The Bulwark Podcast - Mehdi Hasan: 9/11's Fallout 25 Years Later

Episode Date: September 11, 2026

Rudy Giuliani and others who purport to represent the families of 9/11 victims ginned up the idea that it would be wrong for the Muslim mayor of NYC to attend Friday's memorial at ground zero. Republican politicians and Laura Loomer keep pushing their trash Islamification conspiracy. And a law-abiding Muslim family has been imprisoned for five months because Rubio declared them a national security threat—and most of the media could care less. At the same time, Tucker has a new, large Muslim fan base because they like what he's saying about Gaza and the Palestinians, even though he's a solid anti-Muslim bigot who just hates the Jews more right now. Plus: Trump seems to really like communism, JD has never publicly said he opposes the Iran war but he keeps leaking that he's against the administration's signature foreign policy initiative, and Hunter is a crypto-scamming mess.Mehdi Hasan joins Tim Miller for the weekend pod. show notes: Mehdi’s Zeteo news site Tim’s piece for the 20th anniversary of 9/11 Tim on the Iranian family Marco is imprisoning The Bulwark store Tim’s playlist Closing song - Orville Peck - It's the End of the World Bulwark LIVE: Benefit for SpringfieldSome moments require you to step up. Some require you to show up. That’s why The Bulwark is coming to Ohio. Join Tim, Sarah, JVL, Sam and friends Friday, September 25 at the Dayton Masonic Center for an evening of politics and fellowship.Benefit for OhioAll profits from this event will be donated to those in Springfield who are in need. Own your health for $365 a year. That’s a dollar a day. Learn more and join using my link. Visit www.functionhealth.com/BULWARK and use gift code BULWARK25 for a $25 credit toward your membership.”

Hey, everybody, a few fun updates for you. Before you get to the show, as for the music that I've been putting at the end of this podcast since I took over, I've been trying to pick songs, have little Easter eggs for you guys. It's been something that I've really enjoyed. It's fun. I've also been doing this like three and a half years now. And I'm running out of fun picks. And I've got a lot of shit happening in my life.

And so what I did instead, a couple months ago, has reached out to some artists that I've spoken to in the past or featured in the past. past to see if we could just license their songs and use them repeatedly at the end of the show. Orville Peck, The War on Drugs, M.J. Lenderman, shout out to them are allowing us to use some of their songs. I'm working on some others as well that we can add. From time to time, I'll still, you know, pick a little teaser for you guys because I have fun doing it. But this way, that takes a little burden off me. Also, there's the playlist that I was creating that I kind of stopped updating this summer. At some point, I have a boring day, and I'll go back

time and update the playlist, but it doesn't have kind of like the last two months of songs, so I'm sorry about that. But we've got some great and I think kind of cheeky tunes that will now be ending the episodes with and appreciate Orville and MJ and the War on Darks for letting us do that. We also have, just on the event in Springfield, so overwhelmed by the response that we've had, you go to the blog.com slash events. We've already sold hundreds of tickets to the event in Dayton, actually, the Springfield benefit. We will also So for people who can't make it, you know, be putting up some links where you can donate to the groups that we're going to be supporting the nonprofits in the community.

We are going to kind of sell out the first round of tickets, I think, in Dayton, which is pretty amazing. So it's Friday night. Come hang out with us if you're anywhere near the bulwark.com slash events. It's going to be a meaningful night. We also have some new merch that I've been agitating for for a while. I wore last night, my capitalist wing of Antifa, the bulwark shirt. That's on.

My Instagram followers really got a kick out. of it. So it's up. It's on the store. We also have a woke bill crystal shirt that's at the store that's really funny. And like, and we've kind of updated the other stuff too with the new logo and and the quality of the shirts are better. But we got a new hat coming. So a lot of good stuff in the store. Keep an eye on that. So there you go. Up next, it's an interesting show. It's spicy. And I think you're going to appreciate it. It's Medell-Sum. Stick around. Hello and welcome to the Bullwark Daily. I'm your host. Tim Miller. Welcome back to the show, founder, CEO, and editor-in-chief of Ziteo. He also hosts the weekly show Medi Unfiltered. It's Medi-A-Austin. How you doing, man?

Good, Tim. Thanks for having me. Happy to do it. Just a little behind the curtain for people. Last week, you interviewed Hunter on your show, and I was tickled by it. We'll get to that maybe at the end. And so as, you know, as is my... Pre his crypto king days. Pre-price that. As is my kind of erratic booking strategy. I watched it. I enjoyed it. I texted you immediately. I looked at the schedule. I was like, we got an opening next Friday. Are you available? And you replied, you really want to interview me on 9-11, smiley face? And it hadn't occurred to me, but it felt right.

It felt appropriate to do it. There's a lot of people watching this bad faith actors who also think it's appropriate for all the wrong reasons. Yeah, but that's bullshit. Of course it's bullshit. I mean, I don't know. I just came on this show, Tim, minutes after switching on Twitter and seeing Mamdani shaking hands with Rudy Giuliani at Ground Zero. I wouldn't have shaken that big at his hand. Rudy Giuliani has been ridiculously Islamophobic and racist in recent days, more so than he normally is.

But, you know, that's what Muslims in public life have to put up with. I wouldn't put up with it, but Zoran Mandani is a much nice amount of me. Isn't that right, though? I got to say about Zoran, he's given these guys so little to work with that they've been stuck with just the bigotry, like honestly. I talked to Jessica Tull off about this earlier this week. And, you know, She said that I guess some of the Orthodox community or whatever still have some complaints. But like Zoron is tweeting about anti-Semitic attacks when they happen anytime, any place, not even in New York. And he should do that. Like, that's good, right?

And he understands the concerns and he's doing what is, you know, everything possibly publicly as a public figure to assuage them. And isn't that just a good politics? Isn't that what we want? Don't you want the inverse? Yeah. Do you want decent human beings running for office? People who actually give a shit about other human beings? Yeah, wow.

We're such a cynical nation. We're like, wow, here's a guy who actually seems to care about. It gets potholes fixed the day you ask him to do it. Somebody had a great tweet. I can't remember who it was, said, you know, Duran is running New York like a kid in a movie who suddenly gets all this power and just enjoys it. He looks like he's happy. I don't know if you saw him with the school kids yesterday.

He's like he's enjoying himself. He looks like he's enjoying himself. People around them look like they're enjoying themselves. He actually seems to be doing good, as in municipal, good with his powers. And people can't handle it. As you say, we're so cynical. We're like, no, no, there must be some hidden agenda. No, no, it's a Muslim Brotherhood takeover of New York. People are desperate. And his approval rating, meanwhile, go up and up. I think he's nearly 70% right now. It's pretty gross, like the way he's been treated. Especially on this 9-11.

I mean, in general, I mean, I've been following Zaron since the very beginning. I interviewed him when he was at 0.5% in the polls. He's been treated horrifically since the beginning. But I think the last week has possibly been one of the worst weeks of all. This idea that a guy who was nine years old and 9-11 is somehow responsible for 9-11, shouldn't be invited to a 9-11 ceremony. This made-up bullshit story. By the way, Tim, I'm sure you have, I've interviewed 9-11 family members. None of them have said they don't want Zaraan, Mammani to turn up. I just interviewed the mother of Vanessa Lang Langer, who was horrific, four months pregnant,

29 years old and 9-11 died, killed in the World Trade Center attack. She said, the only reason I would go to this ceremony because I love Zoran Moundani. So this bullshit that the New York Post and Rudy Giuliani claimed to speak for 9-11 families with this fake petition and ridiculous Republican city council members coming out with more racist shit every day. I don't know if you saw the interview Tim with where he's asked about this again. And you just see it in his eyes, you're like, he's the mayor of New York. It's a really sad day for New York.

He wants to represent his people. And instead he's been asked this bullshit, bad faith crap about 9-11. Oh, his lawyer was a lawyer for a 9-11 suspect. That's what lawyers do. That doesn't mean Zaron-Mumdani was pro-9-11. This kind of absolute endless shit that he's been put. put through. And by the way, you saw the Vanity Fair piece. I don't know if you saw that as well, where they said, you know, in the eyes of his critics, he's a stand-in for 19 hijackers.

