doesn't make sense. Not logical. It's not necessarily bad. It's just that we're again, we're looking at citizenry versus widgets. It's if you look at it as a widget and you're like, yeah, it doesn't matter where you're from, or if we care about the actual cohesiveness of the nation.

Look, all of the arguments you and I had happened a century ago. I would say we're substantively in a different economy than the Irish waves of immigration filled a rapidly industrializing economy. What do we have? A rapidly de-industrializing economy that's transitioning to a service-based one. That is not one where highly low-skilled labor that doesn't even speak English can easily assimilate into. And in fact, it creates what you have in Germany, which is a vast underclass of people that just serve their betters at the top. I don't think that's fair to the Turks in Germany. I don't think it's fair to Mexicans, Hondurans, or anybody else. But that's not about a migration policy.

That's about labor policy. That's about labor policy. That's about union rates. That's about having a high minimum wage. I mean, that's about making sure that your working class is doing well, period, end of story. That's not an immigration story. No, but it is an immigration story because when it was that you have a complete diversion in the culture, you have no shared values between those two populations where even when you do have some of the highest union rates in the entire world, they're not accepted as citizens. I mean, it's just one of those. I mean, I mean, we can't browbeat people into saying that anybody from anywhere can just come here and be like, yeah, you know what? I'm supposed to accept you. I mean, that's completely that is that's actually contrary to the American story. No, that's insane. Well, if you come here,

you have to accept a human being as a human being. insane. Well, if you come here, you don't speak English. Of course, but if you move here, you don't speak English, you move, and then you take somebody's job or you're competing against somebody's job. You can't expect somebody else to be happy with that situation. There's no evidence that that is happening. I mean, that's the thing is like you can, yeah, if, if immigrants were genuinely like a problem for people in the economy and it was pushing out all these workers, et cetera, that's not the issue. If you care about American workers, then, you know, focus on unions, focus on lifting the minimum wage, focus on getting universal health care, paid family leave, making things better for them. Not, you know, punishing people who want to come to this country, not dehumanizing and saying them they don't belong and they, you know, can't assimilate, which just looking at the American experiment is insane. I mean, it's been called the great melting pot for a reason. I believe in that vision of America.

So in any case, I think Joe Biden should be affirmatively making the case that immigrants are positive for the country, something American people already agree with. I think the pieces of the bill that he put forward that would surge, for example, judges to adjudicate asylum claims, I think that's good. But I think you also have to have path to citizenship. I think you have to celebrate the contribution of migrants and make the affirmative case that it is a net positive for Americans because it is. Well, okay. I mean, if people want to run on that, go for it. He did last time and he won. Okay. I mean, let's have it.. Well, okay, I mean, if people want to run on that, go for it. I think they would get- He did last time and he won. Okay, I mean, let's have it, let's see it.

I mean, if Trump wins this time, then I think we'll have a pretty clear answer as to what people feel about it. No, because, but that's not true because Biden accepted the cruelty at the border situation. So it's not like we're running one candidate who is talking the way that I'm talking and another one who has Trump's view. Well, I mean, this is counterfactual and it's never going to get tested. That said, a vast majority of the polling shows us that while people may support a pathway to citizenship, although some of that gets, some of that gets very dicey. They certainly don't support net

zero migration. Well, that's not necessarily true. It is true. I mean, if you put it in terms of a merit-based system, whenever you say that people who come in based upon our birth rate or whatever should be calculated such that anybody coming in is highly skilled. But you're not saying merit-based, you're saying no migration. No, I believe in a merit-based immigration system with the net number being zero. I didn't say zero people should be coming in. I said the net number should be zero. That would be a catastrophe for the economy. Well, that's not, again, I mean, look, these are all counterfactuals. These are not ones that can be proven. We have done it many times in the past. In the past, it worked out fine. We actually were a much stronger country for it.

So all I'm trying to come back to is that the arguments that we're having here, Crystal, I agree should be democratically tested. I also can read a poll, and I know that people definitely reject a lot of the underlying philosophy of what you're advocating for when it comes to the border. No, they don't. Well, because. Because the majority of people agree with me that migrants have been a net benefit to society. Now, again, I think people are complicated.

I think it depends on the question you ask them. And they may have some contradictory impulses. But you also have almost no one actually making the case that migration is a positive, that yes, it should be controlled. Yes, we should not have chaos at the border. And part of getting rid of that quote unquote chaos at the border is to have an actual pathway to citizenship that functions and lets a sufficient number of people in that you don't have people, you know, coming in undocumented, coming in illegally because there's just no other option on the table. But there are many options on the table. No, there's not. One million people come to this country legally every single year.

It is. It depends very much on where you are from. That's right. Yeah. As it should be. Why? Everybody from Mexico should just get an automatic visa to the U.S. That's not.

That's not what I said. Or from anywhere around the world. We have quotas for a reason. Also, a lot of it is to crack down on chain migration, which is the number one way that we function currently, which is whether you have a family member here or not. Not, hey, do you have any skills and you do anything when you're here? Yeah, but if you're interested in this question of assimilation, which you seem very interested in, chain migration is actually a good way of trying to achieve that assimilation if you have people who are already here who can help you assimilate into interesting communities. I actually don't agree with that at all, because what ends up happening is you have these sub-communities where nobody speaks any English

and there's no real incentive in order to assimilate. And in fact, Meripace, in the past, what we have seen in many other countries, Australia and others, is that they have much higher rates of assimilation and they have much better results in terms of the way that the native born population feels about the people who are there because they know that it's an orderly system. Now, Australia has some advantages. Being an island is number one, so it's not really one that we can have here. But I mean, chain has a lot of issues whenever it comes to assimilation. But most importantly, skill and the fact is that we don't assign, I mean, even Canada

has merit based migration. Like, are we going to say that Canada has a cruel migration policy? Like they have plenty of immigrants who are living in Canada. They don't come there based on chain. They come on a points-based system, which was explicitly rejected under the Trump administration. I think extremely classist. It means basically just like, if you're rich, you can come. And if you're poor, you can. And I think- Poor people in other countries, that's their problem. That's their country's problem. Again, you're framing this as a problem. And I don't see it as a problem. I see it as a challenge to make sure

the system works properly. And on that, we have definitely failed. But I don't see it as a quote unquote problem that we have people who want to come here who have something to offer to the American public, to the economy, et cetera. I see it as a benefit. So anyway. All right. I guess we can call it there. But I mean, I would just say, Crystal, OK, well, then, for example, if there's high rates of people who come here illegally or legally and then go on welfare, do you think that's acceptable? Well, I don't think it's acceptable at all. Why are you coming here if you can't pay for yourself? I think if you the chain migration that you're talking about actually helps with that too, because you have a built-in safety net. But yeah, I think it's reasonable that if you are coming

here and you're unskilled, that it may take you some time to get on your feet. But we've seen how hardworking immigrants are, how important they are. They do a bunch of jobs that native-born Americans won't do and are not interested in doing. I think anyone will do a job for any price as long as the wage is high enough. Which is why we need high wages. I'm totally for high wages. But the problem that we have right now is that, like you just said, there are a bunch of people who are willing to work for nothing. And that's what depresses wages overall. That's why they should be legalized.

And so there you go. What are we supposed to do? That's why they should be legalized. At the same time, the State of the Union reaction is in and the pundits, including ones who previously had called for Joe Biden to drop out of the race, are dropping their sword and surrendering. Put it up there on the screen. Ezra Klein, Crystal, who famously did a podcast, a well-researched story all about how Joe

Biden should drop out with all of this incredible polling and data to back it up just says, fine, call it a comeback. If Joe Biden who showed up to deliver the State of the Union address is the Joe Biden who shows up for the campaign, you're not going to have to worry about any of those weak-kneed pundits suggesting he's not up to running for re-election. Here's hoping he does. So mea culpa of all mea culpas and falls exactly in line with the way that the pundit class felt about this, which contrasts very differently from the way that the public did. Morning Joe, for example, literally drooling and fawning over the president's speech. Let's take a listen. by Joe Biden. And yet Peggy Noonan last week calling him cranky old Joe after his angry press conference, who last night, Michael Beschloss likened him to Harry Truman. And there was a

real give him hell, Harry, a part of this. But what what really completed it was it was give him hell. Harry meets Ronald Reagan's a city shining brightly on the hill for all the world to see. We always under Democrats always underestimated Ike. They always underestimated Reagan. Now it's us. We always underestimate Biden. Yes, Joe Biden is Eisenhower, General Eisenhower, Harry Truman, Ronald Reagan, all rolled into one. He's actually better than all of them, you know, it turns out I would I would I would die happy if we could just have one of those gentlemen to come back as opposed to the husk that we have in front of us. And yet, who do we have next here? The View also giving their laudatory comments. Ana Navarro, the quote unquote Republican host,

very much talking him up after the State of the Union. Here's what she had to say. Joe Biden is old, yes. He's slower of step, yes. But he is far from being incoherent, from having dementia, from not being in charge. Yesterday, he showed he is engaged. He was impassioned. He was pissed off. Scranton Joe showed up and fought. He had his gloves on from moment one. He was knowledgeable about policy. He turned the immigration issue, which I agree with you is the most difficult issue he's facing. And he turned it into one of the most strongest moments of that speech. They thought they were going to rattle him by wearing the buttons of Lakin Riley. He took it and he looked at her parents and he offered condolences.

