The Comedy Cellar: Live from the Table - Live from the Table: Gaza and Gaming, A Meeting with Destiny aka Steven Bonnell

Episode Date: April 19, 2024

Destiny, also known as Steven Bonnell II, is a prominent political commentator and content creator known for his debate skills and provocative takes on various issues. With a passion for gaming, politics, and philosophy, Destiny engages in lively discussions that often challenge the status quo.

This is Live from the Table, the official podcast of the world-famous comedy cellar, coming at you on SiriusXM 99 Rock Comedy. Also available as a podcast and on YouTube for that multimedia, audio, and visual experience. I'm Dan Natterman, a comedy cellar regular. Not as regular as I used to be, oddly enough. I don't know but you know that's how it goes i suppose i'm here with noam dwarman he maybe shouldn't have done that gig at rodney he's the owner the proprietor of the comedy seller uh the comedy seller by the way is adding a new

room on the corner of west third and sixth avenue coming 2025 i can't give you any more precise date than that. I noticed there's no more advertising, by the way, now. Yeah, I don't know what that is. I guess they change it. I got to find out. I noticed that today. Noam was putting ads on the building,

which helped defray some of the cost of carrying the building during the construction phase. Anyway, by the way, I'm doing a cruise, and they're putting me up at the Marriott Courtyard in Nassau, Bahamas. So I don't know if somebody heard the podcast at Princess Cruises and decided that I deserve a better accommodation. The last one wasn't the Bahamas, was it? It was Jamaica.

Jamaica. So maybe there was just less of a selection of hotels. Bahamas is nicer, right? False. There are gorgeous hotels in Jamaica. I've stayed in them. But are there Marriott Courtyards? Are there mid-level hotels?

They're not going to put me up at a gorgeous hotel. Yes, they have the Rose something. Yes. Same cruise line? Yeah, same cruise line. Oh, wow. So they bumped you up the same cruise line? I don't know.

I mean mean it may just well be that for whatever reason in this in nassau bahamas maybe they're out of rooms i don't know but i i'm getting a courtyard this time instead of what i got last time with motel six well that way motel six might have been a step up from what that was but um anyhow uh i had another thing i had another thing i wanted to bring up i really should write this shit down um oh i wanted to talk also about your your your last episode that i was not here for because i do go on the road you know with my comedy uh with phil clay is it clyde yeah oh i'm sorry uh k-l-a-y, Kly. Oh, okay. Well, it makes sense.

He wrote an article in the Atlantic Magazine. Well, why would K-L-A-Y be Kly? Like, I understand some words. Well, I mean, why? K-L-Y, K-L-A-I, K-L-A-Y. Maybe it's Welsh or something. I don't know. Yeah, yeah, that's good. So I think that that episode was absolutely outstanding.

Wow. Just to recap, Phil Kly wrote an article saying that America should disassociate itself from Israel, basically, or from the war. Not from Israel, from the war. From the war in Gaza, saying that it does us no good, that it's basically an immoral war, and furthermore, it costs America diplomatically. On the second point, I guess he's probably on stronger ground in my opinion but did you go ahead sorry uh but but anyway noam took the opposite position and and uh i i felt that this podcast was i if there's a better podcast on the gaza war i have not heard it or seen it uh i i uh you know did you could you pick up could you you detect, did you watch it or listen to it? I watched the whole damn thing on YouTube.

Could you detect that Perrielle was practically wetting her pants as she found him so hot? No, I didn't detect that. Did you? Oh, my God. She couldn't contain herself. He was such a crock of shit. I did mention that he was a pretty good-looking guy.

Now, to that... She was quivering. That is bullshit, number one. Number two, although I acknowledge that, he's really not my type. Well, is he married? Yeah. Well, you are too.

How do you know he's married? Because he said he has three kids. I guess that doesn't mean he's married. No, he's married. We assume. Noam, have you gotten any feedback quite as positive as mine? Effusive?

Yeah. I got some good feedback about that one. Yeah, I got some good feedback about that one. But he was such a nice guy. Yeah, he was really lovely. Normally, when it's somebody who treats me badly, like Khalidi or something. Or Phil Bump. Phil Bump.

Or Norman Finkelstein. Yeah, then I want to be more aggressive. Although the Phil Bump thing, I didn't clip that out. That was clipped out before I had a chance to even determine that he was actually not going to talk to me again. And Phil has been nice with me afterwards it is a um

recurring pattern that a lot of people come on this show and then they ghost me yeah because because you're about you because it's really upsetting it's because you're you you know they expected to come on and have a nice experience with someone who agrees with everything they say how could they think that? Well, first of all, you're a comedy club owner, so they're not expecting a well-researched, you know, they're expecting a more lighthearted discussion. No, no, no, no, no.

No, at this point, that is just sloppy. I mean, these are serious people. Like, you do your due diligence before you go on a show. Ideally, yes, but maybe they don't. So obviously they don't do their due diligence, so they would know that no one was a pit bull terrier. So that guy John Hoffman from the Cato Institute, he never emailed me back in.

We had a disagreement about why people on the West Bank. I had said that many people on the West Bank, a majority of people on the West Bank, according to an article, are not religious. They're just there for the, because it's cheaper and everything. And I sent them the article. I said, hey, thanks for coming on the show. Here's the article I was talking about.

Hello, hello, hello. What do you attribute that to? I know that you say that I understand nothing about human nature, but I have a few ideas of what that is. I said you understand nothing about male sexuality. But, I mean, it's obvious what it is. What is it?

That he's smarting about the experience. But it's not fair because I'm nothing but on the up and up and nice. And, you know, I didn't make any, you know, unfair arguments or gotcha or, you know, I mean, I was like. No personal attacks ever. No personal attacks. He quotes Trump. And I actually do the reverse engineering to find the actual quote and to determine that, you know, it quoted out of context. And then he gets mad about that well you know you're you're writing in in a in a in national publications you know what i think nobody likes criticism even if the criticism is correct you know what i think i know

but you don't ghost somebody i think that these people are totally disingenuous and they're full of shit. Because if you're a serious intellectual, and this is what infuriated me. Now talk about what you know, go ahead. If you're a serious intellectual, you will actually engage the person who is, first of all, I was president of debate club in high school. The debate club?

The debate club. You will really engage the argument. So if you're presenting these people in good faith, and I'm not saying this just because it's Israel, I mean this really genuinely, you will have a conversation. The problem is, is once people write an article about whatever it is about, they are now confined to the arguments they made in that article. He can't, Phil Kly, for example, can't just come out and say, you know, you're right about that. They're really confined. Let's leave Phil Kly out of this because he was nice. Phil actually, I have to say, and we said this to him on the show too, one of the why i really liked phil was not just because he

was so handsome but also because he had written something that took sort of a different position about anti-semitism so he wasn't just like honing in on this idea like he was actually willing to engage he was fine phil bump on the other hand right it's ridiculous but there's only so much they can engage once they've committed their thoughts to to publication they're stuck now with whatever they wrote and then they're saying oh my articles you come to think of it my article was bullshit i'm you know and now they can't say that so so they're they're hamstrung um norman finkelstein who uh you know we had a pretty good experience with him the first time, but then he really...

Well, he's a mental case. He really... Which should have been obvious. He called me a Nazi propagandist. He called Coleman Hughes a black Shabbos goy. One day you're going to let me share with our listeners the behind the scenes of all of that. Well, maybe, you know, we could talk about it

because the guy we... Steve Bunnell. Steve Bunnell, who's Destiny, who's coming on now, he had his own run-ins with Norman Finkelstein. Do you know this? Yes, I do. And so we can probably commiserate about our... Yeah, that was one guest that I think got under my skin

more than anyone else. Norman Finkelstein. Because I was so nice to him in spite of the fact that it took everything within my power. Well, I actually liked him. I still have a soft spot for him. Oh, will you stop it? I'm going to start reading these fucking bullshit emails that he sent us. But he have a soft spot for him. Oh, will you stop it? I'm going to start reading these fucking

bullshit emails that he sent us. But he's a true original. You think he's an eccentric, so you give him a little slack. No, no, no. His behavior was inexcusable. I know. Listen, I can't account for it, but if I saw him in the

olive tree, I'd be like, oh, Norman Ficklestine's here. I believe that. I would gallop over how you doing Norman you think he's a funny character there's nothing funny about it there's a little bit of the classic Tom and Jerry

you clock in and you fight and try to kill each other then you clock out and you're friends afterwards or like old school like senators I could totally see him actually sitting down to dinner with me now despite all the things he says it's he's no maybe no he's a warrior you know no okay well anyway maybe don't make excuses for his behavior seriously it's fucking inexcusable. It really, really is. And he's quite bright.

