Chapo Trap House - 1037 - The China Syndrome feat. Séamus Malekafzali and Dylan Saba (5/18/26)

Episode Date: May 19, 2026

The Turbulence crew returns to discuss the state of the Iran War, including potential escalations and Trump taking possibly the first real L of his entire political career. We also talk about the horrifying Nicholas Kristof story about rape in Israeli prisons, discuss AOC vs. MTG, and then close things out on a lighter note with a Wall Street Journal op-ed about how China doesn’t have babes.

Hello, everybody. It's Monday, May 18th, and we've got some shop before you. Joining us on today's program, sitting in with Helix and I, are the Turbulance Boys back again for their second go-round as a unit. It's Seamus Malikovselli and Dylan Saba. Gentlemen, welcome back to the program. Howdy? Happy. Well, gang, I'd like to start off today, once again, as we normally do on Monday, as I look in on the war in Iran or the war with Iran and how it's going right now. And I'd like to begin by Just reading a missive from our president that was transmitted to the peoples of the world today, he wrote on truth social this morning.

Quote, if Iran surrenders, admits their Navy is gone and resting at the bottom of the sea, and their air force is no longer with us, and if their entire military walks out of Tehran, weapons drop and hands held high, each shouting, I surrender, I surrender, while wildly waving the representative white flag, and if their entire remaining leadership signs all necessary documents of surrender and admit their defate to the great power and force of the magnificent USA, the failing New York Times, the China Street Journal, and then in parentheses he passed, WSJ, exclamation point,

corrupt and now irrelevant CNN and all other members of the fake news media will headline that Iran had a masterful and brilliant victory over the United States of America. It wasn't even close. the Democrats and media have totally lost their way. They have gone absolutely crazy, President DJT. I couldn't even hold it in for like two seconds. That was, oh my God. I love when he says,

I love when he says, their Air Force is no longer with us. I know, it's like someone who. It's like your grandfather or something. Yeah, yeah. Oh, my God. I know that he's been banging on about wanting Iran to, admit surrender. I think Carolyn Leavitt has also said that Iran needs to

admit defeat. The levels just keep getting higher and higher and higher. He needs something to indicate that Iran totally acknowledges that he is the best. I think like every week of this war they say that they've destroyed Iran's

Air Force, which is like a bunch of F-14s that the Shah bought and like if you went up to a guy parking lot and we're like, were you about to throw that dirty bomb at my family?

And the guy was like, what are you talking about? And you swung on him and he just nails you with a liver shot. You collapse. And you vomit and your pants fall down. And it's sort of like the little Reese video where people see their shit on your underwear. Then when you get up, then your family is kind of like,

what the fuck? Like why? Why? What was the point of that? You're like, yeah, but do you see how he like took away his gun? I mean, I mean, okay, like the jets that you're talking about, they're very ancient, but they did manage to bomb at least that one base in Kuwait in the early hours of the war, bypassing American air defenses and killing quite a few U.S. soldiers and injuring a lot of them. Oh, no, no, like the F-14 is like an amazing plane. And they have taken like 50-year-old fucking planes in like retroactive.

benefited them to be able to like, you know, use probably, you know, Glonos guided bombs, definitely laser guided bombs. And it isn't the same thing as like a modern Air Force, but it's like pretty fucking impressive for one of the most embargoed countries on Earth. Incredibly impressive. And also, like, even if we're to take it at face value that the, that those jets have all been destroyed, though I heard reports that some of them have been stationed in Pakistan for their own protection, like that doesn't seem to

matter much if you have like what 80,000 drones pre-war which costs $4,000 each. And also the destruction of the quote unquote the conventional Navy, they still have hundreds of speedboats that are able to shut down the street of war moves and that isn't going anywhere. Like about this thing about the military leaving Tehran? Like is it for the American military to come in? That's a new one to me. I should have I should have not blown past that. Do they mean like an absentee father. They lost custody of the capital. What I love about this

message is I started reading it earlier today and I thought that this was going to be a demand on the Iranians. Like if you admit finally that we've defeated you, then we can end this war once and for all. But then it turns out by the end of the message, you realize it's a fantasy that he's having about them doing that to get mad

at the media. Yeah. It's not a demand being made of the Iranian military or government. It's a demand being made of CNN and The China Street Journal. To go back to the analogy, it's like if all of that happened, like you get your ass kicked by the guy,

your pants fall down, you get knocked out, a perfect, like tiny little log of shit rolls out of your pant leg. Everyone's laughing at you. Everyone's mad at you because you started it. You ruined your family's Octoberfest trip. And you're like,

oh yeah? Well, you know what? If I won, no one would be congratulations. me. That's really what we should be talking about. I do, I do relate to this mentality because I do invent scenarios in my head where I'm getting mad at somebody or somebody has wronged me. But I am not in control of like the nuclear codes. I think it's a fundamental human experience, right? To imagine. Who amongst us does not want to be wrong to then prove everybody in turn

wrong? I think that what it, what it's evidence for though is that Trump is still receiving his daily briefings about how gone the Iranian Navy is and the Air Force, et cetera, and that he's constantly being fed material by Hengsath or whoever, who totally colossally failed at their job as to not fuck up this war, that actually the only thing that is wrong is that the Iranians haven't actually admitted that they've been defeated yet. So it's like still, like, I do think that Trump's frustration is genuinely real. He doesn't understand why no one is recognizing what, you know, his underlings are saying to him, which is that they've just won, and the only thing left is for the Iranians to hold. Well, I am curious as to like what those briefings would, what the nature of those would be during the ceasefire, because the Sengom just come in and says, yes, we're still stopping all of the Iranian boats, but we have no videos for you.

We let the lens cap on. You can't see anything. Like, when you're not seeing the things blow up, when you have to just keep saying, like, everything is still the same as it was. Well, I guess, like, this is what I'm thinking about this, is that, like, I think what this means is, like, in my opinion, this is now a very dangerous situation. Because I think by all accounts, the Iranians are holding firm on their negotiating stance. And Donald Trump, thinking he has won the war, is shocked that he's being insulted as such. But the thing is, we all know that the only thing that could conceivably change the calculus of power, and certainly as regards the Strait of Hormuz,

would be some sort of direct ground invasion. You need to, like, physically remove the Iranian military and government. And, like, I think he's already proven that he's not willing to do that. So I think we're in a situation now where it's very likely that this war is about to get reheated. And I think that they are about to do exactly what they did in the first weeks of this war to no avail. And the reason I think that's so dangerous

is that you see in Trump's statement directed to the Western and American press, basically demanding that they acknowledge his victory, is that like his ego has been wounded because all but his own staff and, you know, like the 20 or 30 percent of the country that will believe anything he says, I think it has now been widely acknowledged virtually everywhere that this war so far has been a complete failure for the United States, like so much so that Iran is going to emerge from it more powerful than when it started. And I think this is a dangerous situation because I don't think his ego will allow himself to be thought of as a loser. So I think we're going to see a reheating of this conflict and like sort of a repetition of the

first two weeks of this war. And we'll see what that happens. What do you guys think about that? I mean, when the Trump failed to break the blockade on the Red Sea with the Yemenis, with the Houthi movement, there was a kind of quick back and forth on negotiations at which the Houthi movement presented their idea of a deal and the Americans. accepted that deal. But the failure was able to be kind of ignored because however much the Red Sea blockade, I mean, it bankrupted the Port of Iliat, it increased shipping times, it did this,

it did that. It was to some extent ignorable by the larger populace as much as I would not like to admit that. But this is completely unignorable, this situation. There has been so much invested in this materially. It is all that has been talked about for months now. And there are very obvious gigantic economic shocks already happening and will happen in the future. And Trump cannot get off of it. He wants to move on to Cuba. But the fact that he cannot get off of it is a huge weight on his psyche.