He made it, you know, he went and he rattled off all the points that were in that bipartisan immigration legislation that Donald Trump and his minions sabotaged. I loved the ending. Four more years. Four more years. Four more years. Okay. Four more years.

All righty. I loved it. Scranton Joe's back. Who is this mythical man that these people are talking about? He sounds great. Look, go ahead. I mean, it's just so delusional to think that one, like, okay speech performance off of a teleprompter is going to just eliminate, you know, it's just going to wipe clean the memories of everything everybody has seen over the past number of years. And also to think that that image is going to then persist throughout whatever additional Joe Biden brain melts we are

certain to witness. So, you know, they're excited, though. So for him, he needed to quiet people like Ezra Klein who were floating that he needed to be replaced. I mean, that was job number one was him to do enough so that he could get exactly this fawning reaction from the pundit class. And he did that. The rest of the American people, though, not quite as convinced as they are that that he's really the man for the job going forward. And this was the, quote, unquote, tour de force that morning. Joe thinks I also just have to say on the Ezra Klein thing, like, how pathetic. Yeah, if you believe in something, stand up for it, dude.

Right. If you're going to go through to write a whole—do a whole podcast, lay it down, do the interview, like, really make the case, and he made a good case, and then he gives one okay performance that was still at times very dicey, and you're just going to melt and like collapse into group thing. I just shows you like he must've gotten tremendous amount of pressure after that last column slash podcast. And it just instantly caves, which is kind of hilarious. Absolutely. And Biden himself addressing the age issue, at least at the top of his brand new ad, they're calling it the quote spring media campaign. Let's take a lesson.

Look, I'm not a young guy. That's no secret, but here's the deal. I understand how to get things done for the American people. I led the country through the COVID crisis. Today, we have the strongest economy in the world. I passed a law that lowers prescription drug prices, caps instances of $35 a month for seniors. There you go. He's basically like, I'm not a young guy, rolls into a bunch of policy stuff. I mean, look, it's probably the best he can do, right? Honestly, I thought it was pretty solid. He talked about, you know, things that pull well for him, right? The $35 insulin, lowering prescription drug prices. He goes on in that to talk about Roe versus Wade and, you know, lies that he's going to codify it into law, which we all know is not going to happen. But

obviously that's a key issue for them. I thought it was a solid enough ad and probably lands, you know, decently enough. I thought it was fine. It just is interesting to me that for everybody else, so the pundits and all that, they're like, no, it was amazing and all that. But for him, he's acknowledging the age at the top, which at least demonstrates that they have some political acumen. Now to get though to where some of this is coming from in terms of the media response versus the public response, let's put this up there. Because even the Washington Post is forced to admit here, early polling of the Biden State of the Union does not match the hype. They even say Democrats would like you to believe that this changed the game on Thursday. It is not clear that the American public saw the home run that they did.

According to the CNN Instant Poll, 65% offered a positive view, but viewers also shifted 17% toward believing the country is head in the right direction. That's what they're saying in terms of what they say is true. But what they also true is the State of the Union speeches, quote, almost always receive strongly favorable views, in part because the viewership tends to draw disproportionately from their allies. And in fact, what they point to is that, quote, dating back to Bill Clinton's 1998 State of the Union, viewers have always shifted an average of 15 points toward a more optimistic view whenever they are watching. They also show that, quote, in Trump's 2017 and 2018 speeches, Republicans were outnumbering the Democrats by five percentage points in CNN sample. Trump's reviews in those speeches were still stronger than Joe Biden's on Thursday,

showing that relative to where Trump was, again, I mean, remember, Crystal, how crazy things were in 2017. That was like the peak of the Trump madness. And even in that, actually Trump was getting better remarks on his State of the Union response. So when we look at it here, it is pretty clear that when you look at it history, he's right within the line. Against Trump, he didn't actually do all that well. So the home run, I mean a home run would be vastly overperforming all previous presidents combined or at least by a significant margin, or overperforming your predecessor, which he did not do in either of these cases.

Yeah. I mean, the reality is it's probably not going to matter at all. At the end of the day, I could see he may get a little bit of an approval rating bump out of this. You know, people feeling a little better about him, the vibes, the way the pundits are selling it so, so, so hard across all of these networks. By the way, the way the pundits are selling it so, so, so hard across all of these networks. By the way, the Republican reaction in opposition was equally deranged to the liberal reaction. They were like, you know, after for so long complaining about, I think accurately, that he's so feeble and whatever, then it was, oh my God, he was like so over the top and so angry. You can't really have it both ways. Anyway, putting that aside, I think the probably reality

on the State of the Union is it's not really going to matter either way. He didn't have a like major obvious health event while he was delivering it, which is what people sort of like wondered whether that would happen and feared it would happen. It had a lot of downside risk. Like if it had been a catastrophe, I think it would have had a huge and lasting impact because it would have affirmed people's deepest fears about Joe Biden. But since it was adequately handled, he avoided that catastrophic downside risk. Is he able to significantly achieve higher poll numbers, higher lasting approval ratings? I think that's probably unlikely. Yeah, I think you're right, Crystal.

And I think overall what we can see is that the pundit class and all of them have very, very low expectations for Biden. I've stolen your line. You're like, guys, if this was Obama, how would we all be? We're like, man, Obama, what happened to this guy? There's something wrong with him. What's going on? You know, he is a guy who actually won elections, actually was. Look, whatever you think of him, he was good at speaking and he was a good politician and he was able to at least get himself reelected twice. Pretty remarkable. Whereas with Biden, you see the curve that he's being graded on. You're just like, oh my God, what are we doing here? So if that's where the bar is, as far as I think we can at least put some trust in people.

Ryan also had a good point in our post coverage where he said, look, this isn't like the old days. You're still going to see clips of Biden unable to physically speak and function over and over again simply because of the Internet. So this monolith media like environment these people want to live in where this matters. And this is really the only connection that we have to our president like we did in the 90s. It doesn't exist anymore. Not the current media environment. Yeah, that is a good point. There you go.

All right. Let's talk a little bit about what unfolded at the Oscars last night, especially vis-a-vis protests of Israel's assault on Gaza. So before the big ceremony even got underway, you had protesters out in the street, put this up on the screen. So they are actually blocking the main route to the, what is it called, the Dolby Theater? Is that where it happens? And they were able to block it so effectively, and you can see a large number of people out there, that they actually were a little bit late. They were worried about having to use seat fillers, I think that's what they're called, so that it didn't look empty in the

auditorium when the show got underway. You had stars like ditching their heels and having to hoof it into the theater. Some people had golf carts sent for them to be able to make it there. So before it even started, there was a strong pro-ceasefire, anti-war protest going on. But the moment that actually got the biggest attention was Jonathan Glaser accepting his award and the comments he made. Listen very carefully to them and then I'll tell you the way they were interpreted on the other side. All our choices were made to reflect and confront us in the present, not to say look

what they did then, rather look what we do now. Our film shows where dehumanization leads at its worst. It shaped all of our past and present. Right now we stand here as men who refute their Jewishness and the Holocaust being hijacked by an occupation which has led to conflict for so many innocent people. Whether the victims of October the 7th in Israel or the ongoing attack on Gaza, all the victims of this dehumanization. How do we resist?