And then some of us called out Vanity Fair and they added the word, oh, that's Islamophobic, obviously. They stealth edited the beast. Yeah, but that is how Muslims feel now. Again, 20 years later, the same shit, the collective blaming, the stereotyping. It's just endless. Well, I'm going to start this by saying, I've been abundantly good. We went off on CBS and the way that they fucking handled, like comparing, you know, saying that the 9-11 coming up. There's Abdul-El-Said's tweets, yeah. Yeah, it means that it's time to reflect on Abdul-Elzad's positions.

It's like, why? Like, what does Abdul-El-Said had nothing to do with 9-11? So I've been disgusted by just the overt Islamophobic bigotry that would not be acceptable for any other demographic group in the country. You saw what Rudy Giuliani said, right? He specifically said that Muslims want to conquer us, and that's what Mamdani supports. Now, you imagine, you imagine Zoran, forget another America. You imagine Zaraan, Mamdani, saying, well, Benjamin Netanyahu's coming to New York,

and I don't want him in New York because Jews want to conquer New York, so we can't have Netanyahu here. It would be the end of his political career, and rightly so. But he wouldn't say that because he's not a better. And there are multiple Republican politicians and leading figures like Laura Lumer, so this is a problem, the Islamification of the country. We need to send us, you know, Muslims back. Tommy Tubberville, who is a sitting United States senator,

put out a picture of Mamdani having an ifhtar gathering. saying the enemy is within the gates. And it's sick. It's horrifying. That is stated. I think that it's worthwhile, at least, for me, having been a former Republican to tell you what people say behind the scenes and what people were saying during this period,

and I was a Republican during the 9-11 period. And something that people would say that I'm curious your response to is like this idea that I kind of just wanted the Muslim community to be madder. Right? like if it was my people, you know, if it was a group of radical gay, former Catholics or whatever that flew planes into the building, like I would be in the same way that Zoran is like really performatively for good reasons, like, you know, speaking out against anti-Semitism. I think that there's a desire unfair, but real inside people for Muslims to be like, you know what I'm really mad at? The fuckers that killed all these people. Yeah.

And maybe people didn't feel satisfied by that. What's your response when people offer that sentiment? I mean, obviously I've had this discussion for 25 years and we're on the 25th anniversary. I mean, I would say multiple things. We'll be here for 10 hours if we get into it. But I'd say a couple of things, which is, number one, the knee jerk reaction, understandable from Muslims, is always, well, why should I? What has it got to do with me? These are 19 foreign hijackers, 15 Saudis, Emirati, Lebanese, Egyptian, 19 guys.

Are you trying to lump me in because there's one Lebanese now, maybe? Okay, I see. There was one Lebanese in there. But 19 guys and came from our allied countries, but why should I be forced to condemn or disown or speak for them? And that was the response from a lot of people. But even with that response, people still did condemn. That was my position. My position is always, if a terrorist attack happens, my position is I will condemn it, but I'll condemn it because I'm a human being and I want to condemn it.

The killing of innocent human beings. I'm not going to condemn it out of some collective blaming, I owe you a condemnation. That I will not do, never do, never have done, never will do. You'll never say, I must condemn it because I'm Muslim. I'm not going to do that. I'll condemn it because I'm a human being. And I think we've seen that over 25 years. No one has asked Jewish people to condemn Israel.

I haven't. I've spent three years condemning Israel's genocide in Gaza. Not once have I asked a Jewish American say, you must condemn Israel. Never, never done it, never will. And I've never asked Christians to condemn what Christian extremists do, what Donald Rumsfeld did in the name of Christianity, or what Marco Rubio is doing in the name of Christianity today. So that kind of collective stereotyping and blaming was something Muslims resisted.

But the reality is Muslims did condemn 9-11. There was a famous thing at the time. I remember I was a straight out of college. I just started a new job in a TV company. I was a researcher. One of the things that came up was aware of the condemnations. I was always the thing, where are the Muslim condemnations? And a website was created.

Obviously, the internet was not what it is today. But there was a website created where Muslims are like, here's a list. Here's every Imam scholar organization around the world who has condemned 9-11. people forget this. On 9-11 itself, or the day after, Yasser Arafat went and gave blood, right? He did a blood drive because a couple of Palestinians cheered, and then it was like, oh, the Palestinians support 9-11. He went and did a blood drive for American victim of 9-11. Iranians went out into the streets of Tehran. The mayor of Tehran said,

we are in solidarity with New York. They went out and had a candlelit vigil for a country that wasn't their friend on 9-11. The Muslim world actually had a lot of solidarity with the U.S. The entire the whole world did. And that's one of the great tragedies of 9-11, what could have been, had George Bush and the neocons actually used that moment to actually bring the world together rather than start this very divisive, endless war. So this idea that Muslims were either happy about it or not mad about it is just not empirically supported. I was there.

Muslims universally condemned it. And by the way, Tim, I just interviewed Talat Hamdani, whose son, Muhammad Salman Hamdani, was a NYPD cadet, an EMT who ran into the Trun Towers. It was his day off. He was not working there. He ran in and he died on 9-11. And the New York Post said, well, maybe he was a terrorist. And to this day, the 9-11 memorial will not include her son's name on the list of first responders.

Even the Mamdani administration has refused to do that. Because he technically wasn't on duty that day and he wasn't full-time, gave his life. So Muslims died on 9-11. Muslims condemned 9-11. Muslims continue to mourn 9-11, including the mayor of New York. So a lot of this is misinformation, I'm sorry to say. Yeah, I agree with that. I think that there's another element of it that is there's this, well, I mean, the other element

being there's a bigotry element. I think there's a human desire that's like, I want people to match my anger. You know, like I feel it about Trump, right? Like, why are people, you know, I feel about this one of these, a couple of these topics are about to come up with. Why are people as mad as fucking I am? And so I do sometimes think that's an element. Can I have one more caveat, which is you don't give people this. The problem is the reaction to tragedies often doesn't give people the space to show the emotion you want them to. And I'll give you many examples. Let's take the example of Charlie Kirk. Charlie Kirk was murdered a year ago yesterday.

Republicans immediately went into, you must condemn this, the left is violent, we must turn him into a martyr, etc. Now, I happen to be one of those people who don't, I don't like people celebrating death. I don't think it's cool when you're going, ah, you know, laugh on people's death. The guy was, I despised the guy, he loathed me,

he wanted me deported, but he had a wife and kids. He was murdered completely unjustly. People say, oh, you're not, why is the left matter about that? Well, you didn't give us a chance to be mad. You immediately started attacking us. You immediately started saying, we must say Charlie Kirk's amazing, which I'll never say, he was a horrible human being.

But you didn't give us a chance. And on a bigger scale, 9-11 is an interesting example of that, where you start this war on Afghanistan and then a war on Iraq. And in the subsequent years, you're like, well, why aren't we talking about 9-11? Well, you've killed 10 times as many people in the interim period. So maybe we're a bit distracted by that. Same with October 7th. People say October 7th.

Oh, people were already protesting straight after October 7. Because Israel already killed hundreds of people within days of October the 7th. Tim Braith was a bad day to protest. I agree it was a bad day to protest, but let me add this. You know that hundreds of people were killed on October 8th in Gaza. You know this, right? Okay. But like the morning.

I mean, sure. But they were killed. Innocent Palestinians were killed on Sunday. Yeah. I mean, Israel has been attacked. I know we don't talk about this, Tim. But Israel killed several hundred people because people like Joe Walsh and others will tell me on social media. You guys were protesting before Israel had even responded.

That is a lie. Israel killed hundreds of Palestinians within 24 hours. of October the 7th. But even some of the protests, people at those protests, were like, we knew they were going to do bad things. It's just, this is kind of being respectful. And I don't agree with everyone at every protest. I'm not here to defend every protest.

