Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 3/21/24: Dems Fund MAGA Candidates, Fox Begs O'Leary To Bail Out Trump, US Happiness Plummets, Biden Impeachment Hearing Off The Rails, Israeli Gen Says War Over Without US Weapons, Bibi Gaza Port For Ethnic Cleansing, Trump Says Jewish Dems Hate Their Religion

Episode Date: March 21, 2024

Krystal and Saagar discuss Dems spending millions to prop up MAGA candidates, Fox News begs O'Leary to bail out Trump, US happiness index plummets, Dem wears Putin mask to Congress as Biden hearing goes off the rails, Israeli general admits war over without US weapons, Bibi floats Gaza port for ethnic cleansing, Trump says Jewish Dems hate their religion.    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 Thursday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed, we do. Many interesting topics to get to this morning. So

we did have some primaries this week and some kind of interesting results that we want to go through, both in terms of the presidential level. Nikki Haley's still pulling a fair number of votes, even though she's not in the race anymore. We've got some interesting polls for Biden. We've got some interesting candidates that are moving on to the general election. So we'll break all of that down for you. We also have some innovative ideas being floated over on Fox News about how Trump may be able to foot that big $500 million bill that he owes. So you definitely want to stay tuned for that. The United States is slipping big time in terms of the world happiness rankings.

And it is apparently mostly attributable to young people who are not too happy about the direction of the country, their lives, etc. So we'll look into what may be going on there. Some big Joe Biden impeachment hearings yesterday, illustrating the absolutely farcical nature of our politics all the way around. So we'll show you some of the lowlights from there. It was bad. Yeah. One of the most embarrassing moments I've ever seen in politics, to be honest with you. So you definitely want to hang in there for that one. We also have the U.S. with regards to Israel, reportedly torn the Biden administration over whether to continue selling weapons to Israel, as it is increasingly undeniable that they are being used in illegal ways and increasingly undeniable that they are blocking humanitarian assistance. So we'll take a look at that debate that is playing out. Also, we've got Bibi floating using that temporary port we're building for ethnic cleansing.

So that's really great. Playwright Tony Kushner also speaking out, backing Jonathan Glazer, and also calling out Israel's all-out assault on Gaza. Very noteworthy comments there. Yeah, it's going to be interesting.

Before we get to any of that, we want to thank everybody who's been signing up. As we keep on teasing, and I do promise it's coming very soon, we have a big upgrade coming in our premium service where we really think everybody is going to enjoy it. You're going

to want to get in now before we launch everything so you get a fulsome first picture into what we're doing. And we're going to upgrade everything. We're going to make it a lot better and a lot easier. So go ahead and sign up, breakingpoints.com. In the meantime, by the way, the emails issue, I believe it's mostly solved. We are working on it and we will remain and keep you guys updated. So thank you to everybody. We're always thinking about you and about delivering the show. So let's go ahead and start, as Crystal said, with the primary. We have some interesting results out of two very important states for the general election.

Let's put it up there on the screen. First, from Ohio, I guess a red state, but not that long ago it was a blue state. Also considered Trump country, kind of the Trumpification of America really embodied in the flip of Ohio from blue to red under his leadership. And though, what do we see? Well, a little bit of a warning sign in some of the primary results. So while Trump did win 889,000 votes and racked up almost 79% of the vote taking all of the delegates, Nikki Haley still somehow was able to get some 14% of the vote, racking up some 16. So what you can see is that between Haley, DeSantis, Christie, and Ramaswamy, you had some about 20% or so people who voted in the GOP primary who decided not to

vote for Donald Trump. A friend of ours, Ryan Gerduski, flags that this is roughly the same percentage that Trump was pulling in 2016 after all of the other candidates had dropped out in the primaries. The noteworthy thing, though, is that he's already been president as opposed to the fact that he was a unknown entity last time around. Same results actually in the state of Florida, if we can go ahead and put that up there. What do we see? Well, Donald Trump, again, roughly same percentage, 81% of the vote, but Nikki Haley, 14, Ron DeSantis, 3%. And if you look overall, you have about 19% or so of people who decided to still come out and to vote against Trump. Some of the cope I've seen on this crystal is that because of mailing votes, some of these people may have sent in their ballots before Nikki Haley had dropped out of the race.

That seems plausible to reasonable to me. That said, a 20% margin, you're still winning overwhelmingly. It just gets to that question. Are these people gonna come out? Are they gonna vote for Trump in 2024? Now, 2016 around, this was a big question. A lot of those people did end up voting for Trump,

or they simply became Democrats, and then Trump was able to bring more white working class voters to come out who'd never voted before to solidify his election. This time around, I do feel, though, as if some of the Democratic purge of a lot of these white college-educated voters already happened. So these are people who are still in the Republican Party. And it's a big question as to whether he can keep that coalition together and still bring out some of those nontraditional voters that would put him across the finish line in November. I mean, I do think it's a warning sign in the same way that the sizable uncommitted vote is a warning sign for Joe Biden. Like to the extent that these people hadn't shipped in mail-in ballots early back when there was still an ongoing primary fight while Nikki Haley was still in the race, the fact that you have people who turned up, like, went through the trouble to show up on election day and vote for someone other than the guy who is already the presumptive nominee, you have to see that as a form of protest. Now, yeah,

the question remains, how many of these people are really even Republicans at this point? How many of these people have already basically shifted to the Democrats in a realignment that has been ongoing since 2016? I think that's a really open question. I saw some exit polls that suggested that about half of the Nikki Haley voters in these primaries said they're going to vote for Joe Biden. Now, are those people who voted for Joe Biden last time around or the people who voted for Donald Trump last time around? It's very difficult to say, but I do think that it is a bit of a warning sign and something to pay attention to. Apparently, it's not only Nikki Haley voters, though, who aren't so sure about Donald Trump's campaign. His own wife giving a very interesting response that was kind of amusing

on the campaign trail when she was asked whether or not she was going to be campaigning for Trump, her husband, this time around. Let's take a listen to that. This is Trump. Are you going to return to the campaign trail with your husband? Stay tuned. Stay tuned. I'm going to start using that, to be honest with you. When someone asks me something that I don't really want to commit to. That was her classic when we covered the White House, that she was the most impenetrable lady. We couldn't get anything out of her. Really? Yeah, even at the infamous Be Best event, which I honestly, I will never forget that,

being in the Rose Garden to watch that kick off. And I think especially because it had come right after Trump had tweeted something about like Mika Brzezinski's facelift. Oh God. And so everyone in the White House press corps was like, Mrs. Trump, like how do you square, you know, your anti-bullying campaign with your husband?

Something like that. She was so furious. I'll never forget it. It was one of the craziest moments that I was president for. But anyway, what can we learn from that in terms of Mrs. Trump, Melania? Well, she does not seem very enthused about getting back on the campaign trail. Reportedly, she did not necessarily want her husband to run again. I mean, look, I was there. She hated being first lady. Honestly, I felt bad for her. She never signed up for this. This is not like many politicians' wives, you know, they're with them for years. To a certain extent, they know what they're getting into. She married him when he was a billionaire playboy. You know, she was there for the New York, Miami, Palm Beach lifestyle. She's like, I never signed up for all this secret service and all this.

She's like, I don't want to do the White House Christmas trees or any of the other traditional First Lady, you know, things that she was required to do when she was there. So in a certain way, I felt bad for her from when we covered her. She did everything in her power not to be at the White House. She didn't want to move to Washington. She barely wanted to bring Barron, you know, here. She wanted to stay in a private school. By all accounts, she wanted to stay in New York or she went to Florida as much as she possibly could. So she is not looking forward to being back in the White House if she does need to be.

And I'm not talking about politics. I'm saying purely on a personal level. She hated it. She truly hated being in Florida. I don't even know if she would this time around. She may not. She may just stay in Florida. I mean, especially like the first time around, you kind of got to keep up appearances because you've got to, you know, he's got to run for reelection again, et cetera.

This time you don't. And Barron is 18 now, so he doesn't have to go to school. So she could just stay. Barron's graduated high school. He's an adult now. So, yeah, I would not be surprised if she stays in Florida and if we don't see a whole lot of her on the campaign trail because she doesn't seem particularly enthusiastic about it. I can't really blame her on that one. Let's go to the next part, though, about Biden and about the general election. So there were some interesting signs. And we always want to

give the counter cases here because by all accounts, you know, I would say things look as if they're going well for Trump. But there have been some interesting movements in polls lately that we would be remiss not to flag. Let's put this up there, please, on the screen. So this is a January to February shift towards March. So in multiple different polling organizations, Emerson had Trump plus one in January, February. Now it says Trump plus two. Keep in mind, this is registered voters, not likely voters, where there is some interesting analysis about whether that's even correct. Then you have others here, Trump plus two to Biden plus two. Ipsos, you had Biden and Trump tied, now it's Biden plus two. You had KFF,

Kaiser Family Foundation, Trump plus four, now Biden plus three. Civics, you had them tied, Biden plus one. And then Florida Atlantic University, it was Trump plus four, now Biden plus two. That last one, let's keep in mind, that's actually likely voters. So that's actually probably the most noteworthy. Now, what does this mean? I mean, it could mean anything. Trump is still overwhelmingly leading Biden in the RCP polling average. And I mean that in terms of the average of the last month or so of the polls. These are some more recent and interesting ones. But Crystal, we have to always remember that per our most recent elections, the polls dramatically underestimated Democratic support. So we have to think that even in these

Trump numbers, and perhaps even in some of this movement, that there is a non-baked-in factor of a lot of white-collar Democratic college-educated voters who just come out and vote in numbers that we had not seen previously, that clearly polls were not able to catch up with in the same way that they under-polled these white working class voters from 2016 and 2020. I mean, if you dig into the polling data for what it's worth, there are some really interesting numbers about registered voters versus likely voters. Non-voter, people who haven't voted before, but who are saying, I am going to vote this time around, favor Trump by like 23 points. So there's a huge question mark.