Alexandra Bystron Kolodziejczyk, the girl who glows in the film as she did in life, chose to. I dedicate this to her memory and her resistance. Thank you. So I thought very powerful and courageous comments there, clearly saying, you know, we refute our Jewishness and the Holocaust being weaponized in these, appropriated in these ways that we do not support, making sure to talk not only about the Gaza victims, but also the victims on October 7th. But Sagar, that has not prevented a full and complete meltdown over these comments and absolutely disingenuous mischaracterization of what he said. People clipping out of context, just him saying,

we stand here as men who refute our Jewishness without going on to say, and the Holocaust and the way that they're being weaponized, not that he's refuting his Jewishness. He's refuting the weaponization of that identity, which I think many, many, especially American Jews right now, really resonate with and support because they don't feel that the Israeli government actions reflect them, reflect their identity, reflect their Jewishness. And in fact, it would be the height of anti-Semitism to say that every Jew must be in lockstep with exactly what the Israeli government is doing. And that's something you see in Israel where there's quite a bit of debate and dissent about exactly the policies of the Netanyahu government. Even if 97% of Jews felt that way, there would still be 2% to 3%.

And to me, they are not Jews. They are American citizens who have the First Amendment right to say and speak what they wish. Mr. Glazer didn't say anything all that controversial. Many of the protesters that I see here in Washington often have the not in our name t-shirts on, which means that they are members of a Jewish organization. I mean, again, not that it matters, but I think rhetorically it's one of those that they're able to, you know, it's a powerful rebuke, right? It's like, this is one where they were being basically tone policed by a lot of Jewish commentators. And Jonathan, John Putt-Heretz, who's the editor of Commentary,

failed son and inheritor of his father's magazine, and one of these individuals saying, by saying he refutes his Jewishness on the biggest stage in the world, five months after the attack on Israel, Jonathan Glaser has instantly made himself into one of Judaism's historical villains. Like, we're going to put him up there with Hitler?

We're gonna put him up there? Hitler? We're going to put him up there? I mean, I've seen J-Pod make comparisons like this in the past. He is unhinged. He is an incredibly unhinged individual. But he's one of those where I've seen him align Jews who speak out against the war in Gaza, like kapos in concentration camps, which are basically Jewish prisoners who cooperated with the Nazi regime. But I mean, it's one of those where it takes a special level of insanity to ascribe here who is, I mean, he sounds British to me, not exactly who he is, but you know, he's on a stage in the United States of America. And I mean, frankly, it wasn't all that controversial. He

even mentioned the victims of October 7th. It's like, well, what else do you want from somebody who's speaking out against violence? I mean, it's one of those where he can say what he wants. He's using, and I mean, in some ways kind of honoring his religion, just saying like this was a historical, horrible event. It's like, please don't use that event in order to perpetrate what we see personally as an atrocity. I think that's fine, you know, once again. And it's, I think the response to it is frankly just disgusting. And it, it goes back to the Biden project and frankly, a lot of American Jewish commentators project, which is to conflate all Judaism with the state of Israel. I mean, that's honestly

disgusting. That is anti-Semitic to say you, you have to, if you are Jewish, you are fully identified with the state of Israel. You must support everything that they do. You have to, if you are Jewish, you are fully identified with the state of Israel. You must support everything that they do. You have to speak about it in these set prescribed ways. I mean, to paint with that broader brush is like the definition of racism and anti-Semitism. And the other thing I saw that people were intentionally misconstruing his comments, is they were saying, oh, he's comparing what's happening in Gaza now to the Holocaust, which personally, if he did that, I would also find perfectly fine. And not in obviously the number of people killed,

but in the ideology and the genocidal rhetoric and ideology, I think that comparison is perfectly apt. But that's also not what he was saying. He was saying, stop weaponizing the Holocaust to justify atrocities, to justify things that should not be justified. So I think the reason there was such a freak out is number one, because of them being Jewish. Number two, because the movie itself, The Zone of Interest, which I haven't seen, I don't think you've seen either. I haven't seen it. I am going to watch it though. I want to watch it. This actually made me want to watch it. But it's about the Holocaust. It's about the banality of evil.

So the fact that he did this movie about the Holocaust and then used his platform in order to oppose Israel's assault on Gaza, I think that was particularly, apparently, sensitive for a number of people. Rabbi Shmuley, of course, had to weigh in in the way that he does. He described it as absolutely disgusting. Jonathan Glazer, who deserves so much credit for his incredible Holocaust film, The Zone of Interest, which I loved, betrayed his people and disgraced himself and trivialized the six million martyrs of the Holocaust when he said Israel's war in Gaza was hijacking the memory of the Holocaust. How dare Again, he wasn't actually comparing the two, although, again, I personally would support that comparison. You fool. The whole purpose of Israel's war in Gaza is to make sure there isn't a second Holocaust, so we don't need more of your films because Jews actually remain alive.

Hamas has one intention, genocide of Jews. How is it the Jews in Hollywood have absolutely no pride in being Jewish and never, ever stand up for the only Jewish country on earth, Israel? It seems to me he very much has pride in his Jewish identity. And what he objects to is that identity being used in the service of things that he finds to be morally unconscionable. So, you know, I thought the response to it, especially the way the words were intentionally twisted and misunderstood, was really telling and really disgusting and shows you why it took courage, by the way. And you could tell he was nervous when he was delivering the remarks that he had prepared and written down so that he could get the language exactly as he wanted it to. So, you know, I really applaud him for being willing to do that, knowing that there would be an unhinged freakout on the other

side. You also had a number of artists who were wearing pins, you know, a sort of more quiet form of protest. We can put some of these images up on the screen. These pins were in support of a ceasefire. Some of the actors, directors, et cetera, who were wearing the pins, you had a Nimona actor. Is that how you say that? I don't know anything about pop culture. Sorry, guys. Eugene Lee Yang, director Ava DuVernay, director Masan Harriman, who's behind best live action short nominee, The After, writer, director, I'm really going to butcher this one, Kyle Arthur, Ben Hania, best documentary feature nominee for Daughters, singer Billie Eilish also. And one of the people you saw there on the screen was Rami

Youssef, who was in Poor Things, who also spoke out in favor of a ceasefire in Gaza. Let's take a listen to that. Tell me about the pin. Yeah, we're calling for immediate, permanent ceasefire in Gaza. We're calling for peace and justice, lasting justice for the people of Palestine. And I think it's a universal message of just let's stop killing kids. Let's not be part of more war. No one's ever looked back at war and thought a bombing campaign was a good idea. And so to be surrounded by so many artists who are willing to lend their voice, the list is growing. A lot of people are going to be wearing these pins tonight. And it's because we want to kind of use where we're at to speak to people's hearts.

You know, there's a lot of talking heads on the news. This is a space of talking hearts. And so we're trying to just kind of have that big beam to humanity. Are you hopeful there will be a ceasefire? Yeah, there has to be. I don't I don't think that there's any there's no there's no other route. It's just it's taking so long. And you know, the president has now called for it in a State of the Union.

The vice president has. And so I think we need to kind of really look at ourselves and be honest of, OK, if the leadership supposedly thinks that should happen, why has it not happened? And so I think that's what we're all encouraging everyone to be vocal about. I thought that was kind of interesting framing since Biden and Kamala have co-opted the language of ceasefire, even though they don't actually support a full and lasting ceasefire, saying, hey, you're saying ceasefire. That's great. Where is it? You claim you want to, you know, you claim you want this now. So why isn't it actually happening? You'll recall that especially immediately after October 7th, there were a number of high profile firings in Hollywood over people who are expressing support

for Palestinians. So it still is, you know, a cause that is take some courage to speak out on. So kudos to these individuals who, you know, took this protest to the Oscars and tried to raise the visibility there for what it's worth. Yeah, it was interesting. I mean, the freak out on is on. That's just a whole other level. And like compare it to some of the other historic ones, like Michael Moore at the Oscar stage. See, that one. Iraq war, that was amazing.