And that's why he thinks that if he can reheat this, as you're saying, do some sort of devastating strikes against their power plants or their automotive industry or really the kind of industry that Iran will capitulate in a very fast way, but this time for real, instead of the expectation that he had at the beginning of this. I don't think that would work. And I think also, I agree with you, Will, that we are heading towards a re-escalation. And the reason is because both sides of this are treating it as a negotiation. I mean, one thing that's interesting about this conflict is that you have the diplomatic tracks, the military tracks, both proceeding apace in parallel with each other. And that's been the case

since before the war. And before the war, they were trying to negotiate for a deal. And Iran was not going to cede on the core bottom lines of its sovereign position. And so, you know, the United States, with the backing and influence of Israel, decided to try and shift the calculus by imposing the costs of actual warfare. And now we're at a place where, despite what Trump thinks about, you know, his military victory on the battlefield, Iran has realized something extremely important, which is that the main pressure card that the United States has is not game-changing. They withstood it. They withstood the full force of the U.S. military and the Israeli military, and not only did

they survive, not only did the regime survive, but they survived with the capacity to impose, as Seamus is saying, massive economic costs. They actually held down the Strait of Hormuz. They shut it, and they did so with cards still remaining to play. end up is still open. So regardless of what Trump thinks, from Iran's perspective, they have no motivation to make further concessions than they were willing to make before the war. And so they are looking at this and saying, well, okay, I mean, if the United States is not willing to fold and by fold, you know, making a lasting deal that respects our sovereignty, our right to enrichment,

etc. Then we can stand to gain by another round of fighting. And so if both sides think that, then that's probably means that we're heading towards escalation. But one thing that's interesting is that if you think about the cards that Trump has, as you've noted, none of them are very good. Right. Like if the point of returning to the conflict is not actually like, you know, total war, civilizational extermination or whatever, and it really is to change the negotiation, then Trump only has a certain number of moves that he can pull. One is to try and take away leverage from the Iranian side. that's what's being floated, right? The reason why they want to take away the, you know,

quote unquote nuclear dust go in there and extract it or whatever is because that's a key thing that Iran is negotiating with and over. And so if they can go in and remove it, then Iran's in a worst negotiating position. Now, we've seen during the war that actually doing that kind of special op would be extremely difficult and they may have even already tried to do it and it didn't work. I remember a while back we covered a proposal that would require the construction of an airfield while they were removing the nuclear material. Yeah, air dropping in like excavators and over days and even weeks to try to do this all while being under fire by the Iranian armed forces. And I should add on to that that like a lot of

the talk about the cards that Trump conventionally pull is, I mean, months ago they're talking about taking Chodak Island or other islands of the Persian Gulf. But even then, the Americans are not willing to risk casualties. Trump in particular does not want to risk American casualties. That was something that he tried to cover up. Sankom tried to cover up in the early days of the war. So what they're doing is that they're trying to convince other Gulf countries to do it for them. Like there was an official on the telegraph. I don't have the quote in front of me, but it was completely absurd. They were telling the UAE to instead send their own ground troops to invade Iranian territory and seize an island of the Persian Gulf

and take it for themselves. Don't involve the U.S. in this. Go send your army, which could not even hold their ground in Yemen, in southern Yemen. Go do that against the entire Iranian military. They don't have an actual serious plan here. I talk about this all the time,

but this idea that no one remembers things that happened more than like six months ago, I realized that like the collegi, intervention in the Yemeni Civil War was incredibly undercover in Western news for obvious reasons. And in fact, that a lot of career husbandarists got some nice overtime hours in, whitewashing that war, people like Dennis Ross. But the one thing with that war that even the propagandist couldn't paper over was the fact that the Emirati and Saudi troops were just getting far.

fucking sandblasted every fucking day. I mean, all respect, on Sir Allah, but just in terms of, like, technology and manpower, unsarralah accomplished amazing things with, like, stuff that they found in an abandoned radio chat. Iran has, like,

magnitudes, more armaments, personnel, or it just, by all means, go ahead. That will talk about getting rid of at the idea of Dubai and the United Arab Emirates in general if you do that at fucking all.

I love it's part of the broader Trump go with God strategy where he tried this with like the commercial shipping too. He was like, just go. You know? Just walk the straight. Get some guts and go through the straight of four moves. Right.

You can just do things. I love that. I love that when he is like commanding people to their death, but he talks to you like your mom when you're afraid to go to your first day of grade school. he's like yeah they're actually more afraid of you than they are of them

and go out there like be yourself don't think about as scared you are when a hypersonic missile reaches terminal velocity and is out maneuvering any countermeasures on your giant shipping vessel that moves at 10 kilometers a day just you know stand up and be like hey my name is boat captain. Meanwhile, the U.S. military

tried to send some destroyers in and Iran sent like, what, a couple cruise missiles at them. Yeah, so five few morning shots and then they pissed out. Yeah, and then Trump could say that they successfully escaped which shows their power. That's awesome.

That's awesome. One of my favorite like organs of the plan trusters of like the people who cooked up the plan for a war with Iran for decades. And now that they've got it, have to, like, continue to sell it. The foundation for defensive democracies.

I don't have you been following them, but, like, their count of how many missiles Iran has is so funny to me. Because I remember, like, the first week of the war, they were, like, they've depleted probably 90% of their missile stocks, and they only have a few launchers left.

And it's, like, now months into this shit. And if the Iranian government is, like, for years now, been teetering on the brink of collapse while also being this, like, you know, emerging regional superpower and colossus that must be confronted. Like, if this is such a victory, like, the question needs to be asked, why is the United States still negotiating? If they, like, why is the state of Ramos still closed?

Like, why do we keep sending JD and company to Pakistan if Iran has already surrendered? I saw an amazing interview on Israeli television. I want to say in late March, where they had this guest on who is saying that the Iranians are still fighting because they don't realize how much damage has been done to them. Like, they literally don't understand how badly they're doing, so they keep fighting on, and it's up to America to just make them understand through talking or some other nonsense like that. No, I don't think they have any idea what they're doing. I mean, the whole FD plan was, as you said, that if enough support was given to protesters, if there was enough strikes at the heart of the Iranian military, that it was just so top heavy, like Venezuela's government, that it would just. collapse. And the idea that it would be much more difficult than that was dismissed as a pro-Islamic

Republican lie. I genuinely don't know what Mark Dubowitz and those sorts of people, how do they go from here? All of these people for years deny that they even supported military intervention, that it had to come from below. And then they started supporting military intervention and then a full-scale invasion in war. And now all of those things are not working. So I would love to know what their suggestion is for the future. I think they fail to consider two things. One is, as you're saying, the decentralized structure of the, and the durability of the Iranian governing structure and coalition.

And the second is that it is the century of the tunnel. They failed to consider that no matter what kind of high-powered explosives and air power you can come at Iran with, they dug deep enough and they have good enough reinforced concrete. And so they've all of their, you know, the majority of their, you know, the majority of their missile stockpiles in their missile cities. Maybe there's some rubble on top of them, but they dug. And that's, and that's proven extremely effective. Well, I guess this is what I find concerning. And Dylan, to return to your point about what is the ceiling for escalation here? Because it seems like a ground invasion, like they don't have the stomach for that. And like,

that's the only thing that could actually change the calculus. So they're like, the ceiling is limited to a certain degree. And I guess like what they're promising now is like even better or more lethal or more destructive air strikes. But my concern here is that, like, if we're not going to do a ground invasion, and that's the only thing that could conceivably give Trump the victory that, you know, he needs to have, at what point does a nuclear attack become part of the calculation here? Because, like, I would not put that past a Donald Trump or an administration that is, you know, reeling unpopular and, like, needs to prove it.

Like, the myth of U.S. invincibility has been punctured pretty steadily for years now. This one is one in which there will be real ramifications for that. And I'm just wondering, like, do either of you have any concern that, like, they're going to consider pressing that button? I'm not a panicking on that front. I think that in anything close to the short run, it's unlikely to happen. I think that what is more likely is that Trump is convinced of moving up the ladder of escalation.

Because, like, as you said, like, there's no real off ramp so that, you know, going in and taking the nuclear dust, that that is a crazy mission. That is not going to work. To force open the Strait of Hormuz, that's what they've also been attempting to do, both with the blockade and their operation epic project freedom or whatever. And that's not really working. And to do it by taking an island, you'd have to occupy, you know, a huge swath of the Iranian coastline. And that would result in like a huge number of U.S. casualties, which they're not willing to tolerate. So a lot of those options are seemingly not good. I mean, they're not good. I mean, they still might try them, but it seems pretty nuts to do that. And it seems like from that position

of indecision, which they've clearly been stuck in for a long time, this period of indecision, of kind of hoping that the blockade is just going to solve things for them, I think that they will eventually succumb to Israeli emiradi FDD pressure to just restart the bombing campaign and target infrastructure, which is what Israel has been pushing in this hope that somehow that is just going to compel Iranian surrender. The idea is that, well, the blockade of the blockade is working, but it's not working fast enough. So if we just hit their energy infrastructure, A, it could compel their economy to collapse and force them to make a deal. Or B, we've assessed, you know, U.S. intelligence has assessed that Iran is going to respond in a predictable way.