And if he talks about wokeness and stuff, he's awesome. And when he talks about his own personal life with his parents and all that kind of stuff, I also find it very good. My life is richer for having Norman Finkelstein. I don't, I can't help it. I still find him interesting. That's really what it is. What about Aaron Maté? Aaron and I are good. I have no problem with Aaron. Stop doing that. It makes noise. It picks

it up. I mean, I don't agree with Aaron on much. Well, I agree with him about Russiagate. Why would you? And I agree with him about wokeness. Why would you be friendly to somebody who you were so Russiagate. Why would you And I agree with him about wokeness. Why would you be friendly to somebody who you were so gracious to

and said such disgusting things. Are we talking about Fingalstein or Maté? Let's start. First of all. Forget his position about Israel or whatever. You agree, you don't agree. The fact that those things are really appalling. Let me let you in on a little secret, Perrielle.

9 out of 10, if not 99 out of 100 people that I agree with are no more intellectually honest than the people that I think are not intellectually honest on the other side. In other words, from Aaron Maté's point of view, most of the pro-Israel people they argue with play loose with the facts, make bullshit arguments, take things out of context.

But I'm saying that. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about personally. He said things. Who? We were talking about Maté or Finkelstein. Finkelstein. I know I had nothing.

I thought we were on Maté. No, I had nothing to do with Maté. I walked out before he walked in. I'm talking solely about Norman Finkelstein. Finkelstein. However the fuck you say his name. Which is the more Jewish one? I think somebody told me there's a scene in Maestro.

It was Frankenstein. Steen. Frankenstein. From Young Frankenstein. It's Frankenstein. Norman Finkelstein. Whatever. I'm talking about the personal. Let's use the more Jewish even see Norman Finkelstein. Whatever. Yeah. I'm not, I'm talking about the personal.

Let's use the more Jewish one because it'll get under his skin. Go ahead. I just said, forget his, forget politics. I can, I appreciate that about you.

Like, I really do. Even, even though I, you know, might not share that ability or desire.

I'm talking about the personal stuff. You were so gracious, and you could not have been more. Cue the music, Max. Go ahead, go ahead. You could not have been more of a gentleman. Yes, you're right. And the things that he said. When you're right, you're right.

I could not. I was gracious. You were gracious. You were generous. Generous to the tune of maybe thousands of dollars, actually. And I was furious about it, if you recall. Because you're not gracious, but yes. I don't think that I'm not gracious.

I actually rolled out the red carpet. For rabid anti-Semites. Rabid anti-Semites. For him and Dr. Cornel West. And I treated them to a huge spread and this was after he was already planning to turn on me it was so so what is that like why not fuck him because from his point of view he probably didn't want to blow the whistle until because he didn't want to risk me canceling the uh corno west event that that's

kind of the game theory of it all i believe what kind of a person does something like that what does that say about somebody's character like what why are you then like welcoming him into your because no one feels that the good qualities outweigh the bad he did what good qualities i don't know. He's amusing eccentric. Like Louis Schaefer. Louis Schaefer was, you know, I've over the years

found annoying, but... Come on. Seriously. Knock it off. We're not talking about annoying. We're not talking

about eccentric. We're talking about downright nasty. All right. Well, I guess right on cue, we have Steve Bunnell here, Destiny, who has his own take

on Norman Finkelstein. Well, let me just briefly introduce him because you know, Norm, that's sort of what I do and don't deprive me of my kind of moment in the show. Dan, say hi. Say hi.

Hello. How do you do? Yes, we have with us in studio and which is a good thing because we do a lot of stuff via uh teleconferencing but i think it's better to be in person uh we have with us steve bunnell the second hey how's it going better known as destiny a prominent political commentator and content creator known for his debating and provocative takes on various issues. Should we call you Destiny, or I guess we should call

you Steven. I got my start at pro gaming, and Destiny is my gamer name. Okay. I tried to slowly transition. Have you read the book Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow Tomorrow and Tomorrow? It's a book about gamers falling in love. I have not. I'm slogging to get through it, but once I start a book,

I kind of sort of can't not finish it. So it's taking some doing. But anyway, that's neither here nor there. By the way, you did something very interesting just now. Yeah? Before we even get to anything. You were trying to determine which side of the headphones was left and which side was right.

Yeah. Which is really, first of all, no guest has ever done that before. Second of all, it's just a single microphone and you're a sophisticated guy. It's almost OCD-ish, right? They go on the left and right. If you put it on wrong, it's probably going to feel uncomfortable.

I don't know if I'm going to have to commit to the bit of it being on incorrectly or if I'm going to have to flip it again. Why would it be uncomfortable? Because sometimes they're angled a certain way. So if you turn it, it'll actually feel wrong. Is that true? I think so. I didn't even... But is it is in your head is like how would it be how would it be left try it flip them like it feels wrong now because your ears aren't yeah try it well i

don't know if i had them on right well also the wire is now across your neck well that's right that depending on which side you're sitting on anyway i thought anyway i thought it was really just because being a gamer and everything i i think it's just like, it's like a gamer thing. Anyway, okay, so listen. First, should we start with Norman Finkelstein? We can, but I kind of want to hear, what's the difference between normal love and gamer love? Oh, go ahead.

I'm just staring at the board. I said gamers falling in love. Yeah, but what is that? Well, exactly. I mean, I haven't finished the book yet. It's like, it's a love story, but against the backdrop of gaming. Did they like meet in the game or?

They, no, they're, they're, they work on a game together. They create a game together. The game becomes successful. Um,

and, uh, and, and I haven't finished the book, but, but, but it's, it's,

it's a love story set in the back and the backdrop is, is gaming. Gotcha. So I'm not finding it particularly riveting, but it's too late now. I started, and I don't generally not finish books I start. That's fair. So listen, you have an amazing life story, first of all,

that led you to the height of fame debating Norman Finkelstein. So actually, let's go over it a little bit. So you grew up kind of poor and a broken home. I wouldn't say it's that dramatic. I grew up, I would say, solidly middle to upper middle class up until I was around like 12 or 13. And then my parents, for a whole bunch of dumb reasons, or maybe not dumb reasons, quit their job. And then we had a whole bunch of problems for the next few years.

This is when he's a preteen. His mother's home, business collapsed. His family's home was foreclosed. Man, that's dramatic. Well, so the... I can go as deep as you want me to. My mom did a family home daycare

where she had, it was anywhere from 10 to 14 kids, 24-7, watched them in the house. I think when I was like 11, 12, or 13, at some age here, or around 12, there was a kid apparently that was like pulling

pants down of girls or whatever these kids are like four or five years old my mom told the parents because she's like hey your kid's doing this make sure they don't do in the future i don't know what's going on and those parents apparently reported my mom to cps where she said oh she's touching the children and cps came and they did a whole two-week investigation and all that and everything was fine but my mom was so stressed after she's like i'm not gonna lose my kids and so she just completely quit the daycare and then uh my parents are i love them to death but they're very much uh have you ever heard the term lifestyle creep if you make a little bit of money you spend a little bit you make a little bit you spend a little bit and then all of like i think four months our house got foreclosed because they'd

had all the equity out on like he locks home equity line of credit cars got repoed sometimes with us in them it was very awkward and then we kind of bounced around from some houses. And then eventually they kind of moved to Florida and I stayed in Nebraska and finished my stuff. And yeah, fun times. You know, Child Protective Services, they are a horrible, I mean, I know they do good work and when it's good, it's good,

but they ruin a lot of people's lives and they come in with a very heavy hand. I have my own ridiculous story about child protective services with my stepson and I threw them out of the house. I won't go into details and no, I was not accused of touching anybody or anything like that. It wasn't an accusation towards me or our family, but I mean, I guess I can't really tell the story. But anyway, I was like, you need to, I said, you come back with some sort of order from a judge or a letter or something,

or I said, get out of my house right now. I said, how dare you come in here and start making these demands of me? I don't think you have any right to do that. And I never heard from them again. I didn't know you were allowed to kick them out of your house. Yes, most people don't know. They actually showed up at the house with zero authority.