Well, that one was wild. Yeah wild because remember, he got booed. People really memory hole how pro-war Hollywood was too at the time. So things have changed certainly a little bit. Yeah, so true. At the same time, there's some major domestic news here with the shock passage of a new bill through the House Committee on Energy and Commerce Affairs on TikTok. Let's go and put this up there on the screen. If this advances to the full House, of which there's every expectation that it will and will likely pass, will go to the Senate and will result in an immediate status quo change for TikTok. So what it says is that this TikTok crackdown is now shifting into overdrive,

quote, with sale or shutdown on the table. So I actually went through, read the full bill, talked to some of the people who have helped craft it. And the details are basically like this. TikTok is owned by ByteDance, the holding company. ByteDance is headquartered in China. I've done extensive work on this in the past, and they would not even really dispute it that they are controlled by the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese government. ByteDance is. ByteDance is, specifically, which is the holding company of TikTok. So this bill would require ByteDance to immediately, within 40 days of passage of the bill, divest itself of TikTok as a media asset or then face a shutdown and a ban inside the United States. It's very substantively different

from the Restrict Act. The Restrict Act, which we previously had spoken about, Crystal, would have resulted in the discretionary authority of the president to ban such a thing, whereas this relies on export-import control laws that we have on our books that say that control of assets by foreign governments, as it could be applied here to social media, would then result in an immediate divestiture and or a ban. So substantively, it is a little bit different. This has, though, transformed itself into a major political issue. TikTok immediately pushed notifications to many of its users, resulting in a flood of calls on Capitol Hill. TikTok claiming that the legislation would have resulted in an immediate ban, failing to neglect the sale

part that I mentioned here. However, the discourse has now transformed and is now all about whether we should ban TikTok or not. Donald Trump actually weighed in on this on the opposite side of the issue that he was previously. He says, if you get rid of TikTok, Facebook and Zucker schmuck will double their business. I don't want Facebook, who cheated in the last election, doing better. They are the true enemy of the people. Immediately then backed up by Elon Musk, if we can put that up there, please. He says Trump's statement there is correct. And a lot of this actually traces back to an interesting gentleman who I've recently become acquainted with named Jeff Yoss. If we can put this up there, please, on the screen.

Mr. Yoss is a billionaire Republican donor and happens to own a nice $33 billion stake in ByteDance, which, of course, is reaping massive benefits from the TikTok profits and has been whispering, it seems, in Trump's ear. He is also the major funder of the Club for Growth PAC here in the United States, which is like a major kind of libertarian organization and apparently has now placed Kellyanne Conway, Trump's former strategic communications advisor, on retainer and she's being paid a nice healthy salary to lobby against this. So with all the details there, Crystal, what do you think? Well, we should also keep him. I mean, Trump in his way, he does make a point that banning TikTok would be a tremendous gift to all the TikTok competitors. Yes, correct. Tremendous gift to YouTube. I mean, we,

self-interestedly, I should be in favor of it, I guess, because it would funnel a bunch of people our way potentially. You know, all of it, I guess, because it would funnel a bunch of people our way, potentially. You know, all of these social media giants, they've been desperately trying to recreate TikTok's success, Zuckerberg in particular, with Instagram Reels. So banning TikTok is a massive gift to the tech industry, which I think is part of why this bill sailed through committee with the unanimous vote. Because yes, while TikTok obviously has a lot of interest in not being banned and not having a sale forced on it, you also have other moneyed interests on the other side that are pushing in the other direction. So that's number one. Number two, I mean, it's no mystery to me why this is coming about right now, which has everything to do with the fact that young

people are getting, you know, a very different and very real view of what's happening in Gaza right now on TikTok. And so this conversation, you know, sort of spiked during the Trump administration and sort of died down. The reason it's coming back right now, I think, is directly tied to the fact that they see the numbers among young people. They see the different view of Israel. They see the different view of Israel's assault on Gaza. And so there's a panic about these young people and we got to control what they see and disinformation, et cetera, et cetera. So I think that's also part of why you see this new initiative and this bipartisan unanimity when it comes to banning TikTok. And the other thing I would say is I do think that there's huge First Amendment issues here. You know, I mean,

Twitter has taken like money from Saudi Arabia. Does that mean that they should be banned as well? If YouTube got a huge, you know, had a huge investment from a foreign country, we're just going to ban or force the sale of YouTube as well. You're really directly attacking a lot of people's livelihoods, number one. Number two, a lot of people's livelihoods, number one. Number two, a lot of people's creative outlet. Number three, a lot of people's social outlet. So I think it is a real sort of outrageous assault on freedom of speech and creative expression. Well, that would be if it was a ban. Now, let's be clear. I mean, if we did a segment- Well, it's a ban or a sale.

Well, we did a segment here previously, for example, about U.S. steel being acquired by Nippon Steel. I oppose that transaction, even though Japan, look, I love Japan. We're blood brothers, we are allies. I respect their, honestly, I like their culture more than I like our own sometimes. That said, sorry, you shouldn't be owning critical parts of our steel infrastructure because you're gonna use it for your purposes and not. I don't think there's really a substantive difference here. Now, the difference between a Twitter investment is that Twitter is headquartered and controlled here in the United States. TikTok is hold 100% as a subsidiary of the ByteDance Corporation. ByteDance itself, 100% controlled by China. Very different than a non-controlling stake or even,

frankly, like a board seat as opposed to where we are right now. I think that now, as I understand, what I would say is one of the reasons as it sailed through 50 to zero through the Energy and Commerce Committee was not just because the Israel issue, although, look, let's not deny it. It's obviously true. But that TikTok actually showed its ability to influence U.S. election, which was the worst thing that they should have done, because they demonstrated through their ability to flood the zone and by having all these calls that they actually could flex political power if they wanted to. Honestly, it was a huge backfire on their part because they opened a lot of people's eyes. They're like, oh man, if they do push notification to any of their users, their users actually will call and will face it. Now,

I have complicated feelings. At this point, I don't think we can ban it. I think we waited way too late. If we had banned it five, six years ago, we would have had a different competitor, different conversation. I mean, it is, look, I wish that we weren't in this situation, but 170 million people now use this thing. What are you going to do? I think that a forced sale is the best possible option, and that's what this legislation does. Now, look, a bike dancer wasn't going to let go of it, even though TikTok is banned in China, because it's tremendously profitable. Already, there are U.S. investors and U.S. companies that are very willing to buy it, frankly, for a premium. They'll buy it for $800 million,

$900 million. Then the impetus, or $800, $900 billion, to be clear, possibly even a trillion dollar transaction, apparently, from what I've been reading, just because of its overall media, its ability to compel so much watch time, which is why Instagram and others want it banned. I think where we are is it's a matter of sovereignty. So I agree with you. I think that if it was an outright ban itself and did not give the option, at least for sale, then we could talk about First Amendment considerations. But at a baseline level, we're talking about sovereignty Amendment considerations. But at a baseline level, we're talking about sovereignty in US markets. Like China does not allow American technology companies to operate in China. Thus, there is no reason why we should not have reciprocal trade rules. We have reciprocal actions against the European Union, against Indian companies,

against Canadian companies, every other in the world. Why should we have a Chinese exception whenever it comes to tech? And I get the common retort I get is, yeah, but big tech is just as bad. It's like, okay, but we can change that. They are American companies subject to a US jurisdiction. But see, we have no jurisdiction over TikTok. But see, that's actually a good point, which is, I mean, we do have jurisdiction over TikTok when they're operating in our borders. So the real problem is like overall data privacy issues, because that's the that's the case that I hear made. I mean, the election interference stuff, that sounds a lot to me like the like Russian Facebook memes and like that direction

of panic and freak out. Right. In terms of the data privacy concerns, these are not limited to TikTok. In fact, the data that TikTok would have available to it is widely available for sale already on the open market. So that's the issue I think we should be dealing with versus going after this one platform because there's this freak out about China and this freak out about, oh my God, the youths as per usual. So the other thing I would say is, you're right, we can do it. I'm not saying we can't do it. Like as a sovereign nation, we could. I just don't think we should. And part of why is because I don't think it'll lead to a better outcome. It does end up

consolidating even more power in the hands of the already gigantic, you know, monopolistic social media monoliths. And for example, one of the things that was cited in this Wall Street Journal piece was that Sam Altman and OpenAI in conjunction with Microsoft were like, maybe we'll buy TikTok. Maybe we'll use it to train our AI algorithms, which to me, I'm like, that's how is that a better state of affairs? How is that an improvement over the current situation? So, you know, I think there's a reason why when people got that prompt to call into the

legislators, why they were so active about it, because for a lot of people, this is important to them and they use it a lot and they derive a lot of benefit from it. And so for them to like, you know, feel like it was under assault, that was enough to spur actually trying to take some action. The other thing I would say is Joe Biden said that he would sign a ban if it came to his desk. He said he would sign this bill. This bill, if it came to his desk. And if you want to lose young people for sure, Joe Biden, go ahead and try to mess with TikTok because I think that would be a political

absolute catastrophe and disaster for him. Well, that's if it's shut down. I mean, they can sell it. I mean, they should. There's no reason. There's no— But it would probably be hobbled if it was sold. I mean, even they acknowledge that in this Wall Street Journal piece. It's possible.