First of all, is it accurate? Because that's always worth asking. People say a lot. Given the misses that we've seen, right? Second of all, okay, these are people who haven't voted, but are they actually going to vote this time around? Because when you look at the universe of people who have voted before, that universe tends to favor Joe Biden. And that's what you're sort of referencing is these, this group of voters, these like college educated, mostly white voters. They are like the most reliable, especially older. They're the most reliable voters like clockwork. They show up every single election. You can really count on them. And they have overwhelmingly shifted into the Democratic Party's camp, giving them an edge, especially in things like the special elections that we've been tracking, especially in like the midterms. Now, a presidential election cycle is very different because obviously you're going

to have your highest level of turnout there. So who actually shows up? What is the real universe of voters that we're going to be looking at on Election Day that pollsters need to be tracking and, you know, seeing what direction they're going in? So that's one piece. The reason why I wanted to highlight some of these numbers is because, you know, you have to take any one poll with a grain of salt. This is not so much to look at the absolute overall, you know, shift towards Biden, but what is the movement over the past month? And if you see a variety of polls that show some positive movement towards Biden, then you have to ask what's going on there, because it's unlikely that all of the polls have the same error in the direction of Biden over that time period.

There's a few potential explanations. One is that, you know, we've had more Trump legal news and it's reminding people of, you know, all of the chaos, the things that they really don't like about Donald Trump. That's one possibility. Another possibility is some of the improvement that we've seen in things like consumer sentiment that takes some time to filter through to the politics is actually starting to filter through people while nobody here is saying the economy is amazing. No one is saying that. The sense that there is some improvement may be starting to show up and reflect in Biden

poll numbers. That's kind of the most hopeful outcome for him and his team. And I think it's plausible, certainly possible. The other possibility is that he did do himself at least some temporary favors with a not disastrous State of the Union appearance. And that is helping to shift things in his direction. But, you know, all of those things, it could be a combination of those things. It could be a one-off fluke.

It could be we're looking at a very different situation when all pollsters move to likely voter models. There's a million question marks around this. But I did think it was enough of a trend to take note that at least over the past couple of months, there has been a little bit of movement towards Joe Biden that his team has to be really cheering for and holding onto for all it's worth at this point. Let's go to the next one. This is also about the candidates, because this is going to be a big question. Actually, in some of these candidates, you see the big test of what the major issues will be. So the AP police about Bernie Moreno. As we can see, Bernie Moreno was the Ohio victor of the GOP primary. He will go on to face Sherrod Brown in the general election.

Now, Sherrod Brown has long been kind of a canary, I guess. He's been very different than a lot of the other national Democratic parties, very pro union. A lot of people who do vote Trump always traditionally at a higher approval rating in the state. What I think is going to be the big question mark about Moreno, who Trump backed as opposed to another candidate was endorsed by Ohio governor Mike DeWine. It's about abortion because I was going back and I was looking. So Bernie Moreno was, I'm not, it's still not exactly clear where he stands on abortion.

He's made comments in the past. It seemed to be he would be okay with a national abortion ban. I think he's gonna have to clarify some of that language with no exceptions, exactly. Most importantly, in terms of Ohio politics, remember, Crystal, they had that referendum that came forward.

That was one where both Moreno and the Ohio Republican Party were on the wrong side of that winning issue. So we can see that Sherrod Brown is going to lean heavily into abortion messaging. And I think that Brown himself is already a very strong candidate. This is a man who has, you know, stood astride like a lot of national trends. He has been very pro-union, very pro-tariffs, for example, on Chinese goods, pro-worker in a much more traditional sense of the past. He was able to set himself apart from the National Democratic Party. Even with Biden, he's clashed with him a

couple of times on several of these issues, kind of going aside on the issue of neoliberals. So he kind of has that going for him. He has a good image, I think, within the state, as I understand it. So then, if you add on all of these voters who came out on abortion, I do think that this could be a real test for him because we can't forget that while Ohio went Trump by some eight points in 2024, actually increased his vote margin there, is that they still did come out for the pro-choice side in that latest referendum that happened in the state. You know, I need to go back and look at where Bernie Marino was and what he had to say about that referendum, because that could end up being significant in the context of this race as you're bringing it up. You know, I just pulled up

the polls that have Brown versus Moreno head to head. They favor Brown at this point, plus four, plus six, plus five, plus two. These are not overwhelming margins. And in none of these polls is Sherrod Brown over 50 percent, which has to be a concern if you're a Democrat in a state that has increasingly trended towards the right. So I don't think there's any doubt Sherrod Brown has the fight of his life on his hands. Now, Democrats think they got the candidate they wanted in Bernie Moreno. In fact, Schumer's PAC spent, I believe, millions of dollars. Yes, they did.

Backing Bernie Moreno, running these ads that are like, oh, he's too conservative for Ohio, he's too close to Trump, knowing that that could actually boost him in the context of a Republican primary. So they very much thought that he is the most beatable candidate. Is that the case? I genuinely don't know. I mean, the comments on abortion are probably the biggest issue for him. There's also this questionable report that came out just before the primary, like literally the day before the primary. The AP reported that in 2008, someone with access to his work email account created a profile on an adult website seeking men for one-on-one sex. The AP, though, couldn't definitively confirm it was created by him

himself. His lawyer said a former intern had created the account as a juvenile prank. So there's whatever that is going on. But I agree with you, Sagar. I think the bigger issue is his abortion comments and other somewhat extreme comments that he made in the context of trying to win a Republican primary. He's also not a politician. So we've seen the way that, you know, he's he's sort of untested in that way. It's also possible Democrats have some additional dirt on him that we haven't learned about yet. And that's why they were so eager to push him forward as the candidate.

But in other ways, I do think he's kind of dangerous for them. I mean, he is cut from a similar cloth as Trump in terms of being this like, you know, not that Trump really was a self-made, but self-made businessman image. He does have this sort of populist positioning that especially in a state like Ohio could work out well. So in any case, Democrats placed a big bet. $2.7 million, I just saw, was the amount that they spent to elevate this guy. They got the candidate they wanted. Let's see how it works out for them. It was funny for me to watch because this is a time when you have J.E. Vance and Trump on the same side as Chuck Schumer, both kind of thinking that they are, he is the most electable candidate. I do

agree with you. If I were them, you're playing with fire here. I mean, you don't know. Look, last time, I think they are all riding high. And this is the problem with politics. Everything is recency bias. They are all riding high off of backing the Doug Mastriano's of the world and others from 2022. Now, don't get me wrong. It definitely worked out like they were right and I was wrong. I didn't think that was a very prudent strategy. But, you know, it's always a roll of the dice whenever it comes to people who are actually voting. So what if it ends up, you know, another thing I was thinking about is about the Senate Republican majority. Something that's come out of nowhere, Crystal, is Larry Hogan in Maryland, who's running for Senate. And he's actually leading in all the polls. That's a plus one

in the GOP category. So let's say that Bernie Moreno here wins and takes out a Democrat. And then let's look around the map and listen, Carrie Lake, she may have lost once. She could win again. We don't know. She could beat, what's his name, Ruben Gallego. It could come down to a percentage point. That's another Democratic seat, you know, or I guess independent, whatever Sinema is today. That goes in the Republican category. Now we're talking about 53, maybe 54, 55 seats for the Republicans that are in the Senate. That is a very, very, very different governing coalition than any time that we saw under Trump in his

first term around. So these are all things where they should be very careful and considered. That said, because there's not a lot of daylight between a lot of the Ohio Republicans on abortion, I do think that any of them are going to get hit with this no matter what. And it'll be a great test, actually, for that abortion standard of 2022 and in some of the referendums. Issue one, I did look it up. He was on the side of issue one. He came out pretty forcefully for the pro-life side there. And obviously they lost pretty big at the ballot box. Whether that's

going to carry over into the general, like we always say, who the hell knows? I think it could be a problem for him. I think it could be a problem. I mean, Sherrod Brown is an unusually strong politician in Ohio. He's probably one of the only Democrats that could credibly win the state at this point. That being said, again, it's different at a state level versus a federal level. And so is the fact his, you know, the way people feel about him locally, is that enough to overcome what has become a completely toxic Democratic brand in the state of Ohio? I will also say that, you know, some of the Biden things that did get passed, like the chips bill, the infrastructure bill, some of the push towards EVs and, you know, increase opening new manufacturing facilities with regards to that. Ohio has been one of the

states that has disproportionately benefited. Sherrod Brown is really running a campaign to tie himself to that increase in jobs in the state. And also, I mean, he's always been extremely pro-labor, even when that was like not cool. He really stood by unions. That's very popular in the state of Ohio. It is very, I used to live there. It is a very like populous state and kind of a little bit different than, you know, the more country club Republican brand that may dominate in other places. So we'll see. I think Sherrod Brown is planning to run his campaign basically on abortion rights and jobs and commitment to working people.

That is a combination that has certainly worked well for him in the past. As I said, Democrats think that they got the right candidate, that they have the best shot of beating, and we will see what happens on election day. That is hands down the best campaign he could run. I think he's the only guy who could possibly win, but as you said, it is still going to be a very, very tough election. On the issue of candidates as well, let's go to this next one. Mark Robinson, we talked about him previously. There was a question about whether he'd quoted, what was it, Hitler or not. I will defend him. Having read the full context of the quote, I do believe that he

was smeared by the media. That said, Mr. Robinson, I would in general abstain from quoting Mr. Hitler. That's just a general piece of advice. As they write here, Mark Robinson has, quote, has a long history of inflammatory statements. He has called for weaving conservative religious beliefs into the fabric of the government. Robinson has kind of been, it's kind of hard to explain, like a firebrand almost. Yeah, like firebrand is probably the best way to say it. I've been familiar with him for a while. I've seen him kind of bubble up in the state. Yeah, just, I always like to track like who's going viral amongst the right wing, the right wing kind of video ecosystem because, you know, they go on to win elections and then now the primaries. And now he's going to face

a major test in North Carolina. North Carolina is another very interesting one here because what we have is the gubernatorial race. Now, North Carolina at the federal level has been largely willing to go Republican. I think it was Obama won the state in 2008. But at the gubernatorial, the state level, the attorney general and all that, Crystal, they don't have really a problem electing Democrats. They've got a Democratic governor right now. Exactly. And isn't he facing the state, the attorney general? I'm not sure.