They're going to respond by targeting, you know, comparable energy infrastructure in the Gulf. And yes, that might be painful and that will be a kind of, you know, quick, sharp hit to the global economy. Ultimately, we'll be able to navigate it, will be able to ameliorate its harms, and the retaliation will be limited, and then we'll be able to renegotiate from a position of strength. Now, that is like totally ridiculous. It's basically, as you said earlier, Will, making the same mistake that they did at the beginning of this war, which is to try and hit Iran big, contain the response, and then reenter negotiations from a position of strength. But I do believe that Trump can be convinced that that will work. I just think that the risks involved of using a

nuclear weapon of just like what the responses would be from other nuclear states, what the international fallout would be. The kind of scale of that escalation on that pace is just too crazy. I mean, maybe I'm being naive, but I think what's more likely is that they ultimately do get dragged into something like a ground invasion that is that involves like, you know, hundreds of thousands of troops mobilized, et cetera. over multi-year campaign. I think there are people in the administration who can kind of see past this moment and maybe

anticipate that, but I don't know. That's my read. I would agree with Dylan on pretty much everything that he said. Admittedly, there was, I'm saying this is a very speculative thing. There was this big explosion near Bates Chamesh in a factory that is known for making more missiles that people were speculating about, but I don't have any more information about that. It was odd that they said that this was a planned and controlled demolition that apparently they told no one about and took place at Saturday night at 11.30 p.m.

Yeah, yeah. I don't think they do that. I think usually when they do like the tornado sirens in the Midwest, it's like, I don't get a bunch of fireworks and they were going to set them off safely. And they do it, of course, at the secret missile facility. In the middle of the night and don't tell anyone about it. Have you guys considered that it was a senior prank? I don't know. That's what the Hebrew University goes hard. Graduation's coming up, you know. Do you break out while you still can? I always say that it has been the season for mystery explosions. You get later to a negotiation and things just start blowing up places. Like the facilities in the UAE, which they were like, oh, that didn't come from Iran. It came from the Western direction. I think there were three drone strikes at the outskirts of a nuclear facility. I wanted to talk a little bit about that. I think like as much as Inamar, Ben-Givir, like, will last. when somebody mentions like dropping a neutron bomb on Iran on television. Like my main fear is not a nuclear attack, but a total lack of care or concern about hitting nuclear facilities.

Like there were real fears of a leak when Iranian nuclear facilities were being hit, not only in this war, but in the 12-day war last year, it was miraculous that nothing bad has happened. And my fear is that, one, more facilities in Iran are going to be hit and more risks are going to just escalate, escalate further. And also because the nuclear facilities being hit, already there has been talk of hitting emiradi nuclear sites and retaliation. As Dylan said, yesterday, there were drones that tried to hit the Baraka nuclear power plant, the UAE, which came from the east. But then Saudi Arabia also apparently intercepted drones from Iraq. though I have not seen this awkward sense in Iraq take responsibility for any of those.

Either way, like so many things that were previously off the table, I mean, what was considered before years ago was doing a covert op at the Zucca facilities in Iran to take them out, because the idea of just straight up bombing them into oblivion was an insane idea. But now all of this stuff is on the table. I think this fits within the broader paradigm that our friend Matthew Petty was tweeting about a couple of weeks ago. I've actually about something his friend said, which is that the Iran versus U.S. war can broadly be characterized as boss baby versus the joker, just in the general affect of Trump and his communications and Iran and their communications and how they're acting. So we have Trump petulantly demanding

the media honor some fantasy that he had about Iranian surrender and being full boss baby mode. And meanwhile, Iran and its broader network of allies are mystery exploding things all over the region and kind of stroking their chin and smiling. Instead of the giant pyramid of money, it's the global oil supply. It's just like, yeah, we'll burn that shit to the ground. You see, I like I have simple taste. I enjoy dynamite and gunpowder and gasoline.

And you know the thing that they have in common? They're cheap. Well, to switch gears, we even talked much about Gaza or Israel and that ongoing war on the show in a minute. It's been a hell of a week for Israel and its defenders in the Western media. And like, basically, I just have to say

it comes down to the issue of dog rape. And this all started when Nicholas Christoph wrote an opinion piece on the op-ed page of the New York Times based on a fair amount of reporting talking to victims of... who've been held by Israeli security forces or attacked by settlers who confirm, you know, a great deal of other reporting. I mean, Nicholas Christoph is not exactly breaking this, but basically about like the systematic

rape and sexual abuse of Palestinian detainees in Israeli dungeons, essentially. Part of the suite of abuses includes accusations that prisoners were raped by trained dogs. And now, like, this is not the first people to air these accusations. It's been covered elsewhere, but it is a bit deal with. the New York Times covers it. And I'll note that, like, in Christoph's piece, it has to be couched in, in sort of contrast to the alleged sexual atrocities that took place on October 7th. But, like, his point is, if you care about one, you have to care about the other.

Well, this set off, like, a week, week-long explosion. And, like, I think, like, the Huzbara industry is kind of in crisis now. Because, like, as we saw with Screams Without Words, despite the many flaws in the reporting of that piece that we've covered on this show, when something is published in the New York Times, it is basically becomes true. And the response here is that Israel is now threatening to sue the New York Times, which is, of course, absurd because a government can't be defamed. I mean, like, conceivably, the person being liable here would be the Israeli prison guards and dog trainers. But, like, basically, the whole thing about, like, dog rape, I think is kind of a red herring,

because, like, there's plenty of human rape being alleged by these victims and survivors as well. And I found it fascinating that like the stock line that's being used by Israel defenders is that like they're claiming that it is a physical impossibility for a dog to rape a human being. And like the less said about that the better. Like I don't think we need to litigate that. But like what do you make of the like rather fever, the intense and fevered response to this? What is being called the worst libel ever liable against the blood liables of ever spoken against Israel? What does it say about like the current state? of public opinion and like Israel's like, I don't know, like their position as like a client of the

United States. I think that you're right that in a sense it is a red herring. I mean, I think that it is indicative of the broad program of dehumanization that Israel imposes on Palestinians. Palestinians who are detained and who are rightfully considered hostages. I mean, there is no real system of due process. These are essentially people. who have been abducted at will. And we also saw just recently that a bill just passed the Israeli-Knesset, permitting the execution of Palestinian detainees. Palestinians have been saying for not just years since October 7th,

but for decades, Palestinians have been testifying as to the conditions in these prisons and have been ignored by the New York Times and especially the issue of sexual assault in these prisons and detention centers has been widespread and not only widespread, but actually physically documented with video. And still, like, at the moment that it really felt like it mattered when consent was being manufactured by the Times and other liberal media outlets to continue support for the war under the Biden administration, it felt like all of that was being ignored or minimized or being considered blood libel. And now that the moment has passed, now that attention is elsewhere,

I can't help but feel that what the New York Times ultimately is doing is laundering its image by allowing this to run in their opinion section. They can later claim, no, of course we covered this. Of course we didn't deny this. See, like it's right here. I do think that it signals a kind of state of panic, though, among the Hasbaris and among Israel. Because, you know, what is like the rational response to something like this is not to turn it

into a global controversy for weeks long where people are talking about these accusations and putting the spotlight on the conditions of prisons is just to ignore it. But they cannot escape their own self-conception as being victimized and targeted and scapegoated for all of what's wrong or harmful or jarring about modernity. I think like the Israeli mentality is not so much to deny that these things happen, that really bad, gross, ugly things happen, although they will do it in specific instances, but it's to say, like, come on, this is what it means to be a colonial power. This is what it means to survive, is to be willing to do this to your enemies. And there is this resentment that

anyone could ever conceivably question that, which is, you know, a kind of tragic recapitulation of the logic that authorized, you know, the Holocaust and, you know, the crime of crimes in the first place. It's very disturbing, of course, to engage with the reality of what it's like for Palestinians in these prisons. But I do think it is symbolizing something that is deeply repressed in the Israeli psyche that is being driven out, not just by the fact that someone's making this accusation, but by the reality that they are losing popular support in the United States and around the world. And what's so going about that is like, we all saw your country have like riots when like a video of your prison guards gang raping a prisoner in their

custody and torturing him was made public and then you had riots defending their right to do so and a prosecution of the person who brought the charges in the first place who's now like in fucking in hiding. You have you mentioned ben Gavir. I see he's in a video every fucking week, touring a prison and mocking the prisoners and talking about how they're just showing a gallows off about how we're going to kill all of them soon. So like the idea that like this kind of shit would be like beyond the pale or put it past them like usually like when confronted with a charge like this, like the reaction to be is like well, you know, it's worth investigating, you know, like it's certainly not impossible, but like, you know, like we find these allegations not credible or whatever.