Do they have to get a warrant? What is their legal? That's, I mean, they're not cops, I don't think. They're not authority. Do they have to get a warrant? What is their legal? I mean, they're not cops, I don't think. They're not cops. Maybe they are. It's exactly what Perry also said. It was intimidation. Well, Mr. Dorman, we saw that you didn't do this, and you ignored this advice or whatever.

I don't have to make any... But are they... Is there something to be said for Child Protective Services erring on the side of caution regarding child welfare? And and and can you forgive them a little bit for for being overzealous on that account? When you put it that way? Yes. But but I hear enough stories like this. They're not few and far between of them unchecked. You know, to be fair, you're not going to hear any bad stories. Like, thank God, CPS took my kids from me 10 years ago

and they needed to get out of that environment because I was beating the shit out of them, right? Like, so, I mean, you're probably not going to hear the good ones, but I understand, yeah, it's a scary, terrifying thing as a parent and you don't know what your rights are all the time, depending on who's talking to you. That's exactly, the police, you know,

there are consequences in their rights. They raise child protective protection services show up. And let me also say, it's not the most erudite, well-trained. It's like a government job. It's a step above from what I saw motor vehicles or something. It was not a sophisticated group of people we were dealing with. And that's scary to know that a very unsophisticated person can have such a, possibly have influence over your relationship with your child, and you don't even know what your rights are.

But I don't want to cast aspersions at the whole idea of protecting children, of course. No, but there are plenty of stories where children have been removed from their parents, which should, I mean, in cases of abuse, of course, yes. There was a famous story not that long ago about those kids. They had pictures of their kids like playing in the bath that were developed at like Walmart or something. Totally innocent pictures of like kids playing in a bathtub and child protective services came and somehow these children who were not being abused got removed and put into you know foster care who

knows what i made that part up but she makes up i don't know she's honest about it most people make shit up when they don't anyway like most of you debate i don't think we want to spend a whole hour on our particular service but okay so then you so so Okay, so then you moved on and you became an online gamer. Kind of, yeah, but with a couple bumps in the road. This is quite an interesting American story. So from 16 to 18,

I lived with my grandma in a retirement senior citizen apartment facility because my mom and dad moved to Florida to take care of my mom. My mom's mom. Her mom, my grandma. And in Nebraskabraska i stayed i finished high school um were you a good student uh no i was kind of smart but i very very lazy when it comes to school work and horrible and but you knew you were smart you just didn't apply yourself yeah let's yeah we can go with that one i think um without as of recently i think like seven or eight months ago i finally got a formal diagnosis for adhd and i've been on medication for that it's like changed my

entire life and i think i would have had this in high school would have been a way different story so i was like decently bright but forcing me to do homework was agony i couldn't i was like cry and scream and it's not even because it was hard i just hated sitting and doing something like that it was agony so the adderall changed everything. Yes. Unironically. Well, it got me into Norm Finkelstein debate. Yeah, actually though. Um, but the, um, yeah, so I did that for a while or why I did that. I graduated high school. I went to college for music. I had a job at a casino, kind of like doing customer service at a diner basically. And eventually I had to quit school because I was working too much. And then eventually I lost that job. And then I like for six months I was kind of aimless. And then I started doing this like online streaming thing.

I got a job cleaning carpets for about a year. Are you a good musician? Can I get the guitars out? We can play together? I can kind of play piano a little bit. Oh, OK. Let me go. Yeah, I'll say that much.

I went to school for saxophone. So unless you get one of those here. Oh, OK. No, no. I'm safe. All right. Yeah, but then I started doing a carpet cleaning job for about a year.

And then towards the end of that job, I was streaming and playing StarCraft, the game that i kind of went pro in and i realized that like if i played and streamed for about as much as the carpet cleaning job i'd make about the same amount of money because the carpet cleaning money was horrible i may be making fifteen hundred dollars a month maybe two thousand a month pissing them and stuff right it was just the way that jobs were scheduled like you'd have one job from like eight to nine and then one job from like 12 to one and then one job from like five to six and they'd all be like you get paid 16 15 bucks for each of these and it was a game it was just horrible scheduling everything and yeah i started

streaming and i've been doing that for about 15 years but you you can make you you in other words you film yourself playing a game yeah there'd be like a camera on your computer and then you talk the audience you play games they watch you play hopefully you're funny okay well that's what no no no your kids can't get enough of that, or at least one of your kids. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So now you got in trouble for making ornery and offensive comments to your fellow gamers? I wouldn't say I got in

trouble for it, but I was definitely an edgier person. Now what's the culture? Like how far can you... Because it's kind of expected to trash talk, right? Well, back then, 15 years ago, it would have made Hitler blush for the type of stuff we said online to each other. It was wild. It was just the most depraved,

horrible, insane, crazy, like detailed description that was going to kill the other person's family. Like just the most off the wall. So how do you distinguish yourself in that atmosphere as being someone

who needs to be disciplined? Be funny and quick with it, basically, yeah. Be funny and quick. I guess in a way, not to compare any of my reflection to yours, but I kind of like,

imagine like an insult comic. Like people are watching you to see like what's the funniest way that i had a sponsorship from dollar shave club and i used to link my sponsored link at the end of streams and tell people to you know just like crazy stuff like that you know yeah it would be like that kind of stuff that people would watch for initially yeah do you remember what you said or can you tell us what what was when you finally crossed the line and um i don't know if i i don't know if I mean, there have been a couple times where I've kind of gotten like smacked on the wrist,

but I think that the, the major step back I started, I think it was in 2013, I was living in Poland for a few months in like a gamer house basically. And there were, there were other people there and I heard somebody,

I heard somebody use the, if I say F slur, you know what I'm talking about, right? Yes, the one, yeah. Yeah, maggots, yeah. Whatever that one, yeah. I heard somebody say that and they were talking about a gay about, right? Yes, the one, yeah. Yeah, maggots, yeah. Whatever that one, yeah. I heard somebody say that, and they were talking about a gay person.

And the way that he said it, I was like, ooh, this guy's actually homophobic. And so I felt really weird. I would never say that word. This was the gamer word that everybody in my community, we always said this. It was just part of what it was. But I didn't want to say it around him anymore

because I felt really weird. And it took me about a week, and then I realized, well, fuck. How many people are listening to me where if I say certain things, they think that there's some camaraderie there, I'm supporting or affirming that viewpoint. And I started to look a little bit more critically at, what are the jokes I tell, what's the language I use,

and I wanna make sure that when I say and do things, it's very clear why it's funny, or where I'm standing at in terms of these things. And it's funny, because I think a lot of comedians have had similar things. Chappelle tells his story about like getting the wrong kind of laughs mm-hmm Chris Rock there's a very famous kid that he has is known for that I think he kind of regrets doing now

because he's what the black people versus yeah yeah yeah and I know that he might regret it but that I mean that I think as much as anything put him over the top it did yeah but I think at some point like when I go back to the internet like 20 years ago and you're seeing horrible racist just depraved things it's funny because it's so bad and everybody knows it's so bad that's why it's funny but it's different when you're in a community and it's funny because there's like a tinge of truth to it like yeah that really is like yeah like you're speaking truth about it's like i don't want to make those jokes for those people because that's that's not what i feel you know i've had that same experience where you know everybody's joking joking joking all of a sudden say wait a second i think he means that yeah and then it's like what the

fuck and then it doesn't feel everything changes at that point he's like oh no it doesn't feel good anymore yeah yeah well chris rock's case i think he he's he probably stands by what he said but he doesn't like the fact that white people are hearing it or not not just white people but certain kinds of white people, certain kinds of people. Yeah, is the issue, yeah. And then it says, I'm going through your,

I didn't intend to do this. It's just today I was kind of reviewing your Wikipedia. I'm like, this is a fucking interesting dude. March 2022, Bonnell was indefinitely banned from Twitch due to hateful conduct. Speculates,

may have been due to Bonnell streaming with white nationalist Nick Fuentes, Dave Smith's friend, who had previously been banned from the platform. No, I'd done debates with that guy in the past. It was, I got banned for, it was related to, there was a whole bunch of talk at the time

about trans sports. And I had a strong opinion on like, I don't think that trans people who have transitioned after puberty probably shouldn't be competing in athletic events with cisgender people. It's just for a whole host of reasons. Cisgendered women. Obviously, a trans man is welcome to compete with men. Sure, yeah. Wouldn't be any advantage. Go ahead, sorry. Well, yeah, I was gonna say, in the course of that, I think I said something where

I was arguing with people online, and a comment, I've just never even thought about it, it's just a gamer word, I guess. We'd say, like, subhuman. You subhuman fucker. We just say that a lot. And I said something along the lines of, don't argue with these activists on Twitter. They're subhuman.