But my point is that at the state level, they don't have a problem electing Democrats. So that is where it will be a big question, too, because, you know, for all the talk here on the show about federal politics and all that, listen, I'm not saying it doesn't matter. It certainly does. But at a gubernatorial level, the state stuff, I mean, this all matters a lot too. And so for North Carolina, it's always been in that purplish category. And for Biden, you need everything you could possibly get. And this is the case too, where like, okay, interesting. Are these people who are totally endorsed by MAGA and all that, how are they going to do in an actual election against a very cookie cutter, normal Democrat in the state? That's a question as well. Yeah. And how do the

wildest characters that they nominate in these primaries translate over into the overall normal person impression of the Republican Party. Good point. Because in a lot of ways, this was their biggest problem in the 2022 midterms. It's not that the Democrats were so amazing or they were, you know, voters were super excited about Joe Biden and his party. But they looked at characters like Doug Mastriano and they looked at a lot of the other candidates that came out of those primaries who, by the way, by and large, were backed by Donald Trump. And they were repulsed in many instances so that seats like the ones in Pennsylvania, which were eminently winnable for Republicans, became, you know, not to use what is apparently now a very controversial

term, bloodbath for Republicans. Hey, don't go advocating for violence here on the show. So in any case, I think that's why these two individuals, Bernie Moreno, but even more to the point, Mark Robinson, who, listen, you can say the other quotes were taken out of context. There's plenty to work with there for this man saying really wild and out of the mainstream things. He also has extremely fringe positions vis-a-vis abortion, which he has worn on his sleeve and has no interest in walking away from, which will be anathema to a lot of people in a state like North Carolina, where these issues, you know, obviously at the state level, this is an incredibly present and important issue for a whole lot of voters. So that to me is the question is, do Republicans once again do themselves in by nominating these types of candidates who not only impact those

specific races that should be completely winnable for Republicans, but really stain the whole party in this sort of like, these are a bunch of fringe wackos that we want nothing to do with kind of a way. The other thing I'm paying attention to, we don't have an element for this, Pennsylvania. Remember David McCormick, who was defeated by Dr. Oz? He's very likely going to be the former hedge fund guy who worked for Ray Dalio, who was one of the biggest sellouts to China in American history. Secondary certainly shouldn't be important. And my big test for him is he always said, I could have beat John Fetterman, which I don't believe. And now he's going up against Bob Casey. So this is also a test on the other side of can the traditional normie Republican actually fare

well against, let's say, a traditional normie Democrat like Bob Casey in the overall general election. So I'm actually watching that race very closely because this is a non-MAGA person. And his whole case was, I'm a throwback to Mitt Romney type. It's like, well, can the Pat Toomey type Republicans still win in the state of Pennsylvania? That's going to be a big question as well. And interestingly, Pennsylvania has been one of the swing states where Joe Biden has held up better for whatever reasons than other swing states, at least according to the polling. All right. We have some interesting developments, interesting on the Trump legal front. So as we covered previously, Trump has been unable, despite extraordinary

efforts of going to 30 different insurance companies to secure the half a billion dollar bond that he needs to be able to put down in this case of his civil fraud suit and the judgment that went against him for nearly that amount of money. So this has led to a variety of Fox News personalities floating all kinds of ideas for how he could potentially come up with this money. And, you know, I don't want to make light of it because obviously it's an extraordinary sum of money. It could genuinely lead to some of his premier New York properties being seized by the state because he does not have the cash in the bank, because who does, to cover half a billion dollars. So here we have, to start with, Larry Kudlow asking Kevin O'Leary if he might personally float this amount of money to Donald Trump. Let's take a listen to that. Kevin O'Leary, I think this is where it's going to go. Now, I was wondering, if he can't get to the Supreme Court, will you loan him the $460 million?

You know. Just to help, in order to protect America's name. Think of it that way. To get the bond, he was able to get the $90-plus million from Chubb. Yeah. I don't know of a bond more than 90 million. I don't recall one. Yeah, you can't.

And so you need cash to back up the bond insurance. And so now we're talking about the terminology of seizing assets. That actually, that's foreign language to an American investor. They want due process. They want the appeal. That sounds like Venezuela. It sounds like Cuba. It's a really bad look for New York. But I think it's gone beyond New York now. Bipartisan participants and financial services managers are not OK with this and very getting very uncomfortable. And I think whether it's the Supreme Court that provides the adult supervision,

whether it's somebody else, we desperately need for this kid's party for the adults to get home. So notably does not respond directly to Larry. I don't think he's good for that half a billion dollars. Oh, no, I think he's probably good for it. I think he just doesn't want to pay it. Well, I mean, I don't think he's going to pony it up,

is what I mean. I got a soft spot for Kevin. He's got a great watch collection. He does a lot of good watch. He's got a great, he's got a lot of good watch content on YouTube if you're interested. I don't know really who this is. He's a Shark Tank guy. He's one of the Shark Tank dudes, right?

That's really all I know about him. He's kind of come out hard for Trump recently. Is that the idea? He's like a business guy. Like he was saying, he's attacking it from the, I've never seen a bond kind of thing. He likes to speak out about like, yeah, exactly. Like business finance. I know he has done a lot of business in New York. So I'm not going to go after his analysis there or whatever. All I would say is I think it is interesting that even his richest and wealthiest,

I wouldn't call him a backer here. Also, I do think Kevin is Canadian, so that's important. They, though, are, while they may decry the decision, I've seen others, Joe Lonsdale and others who are talking about this, very, very wealthy individuals. Nobody yet, though, is willing to actually pay the fine for the man. And that seems important. Yeah. And I would just say with regards to his analysis, you know, maybe we're not used to seeing people who are at that level of, you know, the top 0.01 percent of wealth seeing that liens put on their accounts and assets seized. But this is a very common occurrence for, you know, ordinary people who, you know, get behind on child support or behind on taxes. I mean, that's very commonplace. So it's not like, oh, my God, this has never happened before. This is Venezuela.

Tax, you know, back taxes, all these sorts of things can result in liens being put on your accounts or your pay being garnished or your assets being seized, et cetera. So this is not. That's true. You know, credit card companies garnish people's wages all the time. All they have to do is take you to court and they can put, yeah, they can literally, it only takes them a year and they can actually take money out of your paycheck. Yes. Which is crazy, in my opinion. Yes. That's a whole other. Indeed. Okay. So just to underscore what is actually going on here, because again, I don't want to make light of it.

It is a huge amount of money. It is really significant to Trump himself. Let's put this up on the screen from the AP. So this article goes into, yes, it is a very real possibility on the table that New York could seize Trump's assets. They say if Trump isn't able to pay, the state could levy and sell his assets, lien his real property, garnish anyone who owes him money, according to a Syracuse University law professor. Potential targets could include properties like his Trump Tower penthouse, Wall Street office building, and golf courses. Letitia James' office could also seek court permission to drain Trump's bank accounts and investment portfolios or sell off other assets like his planes, helicopters, or even his golf carts. They go on to say seizing assets is a common legal tactic when someone cannot access

enough cash to pay a civil penalty. Now, Trump does still have some avenues of appeal. And Letitia James has not yet indicated how aggressive she's going to be in moving to make good on this payment that is currently owed. So a lot of things that are up in the air there. Let's skip over the next one and go to our next Fox News personality with an innovative idea for how Trump may be able to pay this judgment amount. Laura Ingram says maybe he should crowdsource it and ask his supporters to fund this half a billion dollar judgment. Let's take a listen to that. A friend texted me today and said Trump should crowdfund this fine. Like if I think it's like one million supporters each gave him $450 that would cover

the fine. But in the meantime, what are his options here? An emergency stay from a federal court? Where does he go? So what do you think of that one, Sagar? Should he go to his supporters to crowdfund this judgment amount? See, this one, look, I have no problem with people asking rich people for money, but asking Trump people for money, but asking Trump supporters for money, that really pisses me off. And, you know, especially these Fox News people.

Laura herself is incredibly wealthy. I mean, she's been in the conservative, like, media complex for decades now. You know, from what I heard, she's done very, very well. It's like, okay, you shell it out then. Like, don't be asking grandmas and grandpas on Social Security

to pay for Trump's $450 million bond. That actually makes me very upset because the problem is it goes back to stop the steal and all the money, some $250 million that was raised on the backs of people. Listen, it is their money. They can do as they wish. But, you know, Trump was like, the election was stolen. I need you to support me. And they gave him a quarter billion and he didn't spend any of it on his elections. He ended up spending it on his Save America PAC. And in some cases, he's paying for his reelection. Legally, he can do as he pleases. I don't think that's right. I don't think it's right to be asking,

you know, a bunch of boomers mailing in checks and all these who may believe in Donald Trump. And in this case, it wouldn't even be campaign or election related. It would be literally related to his own personal finances. And I understand the investigation and all that obviously is political, but to have it be his personal benefit, it's not right. You know, so look, you want to ask your wealthy people, fine, but don't be asking normal folks. Cosign completely. And they really have been so exploited. Trump has tapped these people dry, number one, to the to the extent that, you know, other Republican candidates have really struggled with grassroots fundraising because Trump has just hit these lists over and over and over again. And that's becoming a problem now for him increasingly, where there just isn't enough money among

his sizable grassroots base to continue to fully fund his campaign, let alone the legal bills that he's been able to pay with political money as well. And then you also have the build the wall people. Oh yeah, that was horrible. People who were out there raising money from Trump supporters, claiming they're investing in some currency that's going to come become legal tender when Trump is realized. I mean, so much nonsense and grift has been directed to these people. This is the last thing that needs to happen. And I think your point is well said.