Yeah. I mean, look, I mean, Instagram Reel is not great, but, like, it's fine. I mean, it's, like, not an insane technology that we're trying to duplicate here at this point, especially if they sell whatever their subsidiary is with the pre-existing technology. I mean, look, even your data privacy point, though, there is, again, a substantive difference. The servers and all of the data that TikTok takes is routed through Singapore but goes back to China, whereas our servers, again, are under U.S. jurisdiction, of which we as a democratic people can legislate, can change. I mean, we have the ability.

Correct me if I'm wrong. They've been open to having exactly that arrangement that you're describing. The arrangement that they have described is one where they would route their data through Oracle, through Singapore, but ultimately has backdoors from China. Much of their reply and all that comes down to the fact that they want to keep their ByteDance ownership. And listen, if I were ByteDance, yeah, I would want to keep it too. But guess what? You don't let us do business in your country. So why should we let you do business in our country? That's nuts. Our people really like it. And a lot of people, I mean, just imagine if it was YouTube

and like our livelihood is very dependent on it, right? I mean, there's a lot of people whose livelihoods at this point are tied up in TikTok. And so I've just, I've never really understood the scariest scenario. People always sort of like allude to these like nefarious things that could happen, but I've never really understood how that could play out in this way that would be disastrous, which isn't already unfolding. Like I said, the data and privacy has already invaded. Our legislators have already failed us on that front. And I just don't see it as being really any different with TikTok. I think it's a basic market fairness position. I mean, like in Japan, like, listen, try going to China or Japan or Korea and try opening a social media app. It's not going to happen, period.

But why should we think to their level? Because it's it's a reciprocal trade agreement. It's not about that. It's like going to happen, period. So why should we think to their level? Because it's a reciprocal trade agreement. It's not about that. It's like, this is a very libertarian argument too, which is that, oh, well, we shouldn't resort to that. It's like, no, this is about basic market sovereignty. Americans should have control of their markets. We have no control over this asset.

It's also about First Amendment though too, which is like, you know, if we're cracking down and censoring based on foreign ownership and foreign influence, et cetera, I mean, those are the sorts of things that more dictatorial countries like China tend to do. I think we should do that. So I don't think that we should be doing that. What if TikTok was owned by an Israeli company? What would you, I mean, like Waze, for example, I believe, I think Waze is owned by Israel. I mean, that means that they have- Do you see me out there pushing for Waze to be banned? Okay, but if you did, I would be like, hey, it's a valid argument. It's one of those where like,

I don't know, should they really have access to all of our data here? It seems a little bit, what if they use it for their state purposes, which they definitely would. It's one of those where we can see from a basic market fairness position as we apply to Japan, China, Canada, Mexico, any other country in the world, why do you get complete access to our markets whenever you do not allow our companies to do business there? This is sovereignty. Now, in terms of forcing a sale,

I think it was the best option. I would also say Trump is the reason that all of this happened, and I will never let him off the hook for this. If you'll recall, in 2019 and 2020, he tried to do a forced sale option, but screwed it up so badly that both the US government and TikTok basically folded. At that point, there were only some 60 million, I mean, still a lot, but 60 million people who were using the app. You probably could have banned it at that time and there wouldn't have been the attendance social chaos. At this point now, I don't think it is possible just because we have some 170, 180 million people. It's a part of the culture whether you like it or not. And it's then now a question of like, okay, well, how do we manageably have this asset here in the U.S. operate and not take something away?

But the First Amendment thing, I want to come back to. I don't think it's fair because you're not censoring people's right to speech. We're talking specifically about ownership of the company. And then the onus goes to bite dance. Because if we apply that First Amendment right, then any foreign company in the world would have right to do business in the US. And that's just like a premise that I fundamentally reject. Like they do not have the rights under our system, especially when specifically when we're talking about reciprocal trade, which long time has been an avenue for the executive and has

always been biased towards like a sovereign direction over control of markets. Yeah. Like I said, I think we could do it. I just don't think we should. I think that I don't see the case that, you know, banning TikTok or forcing its sale is going to improve data security for Americans. I think it's a gigantic gift to Mark Zuckerberg, to Trump's point, and to the other- Well, they sell it, not really. And to the other, you know, large tech platform.

Yeah, if they sell it, because it would likely be bought by one of these platforms. I mean, that's who's likely to buy it. It wouldn't be bought by one of these people. Well, I mean, they could try, but okay. But then here's the other thing. We have a Department of Justice, Crystal. We have an antitrust pen, so we could say,

no, you can't buy that. Under Alina Khan, she hasn't even allowed Spirit Airlines and JetBlue to fuse. Why would we allow Facebook? I think this is all based not on genuine concerns, not you, but many of the lawmakers, and a lot of the conversation around this isn't based on genuine concerns. It's based on an anti-China freakout, and it's based on the worry that young people are forming views that the political elite do not find to be acceptable. And they want to be able to coerce them and better manufacture consent. So I'm not for it. I won't deny, but that's certainly part of it. That said, I mean, especially with the forced sale option, I don't see any reason not to at least try and pursue it. Just to highlight though and give you your due, Nikki Haley really gave the reason away

as to why she wants to ban TikTok. Let's take a listen to that from back during her debate performance. We really do need to ban TikTok once and for all. And let me tell you why. For every 30 minutes that someone watches TikTok, every day, they become 17% more anti-Semitic, more pro-Hamas based on doing that. We now know that 50% of adults 18 to 25 think that Hamas was warranted in what they did with Israel.

That's a problem. For every 30 minutes, you become 17% more anti-Semitic. Yeah, even I'm gonna be like, I'm not sure about that one, Nikki. That's a problem. For every 30 minutes, you become 17% more anti-Semitic. Yeah. Even I'm going to be like, I'm not sure about that one, Nikki. Well, and even more telling, there was some leaked audio a while back of that dude who's the head of ADL. I always forget. I'm sorry, guys. My brain is absolutely mush.

But saying exactly the same thing of we got a big problem. We got a big problem with young people. TikTok is at the center of it. Let's take a listen to what he had to say. Independent polling suggests this is not a left-right gap, folks. The issue in the United States in support for Israel is not left and right. It is young and old. And the numbers of young people who think that Hamas' massacre was justified is shockingly and terrifyingly high. And so we really have a TikTok problem, a Gen Z problem, that our community needs to put the same brains that gave us Tagli, the same brains that gave us all these other amazing innovations, need to put our energy toward this, like fast. Because again, we've been chasing this left-right divide. It's the wrong game.

So we really have a TikTok problem. We really have a Gen Z problem. You do have a Gen Z problem, but it's not so much about TikTok. It's just people being able to see what's happening for themselves. That's why I get annoyed, too, because I'm like, guys, it's not a TikTok problem. You can go on Twitter and you can see the exact same thing. Like, what are you talking about? Like, you don't even need Twitter.

You can go on Google. You can go on WhatsApp. Like, you can have people telegram any of these other channels. You have an internet problem. You don't have a tech- You have a reality problem. That's the truth. So there it is. By the way, if anybody's wondering, I doubt that this thing is gonna go anywhere. As I understand, the Senate, very unlikely to take it up just because there's multiple TikTok pieces of legislation inside of that. Even though Biden said he would sign it, as politically, it'd be a problem for him. And they have their own, what's it called? They have their own CFIUS review that's actually going on right now. CFIUS is like the organization inside of

the Treasury Department, which sets the kind of export import rules that I'm talking about here. That would be an easy thing to fall back on. And then they would likely just come to some sort of data agreement that you and I were talking about previously. So my prediction is that's probably where we end up. I don't see any scenario politically where it's going to be banned, even at the forced sale. The problem in the past with the forced sale was specifically individuals like Jeff Yoss

sued against securities guidelines because they're like, well, you're robbing me as my rights as a U.S. investor in ByteDance. So there's a lot of legal hurdles before we get to any of that point for any TikTokers who are out there. At the same time, we had to do a fun story and we had to put it here in the show. People here may know my obsession with the U.K. Royals. Well, there has been a major discussion in the U.K. and I guess actually here in the US too, as to where Kate Middleton is. And this all comes after Kate Middleton, it appears, had undergone surgery. Nobody knows what's for. She hadn't been seen in public. There were some leaked paparazzi images that showed her in a car where there was some speculation as to whether they were even real or not.