I am, though, saying I don't want the erasure of Palestinians being killed instantly after October the 7, instantly. So like Israel waited a few weeks or waited a month and then took revenge. They started killing Palestinians who did nothing, had nothing to do with October 7 immediately. Yeah, it is tough. I wrote about this on a 20-year,

and I'll put a link in the show notes. And it's one of these things where it's like, depending on who the speaker is. I just went back and reread what I wrote and I wrote this for the last 20 years people who had not really lived had to die. They died because of the fuckers who hijacked the planes. They died because

we made a horrifying tragedy worse by palli catastrophe upon cluster fucking years that followed. That's just true. Like that's what happened. Right? And it's like when I say that, nobody complains about that. But Abdul says that and it's like, why are you focused on that? Right. On this day. But like after 25 years like that is the story.

That's a big part of the story. I mean, Zateo's coverage has been, we've done a lot of coverage of 9-11, we've interviewed family members, but we've also talked about what happened after 9-11. I mean, according to the Brown University's Cost of War Project, something like 800 to 900,000 people, 40 to 50% of them civilians were killed between 2001 and 2023, right, in the wars on terror. That's an insane that you can't just say, we're only going to mourn 3,000 people 9-11. We should mourn 3,000 people 9-11. It was a horrific tragedy what happened on Ivan.

It was the worst attack on the United States in my lifetime. Of course, we should mourn those deaths. And I said, I've interviewed three different family members this week to talk about their loss. But the idea that we then shouldn't talk about the Afghans and the Iraqis and the Pakistanis and all those people who died in the aftermath in wars that Donald Rumsfeld and George Bush and all of those guys unnecessarily started in my view. Of course we're going to do that. We're human beings. And now we're back at it. Now we're back at it with Donald Trump, Neocon.

War of choice. We're back out in Iran. Last night, anybody who lived these last 25 years, this is another reason why it's important to talk about this. So it's like when Donald Trump started this stupid war of choice in Iran, almost immediately after I had Bob Kagan on, who was one of the neocons you criticized about the Iraq war. And we were on the show and we're discussing and we're just like, this is stupid. This is not going to achieve any of the results we want. This is going to lead to greater instability in the region. It didn't have to even be somebody that was opposed.

It just had to be somebody that was awake during the last 25 years to learn the lessons of the last 25 years to know that this was going to be a disaster. And last night it's getting worse. The hooties now bombed to Saudi pipeline. They're seizing a port in the Red Sea. The war that they won't even call war anymore. They're just calling a conflict. It seems to be expanding now in ways that might have even more disastrous consequences, economically, loss of life, et cetera.

With classic Trump, because he says, I don't want to call a war, and then he actually calls it a war, and he kind of undermines the messaging. Obviously, it's a war. It's a disaster. It's interesting that you mentioned Kagan and obviously Bill Crystal and others who were very pro-Iraat war have come out against this.

But others haven't. Mark Tieson, the Post, has been a big supporter. Mark Levin and Fox, a big supporter, Dubowitz, the Foundation, all those neocon guys who supported all right. Do support this, Ben Shapiro, Netanyahu himself, of course, famously pro-Iraq War. And Lindsay Graham, the late Lindsay Graham,

who loved all of these wars, they didn't learn any lessons at all from any of this stuff. It's interesting, I interviewed General Wesley Clark this week, who was opposed to the Iraq War, but supports this Iran war, bizarre. Really? Oh, I missed that. Yeah.

Although, interestingly, I got to go watch that. Although interestingly, I then did bring up the fact that he's being paid to give speeches to the M.E.K, this weird, cultish Iranian opposition group. So that might be part of it, but I would never dare suggest that. Look, it's a disaster. I think it's only going to get worse, Tim. The midterms, they made it very clear. The ones the midterms are out of the way, he's got no limitations, no restrictions left. Whatever hesitation Trump has now is only because he knows he's getting destroyed his party.

He's getting destroyed in his stuff. I do worry post-midterms, he thinks. I've got nothing to lose here, and I just go all out. He would escalate before the mentors, but I think the next two months is going to be bad. I think that the Iranians understand the political pressure that he's on. Obviously, what we're seeing with the Houthis, understand. They have many options.

They have many options that they haven't exercised. Some of us spent 20 years warning about a war against Iran saying, this is going to make Iraq look like a walk in the park. Iran is not Iraq. It is bigger. It is stronger. It has more options. It has much more impact on the global economy.

And these guys got hubristic. They saw the attacks on Hamas. They saw the Hizbalah Pager operation. And they thought, look, Iran's, when Venezuela, Iran's weaker than it's ever been. We're stronger than we've ever been. Let's do this now. And you saw the reporting from the Wall Street Journal about Lindsay Graham, you know, telling Donald Trump, you can be this great president if you do this.

I'm not one of these people who says, it's all Netanyahu. Donald Trump must take responsibility for Iran. But he also is a man child who's easily manipulated. And these people did easily manipulate him in telling him it would be a short war. It would be overquick. The regime would fall. They even had Mahmoud Ahmad al-Madinajad on the slide. as a possible replacement.

By the way, can we just stop Tim for a second and just talk about this? The same people who tell us that everything is about anti-Semitism, that you can't support Abdul al-Said and Zaraan, because they're anti-Semites, that you have to support Israel against Hamas because of anti-Semitism,

pitched Holocaust denier Mahmoud Ahmad Adjad as the next president of Iran. Yeah, it's part of the regime-change war. Because they don't care about anti-Semitism if you're on the same side. We'll see, and this is kind of ongoing, it's hard, you know, don't have full visibility into the damage

of this pipeline attack in Saudi, but that pipeline is how, Saudi is getting oil around the street right now. And depending on the scale of that damage, there's the barbell manda, which is what the Houthis can control and block. It's what the Iranians have always threatened. And some of us again warned about that a while ago.

And these guys, I don't know what. Funny thing is now, Tim, really, things, something you guys at the bulwark, and Azizatea, and other than the independent, really just stay on this. Because you know what's going to happen? At some point, inshallah, this war will end. And the Strait of Hormuz will open.

And Donald Trump will say, victory. And we must not let him get away with say, that opening the straight that was open on February 27th is a victory. You can't say the goal of the war is something that was not a problem before the war started. And that's what they're doing. They're basically making all about straight. We might not be aligned on every single issue at Zateo and the Bullark, but I can commit to you that we will both do our part.

To call out the fake straight of Hormuz goalpost shifting victory. To not let them get away with that. All right, ever notice when you Google something, then all of a sudden every ad you see is about it, or you try to watch something when traveling? And you find out it's just blocked. It's happened to me last year when we were at our Toronto show. Shout out Canada folks.

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I want to talk about what it's having domestically. This was back to what we were talking about one of these topics where I'm like, why isn't everybody as mad as me about this? And, you know, it's not really necessarily a healthy impulse. But I wrote about Mariam Thomas Sevi and her family this week. Yes, I'm glad you did. The Iranian family, her mother. in law was the spokesperson for the hostage takers in 1979.

She wasn't born then. Her husband wasn't born there. Her teenage son, sure his shit wasn't born then. And they've been in an internment camp now for over five months. Dilley, right? Well, the mom and the son are at Dilley. The husband is in a jumpsuit in a prison camp 20 minutes away.

They've had no rule of law, nothing. This is on the nose Japanese internment camp. The only reason they're in there is, because they're Iranian and because of their bloodline. And it's just, I don't, I'm baffled by this. Like, I'm baffled that there are not, that this isn't a front page New York Times story. I mean, we wouldn't expect it from CBS, but that the nightly news isn't covering their story. I don't understand.

But their story came out via the nation, if memory says me correctly. She wrote a piece from inside of prison. And her lawyers are fantastic lawyers. I know her lawyers. And it's, it's horrific. I read that piece. And like you, I was furious. Like, anytime I remember.

read about ICE or immigration, I just get enraged because none of this had to happen. And it's so cruel, it's so deliberate, it's so vicious, it's got nothing to do with immigration numbers, borders, safety. It is just, to quote Adam Soa from the first term, the cruelty is the point. And what really enrages me even more, because I'm one of these people who just, unfortunately, is cursed with a memory. I wish I had no memory, but I remember everything. I remember 10 years of Republicans telling me, free speech, free speech, free speech, free speech, we are the free speech party. Joe Biden was a tyrant because he said to Twitter, maybe you should take down

some disinformation tweets about vaccines in the middle of a once-in-a-century pandemic. Meanwhile, this government comes in and starts abducting people off the streets. They pulled that Turkish student. Ramea Ostok. They just grabbed her off the street.