If Laura wants to, you know, put up a few million towards Trump's legal bills, she and some of her rich friends should feel absolutely free to do that. Put the last element up here, B5 from the New York Post. It's the New York Post, so take it for what it's worth. But they have some report from inside the Trump camp of how he is considering his options. And they said, increasingly, one thing that they're very seriously considering and maybe even leaning towards is simply doing nothing, letting the deadline for posting this bond pass and putting the ball in New York Attorney General Letitia James's court to decide if she's gonna actually seize Trump's bank accounts

or buildings, including Trump Tower. Of course, Trump Tower famously where he declared his 2016 presidential run, where he famously has his own personal penthouse. And the thinking is, number one, again, you're sort of putting the onus on her. I think Trump probably, it doesn't say this in the article, but probably feels he can use this to some sort of political effect. And then they feel confident that through the appeals process, this amount at least may get knocked down and then he could regain those assets. Now, there's actually no guarantees in that regard, because if the if Trump Tower, let's say, gets seized and sold off in a fire sale, the state doesn't owe Trump Tower back to Trump. They just owe the amount of money that they obtained from Trump Tower back to Trump. But according to the

New York Post, at least, this is an avenue that he is seriously considering, which would be, you know, a real wild development in terms of politics. I mean, this man's whole brand is based on his iconic brand and, you know, his name being plastered on these buildings, Trump Tower being the most famous of all of his properties. So that's why this truly is an extraordinary development that we're dragging here. Yeah, exactly. I mean, if he does, if she does take it, it will be very politically and financially significant for also, I think he lives there or at least maintained, I mean, has that famous penthouse with the gold toilet. Isn't he mostly think i know he's a florida resident but you

know with these rich folks they do six months in one day or whatever they have houses everywhere from what i know he had a penthouse apartment there the famous one like i said with the gold toilet the marble worthy of well and that penthouse is probably part of what got him in trouble here too because he wildly for some loan estimate, inflated the square footage and how much it would be worth. I mean, I'm talking by a ridiculous factor. It wasn't even close. So this was one of the issues that they went after him for. Let's go ahead and put this last piece up on the screen, B3, with regard to the Georgia case. So as we told you previously, there had been a question over whether there was a

disqualifying conflict of interest with Fannie Willis and her former, at least, lover who had been brought on as a special prosecutor and earned hundreds of thousands of dollars with regard to the prosecution of this case. So the decision came down from this judge that, no, it didn't rise completely to the level of conflict of interest. But this was enough of a problem that one or the other of them needed to resign. He resigned. Fannie Willis is still in place. But Trump is now, according to this report, able to appeal that ruling. So I'll read you a little bit of what Axios says here. They say, the judge overseeing former President Trump's Georgia election subversion case granted a pathway Wednesday for Trump to appeal his decision to allow Fulton County District Attorney Fannie Willis to remain

at the helm of the prosecution. Why it matters, they say, by granting a certificate of immediate review. Fulton County Judge Scott McAfee enabled Trump's lawyers to appeal the decision to the Georgia Court of Appeals before the start of a trial. McAfee's granted the defense's request for a review note in the court filing that other matters related to the case will go forward as planned. So it's not like everything stops while this review is being conducted, but nevertheless, a win for Trump and another crack at being able to slow or even completely undermine this case or get also Fannie Willis removed from the case. So that is, you know, significant development for him. Yeah, very, because the appeal, A, it takes more time. B, for Fannie Willis, this is going to

kick it to the appellate court. And all of this, remember, even if Trump would eventually get convicted, this is all going to matter even more on appeal again, because it's not like Trump has going to run out of money. So from what I understand, this is all going to matter even more on appeal again. It's not like Trump is going to run out of money. So from what I understand, this is just going to lengthen it even more significantly. And publicly, it still remains a blow to her in the overall investigation. Not to mention the fact that even if she does survive this, don't forget, she still has to re-grand jury six specific RICO charges before she's able to bring them in her trial against Trump. Specifically that one relating to the perfect phone. Well, I don't know how many perfect phone calls there are. This was one of the perfect phone calls, one of the most perfect. Let's talk about happiness. Let's talk about happiness. And does it even exist anymore here

in the United States? And to what extent? Let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. There was a very interesting report here from Yahoo News, and it was a write-up specifically about how the American dream now costs $3.4 million. And the overall way that they arrived at that math was that between marriage, two kids, homes, healthcare, cars, and education, an estimated $3.45 million over the course of a lifetime, a new Investopedia study has found. This is from December of 2023, but has actually been readjusted now at this point. They say that the cost of raising children in particular, just two to the age of 18, now totals $576,896, that the lifetime cost currently with the 10% down payment on average and a 30-year fixed rate mortgage of approximately 7%, which is where we're at right now, is $800,000.

That's actually possibly the most stunning part to me because it really shows us how the massive impact of interest rates can affect this. Car purchases, lifetime on average, given how people are spending, it's about $270,000, another very, very significant chunk. But let me tell you guys, the one that hurts more than any of this in the breakdown is average family premium cost, 39 years of annual for a family of four, $934,000. Just for health insurance. Just for health insurance.

Out of pocket. And the craziest part is that doesn't even include the hospital birth that they list here at the top. Right. Which is $5,700 because that's what people are paying out of their damn deductibles. Yeah, and that doesn't actually include your medical. That is just your premium. Yeah, just the premium not medical so insane it's funny because uh retirement in this is less than a lifetime health insurance

cost that is what outraged me actually most about this the top line figure you know we can debate and spend some time on that and a lot of this is fungible like you can you know you can buy cheaper cars you can buy a smaller house you can choose to go to state college and all that. But you really can't choose to not have health insurance in this country. That's one of the most fixed costs in this entire thing. It is the single biggest chunk of your overall lifetime expenses. And what do we know is that this currently is just based on 2018 and the 2020 costs. There's actually been an inflation, huge inflation,

in health insurance costs. Health insurance costs, inflation, far outstrips normal CPI inflation. And I haven't even mentioned food and cost of living and all this. So the likely number is probably higher. So the point of all this is just that the cost has gone significantly up from where it was previously. And then lo and behold, it turns out the U.S. has slid down on the ranking of overall national happiness. Let's go and put this up there on the screen. Finland, for some reason, we'll talk about this in a second, but let me focus on the U.S. part at least right now. The U.S. has now slipped from the top 20 of nations in overall happiness. But what is particularly noteworthy is that inside of the report, what we find is that it is largely attributable to young people. It's that the people who are

over the age of 30, their overall happiness ranking has not really gone. And by the way, this is all self-reported. Their overall happiness ranking has either remained static or has gone up, but that the drop in the young happiness has actually slid all of the U.S. below the top 20 for the first time in quite a long time. So they surveyed 143 countries. The unhappiest country, by the way, is Afghanistan, which we obviously had a significant hand in. Way to go, guys. The U.S. ranked 10th for people who are 60 and older. They still feel pretty good about things. But 62nd for people under 30. 62nd for people under 30. They quoted an economist in one report who said, I have never seen such an extreme change, talking about the drop in happiness

among younger people. This has all happened in the last 10 years. It's mainly in English language countries. There isn't this drop among young people in the world as a whole. And this report I looked at also talked to a young person who was not feeling too happy, who said, listen, we have less to look forward to. In the future, there's going to be climate change that will affect the way we live. There's less of a clear cut trajectory for our life paths because for so long, it was so easy just to know you could get married, have your 2.5 kids, pay for your house. Now that path is a lot more closed. And going back to some of those components that make up the $3.5 million that you need just to do the basics of the, like, you know, middle class American dream life. Have a house, go to college, get married, have kids, be able to retire, have health insurance.

Those pieces, those core components have gone up in price wildly over the past several decades. So, you know, we've talked a lot about inflation in terms of near term cost of living, those things obviously incredibly important. But part of why you see this overall trajectory of people saying we're on the wrong path, of people saying the American dream is no longer reality, of young people feeling so depressed about the current state of their lives and their possibility for the future, is that long-term, massive price spike in education, health care, and housing that has made life so much more precarious for younger generations. Yeah. So again, I mean, just to be 60 seconds, some of the countries that beat us are Guatemala,

Bulgaria, and Saudi Arabia, which is pretty crazy, especially Saudi Arabia, because if you're a female in Saudi Arabia, you don't even have any rights. And it's like, you're happier than people are here in America. That doesn't sound right. Well, look, what we can glean from this is that I think almost all of it comes back to housing. And that is one of the—just because housing is the biggest expense you're going to make in your entire life. So if you're not able to make that— Apparently, health care is more. Well, yes.

So housing and health care. Yeah. I guess housing because it's the biggest upfront cost you're going to make in your entire life, right, in terms of the largest purchase. Unable to save for that. That is what delays marriage, people having kids. America is one of the very few countries in the world where people report having wanting more children than they're able to afford. In some countries like Japan and others, it's not like they don't have the money to have kids. They just genuinely don't want to have children. But America

is one of those places where people want to have 2.2, between 2.5 kids, which is replacement rate. And so they just simply can't afford it. And we just read everybody, the numbers there, and they feel it would be irresponsible or they wouldn't be able to have a reasonable quality of life if they were able to do so. I have always found that very, very sad statistic because it's one of those where that's the exact reason why people are supposed to work hard. It's not supposed to have nice cars or whatever. It's supposed to be able to raise kids, have family. That's largely where you're going to derive the vast majority of happiness in your life. And there's reams of data to back all of that up. The problem that we can see inside of this is both from the very, very early level. And this is where I'm curious to

what you think. Everyone keeps blaming social media, but I'm like, you know, I just think social media is a reflection of what people accurately feel. It's not TikTok, Instagram reels and other things that go viral about people being unable to afford life. That's not a fake circumstance. Like, in my opinion, it goes viral and it gets shared because people can resonate with the themes and, you know, kind of what people are talking about. There's a big debate right now as to whether it's causal in terms of social media, but I still genuinely believe that it's very just reflective of what the actual living conditions are. I mean, when you look at the fact that young people around the world have social media,

and they're not all seeing this precipitous decline and how they feel about, you know, their life and their level of happiness, I think that is, you know, pretty decent proof in your direction. I mean, I would be remiss if I didn't point out that consistently places like Finland, other Nordic countries, you know, Denmark, Iceland is another one that does well in these happiness rankings. These are all social democracies where things like you're not going to be paying a million bucks over the course of your lifetime for health insurance. You're going to have health care things like you're not going to be paying a million bucks over the course of your lifetime for health insurance. You're going to have health care universally. It's not going to be something that you worry about. They have more of a solid social

safety net, more subsidies in terms of, you know, housing, making housing more affordable and paying more attention to that as well. So I don't think it's an accident that those are consistently the places where people self-report the highest levels of happiness. I also think we'd be remiss if we didn't point out that part of this, you know, catastrophic decline for young people and self-reported happiness also coincides with COVID. And, you know, we know that that had a tremendous impact on levels of anxiety and overall mental health for young Americans. So, you know, I don't think that I don't think we can ignore that piece as well, even as I do think that these long term economic trends are incredibly significant in terms of how people feel about the direction of

their own lives in the direction of the country. Yeah, no, that's a good point. I hadn't thought about that. I think you're absolutely right. OK, this is the only thing about Finland. I've been in Finland. Man, Finland is dark as hell. People there are not smiling. I'm just not sure I buy it. Like maybe they self-report happiness, but from having traveled all the Nordic countries, these are some of the most like closed off folks that you will ever see in your entire life. They even, they joke about it, about how Americans are too smiley and they talk all the time. And so I'm like, are you guys really that happy? Like, be honest. Leave us in the comments. Also, the food, let's all be real. There's not a scrap of flavor in any of the food that's up there.