And I guess that got interpreted as he saying all trans people are subhuman, and then they... You just meant the subhuman trans people. Just the activist people online are crazy. Well, at least you didn't say untermenschen. What's that? That's subhuman in German. I mean, years ago, I don't know if you remember this,

when the trans issue was first bubbling up, I said to Periel one time, I said, oh, come on, Periel, sooner or later, and I was kidding, they're going to have Olympic athletes going to put on wigs and the Russian weightlifting teams are going to compete. And Periel was like, oh, don't be ridiculous. It seemed like so absurd that anybody,

it was like the it was ad absurdum argument that they'd have trans women competing against uh cis women and sure enough that's what we're having and of course she dutifully fell in line because well you were talking about you were talking about men in wigs which is not quite the same as well i was i was being over the top but in the end i i said the russians would do that meaning they would just use that it would be cynically i meant at the time but the the idea that and i know you you you most almost certainly agree with me that you have people like me and i'm assuming you who are extremely sympathetic to the trans cause to the cause of anybody living a fulfilling life against bigotry.

And they managed to find a wedge, like something like, oh shit, do I really have to say that it's, I can't go there with you. Aha! Aha! You don't like trans people. It's like, are you crazy? I just think it's obviously not fair. And it was just a thing in the news a couple of days ago, I saw where some newly minted trans person just destroyed the opposition in a sprint. Did you see that? I've probably seen a clip of it or something, but yeah, I agree. It's either

with us 100% or you're completely against us 100%. That mentality is really dumb. And I know a lot of trans people. Not a lot. I know like a half dozen. And all of them agree it's not fair. Yeah. It's usually um leftist liberal people like periel that uh you know anyway so so so that's a pretty amazing life and then how did you find yourself getting into political debate and and then finally

one of the world's greatest spokesmen for the state of Israel. Jesus. One of the worst things that happened in 2016 was gamers decided to get involved in politics, which was just horrible. That's what comedians are doing. Well, everybody has to be political now. You have to have a political stance on everything. And there was a thing called Gamergate and just all these basically gamer people

whose entire political identity was defined as in opposition to, we called them SJWs, or social justice warriors, right, 10 years ago. but now we call them woke people but it was basically that and i mean i i felt like these conversations suck i think we can do this a little bit better so i got involved and then it's just kind of gone from there basically yeah yeah but how did you like get on the radar um well i guess in 2016 so i'd always done a variety of content that's people knew me because i it wasn't just gaming Like we would talk about like philosophy or sometimes politics or science or whatever it was like current events or whatever. I'd like to argue people. And I just had a wide range of interests or wide array of interests. And then around 2016 with the Trump stuff happened, I started to I was pro-Bernie. Pro-Bernie. I was pretty anti-Trump, but I don't know if I was rapidly anti-Trump.

The thing is, it's hard because we rewrite all of history so quickly, but in the beginning, nobody really knew what Trump would be, and there were flashes of Trump. I know there was at least one primary that he lost to I think it was Ted Cruz, and he came on stage, and he congratulated him,

he said he ran well, and there were a lot of people, I think at least hopefully reasonable people, like, listen, Trump does his showmanship thing, but once he becomes in office, he's going to chill out and he's going to be a good leader and he'll do his best, even if I don't agree because he's a conservative or whatever. And it was so much worse than that. But yeah, around the Trump time,

I started to get more involved in political conversations. I started to kind of like debate people online because my background was such like a hardcore, you know, like screaming blood sports kind of guy. I was the only left-leaning person that would jump into these conversations. So I kind of cut my teeth debating kind of like conservative people or anti-woke people. And then for about two years I did that. And then, yeah. And where are you on Trump now in terms of, uh, what, what, what in your, is the big risk of a second Trump term? I think the largest risk is that he is changing what American people think is acceptable in this country in terms of how our institutions function.

For example? The idea that everything needs to be subservient to the president that he's above rule of law that he should be beyond criminal indictment because he was the ex-president so he should have immunity that he can conduct himself in any way possible without being held accountable by anybody that's really scary his divisiveness on a rhetoric level is scary but i mean on a political level he was ineffective at bringing lawmakers together to do anything right the whole repeal and replace obama he couldn't even do that. You know, legislatively, he has his tax bill and that's basically it. Yeah, the type of resetting and the fundamental

mistrust in every part of the country that he's been saying the election has been rigged. He's really, he started it even before in 2016. So he's been saying it for like 10 years almost, that like all the elections are rigged, makes people lose confidence in the election system, everything relating to COVID and attacking Fauci and attacking the DOJ. And like the country doesn't function without institutions. And I think that's undermining those is really bad. Yeah, I agree with most of what you said. I don't really fear the guy as a dictator, like he's not going to leave office. As Andrew Sullivan, of all people, said when during COVID, he had open road to become all the authoritarian that he wanted to be. He didn't

really show much interest in that. I think the main reason he challenged the election because he can't stand the idea that he's a loser. But I think the guy's unhinged. And to me, the strongest argument for anybody who's flirting with voting for Trump, the one that really speaks to me, is that everybody who worked for him, the closest people in his cabinet, came out of that cabinet, including the vice president, and say, don't ever let that man anywhere near that chair again. And these are not political opponents of his. There's really no way. And it's not one. It's not isolated. It's not disgruntled. It's basically everybody except maybe Pompeo. And you have to really be kind of extremely biased or delusional to dismiss that kind of unprecedented warning, right? Yeah, but they have the mind constructs to do it, I think, is the issue. When you're presented with cognitive dissonance, you either change the facts or you change your mind. And when it comes to Trump, the second somebody backstabs him, that's a rhino. They're not a real Republican. He's part of the deep state. Like he was always, you know, against

Trump and Trump has his work cut out for him because every single person is being controlled by, you know, whatever your mind leader is, you know, pulling the puppets behind the scenes or whatever. Yeah. I mean, on a policy issue, my policy, I bet you if we had conversation here, the three of us with Trump, policy-wise, my instincts are probably, I, I bet you, if we had conversation here, the three of us with Trump policy-wise, or my instincts are probably very close to his, I'm happy. He got a Supreme court that got rid of racial preferences so that, you know, people have Chinese people and Asian people can get into college without being, you know, having to have 300 points higher in SATs. I think that, I think that was a huge plus of the Trump administration, that we're not going to have legalized racial preferences for the rest of our lives. So retrospectively,

I'm not unhappy that Trump was president. I think the counterfactual might have been, I don't think it would have been divisive, obviously, but there's certain things that he did that in retrospect, I wouldn't trade them to undo the last four years. We didn't know. But prospectively, I think it'd be a terrible idea. Anyway, all right. So now you disagree with that?

Yeah, with every fiber of my being, yeah. You disagree with the racial preferences? No, I think getting rid of racial preferences was okay. I don't know if that was worth the trade-off for abortion protections um well i think now abortion is interesting because it's first of all you know what you saw the headline there's more abortions performed last year than in any other year in history so it's it hasn't it has not squelched the number of abortions i'm sure there's some isolated cases it's pretty clear to me that

state by state, including in Alabama, they're squirming under this ruling. There's going to be very, very few states that outlaw abortion. And then, of course, at the same time this has all happened, what has swooped in is pharmaceuticals, which didn't even exist. Like this is the modern clothes hanger abortion is you order a pill online. And what we traded for that is got rid of this extremely divisive, not correctly decided, most people understand Roe versus Wade was not correctly decided issue, which science was the enemy of in the sense that the more and more we know about a fetus, the more and more we know about when it can feel pain.