But just like the strident demand that it is, this is simply impossible, would not happen, could not happen is physically impossible to happen. And I think the focus on. dogs is kind of a tell. Because I think like the projection here is what they want to say is that we're demanding that you state that it is impossible for a Jewish person to commit crimes like these against a non-Jewish person. And that's what they really believe. And so, but instead they have to be like, oh, like a dog could never do this. You can't train a dog to rape someone. There's a similar structure actually to all of the furor and investigation and reports in Fog of Warsaw about the Al-Ajli hospital strike very early in the genocide.

side. If folks will remember, this is like maybe October 17th or something, there was an explosion at the El Ahele Hospital in Gaza. Many people died, and immediately all the Hasbirus jumped on it to say, like, actually, that's not what, it was not Israel shelling the hospital. It was some misfired Hamas rocket. And it became this entire kind of like sink of attention and an investigative focus on like whether that particular thing had happened and whether that was possible and all this forensics. And I do think that, you know, kind of to contrast with what I was saying before, which is they should have just ignored this. I do think that there is an Israeli Hasbara strategy of hyperfixate on one specific thing that you can cast doubt on to then project onto all the similar instances of that that are happening all the time that are super well evidenced. So if you can make someone think in their head, oh, I have some doubt about whether Israel committed this one hospital strike or whether this one accusation of sexual assault of detainees,

is valid or not, then that doubt will then extend to all the other things that you're hearing about what they're doing. I think the thing is like for Israel proper, like they want to brag about shit like this and they brag about it all the time on their own, in their own media. You know, like if they really wanted to cover this up, they wouldn't be having prison guards on TV talking about this shit. Like, did you see the clip of the one guy who brought his dog into a TV studio? Yeah, his dog was named Django too. And I couldn't help but remember, like, in the movie Django Unchained, like, they used the dogs for a very specific purpose. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, like inside of Israel, I mean, even on the subject of rape by prison guards, this stuff was, of course, denied. It was very strangely, even within the Israeli media, the idea that you could violently rape or abuse a prisoner. When, of course, the American media is accusing of this. How can you possibly say that? But then in almost the same breath, they would say, of course. course we do this. There were people in the Knesset, members of the Knesset saying, like, everything that you do to a Hamas Nukhah terrorist is allowed. They put on the people in that one camp near Gaza, sedated Taman, and they brought them on television to be interviewed as like the

guests of the week. And these people were oftentimes masked because they did not want their identities be revealed. And I remember there was a very like striking and villainous video that got released several months ago where many of these guards in black masks went to go see a very prominent government sponsored rabbi. And he just openly said like anything you do to the goym is allowed. Like they're fully understanding what this means when they bring the dogs onto television, when they bring the guards on the television, and they talk about how they've been wronged, but also everything they possibly could do, the Palestinians are right. I will just say that this logic, I think that the analogy to slavery while imperfect,

of course, has some purchase here. And this logic is deeply ingrained into the American psyche as well. And I will encourage listeners to have a read of the North Carolina Supreme Court case from 1829, State v. Mann, which is one of the most of the most. mind-blowing cases that I ever read when I was in law school, because it really walks through this logic. It's this judge who is faced with a battery case where a slaveholder is being accused of battery for basically torturing their slave. And the judge goes through all of this painful exhortation to say, like, well, you know, yeah, this is ugly, but if there's any

limitation on this power, then the entire system falls apart. And I think that there is a kind of analogous logic to Israel. If there's anything wrong, if there's any humanity in the Palestinian, if there's anything wrong with these kinds of abuses, then the entire project of Zionism actually will crumble. The whole project of liberal Zionism is kind of premised on not looking at that, and just kind of ignoring that reality and just sitting with the contradiction of it or whatever. I think people like to scoff at the whole paradigm of settler colonialism, but it has a lot of explanatory power when you're comparing the United States and Israel. I would also add that if you are an Israeli who was attempting to justify all these abuse of Palestinian prisoners, you would say,

well, I mean, if we acknowledge the humanity of the Palestinians, that gave us Yahyazinwar, that gave us all of these Palestinian leaders who were released from prison, and then went on to fight us because we were still occupying their land. So the only option is to, as this mass death penalty bill was meant to do, is to just kill them all immediately, prevent them from ever demanding any sort of right. And we can just get on with it. We can get on with expanding the state and making it into the kind of place that we want to live in.

I do think it's incredibly notable. The line from specifically the type of Hasbarist, incredibly pro-Israel Americans who will never fucking live in Israel is this idea of like, oh, do you know how ridiculous it is to say that like you can trade a dog to do that? oh, what's next? Oh, there's more Pallywood shit. It's an important

demarcation point because there is like, even if it's not verbalized, there is some acknowledgement in that group of people. It's just the general pro-Israel sphere that the actual Hebrew language Israeli justifications for this.

It's not even justification. It's just bragging. But any attempt to explain in their terms. Like, you know, well, Goyim aren't technically human, so you can't rape them. Or, you know, well, they would do it to us. Or, like, isn't it funny to rape

a terrorist? That that would be a little bit too much for Western audiences. It just, it is one of those, like, who are you going to believe me or your lying eyes type things? It doesn't seem to be updated

for an age where, like, yeah, you can, like, watch clip of Israeli TV where they're talking about how great this is. It seems more suited for like Hasbara in like the 1980s when maybe you couldn't as easily access Israeli TV or newspapers. As soon as we started talking about the Believe You're Lying Ice thing, I couldn't help but think of like Israel's government runs a Farsi language official account on Twitter. And it is very fascinating seeing that like same psychopaths.

Hebrew language style like in-group messaging when it is published to a group that is decidedly not Israeli and not Hebrew speaking. Like I remember when in the first weeks of the war, there was a video of a woman in her destroyed home. Like her home is just blackened by flames that burned through it. She's wailing. She's sobbing. She cannot believe the kind of devastation that has come to her. and the Israeli government's caption over it was pointing out her handbag and saying, like, can you believe that a non-regime Iranian could buy this bag?

Oh, my God. And it's not even an expensive looking back. It's just a literal handbag. But the idea is that, like, of course, you'd be willing to be as psychopathic as we are if you just heard it in your language. But there is a reason why they really don't do that very often in English. even though it gets quite psychopathic. They did it in English recently over the weekend.

Did you see the New York Post? It ran a photo of what purported to be a cafe in Gaza. And they were like, they were like luxurious cafe in Gaza puts the lie to the quote genocide libel or whatever. And it was very clearly like it was some like chairs and tables under a tarp. And like yeah, there were people in there like on a laptop. It was like signs that like normal human life exist in some degraded capacity in Gaza. But the idea that this was a

luxurious cafe where it was literally like an ad hoc. You could see like it was under a tarp. It was like hastily constructed. Like it was not exactly. I think that burns them so much to know that like any food is being eaten in Gaza that any normal human life persist in any regard.