That's the power of social democracy. It can overcome bad food, terrible climate. Rotten fish, goulash. All day long in the winter. That's how powerful social democracy is, Sarah. No, I don't think so. I would say there is some argument about that, though, Crystal, about whether we could even have. I mean, this is a more important question. It kind of relates back to immigration. But, you know, these are very highly homogenous societies where, look, what are the real differences when you all look the same, talk the same language? You have very, very low levels of immigration.

In terms of their tax and capital, in terms of their innovation and all that, what's the last thing Finland really invented? So I'm not going to put it down and say that that's not a worthy model. The question is, can it ever actually succeed in a country of 330 million? Because we have social security. It's one of the most, it is one of the most successful and popular universal social safety net programs in history. And I would argue the exact counter that when you have the level of rapacious, predatory, state-captured capitalism that creates this zero-sum seeming game and high stakes, that's exactly what exacerbates and opens up an opportunity for unscrupulous, self-serving politicians to stoke these divides. Where if you have a social safety net where people feel more secure and more stable, then they're less susceptible to those type of divide and

conquer tactics, which are so effective and so ever present in terms of our politics. I don't even disagree. It's more just a question of like what is America? Like for example, the largest company in Finland by market cap is like 42 billion. That's a freaking joke. This is not a country- And that's because they have free healthcare? No, I have no idea why. I don't even think it's necessarily because they have free healthcare.

There's a lot of crappy European countries that also have very, very little business. My only question is about America is a very dynamic country, make a lot of money here. People like entrepreneurialism. It's a huge country. There's 330 million people, people from all over the world. We have very different ideas. We have very, you know, Finnish politics. I'm not 100% familiar, but as I understand it, in general, the way that ours functions and the way that we kind of go at it like that, it doesn't really exist in the same way in a lot of these places. I don't know, though, whether that's because of our economics or not, right? So even in times of high economic prosperity, I was looking at this fascinating graph. The top earning cities in America in 1949 were like Cleveland, Detroit. It was all in the American heartland from industrial

manufacturing from the post-World War II era. And I was thinking about how different of a country it was whenever the richest people in America were also the people who actually produced stuff. This is all just kind of me trying to wrap my head around whether any of this is even possible in America. I lived in Denmark. It's a tiny ass little country. They don't have a lot of people there. I mean, but also you're ignoring the fact that like the time period in American history, when probably we had the highest levels of self-reported happiness was during the new deal. And when you had, you know, and partly this was just because of post world war two global circumstances that we overwhelmingly benefited from. But you had a middle class that was expanding.

You had people who felt like they were able to achieve the American dream. And this idea of we're able to work hard and we're able to get ahead was more present and seemed more realistic. And the numbers in terms of the cost of housing then versus now, the cost of health care then versus now, the cost of education then versus now also bear that out, not know, the numbers in terms of the cost of housing then versus now, the cost of health care then versus now, the cost of education then versus now also bear that out. Not to mention the way that wages have not even come close to keeping up with the increased productivity of the American worker. So, you know, of course we can. That's why I'm not advocating.

You're right that there's a balance. Yeah. Right. advocating, you're right that there's a balance, right? You don't want to lose that creative spark and that innovation that at its best we all, you know, have so much pride in as Americans. You don't want to lose that. That's why I'm not like out here asking for communism. I understand. That's why I think social democracy is, you know, has proven to be a good balance of some of those competing priorities of making sure everybody's good, especially in a wealthy, prosperous society, but also allowing for innovation, creativity,

and that like, you know, fruitful hum that we, again, at our best get here in America. That's fair. One thing we should steal from the Finns is sauna. Finnish saunas are awesome. I hate saunas. Oh man, no. Hey, everybody. Anyway, we'll talk about it later. I just, I, listen, I'm a sweaty person to start with. I don't need a freaking sauna. Oh, man. No. Hey, everybody. Anyway, we'll talk about it later. Listen, I'm a sweaty person to start with. I don't need a freaking sauna. That's like my worst nightmare. No, but the Finnish model is great. It's like you get hot, then you get cold, then you get hot, then you get cold again.

It's a lot of fun. If you ever go to Finland, I highly recommend it. Finns, you can keep that part to yourself. At the same time yesterday, there was a major hearing here in Washington about the Biden impeachment, and it pretty much went off the rails in every respect that you can possibly imagine. The Democratic side, on the Republican side, some of the things that we did not learn, but there were at least some good soundbites that we could show you.

First and foremost was Tony Bobulinski, the infamous Hunter Biden business associate, testifying, sparring with some of the members of Congress on the Democratic side. Let's take a listen. Yet the same people preaching this mantra know better. They continue to lie directly to the American people without hesitation and remorse. Rep Dan Goldman and Jamie Raskin, both lawyers, and Mr. Goldman, a former prosecutor with the SDNY from New York, will continue to lie today in this hearing and then go straight to the media to tell more lies. Hunter Biden's defense attorney, Abby Lowell, weaponizes letters to Congress to try to smear

my name and mistake the cold hard facts in an attempt to save his powerfully connected client and his father. I challenge Mr. Lowell to make those claims on national television so he can be held accountable for his lies. Come to order. Mr. Bobulitsky, Mr. Bobulitsky, please proceed. Please proceed. I apologize for the disruption from the minority. Okay. Well, Mr. Chairman, save his time, but he called members of this committee liars.

And I just want to know whether the order and decorum requirements of house rule 11 apply to witnesses appearing before the committee. Uh, does it apply or does it not? There's decorum from the members. We've asked for that. There's no language that I'm aware of pertaining to a witness. Thank you. That was a good taste, Crystal. What the whole day was like. But look, listen, Bobulinski, we've known about him since what, 2020? He did the Tucker Carlson interview back in Fox. If everybody wants to remember, his claims have been wide out there to see. This is part of the problem with this overall hearing is almost all the information has been publicly available now for two years. And I'm not saying it's not even important, but they have not been able to prove from there and a smoking gun of a monetary connection between Hunter Biden and

between Joe Biden, even with the subpoena power and all the others that have come to light. The best that they have been able to find are the IRS whistleblowers that came forward that's resulted in a tax investigation against Hunter, but they have not been able to put a name on a single wire transfer. I mean, Crystal, we were talking – I mean, in a certain sense too. Look, the information is there. Hunter is blatantly and outrageously corrupt. He benefited off of his father's name. Whether his dad profited or not, it's not 100 percent certain.

He definitely knew about it, and he definitely lied about some of his previous interactions. That seems to be the best that we're going to get out of this. Yeah. The other witness, by the way, was some dude who's serving time in an Alabama prison for securities fraud. Was it Lev Parnas? No, Jason Galanis, another former associate of Hunter Biden. You know, gives you a sense of the type of characters he was doing business with. Which is bad.

It's definitely bad. Which is bad. I mean, look, there's a lot going on here. No one would welcome a genuine investigation into corruption that goes on both sides of the aisle more than myself. I entirely welcome the notion of taking serious the idea of corruption, even if, because the Supreme Court has ruled that actual illegal corruption is so incredibly narrow, even if it doesn't meet that standard, it doesn't mean that we shouldn't know and care about the fact that Hunter Biden and James Biden, these other characters, were trading on the Biden name and basically, you know,

promising Joe Biden access and giving Joe Biden access in certain, you know, promising Joe Biden access and giving Joe Biden access in certain, you know, documented instances doesn't mean we shouldn't care about it. But a couple of things have happened here. I mean, first of all, the Republicans are obviously completely hypocrites because they don't care when it's Jared Kushner and Trump or Trump and Live Golf or these other entanglements or taking money into his hotel or whatever. They don't give a shit. So they're obviously hypocritical. And so their claims claims don't have a lot of they don't feel particularly weighty when the hypocrisy is so blatant. That's number one. Number two, because they made such extraordinary and unproven claims about Joe Biden directly getting cash that have never borne out, they set the bar

extremely high for themselves. And, you know, even I think by their own standards are completely failing to meet that bar. Another thing that I would say here is, you know, I perhaps it would be a better world if this was the number one public concern about Joe Biden. But this isn't even the top issue that if Republicans are just looking at political gain to press vis-a-vis Joe Biden, like, you know what the problems are. You know that the biggest one of them is just that people feel like he's too frickin' old

and they're not sure that he can handle another four years. They're not really buying the idea that he's the head of some elaborate corrupt crime family. And it is a little dissonant with the other messaging about him being too old and too infirm, which I think lands more with what people are experiencing and their biggest concerns about Joe Biden at this point. Let's just say if corruption was the number one issue in this campaign, I'm not sure that would go well for Donald Trump either, in addition to, you know, all the rest of what I've laid out here. So it's kind of farcical. I mean, I think, sorry, you tell me because you're more in touch with this. It seems like even the

Republican base is kind of frustrated with the lack of their there in terms of these hearings, their lack of inability to actually directly prove those links and find that smoking gun, given what was promised to them at the beginning of this. I can play this out of order, guys. If we could go ahead and play D3, that kind of hits home what you're talking about. This is a Newsmax host who's getting very upset with Jim Jordan being like, hey, guys, when is this actually going to go somewhere? Let's take a listen. Is impeachment the next step? Are you going to hold a vote on the House floor? I know it's up to Mike Johnson, but the margins, Congressman, you lost Kevin McCarthy. Ken Buck left last week. George Santos was ousted.