Like, you know, right now, Roe versus Wade said, you know, basically to the sixth month. And then if science comes up and says, well, actually, at, you know, nine weeks, whatever it is, it's extremely painful for the fetus to go through an abortion. Has it said that? No, I'm not saying, in other words, we were not able to react to science. Certainly, we know more about this than we did when Justice Blackmun, when Justice Blackmun made his decision, he saw it as like a clump of cells. I have ultrasounds in my children right towards the end of the first trimester with a thumb in their mouths. I mean, we had no concept, whatever.

So all of which is to say I'm not pro-life. That an issue which is unknowable, which is when does life deserve protection, I don't see any better system than leaving it up to the will of the Democratic people. Justice Blackmun certainly did not have the expertise to decide that in a way that deserved respect by 300 million Americans. So there's no good answer to that question. Well, there is a good answer. You could actually leave it up to the women who are having the abortions as a wild idea. Well, that's an interesting point. But just so you know, the polls don't show that women have a drastically different opinion than men on this.

Well, tell that to all of the women in Arizona right now who are terrified because they can't have an abortion. Yeah, yeah, I get it. To his point, there's probably a lot of men who knock up their girlfriend who are now terrified because they can't have an abortion. Yeah, yeah, I get it. To his point, there's probably a lot of men who knock up their girlfriend who are now terrified that she can't get an abortion either. But I think that the country will be better off without regard to the fact that I know there's going to be more than a few individual cases that will be difficult to look at. But Roe versus Wade, I think its days were numbered. I was sympathetic to the Supreme Court saying that,

listen, in the very first weeks, first eight weeks, the only people who say that this is not okay are religious people, that this is essentially an establishment of religion, and we're going to find that in the first— I was sympathetic to that, but nobody really made that argument. I would have made that argument. But a lot of people don't know that they're pregnant in the first eight weeks. I know. But the flip side, that you can have abortion until the seventh, eighth, ninth month, this... But now it's like insane like you can find out that there is something horrifically wrong with your fetus and you're still not allowed to

have an abortion and you have to deliver it and it's insane let's get off abortion let me just say one thing about it sure now you want to get on abortion it's there's a difference between a policy argument about abortion which is an interesting argument to have, and thinking that the Supreme Court in 1973 decided that this was a good—I think it wasn't. I'm sympathetic towards the arguments against abortion, and I'm sympathetic towards some of the arguments that Alito writes out in terms of why it was a bad decision. I think there's a legal concept, stare decisis, the idea that the court needs some legitimacy, and the idea of a court going back and starting to rewrite some of those decisions,

I think is a really scary precedent to set. That certain watershed decisions happen, and the idea that a court should be in the business of going back and rewriting those is just a little bit spooky. I don't know if I agree. It's been done many times, many times. It has, but when you do it,

the court can lose legitimacy, right? Like let's say, for instance, let's say two or three justices die and we get a liberal court now. And then let's say they go back and like, actually, we agree with Roe v. Wade. And then that decision essentially comes back or they get rid of the Dobbs.

Do we go back and forth on like prior decisions over and over again? It doesn't seem to happen. I get it. I don't think it will happen that way. um you know yeah you know yeah i don't know what the exact standard is um uh as to when you would overturn a prior decision but as as noam said it does happen most notably probably the case that everybody uh knows is is uh is plessy versus ferguson which said separate but equal was okay.

And then Brown versus Board of Ed, which said, no, separate is inherently unequal. So that's the most famous example. So you do want some ability to go back on decision. For sure. Yeah, you do. No one ever complains about a decision being revisited when they favor the revisitation. Sure, that's true. Nobody is principled

when it comes to politics everybody just wants their own stuff i definitely agree with that yeah and now when i just said i went to law school and i when i i can remember reading roe versus wade and saying what that this makes no sense it was such an abomination or penumbra of rights yeah it's a very it's it's legal alchemy but as it was it was it was probably pretty well. I think as a student, did you think, oh, it must be me that doesn't understand? Because after all, these are Supreme Court justices and I'm just a 1L. I did. I was insecure about it. I speak to people.

But no matter how many times I listened to it, I'm like, it didn't make any sense. There's no, none of this is in the Constitution, nor could a Supreme Court justice determine when life begins. And obviously, if you could make the argument to me that it should be right up until the day of birth, let's say, but nobody even has the nerve to make that argument, meaning that everybody understands a date has to be picked. And if a date has to be picked, the notion that the Supreme Court would pick the date rather than a community that has to live that,

that to me was- It feels like legislation. Stripping people of the, like the most fundamental aspect of democracy is that we're going to decide when we think somebody deserves legal protection.

We're going to decide when you're going to kill a baby. Not Justice Blackmun in 1973. But even if I grant you that, why wouldn't the decision then be left to the individual woman? Like, why do the states get to decide whether or not, like, I have to give birth to— The same reason we don't leave the decision whether to beat your kids to the individual parents. Or to stay it as an interest, yeah. Or to kill the baby the day after it's born.

All right, let's talk about abortion. Okay, so Israel. First of of all you were fantastic on israel okay can we play a little greatest hits of how awful norman finkelstein was to you i've seen every left he's been making the rounds i don't know if he's someone do you know brianna joy gray is yes of course yeah he wanted her show and he was like yeah my goal from the very beginning was to just scream at him the entire time and i thought it was funny like seriously miss now okay i forgot to get this but with your permission i want to cut one thing into this show later because on our show he scolded eli lake for personal attacks i think it's called dolo specialis it's the most important part of

genocide turn it up a little bit it's proving the special it's a highly special intent to commit genocide it's possible that israel That's mens rea. No. The mens rea, yes, I understand the state of mind, but for genocide, there is a dolo specialis. It's a highly special intent. Did you read the case? It is a highly special intent... I'm going to ask you again.

Please stop displaying your imbecility. I'm sorry if you think the declaration of the judge is imbecility. Don't put on public display that you're a moron. At least have the self-possession to shut up. I'm comfortable putting my display on camera if you're comfortable putting yours in books.

I read the case around four times. I read all of the majority of the declarations. Don't give me this post-modernism binary. Believe me, I'm a lot more literate than you, Mr. Borrelli. I'm going to believe the guy that wrote this stuff. Wikipedia says it's called attaching value to words and not talking like a motor mouse.

That's not controversial. Mr. Bonnell, Mr. Bonnell. We got it right that time. Mr. Bonnell, please slow down the speech and attempt to listen. Legal standard. I know. Absolutely. You have to. I absolutely have to. I think. But I'm just saying I'm just saying I'm just saying believe it or not, normally, literally, you can Google it. I can't. I really can't. I can't. But even Benny Morris is laughing.

It's so painful to listen to this idiocy. I will answer the question. I will even answer Moron's question. You want me to answer or do you want your motor mouth to say it? Enough.

How did you compose yourself with this dude? You want me to answer, or do you want your motor mouth to say it? All right, all right, enough, enough, enough, enough. How did you compose yourself with this dude? I mean, you let him go, yeah. It's a lot of training, because I've done a lot of different types of debates, but when you're doing a debate, it's often better to let the other person lead and to strike more, because it gives you a more favorable disposition to the audience, whereas if you lead or you start insulting them, even if they've kind of earned it, it won't feel that way to the audience.

Maybe it's the way it was cut, but it sounded like he said Bunnell and then went back to Borelli. There was a time I was saying I was glad that Lex, there was a time when we'd get up to go to the bathroom two or three times, and he let the cameras roll, and he kept it for one of them, but they get up, and he says something to me,

or I say something to him, and then he says, Mr. Bunnell, and it was the first time I heard him clearly, instantly, and me and Benny started live. It was like, oh, you do know my name. Yeah, and he just walks off. It was just a big game to him, I guess, yeah. Which, to be fair, the way that if you look at all of his stuff around this,

it's all a big game to him, so. You were 100% right about the Dola Specialis. How do you pronounce it? Dola Specialis, yeah. What is that? It's a special high standard to find genocide that is mentioned over and over in any decision. Well, you could say it. It was four times written.