And that if it does then like well then any any claim to a genocide or famine or anything like that is simply another blood libel. The New York Post is like the only one where there isn't that like incredible gap between the English-speaking Hezbara and the rest of it. But the people they have sent out for this one, for specifically, like, the prison rape stuff, I do think that they have specifically sent Westerners to try to quell this one,

because there is this unspoken thing of like, okay, look, like, obviously I, as an American Jew, I don't want to live here because I also know that this country is gross and weird. But Arabs are worse. And you wouldn't really believe that like someone like me, an American Jew, that I would sign on to like training a dog to rape someone. I wouldn't be involved in something like that. The New York Post is the only thing, is the only publication in the English-speaking world in America

where I could see them printing an article about how, to actually get your dog to do that. I spent three months trying to train my dog to rape me and nothing happened. Case closed. Dylan, I want to get back to something you said earlier about, because the New York Times and Nicholas Christoph is what like, what kicked off this latest round of, you know,

fevered denunciation and claims to blood libel and things like that. I have been actually kind of surprised that the New York Times has held their nerve on this. But like, I should note that like the day or two after Christoph published this on the op-ed section, they rushed out like another, like, hastily reassembled recapitulation of all of the worst October 7th atrocities that were being alleged baby rape and killing of pregnant women and, like, lurid and horrific claims to atrocities that have already been published and investigated already. And, like, I'm interested more in terms of, like, what this means when an

institution like the New York Times is now attempting to preserve future credibility by holding the line on an issue like this. Yeah, just to reiterate, I do think that it is about maintaining credibility, like the Christoph piece in general. I think it's like they've assessed that the risk of a major sea change in terms of U.S. support has maybe passed for now. So like the broader, I think part of what we're seeing is a broader switch in popular opinion that's happening, where we're seeing more and more people who are skeptical of

Israel and growing to be out of favor with continued U.S. military aid to Israel, but it's not happening at a pace that is rapid enough that is seriously going to put Israel in a position of existential risk. And so I think that it is like part of a broader trajectory where Israel itself is transitioning towards a garrison state, trying to be more autarkic, and position itself for a universe in which maybe in the medium term, U.S. funding tapers down or is removed. I think that the New York Times is trying to position itself as maintaining credibility for the long term. So they've done their job in supporting the war when it mattered, when Hamas was in a position

where they could have asserted their national claims if there was a ceasefire earlier, if the genocide was not actually allowed to continue with U.S. support, there could have been, we could have been on a path to a political resolution because the U.S. gave Israel unbridled support and allowed them to carry out a genocide and to really go to extreme lengths to carry out that genocide, Hamas is in a much weaker position. And so the immediate risk of some kind of political resolution now feels a little bit further off. And so that's how kind of I understand the New York Times and the U.S. government and all these other institutional actors retooling and repurposing their credibility for the long term.

But they want to make sure, right, that you don't forget the colonial relation. That when the colonizer inflicts this kind of damage on the colonized, this violence, it's really lamentable, right? It's like, look what you've made us do, kind of. Look what you've dragged us down into with your barbarity. You've lowered us to your level, you know, yeah. Exactly, exactly. And that's, you know, there'll be a whole shooting and crying documentaries.

And like, there will be cultural production around this and how it gave them PTSD and it tortured them for years and stuff like that. But you must never forget that this all stems from the savagery and barbarity of the colonized. And I think that's what's being reasserted as well. I will briefly add on to Dylan's point that there is already a shooting and crying media about Gaza. There was a documented recent release called I cried in Gaza about female IDF soldiers. So yeah, that we're around the way for that. Well, Dylan, you bring up like these institutions and individuals sort of repurposing and sort of retrofitting their destroyed credibility

to ensure that they will have continued purchase over the organs of both the media and the foreign policy apparatus of this country. I'll just note former Biden National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, a guy who has as much blood on his hands personally than just about any other individual in the U.S. government on this. He just made a public statement where he says of Gaza,

too many innocent people died in Gaza as a result of Israel's military operations. I woke up every morning and went to sleep every night thinking about what we could do to try to alleviate the suffering. I have also said that genocide, from my perspective, requires actually an intent to do the destruction and not to fight a terrorist foe while conducting operations in a way that killed too many civilians. Should we or could we have done more? I ask myself that question every day. And the answer must be yes, of course, because too many people died and suffered. I think about what opportunity here or what move there, and I play that back in my head.

I would love this rat. What number of Palestinians would be acceptable to have been killed in this endeavor? What's the limit where it becomes too many? I would love to know. He would say one is too many. That's what he would say. He would say one is too many, but we are burdened with the terrible responsibility of having to commit colonial genocide because that heavy is the head that wears the crown of the world system. That's like literally what he believes.

If he had just like said Yeah, no, looking back No, I wouldn't change anything. It would be less offensive. Not even saying like I'm losing sleep over this. When I go to bed at night and then when I wake up, I think, oh, what could I have done better? Like it was your first like trip to your girlfriend's parents' lakehouse.

How could have I done that better? And like the fact that he says that like he's, I think every day about what opportunity or what chance or what move there. And I play that back in my head. It's even worse because by saying that what he's really saying is I think about what was the move I could have done that could have saved more innocent lives. And what he's really saying is I've concluded that there was nothing I could have done. And it simply made the best of a bad situation.

And you know, it's crazy how he slips in right, his like kind of legal argument about genocide. And he's like, well, also you have to have this special intent, blah, blah, blah. Like, once again, ignoring everything that their own government and military has said every fucking day. Like, you know, you can just imagine the fucking like, you know, Nazi bureaucrat back in the World War II being like, well, you know, one innocent life is too many. But, you know, we had our intent was to get rid of Bolshevism, you know, like that. Yeah. For figures like Jake Sullivan, or I thought Anthony Blinken getting pressed on this over the weekend. And like, if that's the worst thing that ever happens to these guys is for the rest of their lives, they should count their fucking blessings.

But the thing is, I think it's an acknowledgement that these guys have to preserve future credibility by acknowledging, if not a genocide, then simply, you know, mistakes are made. You know, my heart breaks for all the, too many innocent people have died. And I think that is an acknowledgement of what has been a sea change in public opinion on this issue, but a way to lock down and ensure that that never translates or can never translate into an actual shift in political power. And I bring this up because I wanted to mention briefly the Republican primary in Kentucky right now between Massey and this guy Galrine, who is like a Trump's backed challenger to him over the issue of Massey breaking with Trump on both Epstein and Israel. And this is now the most expensive congressional race in history. I think topping the ones to topple Jamal Bowman and Corey Bush,

which are once again, like not a coincidence that the most expensive congressional races in U.S. history all involve claiming the scalp of someone who was critical of Israel and replacing with someone more compliant. And I don't know, by like by all accounts to recent polling, it looks like Massey could very well lose this race. I guess I bring this up because like, you know, in addition to all this, There's been another kind of like meta debate or discourse over the last couple of weeks regarding figures like, like Massey, who has been, you know, very stridently critical of the war in Iran and the Trump administration and the U.S. relationship with Israel. Add to that figures like Marjorie Taylor Green, who basically ended her political career by breaking with Trump on Epstein and war with Iran.

And then a figure like Tucker Carlson, who's been making a lot of waves on his show by, you know, pretty forthrightly advocated. against U.S. policy as it regards to the war in Iran and Israel. And I guess I want to bring this up in the context of like, there's been a debate on the left about whether the people on the left are too credulous towards people who are otherwise very right-wing figures like Thomas Massey, a guy, you know, who thinks, I don't know, Medicare and Social Security or illegal or unconstitutional or whatever. But like, do you see these figures being welcomed with open arms on the left?

Do you think it matters? or is this just like a stupid debate in the first place? I mean, I think there are like two levels to this. I mean, we discussed us a little bit, I think last time. Both of us were on in regards to someone like Nick Fuentes. When I hear AOC being critical of the idea of working with someone like March Taylor Green on Israel, because I guess in contrast, she's much more of an ally to the Palestinians, which is a completely fanciful idea. the idea that she's more honest than Marjorie would be.

But like on the septic of Israel or opposing Israel in this venture, I'm not going to step on anyone's toes and throw myself and be like, oh, we should listen to these people. Or like we should we should like completely ignore everything. Like everything they says is bad and untrustworthy. And like by extension makes you bad and untrustworthy because you say things that sounds similar to what they're talking about, which is that like.

Exactly. Like if March the other grain says something about Israel's treatment of Palestinians or Tucker Carlson goes and visits Palestinians in the hospital or speaks to Palestinian Christians about the oppression of them facing, I am not going to publicly object to that sort of thing. The kind of objection that I would draw is like going much further than that and then arguing that these people are now allies in your anti-imperialism, which I think is completely. the wrong move that I see certain people engaged in but not enough to the degree that like I would consider it a national issue. Yeah. Like Marjorie Taylor Green like last year she did that whole image where she draped the statute liberty and in the club. Like yeah like Tucker Carlson called Arabs Monkeys not too long ago.

I think all of these people still hold a genuine unadulterated hatred and contempt for Arabs and Muslims outside of a context in which America is giving all of this money and power to a foreign nation. I would advise people not to engage with that, but I really don't think, I don't know. I also think maybe my hatred of AOC is clouding my judgment a little bit. I mean, like, but this is the thing is like, if you put yourself in a situation where you can, where Marjorie Taylor Green can be conferred favorably to you on the issue of Palestine, then like, I'm sorry, like, that's on you. That's on you.