And so Kensington Palace released actually a photo of Kate Middleton with her three children. But a very interesting saga has since unfolded because the photo was meant to quell speculation as to her well-being and exactly what was going on with her. But the photo now has been revealed to have been pretty heavily photo edited. Let's put this up there on the screen. Just yesterday, the royal correspondents out of the UK were noting that at least three international picture agencies, including the AP, the AFP, and Reuters, have refused to distribute the photo that was released by Kate Middleton and her children, saying that the, quote, the source has been manipulating

the image. Let's go to the next part because it actually shows the specific problems. There were some major Photoshop errors in the mirror behind one of her son's head in terms of the blending between the red sweater there, pattern matching that happened there on the left, and then also weird things going on with the finger that was crossed in the photo. Now, this is not the most important news, Crystal, but for some reason, this has reached escape velocity online as to what is going on with this lady. Is she okay? There have been all kinds of jokes and all of this. So this really could not be a worst possible situation. We have an update actually from Kate Middleton, if we can put it up there, please, on the screen in which she says, like many amateur photographers, I do occasionally experiment with editing. I want to share my

apologies for any confusion the family photograph we shared yesterday caused. I hope everyone celebrating had a very happy Mother's Day. For those wondering, they have a different Mother's Day in the UK. No idea why. So that's what it is, Crystal. They release an image. People very quickly online are like, this is horribly edited. And then every major photo wire from Getty, AP, AFP, Reuters immediately puts a kill button on the image and just vastly explodes a lot of the conspiracy as to what's going on with Kate. So she had this surgery a month ago surgery. A month ago. Yes. And she has not been seen in public. Well, allegedly in a paparazzi photo.

Although the royal influencers, some say that it's a fake photo. I don't know. Oh, okay. And so, I mean, to me, if you're going to put out the statement like, oh, geez, sorry, guys. I sort of screwed up the editing on this photo. Why don't you release, like, the real photo. Yeah. Without the editing.

And then we could all be like, oh, she's fine. This is a bigger problem that I would keep. So for example, King Charles announced that he has cancer, but he won't tell anybody what kind of cancer he has. And now here it's like, guys, you're the world. First of all, you're an outdated institution. You're lucky that you still survive. Also, all of your income comes from the public in terms of like appropriated from parliament. It's complicated in terms of like the ownership and how exactly they derive their income and all that. But ostensibly, the only reason they're still around is that they're the heads of state and they're the figureheads and they're controlled by the state. It's like, well, why exactly then do you claim the same right to

privacy as any average Joe who's on the street. You guys are basically living a billionaire lifestyle. Yeah. Genuine kings and queens, not even metaphorical kings and queens. Right, right. And we don't know anything about your health or about anything that's going on there. Right.

Well, and you're the royal expert and not me, but my understanding is Kate was really looking for this life. Well, this is very controversial. She was, oh, okay. This is controversial. So I'm touching on something that's touchy? It depends who you ask.

Okay. If people were to watch the latest season of The Crown, you would think that. She certainly knew what she was getting into. That 100% she knew what she was getting into. Okay, so let's just put it this way. From the very early days of their relationship, she knew exactly what she was getting into. From the tabloids, et cetera, they've had their own wars. Kate Middleton has her sister, too, in terms of the tabloids, et cetera. The real,

I think, just like shock factor here is, like you said, she still didn't release the unedited photo. Right. And she didn't get an update as to her condition. Right. And there was also some sketchy stuff where Prince William actually canceled an engagement last minute. And he was like, gave no explanation. And people were like, well, what's going on here? Like, what is happening? So yeah. So you've got the king who's undergoing cancer treatment. We don't know his prognosis. We don't know whether he's sick or not, what kind of cancer, what treatment he's undergoing. Now we've got the princess who had this crazy, some like mysterious surgery, and she hasn't been seen in public. They have no events on the calendar in the future. It just,

for me, it comes back to, and actually what's funny too, is a lot of this discourse is US-based because the Brits abide by all of these censorious laws. So for example, that paparazzi photo I'm talking about was leaked to TMZ. It was not published in the British press because they want to respect the privacy of the royals. To which I say, guys, are you a real country or not?

Like, come on, you're you a real country or not? Like, are you listening to the king or queen? They're afraid of recreating a Princess Diana thing because they still feel guilty for, they think they're responsible for Adele. The paparazzi chasing her and then her dying in a horrible car crash. I mean, listen, in general, I don't really care about these people or what they're up to, but you can't help but resist like the good mystery and potential conspiracy conspiracy of whatever the hell is going on here. And so obviously she doesn't, didn't answer any of the many questions that people have. And I'm also just perplexed by the incredible badness of the Photoshop or AI. Like if you're the royal family and you're going to put out a fake photo, like at

least get some experts. We got the tech now. You could have done this and no one would have even noticed, right? But it was so sloppy and ham-handed. You're the princess of Wales. You're the future queen of England. You ain't got any photos. Can't do a decent Photoshop? Come on, girl. We have three people on staff here who could do a better job. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. The youngest member of our staff, he could put that thing out. You'd have no problems. All right. No twisted fingers, no pattern. How is this even possible? It is too crazy to believe that I actually do believe her story now at this point. Really? You think she just did it? I mean, it's so terrible. It is

really bad. In terms of like the thing with the sweater and all that. But man, she has no idea what she lit on fire. Like I said, speaking of TikTok, which we previously talked about, there are ladies out there whose entire careers on TikTok with millions of followers is just tracking every single one of these things. So congratulations to them because they all just got a lot more content. Amazing content for them. Yes. And for us too, apparently. All right, let's move on to much more serious matters with regard to U.S. policy vis-a-vis Israel and Gaza. We have new details about this stupid freaking temporary port situation the president announced last week in his State of the Union. Let's go ahead and put this up on the screen. So these are the new details from the Department of Defense. Let me just read

to you what we have learned. So this is going to, the construction of this temporary pier is going to require over 1,000 U.S. military personnel. It will take about 60 days to plan and execute. So we're talking about two months before this is even up and running. U.S. Army 7th Transportation Brigade Expeditionary from Virginia is tasked with this mission, maintains the ability to provide unique capabilities from offshore without U.S. military presence within Gaza. The U.S. Navy will not play a role because it doesn't require combat capability. Working with military sealift command and logistics support vessels involved, multiple ships from across the world will come

together. JLAS joint logistics over the shore operation confirmed, employed last year in Australia. Aid will be loaded from Cyprus, taken to the floating pier, barged to a causeway, brought ashore by quote-unquote partners, don't know who that is, into Gaza. Working with like-minded countries and partners who will provide security and assistance on the ground. Again, still very amorphous and undefined. Sending out prepared to deploy orders in process. up to 2 million meals per day under CENTCOM command. I mean, listen, there's so much to say about this. Let's go and put the visual up on the screen too so you guys can see. It's sort of like, it's difficult to talk about this in a way without first establishing that this is just a PR move to try to make the Biden and give the Biden administration some sort of message they can take to the base to try to claim that they actually care about the starvation and suffering

of the Palestinian population. So that's number one to keep in mind with all of this. Number two, even if you take this seriously as an idea, it's got a whole lot of problems. The whole issue right now isn't that there aren't roads into Gaza and plenty of aid available to go into Gaza. The issue is Israel blocking that aid going through. Establishing a temporary pier doesn't change any of those dynamics. The only two things that change those dynamics are number one, pressuring and forcing Israel to allow that aid in, and number two, a permanent and lasting ceasefire. Obviously, a temporary pier does not accomplish either of those things, Sagar. Yeah, I mean, this entire idea is totally ridiculous. Also,

the DOD just casually confirming, by the way, when they say up to 1,000 troops, that means 5,000, just so everybody who speaks up. And I assume when they say 60 days, that probably means like. Yeah, that means 300 days. And whenever they, you're like, I love how over 1,000, what does that mean? That could mean 100,000.