Unless you get Democratic votes, this is going to be real tough. So it kind of seems like you're chasing your tail at this point because this is not going to go anywhere. No, fair question. And we got a small majority. Everyone understands that, not just on this issue, but on a host of issues. Our job is under the Constitution is to do oversight of the executive branch. We are doing that. We're going to continue to do that. There's no time limit in the Constitution on how long you can do an investigation. So as you can see, the Newsmax host was not very happy there with Mr. Jordan.

He's like, hey, what's actually going on? And I do think some of the Republican base feels that way. And this is part of the issue. I do think overpromising was a big one. A lot of it comes back to, I think a lot of it is just deep frustration that people are not willing to take the Hunter Biden laptop story more seriously. And look, I don't even necessarily disagree. I think it should have gotten its due, you know, at the time in terms of actually talking about the corruption allegations. But the truth is that this has now been before the American people now for quite some time. And it seems, unfortunately, maybe because of the Trump factor, maybe because they haven't been able to prove a direct thing with Biden, that it has not been able to actually penetrate anything beyond kind of the Fox News ecosystem. On the other side of the coin, though,

Crystal, is Mr. Jared Moskowitz. This is a Democratic congressman. And this is a continued strategy, right, is to tie any of these questions into Russiagate and to try to saying that you're some sort of Putin puppet. Here is the Democratic congressman who is donning a Vladimir Putin mask ahead of the hearing, trying to talk to reporters and saying that James Comer, the head of the committee, is in Putin's pocket. Let's take a listen. Congressman, can you explain why you're wearing? I just came to thank James Comer for taking all of our intelligence and using it in the committee.

Maybe he can come see the technology in our grocery stores. Thank you. Congressman, I think his behavior is kind of mature. So he's got the Putin Halloween mask on, Crystal. I hate everything and everyone. That's got to be one of the more humiliating things that she's ever done. What a hellscape. What a hellscape of a political system this is. Like, how embarrassing.

This was why I was so, like, distraught. The idea that Paul Manafort was going to be brought back onto the— Oh, because of all this? Trump can be—because it's just—I mean, the Russiagate, it just never ends. Like, are you a child wearing a Putin mask? What are you doing? Even some of the mainstream reporters there were like, a child wearing a Putin mask? What are you doing? Even some of the mainstream reporters there were like, isn't this a little immature? Congressman, don't you think this is a little immature?

I'm like, yeah, definitely. Anyway, so that was the main result. Doesn't seem like it's going to go much further. I know that there's been a vote or whatever on the impeachment investigation, I know, within the House of Representatives. But unless they come up with something soon, this is probably going to be the high watermark of the overall thing. All right. We've got a lot of developments to get to with regard to Israel and especially with regards to the Biden administration's response to Israel. So let's put this first piece up on the screen. A report from Haaretz that the Biden administration is supposedly split

on whether or not to suspend arms sales to Israel ahead of what they're describing as a deadline on Sunday. Now, that deadline has to do with this letter that the Biden administration was pressured into requiring Israel to sign certifying that they are going to use these weapons and are using these weapons in accordance with international law and that they are not blocking humanitarian aid. In other words, that it is actually legal for the U.S. to continue these arms sales because to do so, if they are blocking humanitarian aid or if they are not, which we've all seen the reality of what's going on there, if they are not abiding by international law, that is illegal under our own laws. So they sent the letter from Yoav Galant, the defense minister

of Israel. They sent the letter saying, yes, of course, we're following the laws, blah, blah, blah. And now the U.S. has to certify that that is the case. So let me read you a little bit of this report. They say that Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who is planning to visit Israel tomorrow, has until Sunday to approve Israel's stance. That stance was delivered earlier this week to the U.S. ambassador in Israel, Jack Lew, or the U.S. will immediately suspend weapons transfers to its close ally. We've already had some fallout around the world of other countries that have already suspended weapons shipments in different regards. So we had a group of Danish non-governmental organizations that said last week they would sue Denmark in a bid to end that country's arms

exports to Israel. They cited concerns about crimes against Palestinian civilians. Last month, a Dutch court ordered the Netherlands to stop exporting parts for F-35 fighter jets to Israel, citing concerns the parts were being used to violate international law. Officials from three State Department bureaus, Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, Population Refugees and Migration, and the Office of Global Criminal Justice, as well as USAID, have all, according to this report, expressed deep skepticism about the idea that Israel is, in fact, in compliance. Israel's failure to allow a surge of humanitarian assistance into Gaza, they say, despite repeated commitments, remain a key driver of pessimism. And they also have an interesting quote here from Schumer that I wanted to take note of. In an interview with The Times, he added that without U.S. support, Israel's future could well be over, which I thought was kind of extraordinary given Schumer's overwhelming

past commitment to the state of Israel. So, Sagar, I don't know if this is real, if there really is a schism here, if there really are people who are at a high level pushing for not certifying Israel's letter and commitment and actually suspending weapons sales. But if they did go in that direction, which, again, I will believe when I see because we've seen the unconditional support that's been provided thus far. But if they did go in that direction, there's no doubt that would be quite significant. I think what they would do, and this would be the smart play, is you would try to push for a ceasefire, and then you would do it post-ceasefire after they don't necessarily need it, perhaps as a pressure valve to try and say that you should not re-continue hostilities. There was an interesting quote you found, Crystal, in this Mother Jones piece. I was actually really struck by it. If we can put it up there on the screen. It was actually a quote from a retired Israeli major general,

Itzhak Brick, where he tells Mother Jones, quote, all of our missiles, the ammunition, the precision guided bombs, all the airplanes and bombs, it's all from the US. The minute they turn off the tap, you can't keep fighting. You have no capability. This is more significant than I had thought because I had thought that the Israelis had is more significant than I had thought, because I had thought that the Israelis had more native capacity than I had understood. But what they lay out is that while the Israelis do have, let's say, artillery shells, unguided bombs and all of that, all of their precision munitions actually do come from the US. And that some of these dumb bombs, and quote unquote, largely their use has come either from running dry

and not having yet been replenished by America. So I didn't realize that so much of the high tech capacity of the IDF is actually backed by America. I knew it was some, and I knew it was significant, but I didn't say, didn't think it was quote,

all of our missiles, all of the ammunition, all of the bombs, all of the airplanes is all from the US. Yeah. And I mean, so the idea that, oh, we can't really do,

Israel's a sovereign country. Even if we did cut off weapons, oh, we can't really do Israel's a sovereign country, even if we did cut off weapons shipments, it wouldn't really make that big of a difference. That's just not true. And even if it were true, it still would behoove us to try to put pressure on Israel to end this absolute onslaught that has killed at least 30,000 Palestinians and has led to overwhelming levels of, you know, imminent famine and actual deaths from starvation now in at least about two dozen cases. And so that's what this administration is facing. They were sort of pressured by a group of senators into forcing Israel to issue this certification.

And now in the face of, we've been getting months for months reports about potential levels of famine, potential levels of starvation, et cetera. We've just gotten a few more that have gone into specifics about the way that Israel is using starvation as a weapon of war.

And we also have the images of young children and babies who are literally starving to death now. And we've, you know, come to this point of pathetic desperation where the U.S. is now, you know, airdropping in aid as if into some hostile territory rather than territory that is basically, you know, completely run by our supposed ally and floating this boondoggle port situation. More on that in a moment. But, you know, it's come to the point where even Secretary of State Antony Blinken has to acknowledge the reality of the starvation that is unfolding on the ground. Take a listen to what he had to say recently. According to the most

respected measure of these things, 100 percent of the population in Gaza is at severe levels of acute food insecurity. That's the first time an entire population has been so classified. We also see, again, according to, in this case, the United Nations, 100%, the totality of the population is in need of humanitarian assistance. So how, Sager, do you say something like that? 100% of the population in Gaza is at severe levels of acute food insecurity. How can you possibly say and acknowledge that reality and then turn around and certify that, oh, Israel is allowing humanitarian aid and Israel's in compliance with our laws. They may well do it. Like I said, I'll believe it when I see it with regards to them taking any

real action against Israel versus just these rhetorical shifts. But it seems to me that, you know, it's very difficult to claim they're in compliance with our laws and deserving of these weapons sales when you have an entire population for the first time that is at severe levels of acute food insecurity and in certain instances actually starving to death. Yeah, it was interesting that this happened within Canada. Let's go ahead and put this up there, please, on the screen where they say that Canadians will actually be stopping arms sales. Well, at least consideration, this is from the foreign minister after there was actually a non-binding motion that had passed through parliament that called on them to do so. Very

significant for a couple of reasons. Obviously, Canada is not Western European. Most importantly, though, NATO member, somebody that, especially with the Trudeau administration, has cooperated pretty significantly with the Biden administration and does demonstrate as well kind of a split in the overall Western posture towards Israel. Even if there are some crazy anti-Semitism laws or whatever on the books in Europe, those governments are handling this very, very differently than we are. Yeah, it is noteworthy, not because of the overall, you know, amount of the arms sales coming from Canada. They're not that significant a player in that regard. But still, that such a close ally of ours would basically, you know, look at the situation and say, we can't do this any longer.

That is obviously noteworthy. So we'll see where that goes. I just also have to note that it's not like we've just stood by while Israel does these things. I mean, we have helped them with the starvation policy, in particular by, at their request, immediately defunding UNRWA, which is the number one aid organization on the ground. And, you know, we did that on the day that the ICJ ruling came down, acknowledging, you know, it's plausible in South Africa as a decent enough case to continue this pursuit of whether or not Israel is in fact committing genocide. So we haven't just been observers here. We've been active participants in this horror that's

unfolding of using starvation as a weapon of war, total collective punishment of the entire, entire civilian population. And by the way, since that ICJ ruling came down, which no, did not call for a ceasefire, but called on Israel to cease any actions that are contributing to this finding a potential plausible genocide, that the number of aid trucks and the amount of aid entering has actually fallen dramatically. And you also have now Israel over the objections of the U.S. targeting some of the people who've been really key in distributing the aid on the ground and specifically Gaza police officers. Now they'll say, oh, well, they're Hamas. Yeah, because Hamas was the government. But the U.S. had asked them to stop targeting these civil society workers who are critical for helping to distribute what little aid is getting in.