A small woman in a hijab, 10 guys. Have you seen that video? One of the creepiest videos you'll ever watch where they just grab her. She's just walking on the street and master men take her off the street.

They did this to her at school drop off. They did this to the mother and child. We just don't have the video. So I guess it is. But you can imagine it. But why do it at school drop off? And, you know, Tom Homan was asked about this recently. Why are you doing stuff at school bus stops?

He lied about it, pretending not to know about it. And again, speech, they're basically going off to anyone they think they don't like. They're using this very obscure amendment to the 1952 Immigration Act, which allows Marco Rubio, Secretary of State, to detain and deport and strip of visas. Anyone he says is a threat to the foreign policy objectives of the United States. They've used it against Mahmoud Khalil. They've used against a bunch of students for their... speech. This family didn't even exercise any speech. It's not like they were doing some kind of major

activism. They were literally minding their own business. It's bloodline, right? It's the fact that his mother was the former vice president of Iran, former spokesman for the hostages. And it's just insane that you would punish family members. I thought family members are off limits. We're always told by Republicans. But this is collective punishment. It's a form of Islamophobia. And yet it is abusing the powers that these people have. The idea that, I mean, these are the same people, Tim, you know this better than me. You were in the Republican Party. You were born and raised here. In the 1990s and 2000s, the right was obsessed with black helicopters. They were obsessed with don't tread on me. Elian Gonzalez, people going in with masked goons. That was me.

I was upset about that. Why not be upset now? Yeah. That was Al Gore and Bill Clinton, and it was their masked men thugs. And now a Republican administration is doing this to completely harmless people who are here legally, by the way, they hear legally, they've committed no crimes, and you're sending jackbooted thugs to break them out of cars and put them in detention centers with no and they're not even deporting them right they're actually not giving them a chance no it's good luck they're i mean trump last night laura engram asked him his one sentence reason for why people should vote republican in the midterms it's like fear of communism and i'm like what is it that you don't like communism exactly taking over companies i don't know police on the streets yeah yeah

ruled by a cultish leader uh it's all it's all there i mean the guy is ready for a communist state No, it's amazing. And I think to go back to your question, it is frustrating. I don't want to be sanctimonious or lecturing about this, but whether it's Gaza or whether it's ice, whatever it is, I wish we had more protests. I wish we had more people on the streets. I get why people aren't protesting in the same way they have before. I get the fear.

I get the intimidation. I think it's a mixture of factors. What's your reason why? I think it's intimidation. I think it's fatigue on the Gaza issue. I think it's having done it for two years with the Democratic president. and got nowhere. What's the point of doing it with the Republican president? I think there's a mixture of factors. I think it's also, you know, Steve Bannon said it best, which is flood the zone

with shit. I as someone who covers Trump. You as someone who covers Trump. I can't keep up with the outrage scandal. What should I be angry about today? Like, is it immigration? Is it the brazen corruption in front of our eyes? Is it the cruelty? Is it the racism from the loomers? What are we supposed to be mad about? How do we organize to focus on one issue? You say Dillie should be on the front page. I agree, but I can tell you seven other things that should also be on the front page. They can't all be on the front page. I don't want to be a New York Times defender. But the reality is Donald Trump does enough scandals. I would just think that the nightly news would one time once want to cover the interment camp. I hear you. It's just, it's just mystifying the situation. It's

boy, we're torturing this boy. But the mainstream media is brought into the narrative that underlying Trump's abuses and cruelty is a legitimate campaign to deport criminals. And you have to start from the premise that nothing is legitimate about what Trump is doing. I don't buy this whole, you must start from, well, the border was out of control on Biden. And something, no, no, once you concede that premise that actually what he's doing is driven by any kind of legitimate policy concern, you've lost the argument. Well, this is how they pitched putting these people in the camp, is that Marco said, well, that we can't have terrorists in the country. They're terrorists. And this is a 9-11 echo, too. And, you know, because of their mother, you told me that you had

interviewed the mother once, ICE's mother, the grandmother. That's wild. Masuma, Eptica, who was Vice President of Iran. I interviewed her when she was Vice President Iran. I was at Al Jazeera English. I did lots of interviews with lots of politicians from around the world, and we secured an interview with the Vice President Iran in, I want to say, 2016, 17. And it didn't go so well for her because I tend to do quite tough interviews, and she's not used to that in Iran.

You'll be shocked to hear. I don't really do very many accountability interviews on TV there. She got very upset. I believe she complained to Al Jazeera afterwards. It was very funny because she was sitting in the studio, and I could hear her saying, and then we had interpreted say she spoke in English in the interview, but she apparently asked her, A, like, who is this?

What is this interview? I was like, what is a mistake to come on interview me and not prep for the interview beforehand? So that's during the Trump first term, though. It's pretty telling. I mean, like, okay. So Trump was president once. She was vice president. You were interviewing her, asking her hard questions about the proxies that they're

supporting, et cetera. And these people, her daughter and law are grandson were living their life. Which tells you everything about that first term versus the second term. It's where the, you know, how the second term is on steroids versus the first time is that they're doing things they never would have dreamt of doing. in term one because there are no guardrails, there are no quote unquote adults in the room. He did get second term vindication after Garland. I mean, unfortunately, Democrats have a lot of things to answer for here.

Trump is the way he is because they let him get back into power in the way he got back into power with no accountability. And I know people get upset and the Matt Iglesias as well say, oh, you blame everything Republicans do on Democrat. But yes, I do blame Merrick Garland for why we're in this situation, 100%. And he came back, he came back feeling, vindicated, feeling angry, feeling, I'm going to get revenge, feeling like there's nothing that can stop me now. And that's why they're doing this. I mean, imagine if I told you during the campaign that they are just going to round people up

for no crimes, hold them indefinitely, and the Secretary of State's going to do it with the stroke of a pen, it's going to be masked guys doing it. You would have said, or not you, but others would have said TDS. Medi's got Trump derangements. Oh, he's a fascist, is he? He's gone beyond even what I was thinking he was going to say. We're going to do so quickly. I think some people would turn back you. I think believe the last time we were on together was right before the election and we kind of went back and forth a bit on this question of whether, you know, the kind of uncommitted movement and Dearborn in particular in Michigan and whether they should vote for Kamala. And you kind of were of the position just summarized. It was like, you understand why they're upset. You think that they should vote for Kamala. I was like, I don't even understand why it's a close call. That was basically the degree of our disagreement. I'm looking at this now. I do think you look back at that and some of the left act. activists have to be like, God, we maybe spent a little too much time pissing in the comlatent and not enough time reminding people about the threats. I'm almost with you. The pissing on the calm intent, depends how you define that.

Remember, she was vice president in an active administration that was governing the country in 2024. Like, you can't just give up accountability because it's an election, right? So in the sense of holding Biden Harris to account for what was happening in Gaza at that time, I think everyone was legitimate doing it. But I was trying to walk and chew gum at the same time. I was trying to say, Biden's doing bad stuff. Hey, Biden, stop doing bad stuff. Stop sending weapons to Gaza. But I wasn't glazing Trump.

I wasn't suggesting that he's going to be somehow better. Some people on the left did. And those people should hang their heads in shame forever. I asked MAGA people in there. Like I had Pedro on yesterday about whether people have regrets in his community. Do you feel that? Do you ever hear that from like either left types or? Oh, I've had people come up to me all over the place and say, I voted for Jill Stein.