And like what she did at the DNC, like, that's going to fucking haunt her and as well it should. But like ContraPoints was on Brianna Joy Gray's show a while ago. And she was asked, is there anyone that you wouldn't support, like, against Donald Trump? Is there any, like line you wouldn't cross? And she was like, God, I don't know. Like, you know, I would sell my soul to the devil himself or like, it's hard to imagine things I wouldn't do to, like, defeat Donald Trump or his things. And I'm like, I'm going to apply that here.

If someone with Tucker Carlson's audience is making this. case in the way that he's doing in a way that no one on the most people in the liberal media won't touch with the 10 foot poll then like yeah I'll I'll make a you know a I'll temporarily nod my cap to Satan himself or a figure like Tucker Carlson even if it is opportunistic on their part because why aren't all the good people who were supposed to support why aren't they saying the same fucking thing no there is this total moral failure on the part of the Democrats here to properly align themselves with with with basic human beings.

The conscience of the country and the world. Yeah. And you can allow yourself to be outflanked by these total intellectual dullards who are being opportunistic and also like in regards to not falling hookline and sinker for this. I think many of them are just angling to back vance in 2028 against someone who's going to completely follow. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So like that, that's my thing. Like don't don't go completely in that direction.

Don't go and congratulate MTG for all she's done. But I am not going to try to do a purity test on any kind of criticism of Israel anywhere ever. I will also say one thing that's frustrating about this discourse is that I don't see any segment of the left that is trying to enter into electoral coalition with the far right. I mean, I see people like reacting favorably to Tucker saying X, Y, Z or Marjorie Taylor Green saying X, Y, Z. But in reality, there is a large segment of the left that is advocating for electoral. coalition with the Democratic Party, trying to bring people into the Democratic Party. And I think that that is what is worthy of suspicion of the issue of foreign policy, right? It's like we've actually seen how that has neutralized critique on anti-imperialism, and that has demobilized a lot of people.

And there's a real tension around how much credibility the Democratic Party and its institutions deserve. So I kind of, I see the discourse as being displaced a bit. And the question of credibility going in the opposite direction, because I think there is a real basis by which to actually question what we're hearing from people like AOC and also people like Zaharan Mamdani sometimes. When he's talking about, you know, he's kind of like signaling favorability towards Palestine or having like a Nakhba video during Nakhba day, but then also coming out with all of these like quite very harmful statements in response to like obvious propaganda about that, you know, capture of some access of resistance leader, which is not to say that those debates aren't

worth having, but the idea that there's like some credulity happening where segments of the left are being lulled by, you know, by what the Republican Party is doing, when in reality, like, there is that question of idealism versus pragmatism happening in terms of the left's very complicated relationship with the Democratic Party. Whereas I think the people who are watching Tucker and Marjorie Taylor Green are actually in a position of saying, well, I mean, it's not like the Democrats are advancing any kind of real anti-imperialism. They seem even more hawkish on China than Trump is himself. So it might be worth like stepping back and reconsidering like what's our relationship to this party system at all. Right. Right. Dylan,

that that is what I was going to say is it's particularly infuriating to hear AOC talk about this at all. This, all of this, right now, this is just posts. All of this is just post. This is just like a guy you follow goes, oh, Tucker talked about this. Marjorie Taylor Green talked about this. No one is proposing that we create some new merger organization where it's PSL merged with like Tucker's weird pouch dip company.

There is no actual thing here. being proposed. Felix, I didn't tell you about the ad read I'm doing later in the show. But for AOC herself to do this. Okay, who has more blood on their hands? Tucker Carlson or Joe fucking Biden? Right.

I am not saying Tucker is a good guy. He seems like a piece of shit as a guy. And the idea that he didn't spend most of his adult life as a neocon is fucking hysterical. he is an opportunist but because of the complete fecklessness and ethnic supremacism of the Democratic Party

he is easily able to outflank them on this and she of all people has no fucking leg to stand on what was the what was the pragmatic outcome of her and Bernie disgracing themselves as they did for the entirety

of the Biden administration. Did it stop Trump? This is this is it goes all the way back to to the the fundamental thing with contra points again. Oh, you, you people are such fucking assholes because you didn't do my practical plan that didn't work. Okay. Okay. Well, okay, let me know when it fucking works, asshole. And by the way, if you're, if you are concerned about sort of mushedded American leftists being or voters in general being seduced by the, you know, siren call of far-right political figures taking a stridently anti-Zionist line.

Well, you know, an easy way to foreclose that opportunity or to sort of shut down that lane being opened up too widely is to, I don't know, can you think of anything that could be done to like maybe take advantage of it yourself? Like, they're filling a huge gap that is now opening up on the right, but like a much, much bigger lane of voters and sentiment exists on the liberal left spectrum in America

that is being actively foreclosed upon right now. I'm sorry to the good efforts of people like AOC who with her comments at the DNC was attempting to defuse rather than heightened the stakes of this very important issue.

No, that would require them to admit that they were wrong about something that happens with Democrats, what, once every two, three years, individually? No, they have to keep going to what, Felix was talking about the practical plan that, you know, it could have worked, but really didn't work. No, no, no, no. And you could see, like, there is excitement for people in the Democratic Party who at the very least give rhetorical support to the Palestinian cause and are willing to call out

the insanity for what it is. Like, as much as we were critical of Zohran Mam Dani, and I have those critiques as well, like when he stands on that debate stage or the rest of Democratic candidates are all talking about how they're going to visit Israel first thing. And then Zoran is like, I'm not going to do that. That goes very far with people. People are willing to entertain this. I'm not overly familiar with the platform of Abdullah Sayyid out in Michigan. But I have to imagine that, I mean, the pro-Palestan messaging that I'm seeing around his campaign is at least part of the reason why his campaign is doing so well against the freaks that he is up against who talk about how they dream of Israel at night.

Like, this is 100% a dying ideology. And absolutely, there are Democrats who could feasibly rhetorically, opportunistically take advantage to it, but they are allergic to the idea of even short-term victory, where they can lie to people after the fact. It boggles my mind sometimes. What I will say is that the Democrats are pretty adept, even if you have to drag them kicking in screaming at taking popular sentiment and turning it into some kind of like rhetorical reform or something we're going to recognize the humanity. We're going to acknowledge the suffering. Hence the Jake Sullivan comments.

Yeah. The kinds of responses that we saw after BLM, like they can assimilate critique. I think what the what's missing, though, is being able to take that, that the fact that there is this constituency that has been mobilized around this issue and actually tie it into a broader anti-imperialism as part of your worldview, right? Like, there is a problem where the Democrats are like, we're not going to talk, and politicians, more broadly, we're not going to talk about foreign policy because that's an issue people don't care about. It doesn't affect their lives, and it's too divisive, right? And so, like, you have these, like, really banal statements when AOC goes to Munich and is, like, giving her foreign policy platform. And it's just like,

we're just going to do it, like, socialistically and, like, for the working class and, like, against authoritarianism or whatever. And like that is not a compelling story for people. That's not going to explain why the price of gas has gone up like a dollar and a half in the past six weeks. It's not going to explain why their food is going to get more expensive and why we keep doing all of this shit, right? There's not like a raising awareness.

Like we actually need people to understand what the United States is doing out in the world and all of the ways in which we are colossally fucking everyone else and ourselves. And if no one is willing to actually tell that story, then embracing the Palestinian cause is just going to stay at the level of an assimilated critique that doesn't actually go anywhere. I have a genuine question. I don't for people here who are a bit older than I am. When was the last time there was a major candidate who openly said that American foreign policy decisions were not just wrong or a mistake, but like actually morally decrepit, like morally evil, their whole American foreign policy decisions were, we're not just wrong or a mistake, but like actually morally decrepit, like morally evil. their whole American foreign policy output. Like, when was that? Well, I'm only about a year or two older than you,

so I don't know if I can answer that. Yeah, I was actually born in 2015. Fuck, I mean, I can't remember one. Oh, so maybe Barry Goldwater, but from the right. Yeah. The last thing I even remember, like, even kind of approaching that was Robert Bird, who Chapel All-Star Robert Byrd.

Oh, the West Virginia senator? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, the guy who said, who said, I've met a lot of white N-words on Meet the Press. He was a former member of the Ku Klux Klan as well. Yeah, he was a former member of the Klan.

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, did he say, like, white and then not just W? Well, like, they asked him about being in the clan, and he was like, well, you know, they're white N-words. And he thought that was fire. He was like, I've closed the book on that long. Robert Byrd did one of my favorite things that anyone has ever done in modern politics.