You don't find mens rea in the South Africa case. You find that Dola Specialis is mentioned four times. And it's not even, I hate bringing it. It's just like an obvious. What is Dola Specialis as opposed to just your run-of-the-mill intent? Run-of-the-mill intent is like you intended to commit a certain type of criminal act, a mens rea. You have a criminal mind, right? An intention to do a criminal act. Dolas specialis for genocide, there needs to be the highly special intent to basically eliminate a group of people in whole or in part.

So it's not even just like they launched a –... So one of the examples I give here is like you could theoretically nuke all of Gaza and that wouldn't necessarily be genocide. Let's say you think they've got nuclear weapons and you nuke them

and all the people die. It's still not genocide because the goal there, your highly special intent was that we need to destroy the entire Palestinian people. It was more like a military thing

and a lot of people might die and it's still horrible. There could be war crimes. So Hiroshima's not considered genocide by any international body? Yeah, and it's been- So Hiroshima is not considered a genocide by any international body? Yeah, and it's, I don't believe so, no. I've never heard that before.

I mean, people will give the opinion that it is, but again, the goal, especially in times of war, you're always trying to defeat your enemy or destroy parts of your enemy, but to call every single war essentially then a genocide is just not, yeah, it doesn't map on. Everything becomes a genocide at that point, basically, yeah. But in the emails I had-

Are you at least part Italian? I mean, was he even- Who, Finkelstein or me? You. I don't think so. Okay, because he was- Bunnell? I don't know, French, Italian, something.

Because he was saying Borelli. What are you looking for? In the emails that I had with Finkelstein in December about genocide, he knew. We talked about intent. We discussed these cases. I mean, he's full of it.

Yeah, I'm not. I don't. On your debate with him, there was a time, there was a moment where you didn't even, this shows you he's a crazy person. There was like,

he went off on a soliloquy about how you might run a comedy club, but this to me is not funny. And he went on for several minutes. And you hadn't said anything jokingly. You hadn't, I mean, maybe you let out a minor laugh or something. And he went off. No, there was no laugh.

And he went off for several minutes on how he does not find it funny. So, yeah, this is just sort of his thing he goes off by on on on pre-written digressions like and it's the same lines like i noticed because i watched his uh conversation with eli on your program in preparation i took notes and i watched him through a lot and there's a lot of common talking points that he brings up over and over and he always references those uh pac Islands, like the Marshall Islands or Samoa. He always references that and people that support Israel and the U.S.

He always references... He just has these talking points that he runs through. And he always references his credentials or books that he's read without actually showing that he's understood any of the underlying material that he's sourcing you. It's very frustrating, yeah. So this is an email...

But he's very effective, though, I think, to people that may not know better. There's an email here where he and i are arguing about genocide and about intent and i bring and i and i presented him with the um legal opinions in the rwanda case and it says here there's talk of dola specialis i put special intent when it comes to genocide. I give a link to the very thing and then he's pretending he's never heard this before. Yeah, I truly don't understand other than maybe he just hasn't. The thing is he got into, because about two weeks after that debate we posted, maybe it was a month or two after, he started posting on Twitter towards me about, I think the title was Moron Specialis,

and he starts quoting from Yugoslavia, the genocide case showing how, well, look, here they say mens rea, look at what they're saying. And it was so funny because if you actually click through and you read this part of the case, I think it's around paragraph 440, and you start reading,

what they were actually arguing about was this person had the mens rea to aid in a bet in genocide, but he didn't have the special intent. He was missing that. But if you know this guy has the special intent and you've got the mens rea to help him and you've got knowledge of his special intent, is that transferable to say that you were part of a genocide? And it's funny because they make that distinction even when he's linking. And I'm like, well, I don't understand. Yeah. Yeah. He sent me minority pins and then he made the argument to you. Well, they

were, I wish I could do the Finkelstein. We need Michael Moynihan. He really does the best Finkelstein. I can do it a little bit, but I can't do it under pressure. But he says that, well, they didn't find it, but they found it was plausible. Like you didn't. What was the analogy? He was saying, imagine you're a worldwide famous athlete who qualifies for the Olympics, but you don't get a medal or something. That was like the plausibility standard. Yeah. But, you know, every single innocent person who's tried for a crime that they didn't commit met the plausibility standard that's

why that's how it is they got into the courtroom somebody thought it was plausible yeah but the issue is when they use argument yeah because he's using the layman's because plausible to me sounds like well yeah i guess that could be a high standard right like you know is there probable cause i guess yeah but if you don't actually know the legal standards, then, yeah. Now, what is your general take? First of all, I just want to say, because this genocide thing, you could tell me everything else about the war, you disagree with me, and I could live with it, that Israel made a mistake, that they committed a war crime, any of that I can live with. This genocide thing scares the shit out of me in terms of what it will mean for the Jewish people going forward. I know that sounds very self-important over the top,

but I compared it to like acid rain on the psychology of Jewish people, this kind of attempt to cancel out. I can't believe I'm talking this way, almost to cancel out the Holocaust as if the pressure of the Holocaust was so psychologically oppressive that there's this yearning to be able to say, well, the Jews, it happened to the Jews in the 40s

and then the Jews did it in the 2020s. One side cancels the other side out. Thank God we don't have to talk about the Holocaust anymore. In the same way, certain racists are always on the lookout to find the black people in South Africa committing some atrocity towards the white people so they can say, you see? Yeah, the whites did it to them, but now they did it back. Thank God we can stop having to feel sorry about that. I really feel that's what's going on. And my children, who are too young to know any better, they're getting the message that I've given before. I'm sure you know this. In Rwanda, they killed in 100 days 700,000 people on the behest of radio announcements,

go out and kill your neighbor. They killed 700,000 people, maybe more, basically with machetes, blunt objects, and their bare hands in three months. That's what a genocide looks like. Israel, if it wanted genocide, everybody would be dead by now, right? So that's how I feel about genocide. But having something to get that off my chest. What is your general—don't say you believe in genocide. What is your general take—

What if I do? No, if you do, you do. What is your general take on the war, stakes, gone too far, not far enough, Iran, all of it? One thing, especially being American, traumatized from our adventures in Afghanistan and Iraq, I wish that for conflict, people would set up very, very clear goals. I think that would help people a lot.

Like just eliminating Hamas is probably not explicit enough. Like, what does that mean? I think even today, I don't know if we know what that means, right? Does that mean you kill every single militant? Does that mean they're just removed as administrators? Does that mean that you are occupying it again? I don't know if we have a clear answer of what that means yet. Like right now I don't even know if they're gonna go into Rafah. I think that's like in the air right now. Well, they wanted to. They wanted to but I don't know right now if that's because it feels I think Israel started to pull people

back already and then some are returning to northern Gaza so that's like a question so if Hamas remains and the Gaza Strip yikes that's just bad for everybody I think that the the initial I think the initial cause for war I think was completely legitimate like it's time to remove these people this is not acceptable anymore it's. I think that as far as, you know, doing their best to avoid unnecessary civilian casualties, it's an unpopular take. But I mean, when you actually dig into the obligations under international military law, when you actually dig into all the things that the Israeli military does, it seems if you engage with it honestly, and I hate to say this because I'm very partisan, when you engage with it honestly,

it seems obvious, like patently obvious that Israel is doing everything they can to minimize civilian casualties. It's like undeniable, because the numbers would be so much different if they were just indiscriminately bombing or carpet bombing, as everybody says. But I mean, they still have to manage the PR aspect, because at the end of the day, perception is really the only thing that matters in international communities with other countries. Well, I actually actually worry that especially early on in the conflict. That there was so much rage in the room that some decisions might have been made that that shouldn't have been made. That would be human. I don't say they might. I don't

mean to excuse it. I mean, yeah, I would not want to bet against that. Maybe that's possible. But the issue is we have no counterfactuals. You know many people have died in Ukraine so far No, nobody knows You know how many people that are Syria how many people died in Yemen over how many people letting him in a famine? How many people like no one has any idea but you better believe every single day 32,000 a day 30,000 500 a day I know the 240k we have every single fucking number and it's like Jesus Christ I guess in here every single fucking number. And it's like, Jesus Christ, I guess in here, every single civilian death absolutely matters more than the combination of however,

like if you looked at the coverage for the area and you looked at how many people talk about it, the strong opinions about it, my feeling, I guess like 10 million people have died in Palestine and maybe a few have died in the surrounding Middle East. That's what it seems like. That's what the attention makes it feel like.