I feel stupid. I've had a lot of people showing regret. But at the same time, I've had people say, no, I don't have any regret because there's no way I'd vote for a Democrat because of the genocide. And I'm like, but the genocide's still happening and it's worse in many ways now in terms of what's happening with Gaza and the future of Gaza and Israel and Lebanon and Iran. I mean, look, Dearborn is a town that I know well. I have many friends there. It's a great place. It got a lot of shit because it became like a kind of shorthand for Arab-American opposition to Harrison Biden. But it's a community

filled with Lebanese people and Iranian people and their countries have got a lot of shit since Donald Trump became president. And I had a Yemeni Imam on from Michigan who was one of the people who endorsed Trump on stage in 24. At the time, he's like, yeah, he's the peace candor. And I've invited him back on several times. You'll be shocked to hit him. He has not come back on to talk about how the peace record is going 18 months into this presidency. But look, I just want to be clear, because your audience is probably an audience is very critical

of lefties or Arab Americans who were anti-Harris. That's why we be clear. She lost seven states, all seven states. You can make it about Michigan as much as you want, but this was much more. I wish I could say Gaza was, I'm of the view that Gaza did hurt her and did cost her. the election in a way, but it wasn't the only issue. There were many reasons she lost. You think cost her the election? As in as in as in as in as in as in, as in, if you tell me what are the issues that cost her that, why did Harris lose, I would put Gaza in the top five reasons of

why she lost. Now, I don't know what number one is. We'll never know for sure. There's a mix of things, the timing, whether she was a good candidate, et cetera, et cetera. But my point is, it clearly hurt her, but it wasn't the only issue and it would be absurd to say she lost, I don't know, Pennsylvania or Arizona because of Gaza. She lost multivore. She lost multivore. Swing state. So it slightly annoys me when some centrist Democrats and blue maga types would be like, oh, it's all the fault of Uncommitted. By the way, Uncommitted came out against Trump, just factually. People were trying to attack Abdul Zaid. Uncommitted came out and said, do not vote for Donald Trump. They made that very clear. And most prominent leftists did endorse Harris. Sometimes we talk about

left, like some rando on Twitter is not the left. It really annoys me when we brand the left as like some rando person. The left is Bernie Sanders. The left is AOC. The left now is Zoranamundani. the left is Abdul Al-Saheyan now. I mean, they all, Abdul endorsed Kamala Harris. Bernie Sanders endorsed Kamala Harris. AOC endorsed Kamala Harris. She spoke at the convention.

A lot of far left to still hate AOC. It's kind of like the 9-11 thing. I think people wanted a little more fervor. People wanted a little more excitement. AOC was so fervent. AOC was great. She gets shit now for saying they were working tirelessly for ceasefire when they, of course, were not.

And she gets shit, and I have to defend AOC from people who hate her because of that one speech she gave her the convention. We all have, you know, our burdens to carry, Maddie. You know, I'm doing with the excellent. The left back Biden as Hunter Biden. You've got a deal with the Jill Stein people.

We're going to get to Hunter at the end. Very quickly on Hunter Biden separately. He reminded me, and he's reminded many people, that the people who backed his dad when the centrist were turning on were the left. Bernie Sanders AOC supported Joe Biden in June. They did not call for him to step aside. Correct. No, that is right.

It's something I mentioned quite a bit. September is World Alzheimer's Month, but most people never check their brain health until something's feeling off or wrong. I wanted to stop waiting and look at my own data. And I didn't want to take one of those Donald Trump tests like person, man, woman, camera, TV. Did I just pull that straight off the top, straight off the dome? I think I got that right. Look at me, just like Donald Trump.

No dementia here. And here's the thing, though, that isn't really a test. So one thing that you can use is tests from function health. Your focus and mental stamina leave a data trail in your blood. And function tracks it. And they track the core biomarkers that are tied to brain. Health, Omega 3 index, MMA, magnesium, and some other things that are hard for me to pronounce because I didn't do well in the science portion of the ACT. Plus, function members can add on brain-related

add-on tests. If you're concerned about brain injury or degeneration screening, Alzheimer risk test, Alzheimer detection test, check your brain and health the way I do. Function provides 160 plus lab tests for $1 a day and member pricing on advanced imaging. Join at functionhealth.com slash the bulwark and use code the boltwork 25 for a $25 credit. Here's something I'm a little bit nervous about, about lefties and the Arab-American crowd, which is said they're making this thing. That's not it. I don't have my capitalist wing of Antifa shirt that I was wearing last night.

What is worrying me is that making the same mistake over again, but instead of Donald Trump, it's Tucker Carlson and potentially J.D. Vance. You're on with Sam Minaj, I think, where you said that Tucker has a huge, on fan base, even people in your own family, people want to know when you're going to go on his show. That seems pretty alarming to me. It feels like just another version of Donald Trump, the peace candidate. Agreed. It's alarming to me, too. I don't say it in a positive way. And people who tell me they love Tucker, I do try and remind them of who Tucker is. The problem is, Tim, you, me, your audience, my audience, very newsy, plugged in audiences. Think about Norma Americans. Norma

don't follow the news. They don't follow the stuff. They don't know. If I start telling them what Tucker calls it, they have no idea. They barely know who Tucker Carson is. The people I'm talking about, they never heard of Tucker Carlson prior to him becoming this pro-Palestine. Now he's in their Twitter feed. Now he's in their feed. It's just all clips of Tucker calling out Ted Cruz, calling out Mike Cuckabee. Come on, you're calling out the worst people, right? I cheered Tucker calling out Mike Cuckabee and Ted Cruz as much as I dislike Tucker Coulson, right?

Because he's clearly in the right in those exchanges, and they're clearly odious people. So I get it again. But look, the reason, let me just wait, one substantive point on this. Please. Again, I know I'm speaking to your audience. I just want to, it's not that I'm defending to me. I just explain what's going through their heads. Through their heads is, mainstream media abandoned us.

Mainstream media gave Israel a pass. Democrats won't even call for a ceasefire till two years in, still won't call for arms embargo. Hakeem Jeffrey still won't go after APEC. Chuck Schumer still says his job is to make sure the left is pro-Israel. This guy is saying the stuff that liberals and leftists aren't saying. So why wouldn't we support this guy? He sounds like he's fresh and different.

He sounds contripe. By the way, Tucker says his whole, I got it wrong. and Americans love a, love a apology tour. Maybe those people should just like Chris Van Hollen. He's not as good at monologues. Tim, that's exactly what I say. You know what I say, events when Muslims bring up Tucker and Candice and MTG and say, these people are saying, shouldn't we ally with these people on the right?

They're saying the right stuff. I say, number one, they're saying the wrong stuff on everything else. They don't like immigrants. They're not like non-Christians. And number two, there are people on the Democratic side who are saying good stuff. You just don't know who there because TikTok doesn't give it to you because they're not as sexy. as Tucker Carlson and Canada. Delia Ramirez, who sponsored the Block the Bombs Act,

congresswoman from Illinois. People don't know her name. She's a fantastic Latina congresswoman who is pushing for justice both on ice and on Gaza. People don't know her. She's not Tucker Carlson. Let's help the algorithm. Here's the truth about Tucker Carlson.

He's a bigot. And he is an anti-Muslim bigot, but right now he hates the Jews more. And so that's why he's on the side of Muslims. But here is Tucker Carlson talking his real views about Muslims on Bubba the Love Sponge a little while ago. A rock is a crappy place filled with a bunch of, you know, semi-literate for big monkeys.

But I just have zero sympathy for them or their culture, a culture where people just don't use toilet paper or forks. And the way they treat women, you know, I agree with you. Their culture is, but you're in their homeland, and you're over there as an American who they hate, and they want nothing more than the Americans off of their soil. So they're not going to play games. Secondly, I mean, they can just shut the fuck up and obey, is my view.

Really heavily into Islam, I really do. I'm sorry, I just don't, I don't care for you that much. And I don't care what that sounds like. You can call me a racist. You can come over the fuck you want. That's like a carousin. So what people will say now, Tim, I've done, everything you're saying, I've had these conversations, they will say, but now he's apologized for that.

Now he's defending Islam. He called out Donald Trump when Trump mocked Islam. Candice Owens has come out and said, I was wrong on Islam. I was lied to about Islam. I'm not anti-Muslim. You're right to say that they have different targets right now. And I've said this to many people. We should make alliances with people who agree with us.

You and I are allied against Trump. We don't agree on everything else, but we agree that Trump is existential threat to this country. You and I have always agreed on that. You can ally with people you disagree with other things. The problem is that if they are basically saying, okay, it's Israel now slash Jews slash whatever it is now, and then Muslims later. That's Jews. He's a bigot. He was an anti-Muslimbishop when he was a fox.