He had a bunch of like National Merit Society. Like, you know, Brown knows their overachiever students coming to his office once. And this was in like, you know, 2002 or some shit. And he went, if I could give you any piece of advice, do not get involved with the clan. And it's like, yeah, I. I'm sure they were going to take up every Sunday. You're not going to take up any time. But, you know, is there anything ever like that, like that, you know, Tony Ben's speech in Parliament?

Yeah, right, right. Nothing quite like that that I could recall within my lifetime, certainly not. Mom and dad and apple pies baseball games and picnics in July. Fireworks and marching bands A pride that only freedom understands That's America to me If I could maybe just offer a sort of a pallet cleanse It's been sort of a heavy episode

So I'd like to share with you A reading series that I've prepared for today That's a real gem And I think it'll sort of Maybe lighten the mood a little bit Obviously Donald Trump just came back from a trip to China, his favorite country. There was negotiations.

And I read the news accounts of the negotiations. And basically what the negotiations achieved is that China has agreed to buy several hundred planes from Boeing, and that's it. And I noticed that as soon as Air Force One lands back in America, like Lindsay Graham's on TV going, and by the way, China, you keep your hands off Taiwan, or it's going to be trouble.

And it's just like, well, maybe you should have sold them. that like while you were face to face with them, but they just slunk out of there, like, without much. They were trying to get China to not buy Iranian oil. Yeah, yeah. And they were coming out with this. All right. So,

and like, look, and obviously, like, there's been a lot of, uh, sort of like the, the background to these, you know,

like the, this state visit, uh, by Trump to China is, you know, like the unspoken thing is that like, you know, China has a much stronger hand because of Trump's catastrophic war with

Iran. And like, you know, like, an emerging Chinese century. But thankfully, the Wall Street Journal and their opinion section has been here to, they're here to put an end to that silly speculation. This is the Wall Street Journal opinion section.

This is a piece by Matthew Hennessy in the free expression vertical. The headline is, the future is not Chinese. The subhead is, okay, the sub, you're going to love this. The subhead is, okay, the future is not. Chinese. We have Apple, the NBA, and Sydney Sweeney. What do they have? Oh, God. Reminds me of all we have? Hey, look, the NBA, Apple, Sydney, Sweeney could be a lot worse. Could be a lot worse, right? But like the subhead reminds me, I don't know if you've ever seen the,

the De Niro and Matt Damon movie, The Good Shepherd about the founding of the CIA. Oh, yeah, yeah. Okay, there's a scene in it where Matt Damon's character who's this like, old money wasp, like one of these guys, one of the original, like, OSS guys who became the CIA. There's a scene where he's meeting with a character played by Joe Pesci, who I think is a stand-in for Santo Tropic Conte. And Joe Pesci's character says to him, like, you know, like, when we Italians came here, like, we had nothing, but we had our family. You know, we had our family, you know, we had our traditions, the Irish, they have the church. And he's like, even the blacks, they have their music. Like, what are your people have? And Matt Damon.

and coldly looks at him and goes, the United States of America. But like, this is how downgraded this has been. Like, what do your people have? The NBA, Apple Computers, and Sidney, that is the New American Century here. All those Apple computers, by the way, made in China.

Yeah. That's the same. You make that of the shit here. All right. All right. Matt Hennessy writes, President Trump's visit to China has prompted Americans to reflect,

as we periodically do, on the state of our superpower. Some say the future is Chinese. don't worry. It isn't. The U.S. is rich, powerful, and attractive. We are perhaps the richest, most powerful, and most attractive country that's ever been. Had we been blessed with only one of those attributes, we'd still be a formidable player on the global stage. In the event, we're three for three. We are crushing it. Wait, wait, physically attractive? Is that? That's what he means. I think he means physically

attractive. You said it twice. We're the most attractive. nation that has ever existed. I don't think that's even remotely. Wait, wait, look around. It's only about 10 out of tens everywhere you look in America. I will all expenses paid trip for the author of this piece to go to Chicago, Illinois, I realize how wrong he is. Look, look, there are many beautiful women in Chicago, but Iranian women, Lebanese women.

Like, 90 more beautiful. No, but all of these different countries have much more beautiful people, men and women, alike who are much more beautiful than the American population. There are never more than 10 beautiful women in Chicago at any given time and they immediately it's like

a commodities trading board. Their names go on a board and then all the richest guys in Chicago immediately, like a Bulls player a guy who cornered the market on like pork belly futures you know the guy who

holds a pat on malort. They're all, they're scooping them up. There's never more than 10 of them. There's never more than 10 of them. And the men are even worse. No, no disagreement there. I have to say this is a completely wrong statement that you're saying about the beautiful people of Chicago. But I'll agree to disagree. Ugliest city. I used to go places as a kid. I would go to places, random places. I would go to like Ann Arbor, Michigan or fucking Falls Church

West Virginia and I would go Oh my God, the people in this bullshit town are so beautiful. Why? And then I finally put two and two together. No. It was just all these places weren't Chicago. Hennessy continues.

Run down the list. Almost all the world's top companies are American. The reason is simple. Ours is an open economy governed by the rule of law. Anyone can start a company and grow it. You don't need an uncle in the Poet Bureau. That is so funny to be saying right now under the Donald Trump 2 administration, which is like, yeah, the most corrupt executive office in American, like putting ULS.D.S.

Grant's administration to shame in terms of like the pay to play rules that they're enforcing on, you know, firms in this country and elsewhere. But he says here, the U.S. has Nvidia. We have Apple, Microsoft, Google, meta, and Tesla. We have the big, healthy and transparent financial institutions. We have Walmart. Our ability to project both hard and soft power is unrivaled. We have the NBA. We have the Northrop B2 spirit. We have Sidney. I hate how all like all these guys all this is again, this is a specific type of guy we've identified, right? A guy who was anti-Trump until like May 2016, you know, I hate how all of these guys are like, who else is Jack? their erect penis

to Sidney isn't it based? Who else is enjoying some heterosexual semen explosion? It does genuinely I'm not, I don't know if I should make

like a political assessment of this, but it does genuinely kind of concern me how prominent Sidney Sweeney seems to be in the right-wing American. Yeah,

she's been designated like the, because like it's so, shame this, it's so weird, like on the right. like their relationship to sexuality and gender is so bizarre that like only one woman at a time can be appointed the sole attractive American female by which all others fall short. So if you try to say like, you know, like, are any any non-white woman usually or just anyone with even brown hair, you're like, damn, she's bad. She's fire.

And they're like, wrong, incorrect. I saw people, I saw people demanding that Christopher Nolan should have casted Sidney as Helen of Troy. He said, like, if he had asked Chris Pratt as Odysseus and Sidney's Phenny as Helene of Troy, his movie that isn't even released yet would have been a box office smash instead of a bomb. Oh, who's Helen of Troy? Lipita Nyango. That's how they're all mad about it. Oh, my God.

Another incredible. Oh, she's so ugly. Oh, God, I hate looking at her. I feel like they're just looking around and waiting for someone to. to say anything and they're like, oh, I'm canceled. You can't even impose the Nuremberg laws anymore. And so he goes on to say, so again, we have the NBA. We have Sidney-Sweeney.

When you look at it that way, it's laughable to say we are in competition for the future with China. What do they have? What have they done? TikTok. That's pretty much it. Name a Chinese movie star with global. That's it.

Name a Chinese movie star. No, no. He says, he says, name a Chinese movie star. movie star with global box office appeal. Okay, Jackie Chan, done. Yeah. One of the most famous people on the planet. Jet Lee.

Yeah, like, Tony Lung. Yeah, he was in a marble movie, for Christ's sake. Yeah. And not to mention Tony Lung, one of the most handsome men in existence as well. You know, I'll put him up against positing any day. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, my God.

Besides like that incredibly stupid point, like, Oh, what is China done besides? Not start a war with Iran. Basically, basically accomplished 60 years of weapons and jet engine development in 10 years. Leapfrog the American defense industry at a fraction of the cost. Besides that, I mean, they don't have an NBA. So, like, you know, let me know when China produces a lab grown white woman.

Felix, he brings up the NBA. Like, if they do that or do they win? Like, what, what is the argument here? He says, he keeps bringing up the NBA, but he says, name a Chinese movie star with Global Box Office Appeal. Name a top Chinese athlete playing in an elite sports league. I mean, not now, but Yao Ming is retired. But, like, he was in, he was like an all-star player in the NBA for like a number of years.