And then when you look and like, I'm pulling from history, I'm pretty sure historically from 1900 to 2024, I'm pretty sure more people died in the Syrian civil war than Arabs and Israelis and Palestinians have died in the history of Israel. Oh, absolutely. It's like 300,000, I think, at least I think for Syria. And it's, are you even at 100,000? Maybe a little bit more if you add up all the wars, all the massacres, everything. It's like, Jesus.

Yeah. There was a time, I don't know how the numbers have changed, but I remember this statistic, it was reliable at the time. During the Iran-Iraq war, in one day, more people had died than in all the Arab-Israeli conflicts on both sides.

Because that one, by the end, was one to two million deaths. That was an insane conflict. In one day. And this is not a day remembered in history. It was just another day in the Iraq War.

Do you want to say something, Dan? Well, I just was going to also bring up the point that, you know, you said, well, you alluded to this, but there's always also the possibility that an individual soldier

or group of soldiers during this conflict could commit a war crime and kill civilians, you know. And I'm not even, I am not even convinced that aid, I don't think, God forbid, I don't believe that anybody has any intention to starve anybody. I don't believe any, you don't even have to believe

they're good people, that the Jews or Israelis are good people. It just't believe in it. You don't even have to believe they're good people, that the Jews or Israelis are good people. It just doesn't make much sense. You're not going to starve out the entire population and kill a million people. Anybody that dies of starvation is going to hurt your cause internationally and in your own country, right?

That's Salam and Haaretz are not BBC, UK or American publications in Israel. Your own population won't stand for it. There's just there's literally nothing to be gained from that. But I do I do fear this, that. Now, somebody has to decide how much effort, how much aid. Yeah. And they definitely want to keep the pressure on that they could have miscalculated and been too too slow. Because it can't be denied that as soon as Biden put more pressure on them, the aid did ramp up.

Now, having said that, the latest headlines are that the aid trucks are just stuck at the crossing there and they can't deliver it. But that's, you know, that's on them. That's not an excuse. Yeah, but that conversation can't happen. There's no place for that conversation because it's either Israel's intentionally trying to starve out and murder everybody or it's Hamas's responsibility to fuck Hamas. But I agree with you that it might be that some of the decisions being made are either being made way too hastily. Like after, like when those aid trucks got hit, those three aid trucks intentionally, all three of them got struck. There's a lot of questions where it's like, okay, like you sure there might've been a Hamas guy there, but like, would you ordinarily have killed one Hamas operative with nine civilians that are in aid

trucks? Is that like an ordinary decision you would make or what? Like those are good conversations but well there was a guy shooting his rifle on top but yeah i sure but let's say there even was though is that is that a calculation that is worthwhile um i don't know just i mean like internationally like jesus christ you're shooting like aid is the biggest like hot button topic right now is this like the strike that you need to do uh it's colossally stupid. Yeah. And yet, there's so many colossally stupid events in history. For sure, yeah. And we're getting a microscope on every single battle

operation. But I mean, I agree with you that it's a high level of scrutiny, more than anybody has ever suffered in any war ever, the amount of scrutiny there is for this one. But we can't have, like, a good conversation about how does Israel figure out proportionality or distinction. Instead, it's like, well,

are they bloodthirsty demons, or are they just Satan spawn, or are they completely the victims of everybody else and they're doing no wrong and we should defend them wholeheartedly? Because the conversation is horrible. And also, what's the alternative? What are they supposed to do? Now, we're almost out of time. What is it about your past, especially as a kind of left-wing Sanders-type guy, that would you say led you to become so pro-Israel? I don't know if I would say I was so pro-Israel. Debated a couple politicians. If you're chosen among the very few people in the country

to debate alongside Benny Morris, you had to have made a name for yourself. Sure. So I said I got that prescription for ADHD medication for Vyvanse around October, actually. My mistake. I said Adderall. Oh, no, you're good. It's the same thing, more or less.

But the attacks happened, and I'm like, oh, well, I've had strong opinions about Israel policy in the past. I wonder if I can actually read more about this. And then But the attacks happened, and I'm like, oh, well, I've had strong opinions about Israel-Palestine in the past. I wonder if I can actually read more about this. And then I found out for the first time, like, oh, cool, I can read a book, or I can read full reports, or I can read whole UN things or whatever. And in doing more and more research, it's fun sometimes to argue in areas that are highly contentious. So before this, I did a lot of Ukraine-Russia or vaccine stuff.

So those are fun areas to argue in. But this particular one, there I did a lot of like Ukraine-Russia or like vaccine stuff. So those are fun areas to argue in. But this particular one, there's just a lot of – sides of like the, you know, the eight packs and they're trying to push for like, you know, we should be friends with Israel and defend them. And they're an important US ally to like this whole institution of people that are like Israel is the enemy no matter what. And yeah, I don't know. It's just, it's a very, it's very interesting how strongly opinionated the whole world is on this particular conflict and sometimes the most unbelievable ways. So, so the part where I thought you guys basically wiped the floor with the other side, and after that, it was really just nothing that mattered other than being entertaining, was that they

were making the point that, and Morris agreed, that the notion of expulsion was from time to time mentioned by Zionists and whatever. It was in the air, I think was the term that Benny Morris used. But the fact is that nobody actually took any steps to do it. And it was only after the attack that any of this happened. And to say that, you know, it's very sloppy. Sure, some people said it. But are you saying that if the Palestinians had accepted the partition while after dancing in the streets, they were then going to start expel? It's not

really plausible, just like, you know, the same way you could say whatever you want about how they were coveting Jerusalem and the West Bank, but it was only after they were attacked. All these pivotal moments, whatever you think about whatever lurked dark in the heart of the Jews, all the bad luck to their cause happened as a result of aggressive, murderous attacks. And that's on them. And it's tragic because we don't have the counterfactual. But like I said, for Gaza, you could destroy Israel in two weeks.

If you were Hamas and you actually built dedicated bomb shelters for your civilians, and you didn't do any rockets from there, you didn't do any attacks from there, no military ammunition storage or whatever, if you were to build those shelters and any rockets from there, you didn't do any attacks from there, no military ammunition storage or whatever, if you were to build those shelters and put people in there, if Israel were to strike a single one of those, then it's over the next day. Whatever would be in office would be completely expelled.

International support would collapse. Why would they need bomb shelters if they were peaceful? No, but I'm just saying that you could prove at that point, finally, we have an attack where they did it for no reason. But yeah, every other thing, it's like, well, look at all the terror they got in 67. Okay, well, what happened right before that? look at all the turd they got in 67 okay well what happened right before that or look at the war in 48 okay well what happened right before that well look at like and it's like yeah but like jesus like if you would just chill for one second maybe maybe they are crazy murderous people but you always

give them an excuse right before it happens stop you know i just think it's really interesting that you're like actually no i'm not really that pro-Israel. Like, I'm just looking at facts. Well, because I think that there are things that Israel does, and they don't come out in my debates as much. I debated a guy called... Say whatever you want, because I'm going to cut it out. Go ahead. Say whatever I want.

Oh, is it Simcha Rachman? Oh, God, he's a big Knesset member. Or he was... I debated far-right Zionist people, and there are some things that I think that Israel hasn't done itself any favors. Sure, that's not what I'm saying. Let it finish.

Go ahead. Like, the West Bank stuff is atrocious. And Israel is, like, arguably, like, if World War III starts from the Middle East, it's because Israel in all of its arrogance hasn't aggressively tried hard enough to pursue some sort of peaceful arrangement with the Palestinians. That's the entry point for Iran to have an interest in this region and to do bad things. It's a reason for the population. You think that's Iran's interest as the Palestinians? I would dispute that. I don't know.

I think Iran's interest is fucking with Israel. Yeah. Palestine is a good excuse. But if they weren't an excuse, right? Look at what happened. You know where a lot of Palestinian people live? In fucking Jordan, right? And guess what Jordan did when Iran launched those missiles?