He might come right back for you. It might come right back around. I did multiple segments on Tucker Carlson's racism and bigotry when I was at MSNBC and he was at Fox, right? He said, immigrants make this country dirtier, which J.D. Vance said at the convention last night. He said horrific things. By the way, I wouldn't even go back to Bubba stuff because he can say those are old views. We've all had old views that we disown. What about what he's saying right now? Even now in his new phase, he says stuff like great replacement. He says, oh, I don't recognize the UK. There's so many Muslims in London. He just did that the other day. He did it with Pierce Morgan, and Pierce Morgan had to defend Muslims and defend the UK.

Even now he's saying reactionary things, even now Candice Owens, I don't think, is anti-ice or Nick Fuentes. There's another name who's conned a lot of people because he says things about Israel, even though he's a card carrying anti-Semite Holocaust and anti-Muslim. So, look, my politics have always been, Tim. My enemy's enemy is not necessarily my friend. I've never bought into that logic. And I think too many people on all sides of the spectrum,

this is not just a left-wing thing, Tim. This is a centrist thing. You're seeing it in Michigan. Literally right now in Michigan, there are Jewish Democrats saying, I'm going to vote for Mike Rogers because I don't like Abdul L. They'll say it. If you don't like Abdulah say it, stay home. But vote for Mike Rogers. That's insane. You're voting for a white supremacist party. So a lot of people do this. Jews, Muslims, leftists, Christians, conservatives. They do this whole, my enemy's enemies, enemies, my friend. That's not the way you should do politics. Have some consistent principles. I'm for doing coalitions across disagreements. Okay. That's what the fucking bull works about. My point is that, like, Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens are bigots and liars. Right. And so they're not actually allies across differences. that's the key point you're making is more than the bigotry is the trust. My main issue is,

I don't know if I trust these people. MTG has switched. She's saying stuff that I like the sound of now, but like I also know MTG's record. Can you just twist on a dime? I worry about we live in an age of grift. We live in an age where people on all sides of spectrum can swap views like this, change them out and people shouldn't fall for it. And I said earlier in the conversation, I'm cursed with a memory. I remember things. So unlike my friends in the Muslim community or in the left community who, you know, who just, you know, don't know what Tucker was saying one year, two years, three years, or even two weeks ago. I know this stuff. So I need to see more evidence of any kind of substantive. My worry is like yours. And Hassan Piker and I had this conversation.

Interesting enough, Hassan is also very skeptical of the Tucker turn. We both agreed that the job that Tucker Carlson is probably doing is to bring people back to a future Republican Party under Vance. When he says, I'm against the Republicans. He goes on Bloomberg with my friend Michal who saying, he says, I'm not a Republican. I'm against the Republican Party. And then he goes, I love JD Vents. You can't be against the Republican Party if you support the Republican Vice President. That's a contradiction. I talked to Assange about this off stage last year at Crooked Con and I was just like, and he agrees with this. I was like, this is your job. Again, like I said earlier, we all have jobs in this world. And it's like as a prominent

influencer on the left. And we are. To talk to people and make people understand who the real Candace and Tucker are and, you know, have as much energy for hating them as for, you know, I don't know, whoever. Richie Torres or whatever, who you have some substantive disagreements on. That is not a big and a liar. But, you know, and there's other people like Chenk and Anna at Young Turks and others. He'd say, no, no, we must ally with Tucker. And I don't agree with them.

I've said that publicly. But what a lot of good faith normies would say is, look, we care about the genocide in Gaza. I think Bassem Yusuf, who is a comedian, you know, I do stuff with him. Zadeo, he went on Candace shot. I said, why did you do this? Why? And he said, his argument, I'm not saying I agree with it, but this is his argument. He says, when the house is on fire, you do not turn away.

a bucket from anyone who's bringing you a bucket of water, right? And that is the view of some people, which is Gaza's on fire. She's bringing you a bucket of piss, though. That's what she's bringing you. I wish I'd have that comeback. But the point is, their argument is, and I understand it. I'm not saying I agree with it, but it's like, Gaza is a huge issue. We've been abandoned my mainstream media and mainstream political leadership. These people are saying something, and they have platforms, and it's worth it. Now, my argument is, Gaza's my number one issue because it's a genocide. I've said that very clear. It's the number one issue in the world for me. What's happened to the Palestinians have lost three years. But it's not the only issue. I also care about what's

happening at Dilly Detention Center. And if you also care about what's happening in Dilly Detention Center, then of course you can't ally with MTG or Tucker or Cannes because they support what's happening at Dilley Detention Center. And here's the most important thing going back to J.D. Because let's talk about him. Because that is Tucker's project, is to support J.D. And I do feel like we're just sleeping walking into, yeah, or running himself. And into the same thing. that we ran into in 2024. And Jay Vance is anti-war. Yeah, he's trying to do this thing now.

It's the same shit Trump did. It's like, you're the vice president. This is the signature foreign policy initiative of this administration. And so J.D. leaks to the New York Times yesterday. That's obviously him about how he's had to. And they ran it uncritically with no caveat. They said J.D. Vance, comma, who has been opposed to this war from the outset. He was?

Since when? He's never said it. He's leaked to the New York Times that he's against it. And then last night in his speech. He does this very strange gambit where he talks about how his friend Charlie Kirk was always against war, which is not true, by the way. Charlie Kirk was a big Iraq war supporter. And so we don't know what Charlie would think. Yeah.

So we don't know what Charlie would think now, but we think he'd probably be against the war. And so if you're like Charlie, he would still vote for us, though, anyway. And so he tries to do this thing where he creates like Charlie Kirk's ghost as a straw man as like an imaginary person who would be against the Iran war but would still vote for Republicans. And like that's how he's trying to weasel out of this. And I just am worried that it's going to work for some people. Oh, I think it will work for some Republicans and some non-Republicans. I do think, no, J.D. Vance has a big problem in making that case, which is why he needs Tucker Carlson, because J.D. Vance has the charisma of a piece of wood.

J.D. Vance is not a communicator. He's deeply unlikable. People have short memories. I know we're all dunking on Tim Walts these days. But if you go back and look at the polling from in 2024. He was the most unpopular running mate in modern polling of running mates. He was talking about weird cat ladies and pissing people off, if you remember. I strongly believe he will not be. I don't do predictions anymore, but I personally have gunned to my head. I don't think he will be the 28 Republican candidate. I think he will be the 28. Okay, we'll talk again in 2028. The internet's forever. I don't think he'll be the candidate because I just don't think he's going to be, I think the Trump presidency is going to be such a car crash, such a pile of shit in 2028.

There's no way that he can run without disowning Trump. candidate it runs in 20, it has to find some way to disown Trump. And Trump won't allow anyone to do that. Well, this is how he's going to do it. He's going to be like, I was against it. Look at the New York Times. Unless Trump's dead, he can't do it, right? Unless Trump has died at that point. People keep forgetting. That's his biggest risk. People keep forgetting that in 2028, Donald Trump may not be the candidate. I think I'm not ruling out that he tries to stay on. But let's assume he steps aside. The big thing no one talks about is, I've not seen a single think piece or analysis piece or reporter piece about this, which is, okay, it's Rubio, it's Vance. Where's Donald Trump? You think he's just playing golf, quiet. keeping his views to himself? No, he will be tweeting and posting every day

about what they've done wrong. By the way, he'll also be the sitting president during the election campaign. He'll be doing shit every day to undermine the candidate. He doesn't care about anyone but himself. He doesn't care if he fucks them over. In fact, he might want them to lose so that he looks like a winner.

I agree with this. If JD's not the nominee, it's for this reason. And it's not his lack of charisma and the fact that he has a punchable face or whatever. It's like the fact that he gets on Trump's bad side. He gets too far out on the ledge. I don't think he's not. I don't think he's not the nominee because of lack of charisma.

I think he loses a general election because there's lack of charisma. But I think he's not the nominee because I don't think you can distance yourself from Trump in the way he wants to. It has to be someone who's willing to come out scorched earth against Trump and there's an audience for it further to the right. I'm sorry to say this. It has to be like a Fuentes type. Not that I want that, but strategically, if I look at the Republican Party, that is the only lane I can see is coming at Trump from the right saying you did do more of what we wanted from the right. There's no other lane that exists. So Jady's going to try to do that subtly.

that's tough to do. Here he is last night. I just wanted to play one clip because we were live streaming and I was, I couldn't take very much. And so this line kind of slipped past me. And so I don't want to let it do that. So we'll cover it this morning. Here's J.D. last night talking about his concerns about being called a racist.