And that has not happened. In fact, if anything, they have stepped up the targeting of those individuals on top of, of course, the massacres that we've seen, like the Flower Massacre, of directly targeting starving Gazans who are going to try to obtain what aid they can. There was an extraordinary report in the Washington Post summed up quite well, I think, by Dave DeCamp of antiwar.com. Great website, by the way, like libertarian or right-leaning anti-war website that I highly recommend to you guys regardless of where you are on the political spectrum. Let's go ahead and put this up on the screen and I'll read Dave's assessment of the Washington Post report, which really was quite stunning. So this Washington Post report attempted to go back to October 7th and basically look at how we ended up, the U.S. ended up in the place it is now. And at this point, undeniable and manifest failures of the Biden administration's policy to say nothing about

its immorality. So Dave writes, Biden administration officials knew back in October, October 27th to be specific, that Israel was bombing buildings in Gaza without having solid intelligence that they were military targets and continue to provide full support for Israeli military operations anyway. So we knew, October 27th, we knew that Israel was indiscriminately bombing without solid intelligence. And yet you remember the language and the rhetoric and the policy support that was levied behind Israel at that point and continues to be to this day. Let me just continue reading this, guys.

They say the report said that a briefing took place at the White House on October 27th, three weeks into that brutal Israeli military campaign due to the sheer destruction in Gaza. It was clear Israel was bombing the strip indiscriminately. And a report that we covered extensively here from Plus 972 Magazine published in November revealed Israel was actually intentionally hitting civilian targets. Israeli intelligence sources told 972 that Israel targeted what it called power targets, which include civilian infrastructure, such as high-rise apartment buildings, banks, universities, other public buildings. The sources said the Israeli military would also approve strikes that kill large numbers of civilians in an attempt to

target one Hamas member. Biden officials also acknowledged during that October 27th meeting that Israel had no clear plan on how to defeat Hamas. So think about that. They knew that this idea of, well, we're hunting Hamas was bullshit from the early days of this war. Quote, we never had a clear sense that the Israelis had a definable and achievable military objective. A source familiar with the meeting told the Post, quote, from the very beginning, there's been a sense of us not knowing how the Israelis were going to do what they said they were going to do. U.S. intel has acknowledged since that Hamas is not going away. The annual threat assessment that was released publicly by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence that we also covered here on Breaking Points this month said Israel, quote, probably will face lingering armed resistance from Hamas for years to come. Despite the lack of a realistic goal and massive civilian casualties,

President Biden still continues to provide unconditional military aid for the slaughter. Since October 7th, his administration has approved over 100 arms deals for Israel. So bottom line, they knew. They knew the hunt for Hamas was bullshit. They knew civilians were being targeted from the very early days. And it did not stop them from shipping 100 different times, 100 weapon sales, voting down, you know, vetoing UN ceasefire resolutions, providing overwhelming diplomatic cover and support and rhetorical support to Israel. And one last thing, Sagar, that was not in that particular report about this Washington Post piece, but that was also very noteworthy with regard to the raid on al-Shifa, that you'll recall the Biden administration greenlit. And that very day when they came out and said, oh, we agree with the Israeli intelligence with regard to al-Shifa. And we think that there is this command and control Hamas node under the hospital. That was the very day that the first raid of al-Shifa

occurred. Well, Senator Chris Van Hollen in this Washington Post piece who had received a classified briefing about that U.S. intelligence on al-Shifa said, quote, there were important and subtle differences between what Biden officials were saying publicly and what the intelligence actually showed, quote, I did find there to be some disconnect between the administration's public statements and the classified findings. In other words, the Biden administration lied on behalf of Israel about what our intelligence said about that supposed never proven Hamas command and control node in order to give Israel the green light to go ahead and raid that hospital. That has led to numerous, at this point, I couldn't even say how many hospital raids, including we've just had our fourth raid of

al-Shifa that we covered this week. I encourage people to go and read this entire thing. It's very well written. John Hudson, one of the reporters on there is a very good guy. He covers the State Department has for a long time. It's a very excellent piece because it outlines exactly why there's so much of a disconnect between public and private outside of the political. The overall strategy that they are now acknowledging is failure is that the bear hug strategy allows you to be close if you back somebody up, and that will then let them listen to you because you're holding them close and you're actually sticking with them as opposed to if you criticize them from the outset, then they're going to, they're not going to listen to you from the beginning. But what they

demonstrate in the piece is that step by step by step by step is that the bear hug, even with the bear hug was being taken advantage of by the Israeli side, but was not being listened to. And that in the end, what happened is that Biden himself ends up looking foolish. One of the ways you can really see that right now is Netanyahu just losing it over Schumer. I mean, apparently he's been berating him behind the scenes. Netanyahu actually addressed the Senate Republican conference this morning, which by the way, John Fetterman asked to sit in on, but that's a whole other separate conversation. In that meeting, he berated Chuck Schumer and allied himself even more with the Republican Party. And, you know, let's be honest, it's not like Schumer called for anything substantively different. So my only point

is that the bear hug strategy is met with the same contempt at an analytical policy level, brass tacks, as opposed to the same critical level and withholding the only thing they do seem, at least the only thing they really seem to understand is actual strength, which has not yet been tried by any administration, by any real political entity in the U.S. Not for a while anyway, certainly not under this administration. Let's get to this next piece, which is incredibly significant with regard to this port boondoggle situation put this up on the screen so uh bb is apparently floating hey you know what we could use that port for a little uh ethnic cleansing so that gazans could leave let me read this

tweet specifically netanyahu in the foreign affairs committee in israel said we're looking into how to distribute the aid in gaza through non-local entities because Hamas failed the attempts to distribute it through local entity. Of course, this is bullshit, but anyway, we'll put that aside. Private companies are also being investigated. This is all because they are defunding UNRWA and trying to destroy UNRWA. As far as the state of Israel is concerned, there is no obstacle for the Gazans to leave. Maybe even the port they are building could be used for this. But there are no countries in the world that are ready to receive them. Yeah, countries not super excited about participating in your ethnic cleansing plan here. know if you saw this, you probably did, Mitt's reports that as much as Biden floated this port situation as like his idea and this great humanitarian assistance to the Palestinian

civilians, the idea actually came from the Israelis and from Netanyahu himself. So this gives you some insight into why they were keen for us to build this temporary port, which is going to take months, which is going to take months, which is going to take somewhere around a thousand U.S. service members who are going to be put at risk, untold amount of dollars, and is not even going to come close to solving the problem, which is the fact that babies are starving to death right now. That's what they want. They want us to take them.

They want us to be responsible for occupying for, I mean, remember the Wall Street Journal, they wrote a whole article. They were like, hey, America, you guys should take all these refugees from Gaza and then we'll figure it out. You know, you, this are literal members of the Knesset who wrote this openly. And they said that we should occupy the place and that we should take responsibility for them. That's what pisses me off the most about this. It's not even humanitarian because as he said, people are either starving. We're not helping in the future. we're footing the bill, our people are at risk. It's a boondoggle and it's just helping, at least in the interim, you know, kind of helping accomplish their overall strategy.

So the whole thing is just totally ridiculous. And what, again, does it say about a prime minister who was willing to just say this out in the open about how, hey, maybe you guys can take them or you can facilitate her? It's like, what, we're going to ship people out on U.S. Navy vessels? To where? On your behalf? Like, no, no, no, no, no. That's not how this is going to go. Well, it may be how it's going to go, but it's not how I want it to go.

If it were up to me, I would say no. Yeah. At the same time, the level of contempt that's being telegraphed from this administration towards people who have, who are many and who are a majority of Joe Biden supporters, by the way, at this point, who have issues with their policy is really breathtaking. Here's Karine Jean-Pierre. Just look at her affect, listen to the answer, but also look at her affect while she is fielding this question about people who have objections to Joe Biden's policy of unconditional support of Israel-tanklism. Majority of Palestinian American, Arab American and Muslim organizations that the White House

reached out to for a meeting this week rejected the invitation. So what is the White House strategy on this? And are there plans for the president to directly engage with these communities? So, look, the president, as you know, has had an opportunity to meet with members of that community not too long ago, leaders of that community, the Arab American community, the Muslim American community, not too long ago. And so, look, what I will say is we understand that this is a difficult time, that this is a painful time. We understand that the events of October 7th that killed more than 1,200 souls, right, took more than 1,200 souls in Israel, and also took Hamas, the terrorist organization, also, as we know, took hostage more than 200 people.

And what that led to, that war that led to, is incredibly painful. We understand that. So, I mean, this response that led to, is incredibly painful. We understand that. So, I mean, this response was so bad on so many levels. First of all, she's practically rolling her eyes. And keep in mind, again, 50% of Joe Biden 2020 voters think this is a genocide. 50%. Okay. And that was, by the way, that poll is now, you know, at least a month old. I would be very curious what the numbers are at this point, given what we've seen unfold. She's flipping through the papers.

She can barely be bothered. She looks bored. She's annoyed. Like I said, she's practically rolling her eyes. And then she can't even offer anything about, you know, how they take this serious, how they're going to win people back. She can't offer anything, even a word about Palestinian civilian death and that loss of life and how it's wholly unacceptable. So like I said, the level of content that continues to be telegraphed here is just really wild. It's very odd. I think, look, I think that the eye roll just comes from, they're like, they don't want to deal with this anymore.

They're just like, we want this to go away. We don't want to talk about it. We don't want this to be a problem for us. And that's, I think one thing that the Israelis and the Biden administration, all of them have underestimated is that these clips are not local. Like they go viral. And that moment went very, very viral. I think for the exact reasons that you're talking, part of the reason why we highlighted here was because it was because of the indifference and they just don't seem to understand where that disconnect is, especially for their voters. And that's where it's becoming a political problem. Yeah, absolutely. So the last piece we wanted to put up here, because this is relevant to this whole conversation about like Israel so upset about Chuck Schumer

interviewing meddling in their domestic politics. All right, put this up on the screen. Haaretz reports on an Israeli influence operation that directly targeted U.S. lawmakers with regards to Hamas and UNRWA specifically. The subhead here says hundreds of fake accounts amplified three mysterious, quote unquote, news sites to advance Israeli interest. Their target, U.S. Democratic lawmakers. The number one target, by the way, of this influence operation apparently was Richie Torres. You know, very interestingly, the majority of the posts were targeted not just at Democratic lawmakers or even just at, you know,

insane pro-Israel acts like Reggie Torres. It was actually targeted very specifically at Black Democratic lawmakers because there was this, you know, the census borne out by, if you look at who was signed on to ceasefire proposals, especially from early on, there's a disproportionate number of Black Democrats who were backing these proposals. You have a historic connection to the Palestinian cause among black communities and civil rights activists in particular. So that was a serious focus. They say that over 500 different avatars were found on three social networks. They pushed out posts with almost identical wording, links to what fake reporter called, that's the outlet that actually originally

identified this influence operation. The three main assets in this influence operation were these fake news websites, Unfold Magazine, Nonagenda, and The Moral Alliance. There's a very strong suggestion in this report, though they don't come right out and say it, that it was being run by the Israeli government directly. We don't have 100% proof of that, But again, like I said, strong suggestion.