It doesn't mean anything. Greater, it's not gonna be less than 1,000. Having covered the Pentagon and watching the way that they do the accounting tricks in Syria, it will all be fake. If it's over 179 days and they have to acknowledge it, which means every 179th day they'll just rotate everybody in and out. All of the details here demonstrate and confirm all of our worst suspicions, which are Israelis inspecting U.S. military cargo, thousands and thousands of American soldiers who were involved in this mission, probably tens of billions of dollars that this will require. Putting American soldiers in harm's

way. I mean, what, are we all going to just trust the accuracy of the Israelis whenever it comes to our guys who are there? I mean, I wouldn't do that. I wouldn't put them in a combat zone. And yet that is the preferred solution of this entire thing. Plus, we're talking about like a D-Day level, you know, mission when we have perfectly 10 good entryways that are right there. It'd be a lot cheaper. The aid is waiting. We can just send it in there. And yet that's not the option that we're pursuing. And people are starving. Children are starving today. It's nuts. Right now, they are starving. And by the way, those warnings have been coming for months now.

It's been clear since the beginning of Israel's assault on Gaza that we would head in this direction when they announced a complete siege. So all of this was predictable, and this is clearly no solution. The press corps picking up on some of exactly the questions that you are raising, Sagar, and pressing the Pentagon on a number of key issues, one of them being, I mean, we just watched the Flower Massacre where hungry Gazans were trying to get food off of an aid truck. The Israeli military fires on them, and over 100 are massacred in this horrific incident. That's not the only time either, far from it, that hungry Palestinians have been fired on by the Israeli military while they are trying to seek aid. So one of the questions that was asked of the Pentagon was, hey, are you going to make sure that Israel isn't firing on people who are trying to obtain

starving Palestinians who are trying to obtain this aid? Let's take a listen to that response. Have you received assurances from the Israelis that they will not fire upon Palestinians as they seek to retrieve the aid? Look, you know, our focus is on delivering the aid. I'm not going to speak for the Israelis. Obviously, the focus is to make sure that we're going to get the aid. Thank you. So, no, we have no assurances that the Israeli military isn't going to fire on the starving civilians who are trying to obtain this temporary port delivered aid. There's another question though, which is, hey, are our soldiers going to be safe, the 1000 plus who are involved in constructing this?

Or are you afraid that Hamas could fire on this temporary pier? No assurance is there either. Let's take a listen to that. Do you anticipate that Hamas will try to fire on the operation? You know, look, I mean, that's certainly a risk again. But if Hamas truly does care about the Palestinian people, then again, one would hope that this international mission to deliver aid to people who need it would be able to happen unhindered. That's certainly a risk. Yeah. I mean, you know, the reason they're doing this peer is so that they don't technically have, quote unquote, boots on the ground. But this is an extraordinary admission that, of course, our service members are being put once again in harm's way.

Why? Because we don't want to pressure the Israelis to allow in the trucks that are already massed at the border. And we don't want to pressure the Israelis to have an actual ceasefire so that Palestinians are able to live. I mean, that is the height of irresponsibility and insanity. And this is just an utter boondoggle. The whole thing is completely nuts. We even saw more recent evidence of this. Let's put this up there on the screen. Tragic news, but actually exactly why dropping aid from the air is pretty inefficient. Not all that reliable. At least five people were actually killed after airdrop aid fell on them in Gaza because their parachutes didn't deploy.

I mean, this is inaccurate. It's not enough food in the first place. There's plenty of food waiting on the other side of the border that doesn't take 60 to 90 days to build, that doesn't take thousands of American service members being put in harm's way. And just take a look here of the video of what this looks like. I mean, that's, you know, the American plane that's there, the aid, I believe, with the cooperation of the Royal Jordanian Air Force that's falling down everywhere around them in Gaza. You can actually see it is dropping, you know, quite quickly, but it just highlights the ridiculousness of the whole situation. There's all this aid that's waiting on the other side of the border. All you have to do is just say, hey, let it in, or we're not going to allow you

to continue to prosecute this war this way. Just let's have a ceasefire. Let's allow some of this to come in. And instead, we're going to build a port on the other side. Hamas may or may not fire on it. Also, who wants to bet? This is the greatest Israeli plan ever. All it's going to take is one idiot in Gaza to fire a rocket, and now we're in the damn war. And that's what they want. That's what they've been begging for from day one. They want us to take security control, to pay all their bills like we always do. And you don't hear any, you hear silence from Congress. How can they allow something like this to happen? In terms of their overview, they should defund this project, they should withhold funding or something

to keep our people safe and not have to go into this situation, the whole thing is crazy. It's just, it's completely insane. I mean, I really am genuinely losing my mind over the insanity of it because it's long, it's expensive, and it doesn't solve any of the existing problems when there is a very obvious glaring solution staring right in the face, which is to allow in the aid that is right there and to have a ceasefire.

Part of the picture of the starvation of Palestinians in Gaza, which has reached horrific levels, and I'm talking a little bit more about this in my monologue as well, but part of that picture, which we have been covering, is these protests, which have been allowed to persist by the IDF and the Israeli government, the Israeli police force, have allowed these protesters to block aid coming into the Gaza Strip. CNN's Clarissa Ward, to her credit, went and talked to these protesters and argued with them a bit about what they're doing. Let's take a listen to how that went. Under international law, it's Israel's obligation to make sure that the ordinary citizens of Gaza don't starve to death. And right now they are starving to death.

Hamas is making it very difficult because Hamas is not allowing this to arrive. They're not holding it. They're not holding it. They're not receiving it. But they'll do it. I'm telling you here and now. If we knew it's getting to children of Gaza, we would do it. This does not arrive at the doorstep. This arrives into the tunnels of Hamas that are fighting us and holding our hostages.

There's no evidence to support the idea that all of this aid is going to Hamas. Not to the rest of the population. This is intelligence only for terror. That's why they're getting, they should get only the minimum calories required to survive. They're starving to death. They are starving to death. You know what? If they are starving to death, give us back, give the hostages back.

No single loaf of bread should go there till our hostages are coming back. To many people in the world, listening to what you're saying and what you're protesting for, it sounds like A, a contravention of international law and be incredibly callous. You know, even if there is a humanitarian crisis and there is not, even if there is, it's my right and my duty to prioritize the life of few babies, one year old babies that deserve over any dozen babies. Just wild the justifications here. I mean, first, the denial of reality, right?

Well, they're not starving. They literally are. I mean, we've had now dozens of, especially infants, starving to death. And this is happening now on a daily basis. Infants particularly at risk because mothers are so weak. They're unable to breastfeed. Formula and milk is not widely available, difficult to come by. When you do come by it, there is effectively no clean water available.

So these babies are being dispatched from the hospital. They're immediately getting sick, having diarrhea, and just literally wasting away. So that's where we are. So that's the first thing. Well, they're not really starving. There isn't really a humanitarian crisis. Also, Hamas is just stealing the aid. There's not evidence of that either. I mean, there may be some one-off instances, but we have not seen widespread indications that Hamas is stealing the aid. Anyway, basically, the bottom line is even if there is a humanitarian crisis, I don't

really care because it's my duty to prioritize me and mine first. And again, Sagar, let's be honest. This is the view not only of the Israeli government, which we've seen implemented in terms of policy, their official government policy is to basically collect a punishment, hold the entire population of Gaza hostage for their own ends, and additionally enjoys a lot of support from the Israeli domestic population, which is why these protests have been allowed to go on. Well, yeah, it comes at a certain point. It's like, oh, they're crazy people in any country. And it's about how the government deals with said crazy people. And it's like, well,

whenever you're going to spray people in Tel Aviv who are members of hostage families because they're protesting and you're going to break them up with police force, but these people get to stay there with impunity, then this is a government sanctioned protest. That's why it's worth highlighting. It's not like, yeah, I'm not denying that, you know, this element and all that wouldn't exist in Israeli society at a private level, but it's more about the allowing it to continue and not, I mean, not even allowing in many cases being cheered on by members of the cabinet, then this is a government policy. This is something that you are sanctioning and you support. That's what connects back to the debates that are in the U.S. and specifically why it is so crazy that we're building this pier and this military operation when these people are the only

ones standing in their way. And the Israelis have proven to us that they have no issues, you know, using force against their own citizens whenever it comes to civil protests and all that that they don't like. So then do the same thing here. But they won't do it. And that's why the whole the whole situation is nuts. Yeah. And, you know, to bring it back to U.S. policy, as Biden is now pretending because you realize he has a political problem, that he cares about the

suffering and the plight of Palestinian civilians. We just learned, put this up on the screen, that there have been more than 100 arms sales to Israel post-October 7th. And this Guardian article details how they use these legal loopholes to avoid public scrutiny and to avoid congressional oversight. Let me just read you a little bit. They say the U.S. is reported to have made more than 100 weapon sales to Israel, including thousands of bombs, since the start of the war in Gaza. But the deliveries escaped congressional oversight because each transaction was under the dollar amount requiring approval.