And we were tired of being called racist for noticing that our country was becoming dirtier and poor and less safe and less prosperous. Can I just ask? write Hillbilly elegy, right? When he was writing about that community, was there a lot of immigrants there. I'm pretty sure the whole point of Hillbillegro was that Appalachia was dirty and poor. That was the fucking book that he read. And not because of people from Pakistan or Afghanistan. I mean, first of all, there's so many things to respond to that way. Number one, just the fundamental racism of that statement. Number two, the fact that his in-laws are Indian

immigrants. Like, how do they watch that and not go take a shower that their son-in-law just through them and their entire community under the bus and their mixed-race grandkids under the bus. Just deeply disgusting to say immigrants made this country dirty when your in-laws are Indian immigrants who your party hates, as we saw during the whole Musk H-1B debacle a year ago. And number three, the fakery of it. Like, I prefer the real racists, right? I prefer the actual people who are racist in their core. And the fake racist, I hate you.

Any time I hate, I prefer the true believers on the right. I'm sorry. He interviewed with me in 2016. Before I interviewed Massama Eptica, I interviewed J.D. Vance in 2016 for Al Jazeera, and he was a never-Trumper. And he said, Medi, Donald Trump is taking my party in a dark direction. He's putting Muslim friends of mine at risk. Sorry, J-D. Are you talking about yourself then when you say we were accused of being racist? You were accusing Trump of being Hitler. You were telling me on Al-Jazeera that we should stand by our Muslim allies and not go into a dark place.

And now you have the nerve to pretend that you're part of this amorphous right-wing. We were silence when we were trying to be racist. You weren't even trying to be racist when everyone else was trying to be racist. So like the inconsistency of it, the sheer opportunism of it, and obviously dangerous. It's super, super dangerous. We live in an age where there's a massive amount of political violence. I know the right want you to believe it's the left. But last night, Ted Cruz was speaking, and I believe people were shouting out, shoot him or whatever it is about Mamdani and Talarico and Abdul.

A mosque was attacked in San Diego in May of this year by two neo-Nazis who killed three Muslim worshippers, tried to kill a whole elementary school of Muslim kids. There are consequences to his rhetoric. You mentioned Tucker Carlson. Tucker Carson was one of the most outrageous things he said at Fox was when he said, immigrants make the country dirty. At the time, it was so controversial that advertisers pulled out of Fox. They started boycotting Fox.

Look at the Overton window. Today, the Vice President of the United States can say the same line. No one blinks. It's just normalized. And that ties back to our conversation about how Tucker is still using as the stalking horse. They're obviously talking. That's a Tucker line that he's using right there. JD Vance has a nerve to the other day to say, Abdul brought his wife into it.

When number one, Donald Trump brought Abdul's wife into it, as Abdul pointed out. And number two, yeah, we are going to bring it. I, as a brown-skinned immigrant to United States, every time I hear J.D. Vent's being racist, I'm going to remind him that his kids are brown, his wife is brown, and his parent-in-laws are immigrants. Yes, I'm fucking going to remind you that. I have nothing to add to that.

You had an internet dispute with Noah Smith this past week. You could fill in the gap with multiple names out. You mentioned Madaglian. Both of us sometimes get a little hot on the Twitter. So I want to kind of separate out. There was some name calling Noah said some gross things. He said I should go live in the Middle East because I love it there and I don't love America. And America wants me gone, which is very Stephen Miller-esque from a centrist pundit.

Yeah, a bad thing to say. The broader conversation, though, and it's something that Noah says that Matt says a lot, I think it's not worth exploring because we're now in minute 47 in the podcast. Like 43 minutes of it has been discussing Middle East politics and Islamophobia and anti-Semitism and all this stuff. We live in a pluralistic society here in America. And, you know, Matt was going at with Jasper Nathaniel, who I just really respect the work he's during the West Bank, and we've talked about that. But Matt just kind of summarize it this way.

He says, here's what I think we should do. I think we should end aid to Israel and try to be as uninvolved with this situation as possible. Noah, talking to you, said that you're speaking about a dispute between you and a pro-Israel guy on Twitter. These people get up every day and think only about the Middle East. They think about America's daily life and public policy and political movements and worldview should revolve around things that are happening in the Middle East. No. Screw the Middle East. So again, inartful, way to put that. But what about the broader conversation of like, man, our politics is way too fucking much about these religious disputes and these territorial disputes in the Middle East.

And like, we should talk about that way less. Maybe the big lesson on the 25th anniversary of 9-11 is we should do as little as possible over there. I agree. But I do think that there are folks here that are making that very challenging by really centering that as like the main, as the main issue in our discourse. Do you mean, are you saying people on the left or I think both. I think pro-Israel and anti-Israel activists online want our politics to be very much about what's happening in Israel and the surrounding Middle East. That's not to pick aside, but just to say kind of like, well, Homer into the bushes. Maybe this shouldn't be as much. So a couple of things. First of all, I don't accept all religious battles, but that's a conversation for another day.

The problem with the Matt Iglesias-Noah-Smith position is they don't believe it. They've never done anything or said anything to affect that view. You can't just turn up on Twitter and go, ah, I wish we could do Homer into the bushes. No, no, no. We have a 50, 60 year legacy of foreign policy in that part of the world. We've started multiple wars.

When better than now to start homering into the bushes, though. I hear that. Okay, let's say that's a fair point. Like, hey, they fucked it up the last 25 years, but why not start today? Okay, what does it look like? Does it mean ending USA to Israel? Because I haven't heard of Israel.

Does it mean ending arms trade? And not just to Israel. Let's do the region. Why are we supporting Egypt? We're supporting Egypt because we're supporting Israel. Why are we supporting Saudi Arabia? Why are we propping up all these dictatorships? I'm against all of that.

People on the left are against all of that. I'm all for pulling out of the Middle East. By the way, I'm of the view that 9-11 happened because we were in the Middle East, because we had bases in Saudi Arabia, because we were supporting Israel, et cetera, and Egypt and all these places that Zawahiri and Bin Laden came from, right? So you want to talk about the 25th anniversary of 9-11. We shouldn't have been over there. I think bin Laden probably would have found a reason to not like us besides the base in Saudi Arabia.

We'll have to agree to disagree on. The U.S. had no role in the Middle East. I mean, bin Laden famously put out video saying, I'm not attacking Sweden, am I? And it's, you know, this was, the idea that the United States, Middle East policy... And there was, obviously, al-Qaeda attacks in various places in Europe. But you know what? But the point is, the war with the great Satan, the great enemy is we are there, right?

And by the way, let's test it out. This is the same thing with Israel. They go, if we pull out of Gaza on the West Bank, Hamas will still hate us. Okay, we'll pull out. And when that happens, then we can all say Hamas has no reason to hate you. And Palestinians have no reason to hate you. But while you're occupying the land, of course, there's going to be violent backlash. Same thing with us, right?

pull out of the Middle East. I'm happy. I don't want any American base in the Middle East. I don't want, you think I want a $1.6 trillion Pentagon budget? You think any leftist wants us spending billions of dollars on arms to foreign countries, subsidies on arms, wants bases built, once fighter jets sent to these countries? No leftist I know wants that.

I'm with Ben Cohen who wants to like halve the size of the Pentagon. I mean, I was watching some left. And Roe Kano was on a left. I think it was majority report where he was getting screamed at because he doesn't want to arm the Palestinians. So, I mean, I do think... It was drop site. It was drop site. It was drop site.

But that was more a debate about the double standards when it comes to a right to self-defense. And I'm glad you brought that up. So if you're going to stay out of it, what does that... Let's talk this through. What does that mean, then? On October the 8th morning, what is U.S. policy? What is the U.S. position at that moment? Because...