And, you know, he was- How old is this man? Because, like, I'm, I'm. I'm young as shit, but I still remember fucking Yao Ming. Yeah. It's an extremely probably guy. That doesn't, that doesn't determine if you're like a world power. There's a disproportionate amount of Surinamese champion kickboxers.

That doesn't mean that like people that like on the world stage, people are like, oh, no, what will Suriname think? And by the way, five of the last six NBA MVPs are foreign born, are not American. That's a great point. Great point. Name a Chinese musician who could pack stadiums around the world like Taylor Swift or Beyonce. Name a Chinese writer or thinker whose ideas have infiltrated the intellectual discourse. Name a clothing brand or style originating in China that has conquered the world. Name a Chinese product that you can't live without.

You got nothing. Be honest. Now name a recent military engagement that Chinese have fought and won. Okay, that's the most incredible one. he's saying this like, like, name a U.S. one. What are you talking about? Oh, my God.

A country knows with the fight a war. Over the last 40 or 50 years. And like, they're reaping the benefits of it. We're like, we're stripping the copper wiring out of our society to fucking lose a war with Iran. Like, look,

you, like, if you want to argue in the terms of like, who does more BFO B.O. Who has hotter pop stars? Fine. But you cannot say, name a war of China's one

in the last 30 or 40 years. It's like, you can't do that when you're arguing for a state of United States, USA number one. No, this country refuses to punch itself in the dick as many times as we are. Like, these guys must be fucking idiots. He writes, their soldiers are untested. Their pilots have no combat experience. Their Navy plays sharks and minnows with Filipino fishing boats. Their supply chains run on the principles of corruption and inefficiency that are the communist hallmark.

Well, it's like, that's equally true of this country. We're using our military and air force to blow up fishing. boats in the fucking Caribbean. That's not exactly, that's not exactly going like through Red Barron. If their supply chains run on the principles of inefficiency and corruption, then that is

even worse for us. If these are their corrupt, inefficient shitty supply chains, they're fucking eating our lunch. Well, apparently just all of it is just graft, apparently. What would it look like if like, I don't know, they,

um, you sent an enterprising professor from George Mason University there to teach them about the free market and do it your way. It's just completely delusional because you can't produce a single fucking thing in this country without components from China. Like the idea that we're like somehow like independently producing things like cars and phones and whatever the fuck consumer items this guy is like obsessed with. He said name a Chinese product that you can't live without.

And then he mentioned an American product that you can't make without China. Like you can't even single one. Dylan, we tried to get hats made. We tried to get hats made in America once. And we could at most get like 14 a month made. Yeah, at a cost of like a thousand dollars a hat. Yeah. No one should want a war between the U.S. and China.

Thank God. But he says, but if it comes to that, I know which side I'd rather be on, the team that took Fallujah twice. the team that neutralized Fordow, Natas, and Ifshan, the team that snatched Maduro. The team that, wait, the team that took Fallujah twice in a war we lost. Like,

like what? Uniquical fucking disaster that was the bellwether of how badly things are going to go for us for the next 20 years. The idea, if you said, like, if this operation takes Shanghai, it's going to be just like Fallujah. Or it's snatching Maduro. People will be saying, oh my God, tens of millions of Americans of,

soldiers are going to die. It's like we took it and it was so fun the first time. We just decided to do it again. I'm going with the Marines. I'm going to say Iwo Jima. Twice. Yeah, imagine if in World War II, they were like the second battle of Iwo Jima.

Yeah, that's the indication that the first one didn't go splendidly. He goes here. Americans have a reputation as yokels and naval gazers. I can't see why. He goes, that's not reality. We're actually quite cosmopolitan. We can be open-minded and self-critical. We read our own reviews, even the bad ones.

We know what most people think of it. Most of it is motivated by envy. The reality is, the world is with us. If they could, it would be us. Nobody wants to be China. No one in Albania or Botswana dreams of living in a low-income censorship and surveillance state. They want to live in a modern, prosperous society with free and fair elections. People risk everything to come here to build new and hopeful lives in the unsexy parts of our country, mid-sized city, inner ring suburbs, run down areas.

Everywhere you go in the U.S., you find immigrants from around the world, raising families, building businesses, investing in their futures. That is a vote of confidence, a revealed preference. It doesn't happen in China. Once again, writing this in 2026 is awesome. Like if you wrote this in the 90s, fine, but it's like everywhere you go in the U.S., you find immigrants from around the world, raising families, building businesses, and then cowering in fear. as our state paramilitary security forces, round them up to be exported to concentration camps. What are you talking about, dude?

He says that no one wants to live in China. If anyone listening to this is within the Chinese intelligence service, I will drop everything right now if you send me to Chongqing or something. That place looks awesome. I'll just say, there's a lot of people living in China, a lot more than they're living in the United States. There's a lot of people in China who are living in China. they're all standing around and watching as we fuck ourselves and like kill each other.

So he writes here, tune out the partisan noise and the communist propaganda. China's per capita GDP is in the neighborhood of Mexico's. Its economy is dominated by state-owned enterprises, phony businesses, in other words. They don't engage in real competition in open markets. They don't report real numbers. Everything is a mirage intended to give the illusion of strength. Like everything he's saying about China is like absolutely true of the United States. Because you guys here

Communism is you can't steal your way to greatness And you can't bluff your way to hegemony Communism is a self-defeating ideology Improversed weak and ugly So don't worry too much about the future It's got America written all over it That's Matthew Hessey Critic of the Wall Street Journal

And they say that the English language is dead I just love the idea that global power Is just a popularity contest He's like putting his best case forward for why you should vote for America for being world power as opposed to like who's actually the center of global production who's actually making shit.

Well, you know, they need to, okay, somebody has to open up the Sydney Sweeney factories in China. Well, I don't know what party bureaucrat you need to bribe to start making Sydney Sweeney's in China, but they're going to steal her from us, reverse engineer the Sydney Sweeney program and start turning them out by the billions. Yeah, I love the idea of like an American Victor Bolinko who like hijacked a Sydney

Sweeney and flies it to China into fact. And they're like, oh my God, we can finally reverse engineer like a 5-2 woman with 36 Cs. I'm sorry, I don't mean to be gross. I mean, Spencer says she considering killing Sidney, like Stalin and John.

You know, Stalin was a big fan of John, all of John Wayne's movies, and that's why I wanted to kill him. He was like, this guy's too good. He's too good at being a cowboy. We should consider assassinating him.

I like the idea that she is like watching euphoria and being like, you know, this show is really good. I wish me, I wish my onerous censorship ship regime in China allowed us to have a wonderful TV show like this. I'm sorry, I've listened to this program for a very long time, and I've bet on a few times

as well. This is maybe the worst thing that it's ever been read that I've ever heard. It's really up there. It's pretty good. It's pretty good. It's like all of the psychology, like they used to say that the Germans were their psychology on their sleeve. Yeah. This is, this is pure American excellence in that category. Well, yeah, because like basically Chim is like, if I could distill this article through one sentence, he's like, who wants to fuck China? Look at America's sweat-ass pussy. She's ready.

She's got big ass tits. Everyone, or dick is on hard for America. Look at this. Look at these ugly. They got no ass. No titties. They got no magic city in China. No NBA.

Everybody's clamoring for a journalism job. But really, if you learn how to write like this, you will get a guaranteed staff position at at least one American newspaper. Like just work to the wise. All right. Well, let's wrap it up there for today. I want to thank our guest, Chamis Malikovselli and Dylan Saba.

Their show is Turbulance. We will have links in the episode description. Is there anything else you'd like to plug? Anything you're working on? Any pieces that you want to put on our radar? Yeah, I got a piece coming out tomorrow in the Law and Political Economy blog called The Shakedown,

which is about Kushner and Whitkoff and the gangsterification of U.S. foreign policy and diplomacy. You should check that out. Go listen to turbulence. Shout out M. Seniza, a beautiful woman from Chicago, so I have to momentarily defend the honor of Chicago. She's one of the ten. No, no. No, no. She's one of the ten.

That's right. That's right. But yeah. I would also say that I have a piece coming out in the next Parraxis magazine about the death spiral of Iranian monarchism. And I have a piece coming out in the drift. next issue about the UAE trying to be the Israel of the Arab world. Go pre-order those issues now. All right.

Well, once again, that does it for us today. Until next time, everybody. Bye-bye. Thank you.