The Arms Export Control Act makes significant exceptions for arms sales to close allies, a limit of $25 million for major defense equipment, and the limit rises to $100 million for, quote, other defense articles like bombs. They have a number of quotes here from people who are concerned about this policy. One person who's the director of the Security Assistance Monitor at the Center for International Policy Think Tank said, this doesn't just seem like an attempt to avoid technical compliance with U.S. arms export law. It's an extremely troubling way to avoid transparency and accountability on a high profile issue. So how are you going to claim, and even MSNBC is calling this out at this point, how are you going to claim that you care about Palestinian civilians when you are skirting congressional authority

to ship as many weapons as possible, as quickly as possible to, you know, destroy all of Palestinian civilian institutions, to, you know, kill tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians, something that even the Biden administration admits at this point, which really raises a question for me of what the actual death toll really must be. How can you claim that this little piddly bit of aid is anything but a PR stunt when this is the actual reality of your policy? I think that's right. Crystal, what are you taking a look at? Well, take a look at this image. Bombs and aid simultaneously dropped on Palestinians from the skies above the Gaza Strip. The perfect encapsulation of an outrageously insane and immoral U.S. policy. On the one hand, we ship

2,000-pound bunker buster bombs to help our ally with their genocide. On the other, we drop a pathetic amount of food so that our murderous president can pretend he cares about these lives. There's an election coming up after all. An artist captured this dynamic well too, portraying an onslaught of bombs raining down on a destroyed Gaza, interspersed among those bombs, couple loaves of bread. Unfortunately, even this aid has proved deadly for Palestinians. Five people, including this beautiful child, were killed by one of these aid drops when the parachute malfunctioned, bringing to awful reality the warnings of experts that these drops are dangerous and are no substitute for a lasting ceasefire and forcing Israel to allow in the hundreds of AIDS trucks that are amassed at the Gaza

border. But it is not only our bombs and bullets that have helped to push this population to absolute desperation. We have backed Israel at every turn. When they throw on a new set of lies and propaganda, whether it's beheaded babies or a Hamas command center underneath of a hospital or the evidence-free allegation that UN aid workers are actually Hamas terrorists. You remember that, right? On the very day that the International Court of Justice ruled Israel was plausibly committing genocide, we parroted, here in the United States, Israel's evidence-free claims that some dozen UNRWA employees were involved in October 7th, and then we used that as a pretext to strip funding from that critical organization, which just so happens

to be the top aid organization on the ground in Gaza. So our response, the ICJ ruling, was to heighten the genocidal conditions, exacerbate the starvation by cutting aid. Of course, even if true, these claims about a dozen employees would not justify an attack on the entire organization. But it almost immediately emerged that no evidence was actually offered by the Israeli government to back up these extraordinary claims. The UN says they still have not been given any evidence. And now we are learning something even more shocking. According to the UN, the IDF tortured UNRWA aid workers in order to extract false confessions of Hamas affiliation.

Really sit with this, because I can scarcely believe the depths of depravity that this revelation reflects. The Israelis tortured UN staffers, humanitarian aid workers. They then used these fake confessions to push the world to defund UNRWA, all so that they could more effectively starve the civilian population. And we, here in the United States, our president went right along with it. Here is a bit of that report. The UN Agency for Palestinian Refugees said,

some employees released into Gaza from Israeli detention reported having been pressured by Israeli authorities into falsely stating that the agency has Hamas links and that staff took part in the October 7th attacks. The assertions are contained in a report by the UN Relief and Works Agency, UNRWA, reviewed by Reuters and dated February 2024, which detailed allegations of mistreatment in Israeli detention made by unidentified Palestinians, including several working for UNRWA. The document said several UNRWA Palestinian staffers had been detained by the Israeli army and added that the ill treatment and

abuse they said they had experienced included severe physical beatings, waterboarding, and threats of harm to family members. Severe physical beatings, waterboarding, and threats to family members. I guess we shouldn't be surprised since Israel has already killed more UN workers than anyone else in history. And Israel has so little shame about these war crimes that they proudly broadcast them to the entire world, and especially to their own revenge-drunk nation. Here's a report that was broadcast on Israeli TV showing how they humiliate prisoners and demand that they admit that they are actually Hamas, even when they swear that they are not. That as of now unreleased UN report that we were just discussing, that says a lot more too about the routine torture

meted out against anyone fortunate enough to be detained, not just those UN aid workers. Former prisoners testified that they were beaten, they were deprived of sleep, they were held without adequate food and water, not allowed access to bathrooms, and some were sexually abused. The injuries sustained during their captivity were severe enough, and the medical neglect so profound, that every prisoner released necessitated ambulances to transport former captives for emergency medical care. And those are the lucky ones.

According to Israeli outlet Haaretz, at least 27 Palestinians have died in Israeli custody since October 7. The Israeli government refuses to divulge the details surrounding those deaths. Now, in the wake of these revelations about forced unreconfessions and as reports pour out of the strip of babies starving to death, children with bodies wasted for malnutrition, countries with slightly more shame than the U.S. have actually reversed course. Of the dozen countries which had suspended funding to UNRWA under U.S. and Israeli pressure, Sweden, Canada, and the EU have now all restored their aid dollars to this aid group, whose mission has literally never been more critical or more

impossible to fulfill. But not the U.S. We are standing strong with our big bombs and tiny bread strategy, shipping the weapons of death, defunding the most critical aid agency, and acting faux-shocked at the predictable results that we ourselves engineered. And what are those results? Well, let me show you another image which perfectly encapsulates U.S. policy. This precious angel, only 10 years old, Yazan Kafarna, died from malnutrition shortly after this video was taken. Yazan had cerebral palsy and was reliant on a diet of soft foods with high nutrition. He couldn't walk, but he loved to swim. His father, who you see in this video, lovingly tended to Yazan's care, therapy, and

feeding every day until the siege on Gaza and constant bombing made that life-giving care impossible. But Yazan is not alone. 15% of northern Gaza children are acutely malnourished. In the south, the number is roughly 5%. Dozens of children, mostly babies, have died already of starvation. Infants are the most at risk as their mothers are too weak to produce milk. Formula is rare. Clean water, nonexistent. But don't worry starving babies of Gaza.

Our great president, after defunding the main aid agency based on torture force confessions and helping bomb the hell out of a trapped population, he's building a temporary port in a few months to facilitate a slightly larger but still wildly inadequate amount of aid, an absurd boodoggle so that Biden and the Dems can pretend they aren't just cold-hearted killers. But they are. They killed Yazan just as surely as if they had put a gun to his head, supplying the bombs that upended his world, ignoring the desperate warnings that famine was imminent, defunding the most important aid organization, and running cover for Israel's lies at every chance they could. When the history is written of the Gaza genocide,

many of the details are going to be forgotten. Will we remember this stupid freaking port? Are we going to remember how Kamala called for a temporary ceasefire and the media pretended like it was an actual policy shift? Or how Biden sort of told MSNBC that he had red lines before immediately proclaiming that he will never leave Israel? Probably not. A lot of those details will be lost. But the images of Yazan, body impossibly wasted, skin stretched over his tiny skeleton, an image that unavoidably recalls the torturous horrors of the Holocaust. These images and our complicity in causing them, we could never forget if we spent our whole lives trying.

And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. Thank you guys so much for watching. We appreciate it. Apologies, we had a lot to cover today, but we will get it out to you as soon as we can. We'll see you guys tomorrow. This is an iHeart Podcast.