October 8th, 2026 or 2023. No, 20203. Let's take that as a concrete role where the U.S. decided to throw its full arms and weight behind Israel's response, quote, unquote. Now, where does Iglesias and Noah Smith stand on that? I would have said, stay out of it. If you're really anti-intervention, should it stay out of it? Right?

Why are we army? And by the way, everyone complains. Why do you talk about Israel all the time? Because we're arming Israel. Again, put it to the test. If we stop arming and stop funding Israel, then Americans will talk about Israel less. And this was a BB Netanyahu and Ben Shapiro position, though. Like Israel would have been able to defend themselves without our military aid.

But they wouldn't have been able to get away with, for example, at the UN without our diplomatic veto. And actually, that's not true, by the way, Tim. Israeli generals on the record saying we would have run out of ammo. We can't even fight Iran on our own. You think Israel would have done a three year war? They needed reloading. That's why we bypass Congress twice. But look, it's an important issue. So your problem is with Iglesias

past position. No, no, no. My problem is I don't believe that they say what they mean. I don't believe they actually support cutting our defense budget, pulling our bases out of the Middle East, stopping Egypt and Israel. That's what I support. Do they support that? Do they support that? The notion that like, gosh, American politics, pluralistic society, we have a lot

There's a lot of issues in the world. They're activist groups, both pro-Israel and anti-I, that are really making this too big of an issue. But it's not both sides, though, is it? Let's go. Can we take Michigan as an example, Tim? Sure. In Michigan, APAC spent $30 million.

Insane. I criticize that a lot. There's no equivalent on the other side. There's just not. There's just zero comparison. So if you want to say, why did the Michigan race become about Israel, where Haley Stevens taking money from a massive pro-Israel group to fund her campaign, dark money from Republicans, by the way, who fund APAC,

that makes it an issue. If you don't put lots of APAP money into a race, maybe we won't talk about APA. I mean, you said earlier that Gaza's number one issue. I think that there are a lot of activists and there are a lot of left media folks that is the main issue. That's the animating issue. People are allowed to that. That's allowed.

But Tim, can I just be clear when I said that? People are going to clip it out of context. People are going to clip it out of context. When I say Gaza's number of issue, I mean the genocide that's been happening now. I don't mean the Middle East is my number one issue. When I go to vote, I don't go to vote based on what's happening in Egypt or whatever it is. I just want to be clear about that. I'm talking about specifically the last two and a half years of three years of genocide.

pre-20203, the Middle East was also an issue. We also supported Israel, but it wasn't the top issue for most people. It was an issue that I still cared about, but it wasn't my top issue. In Donald Trump's first term, Middle East was not my top issue. Donald Trump doing shit here and home was my top issue. But now, Middle East is still my top issue because it's a genocide. You may not agree with that. Others may not agree with that.

But if you think it's a genocide, obviously you're going to feel strongly about it. For a lot of people in the 80s, apartheid, South Africa was their top issue. That was a huge cause for the liberals across the West in the 1980s. You're going to have these big moral causes that people care about. But if you're talking about American politics. I'm talking about the politics. American politics are a democratic primary where it's like we have pro-Israel groups. Take the money out of the political.

Here's my test. I put my hand out. I can't speak for other people. If you take pro-Israel money out of American politics, if you take pro-Israel litmus tests out of American politics, every politician has to declare their love for Israel. Mandani was asked in a debate. Will you go to Israel first? No, he's the mayor of New York.

Why? If you get American policy bases out of the Middle East, if you get American money out of Israel, Egypt. And then I still go on and on about Israel, then you can attack me and I'll say, yes. But until you do that, don't come and lecture me about no one's like, oh, we should stay, why do you only talk about this stuff? We talk about it because we're involved in multiple wars right now. We're bombing Iran. I think that might be where things are going. And so I guess my request would be, if that's where things go, particularly in the Democratic Party, I would like people to take the W because I do, I project out a lot of still bitching.

100%. Can I give you one example? Can I give you one example from the UK right now? Ed Miliband, who is the Foreign Secretary of the UK. I wrote a book about it many years ago. He was a leader. Now he's a foreign secretary. He's Jewish. He just announced a settlement ban on goods, right? Sanctions on settlements.

Huge controversy in the UK. A lot of pros-zero groups losing their mind, even though public support it. A lot of people are left-law like, well, it doesn't go far enough. Yeah, it doesn't go far enough. But take the win. Israel's pissed off. The supporters of Israel pissed off. The British government has never done anything like this before.

So yes, I say to my fellow, Lester, please take the wins. wherever we find them. There aren't many of them, but take them. We went long, and I don't want to do Hunter. I don't have the spirit for it, but I just, you did speak to him. Well, let's just, let's just for kicks. He's got a crypto. Let's watch. Hey, everyone, Hunter here. It has been a long couple days, but I'm used to long days. I want to make one thing clear, is that this is my fucking token. I've been working on this thing for six months straight. And I have gone in deep in terms of cryptocurrency and understanding exactly what I was getting into.

And what I was getting into was trying to do something just markedly different than what has been offered up to the community in the past two years. That's something that actually could help build community and do something that's worthwhile. We're building community of the shit coin. What did you make of your conval? He won't come on here. He doesn't. He's mad at me. But what would you make for your comment?

He or his family may be mad at me now. He did a great interview, I thought. He took my questions. He answered them on Gaza. He was very honest and raw. But, you know, I wondered, I asked him at the beginning of you, why are you doing all these interviews? You do one every day.

You've done like 40 interviews before I got to you. And I think this is the reason why. I think we saw he was building up to something. A community. A community. If you're going to slag off the Trump family for all the stuff, it's just insane that you would come out with it. I know he's got his reasoning and he's got his justification.

But it's insane. Come on. can't come up with laptop as your coin after doing this media tour. It's just, it's just, I said it earlier about like Gryft and people's positions. People don't trust people who are doing these kind of U-turns and change in views. And a lot of people, by the way, a lot of people love Hunter Biden now because he's been criticizing Gaza as a genocide. I see people on the left like him now.

Again, I want to reserve judgment and see, have these people really changed? And this is not helping. It's not helping. No, it ain't. I'm not sold to say. I'm not buying a time share from Hunter Biden. I'm not buying anything from Hunter Biden. I would recommend that everybody not do that,

or from his friend Tucker Carlson. I think the best thing to do is probably just to kind of walk away from both of their content activations. But I'm going to say last thing, sorry to be of the boring, lastly before I go. What I say and others say who are smart about this, I think, is it's bad that Tucker Carlson is getting popular in some parts of the left and some parts of the Muslim world.

But again, it's an indictment of the day. Democrats and liberals, how did you leave a lane open? How did you leave an anti-war, critical of Israel lane open for Candace Owens and MTG and Tucker to take? How the hell do Democrats still have leaders who are still saying, well, it's fine to take APAP money? Why is it that we need these freaks to be condemning what Israel is doing because too many Democrats just stay silent? I agree with this, but this is a through line for our whole conversation. And I appreciate the I wanted to end with that because it's kind of, I kind of feel like I, what was the thing you said, the early internet where they created a list of the Muslims that condemned 9-11? I kind of want to

create a list of all the Democrats that have done the right thing. And it's just like, and people are still mad because it's like they're not giving them the energy that we agree. And I just, and so it's like, and that's a human nature. But, you know, so maybe more energy on it. Anyway, Maddie. And in agreement. I appreciate you very much, brother.

Thank you for coming on. Thank you. A fun day to do it. And everybody else. You can say that. I can't say that. It's not a fun day. That is an imbalance.

That is an imbalance. And it is a sad day for our country. Everybody will be back one day with Bill Crystal. Ironically, see you all then. Bye-bye. Once again, find me a friend. Someone do walk with too, too many boys, too small a town. Feels like I'm always wandering the grounds.

You call me up. I let it ring. Heartbreaking me. Only one thing. Got me again. It's the end of the world. Done with this year. I miss drinking beer

Missing the songs for you Too slow to hate Summer came late Fires on the west side I'm rolling the waves Let's misbehave Catch it before It's almost gone

Try to pretend It's the end of the world So kiss me to death There's nothing to live to decide Nothing. The Bullwork Daily is brought to you thanks to the work of lead producer Katie Cooper, Associate producer Ansley Skipper,

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