And to the point of what I was saying, some 85% of all the American politicians whose accounts were targeted with such content were Democrats. 90% of them were African Americans, according to that analysis. And Richie Torres was targeted most. So very interesting. So they would never meddle in our politics. Now, I want to say like the posts they were making, I'm not saying they were particularly. No, they weren't even good, but they were doing. Effective or influential. Some of them even didn't even make sense. It'd be like an avatar with a white middle-aged looking dude who's like, as a black woman, I feel blah, blah, blah. So it's not like it was like really well done or I think particularly

impactful. But I also would point to Saga. Remember, the ADL was having a meltdown. We played some of the audio that got leaked about their TikTok problem. And there's this whole freakout about social media and how the young people are, you know, pro-Palestinian sense on social media, especially among young people. I think it's possible. I don't know necessarily, though, if that's what they're – I think it's just a classic influence op and they're going after the people that they can work for. Yeah, this is just what they do. The Mossad Israelis, like I said, they're the most notorious spies and internal meddlers here in the U.S. by an alleged U.S. ally.

So anyway, I think it falls in the traditional playbook. All right. We have an update for you on those Jonathan Glaser comments at the Oscars that came in for quite a bit of controversy. Let's go ahead and put this up on the screen. So in reaction to the Glaser comments, he was the filmmaker who made Zone of Interest. That's actually about the Holocaust. He himself is Jewish. And he said that he rejected the weaponization of his Jewishness and of the Holocaust in order to justify things that he believes should be unjustifiable. So they say, according to Variety, over a thousand Jewish creatives and professionals

have now denounced Jonathan Glazer's own of interest Oscar speech in an open letter. Oh, really? Well, it turns out that this open letter, it's just a form, it's a Google form. And you can see this in the community note, which is actually rather helpful here. They say the letter's a simple Google form.

It does not confirm or ask for proof that the signers are Jewish creatives or professionals. One of the signers listed by Variety is a SAG-AFTRA member named River to the Sea. So apparently, you know, the original version of this letter had something like 450 names after it, after it got some publicity, suddenly it just shot up to over 1,000 purportedly Jewish creatives and professionals. But some significant doubts about whether these are actual people who had an actual problem and certainly whether they are Jewish creatives in Hollywood. Also, just as a note, apparently not a lot of big names signed on to this letter denouncing Jonathan Glaser. But I don't want to downplay the fact. I do think this could potentially his outspoken criticism, which did become very controversial and was also lied about and misconstrued intentionally by a lot of dishonest actors.

This could be a problem for his career. I don't think there's any doubt about that in terms of, you know, what the future may hold for him. I'm sure he knew that going into making these comments as well, because we've seen people in Hollywood lose their jobs for speaking out on behalf of Palestinians. Yeah. Tony Kushner, our producer, Griffin found this. If people aren't familiar, he wrote Lincoln. He wrote Munich. He's been a Spielberg kind of collaborator. He's one of the more high profile people. I saw him speak once actually in college. He's the playwright. He did Angels of America. He actually spoke out on Glazer's behalf, and some of the comments were interesting. Let's take a listen.

The idea that, you know, the blowback after Jonathan Glazer's really sort of unimpeachable, irrefutable statement at the Oscars. You identified with what he said? Of course. I mean, who doesn't? What he's saying is so simple. He's saying Jewishness, Jewish identity, Jewish history, the history of the Holocaust, the history of Jewish suffering must not be used in a campaign as an excuse for a project of dehumanizing or slaughtering other people. This is a misappropriation of what it means to be a Jew, what the Holocaust meant.

And he rejects that. Who doesn't agree with that? What kind of person thinks that what's going on now in Gaza is acceptable? And if you find yourself saying out loud and in public, oh, it's fine with me what they're doing because you feel that it's the only choice for you because you're a Jew is to defend everything that Israel does, you know, shame on you. I thought it was interesting just because he's a big, he's a big player in Hollywood.

So for him to come out and say something like this, Spielberg collaborator and all that, you're going to have to pay attention. Yeah, according to producer Griffin,

he's our, like our most famous American playwright. Like I said, I think he's an interesting guy. I went to go see him speak just because he wrote Lincoln and he's a very,

very, very learned man, very well kind of crafted in his thoughts and the way he puts stuff down to paper. I've always found him kind of an inspiration as a writer. He also said, and you could see that on the screen, he went on to say that what was happening in Gaza looked a lot like ethnic cleansing to him. So again, these are, you know, really noteworthy comments. And I think speaks

to this conversation too about anti-Semitism because, you know, the idea that being a Jewish person requires you to support Israel, requiresoted to say you have to associate yourself with this ethnic cleansing, in his words, that's being carried out here. You know, I think that is truly anti-Semitic. And that gets to some comments that our former president, Donald Trump, had to make about Jewish people and how they should be viewing this conflict, dictating to them what should define their Jewishness. Let's take a listen to that. Why do the Democrats hate Bibi Netanyahu? I actually think they hate Israel. Yes. I don't think they hate him.

I think they hate Israel. And the Democrat Party hates Israel. Any Jewish person that votes for Democrats hates their religion. They hate everything about Israel. And they should be ashamed of themselves because Israel will be destroyed. Any Jewish person that votes for Democrats hates their religion. Think about that. And that's the polar opposite of what, for example, Tony Kushner was saying that his Jewishness requires him to speak out against what is being done to Palestinian civilians in the name of him and other Jewish people. So it reminded me so much

of the Joe Biden, if you don't vote for me, then you ain't black. It reminded me so much of that, that Donald Trump thinks he can dictate to Jewish people what their religion is all about and how if they vote for a Democrat, then they must hate their religion. I mean, that is disgusting. I mean, I don't think it's right, but it's actually become more of a popular talking point amongst a lot of conservative Jews. I've seen a lot of people like Jay Pod, John Podheritz, Josh Hammer, and others who have kind of normalized this within the conservative Jewish community, where they are inextricably linking Israel, the war in Gaza, criticism of that, and trying to not excommunicate per se. I don't think it exists in Judaism,

but it's more like you are not adhering to the tenets of who we are and what is described in the religion if you vote for the Democratic Party. I believe Hammer said that outright and explicitly. So I think that is where a lot of this is coming from for Trump is they're like, hey, you should push this. And I've seen a lot of this internal policing, you know, in the Jewish community very recently where, you know, Schumer, his act was very controversial, where it kind of split some of the way that they think and talk about Israel. And I think Trump is trying to like glom onto that and trying to bring some of that energy into the Republican Party.

I mean, listen, on a rhetorical level, I think it's crazy and outrageous. Like, you know, nobody, it is not the job of anyone except for people in the religion. And even then, they don't, as far as I understand it, there is no pope or whatever in Judaism. So you people figure that shit out for yourselves. This is more my my question um you know there was a poll that found a majority of jewish americans support a ceasefire okay a majority right of jewish americans support a ceasefire

most jewish americans are libs like that's the other thing i mean here's the here's the thing too um there's been obviously a very warranted conversation about anti-Semitism. There's also been an unwarranted conversation about anti-Semitism, you know, being invented and any criticism of Israel being considered anti-Semitic, et cetera, et cetera. And anti-Semitism is never justified. It's never acceptable. I just want to, you know, this is not to justify anything. But if you are requiring all Jews to be associated with what the Israeli government is doing right now, starving two million people, wanting to ethnically cleanse those people, plausibly committing a genocide against those people, and you want to tie every Jew in the world to those policies and say that's what makes you Jewish, that's the defining character of your Jewishness, is to be associated with this state that is acting

in the most morally outrageous ways you can possibly imagine, it is almost inevitable, again, not justifying, it is almost inevitable that is going to lead to an increase in anti-Semitism that is going to make Jews around the world less safe. So that's part of why I find the reaction to Jonathan Glazer's speech so disgusting. It's part of why I find Donald Trump's comments here so disgusting, this conflation of Jewishness with unconditional support for Israel. I mean, this is not the way Israelis think about things. I mean, you know, they certainly don't think that their Jewishness is defined by supporting frigging Benjamin Netanyahu. I can tell you that much based on the polls. Now, there is a

very high and very disturbing level of support for what is being done in Gaza by the Israeli public. But to say that you are defined in your Jewishness by your level of support for whatever it is the Israeli government is going to do, or even commitment to the state of Israel, you know, and the Zionist project itself, I just find that absolutely disgusting, wrong. And like I said, I think inevitably actually makes Jews less safe and lifts the level of anti-Semitism here in our world. Well, that's a point our friend Daryl Cooper has been making very consistently. He's like, listen, if you want it this way, well, then, you know, you are going to be, by and large, actually increasing the amount

of aggregate anti-Semitism in the world. I'd also say this. You know, you can't be saying dual loyalty is anti-Semitic if you also are accepting a frame of dual loyalty. That's true. It's actually true. You're like actually demanding it. Yeah.

Right. Yeah. That's a whole other conversation. most poignant part, and it is one on the American right, which nobody wants to touch with a 10-foot pole, and yet is so obvious with so many commentators, I'll just leave it at that, that it is supposedly off bounds, but it's like they're the ones also internally trying to enforce the exact same standard. So you can't call it anti-Semitic and then say it's anti-Semitic not to adhere to that standard in their own community. So anyway, that's a whole other conversation, I guess. Yes, indeed.

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