They shot some of them down, right? Israel needs to do something. Because right now, I think the issue is, both sides like the status quo. Palestinians, because they literally never suffer any political defeats ever. They can always say, 67 borders, no matter how many times they fuck up,

it's always 67 borders. And the whole international community's like, yeah, international law. And Israel's like, okay, well, we'll keep fighting because we're expanding all of our settlements. We're making more and more gains. Like, fuck you guys. I guess that status quo can't exist. Eddie Long has to stop. I agree. I think that, um, you know, as usual, innocent people suffer at the hands of terrible government leaders. But I want to say this to you, the thing that enrages me and enged me about watching you with Finkelstein,

and we started the show like this, is that he takes this holier-than-thou moral high ground, and it is so fraudulent, and it is such bullshit. I hate him because I have receipts. Mm-hmm. All right. No, no, no. But no, but I think... Don't, don't, don't.

Sounds like you're changing the subject. Me? Well, I'm not changing the subject. I mean, I'm trying to. But I want Noam to respond to, because I think Noam, I would imagine, disagrees strongly with Mr. Bunnell just said. Oh, the West Bank? I mean, I think that.

That Israel prefers to be in a constant state of war. No, no. My take on that is that I agree with you that the settlements are atrocious, and that especially the most recent coalition government is atrocious, but that the second intifada, and then 2008, and then 2014. 2014, yeah. And then the march of return with the balloons in 2018. They have ought to have demonstrated to any reasonable person

that there is zero interest in political will on that side to make a deal, number one. And number two, then even if you get that far, which I don't think you can, then you have to be able to say, and if they made a deal, whoever made that deal would then be able to promise Israel that six months later Hamas would be sending rockets in. And obviously they can't do that either. So I would say on their side, it's an actual rejection of peace.

And in the Israeli side, it's an opportunistic use of their rejection of peace to be selfish and try to get, I mean, in other words, we should say, they should leave it pristine. Don't make a fucking move on the West Bank. And that apparently is too tempting for these religious people. And then the Israeli electoral politics, kind of like ours, is so

on a razor's edge that these small parties have, and that's not written in stone, have so much power that they're able to extract these settlements and whatever it is. And that's terrible. I can't defend it. I'm just saying it happened. But the essence of truth, in my opinion, is if a Palestinian leader wanted peace, said he wanted peace, made a speech for peace, the Israeli public would immediately fall in line. And I know Benny Morris agrees with me. And I'm jealous that you got to spend time with him. I think he's an intellectual hero of mine. And he's a very brave guy. And it's very interesting how he went from being

such a huge advocate for the Palestinians to such a dismissive of the Palestinians while not changing a single fact that he thinks is true. I compared it to this meme that goes around of a left-handed pitcher and a right-handed pitcher and some people see it as a left-handed pitcher, some people see it as a right-handed pitcher.

And people who see it as left-handed say, what the fuck? How can you possibly see it as right-handed? And I think a lot of disagreements are like that. People get mad at each other. But they just actually—and I'm going to finish with my long thing. On that point, when Finkelstein said in that debate to Benny Morris, I can't even imagine being in the mind of an Israeli.

I don't even want to try to get into their mind. As a historian, you're literally Jewish. You can't imagine what people is. But you can speak for Hamas and support the Houthis? What? So Benny Morris, he saw a left-handed picture. And after the second intifada and a few of the other episodes, now he sees a right-handed picture.

The actual picture hasn't changed. It just, he had an epiphany in that way. And I think his more recent epiphany with the benefit of wisdom of age and these events, I think that's the actual true one. But I don't want to defend outrageous conduct of Israel. I'd like Israel to be holier than fucking now so nobody could say a single word about their behavior,

and that's not the case. But they would anyway. Right, that's fine. But that's not an excuse. It's frustrating that there are good reasons why people will say the Palestinians feel the way that they feel. But I feel like that same charitability is never granted on the other side. They're like, well, of course the Palestinians are upset. You know, you continue to expand settlements in the Oslo Accords.

It's like, okay, well, there are also still suicide bombers during the Oslo Accords. Well, of course the Palestinians feel upset. You know, you blockaded their stuff. And it's like, well, yeah, that's because in 2004, 2005, when Hamas was taking over, a whole bunch of shit got shipped in there, right? And even during the Second Intifada, that's where a lot of the weapons and stuff came in. There's always an excuse made for why the Palestinians

feel the way they do and the reasons they're taking the action to do, but is there any... Except... But there is one difference, that if you were to graph the Palestinian attitude towards Israel since 1900, there's really no change. If you were to graph the Jewish attitude about wanting peace and what is a huge slope toward the right. Yeah, but this is why I'm so naive and stupid, okay? Because I

thought that like with a conversation with scholars, it's going to look a lot different than my horrible online debates. We were just screaming at each other. This was the worst. The most interesting thing to me, especially with all those people, even if it could have just been between Benny and Finkelstein, the most interesting thing to me is that all of the normative power and the moral loading today comes from two fundamentally different histories between what happened in that region. And it would have been so interesting to go back and forth, point by point, like, where are all of the peace deals that Palestinians offer that were left on the table? Or is there even one? There's not, right? Why can we say, I asked Muin, like, you're saying that the Israeli logic is one of exclusion,

that Zionism is a supremacist organization and an ideology that would never allow for, okay, well, what about Lusen when they accepted? They would have taken the whole Gaza Strip in 1952. What about for the partition plan in 1947? What about in 1948 when they kept some Arab... Peel Commission when it was a... Yeah, there are more Arab Israelis today than there are Jews living in every other country in the Arab world.

I think their one peace offer was the whole thing is Palestine, but some of the Jews can stay if they have been there sufficiently long. Sure, yeah. And they can speak and they can learn Arabic and live as a minority. Yeah, and how can you say it's just the different histories? Like even when you think of 67, like when you go back to the 67 borders, that doesn't mean, a lot of people think that means going back to, what, Palestine? That was just occupied territory by Jordanordan and egypt that was never palestine like why but it became bad when the jews occupied it or yeah it's just so frustrating even even my

contemporary understanding you can even go back probably four or five months ago even and find me saying things like yeah hamas is bad we need way more moderate people like the pa or the plo and i didn't know the history and then when I go and it's like, Oh, these organizations literally always been doing this. They were called Fedayeen. Then they were called PLO. Then they were, you know,

black September and civil wars. It's like, okay, well fuck me. It's always been like this, this type of conflict. Also agree with this. And this doesn't apply to all Israeli advocates for sure.

But with Benny Morris versus Finkelstein, Steen, Steen, Stein, Stein, um, there, I'm glad you, I'm glad you people make that mistake I never know I never know if it's Stein or Stein I'm glad you guys fuck it up too this is how you get thrown off Twitch I'm already thrown off Twitch

there is a different spirit Morris really in his heart is constantly trying to see things from both sides in his books one of the to see things from both sides. In his books, one of the things I like about Morris's books, I don't know if you've read them, any fact that you might need to make the Palestinian argument, you can find in Morris's book. He includes every, almost like he relishes in including inconvenient facts in his books. And he updates his history too, remember?

Because he said there was actually more expulsion than I realized. And he updates his history too, remember? Because he said there was actually more expulsion than I realized. And he updates his writing accordingly. Where Finkelstein's books, I've read those too. And I've gone to the footnotes. He leaves out all sorts of things. He has one thing where there's a break the silence as these Israeli soldiers who,

and he quotes them in their book. And I downloaded the actual transcripts and he just lops off huge exculpatory paragraphs by the very same people he quotes. He's a David Irving. Benny Mars, yeah. Benny Mars would never do such a thing. Never, ever, ever.

And that says something or could say something about the merits of the underlying. About the caliber of both, yeah. I remember the day before that debate, I asked Benny if he wanted to go grab a bite to eat so I had a whole note and everything because I wanted to make sure that I wasn't going to say anything stupid

and that I wasn't missing anything and we could run through everything. And something he said that was very interesting, I don't think this ever came up in the debate, but I brought up the differences in, like, there are no archives that we have access to for a lot of the theocratic dictatorial states, which is unfortunate.

And one thing Benny Morris brought up that I thought was really interesting is Benny Morris says that for a long time in Israeli or Levant history, whatever, like for this region, you've got written records and archives by Israelis, but a lot of the Arab people would do things like oral tradition, and they would tell stories and pass these down. But Benny said that through all of his research, and when you track down a lot of the oral tradition, and then you compare that to the written record, they actually line up like pretty closely, like he was willing to give credit on a lot of that stuff. And I do agree that there's a difference in caliber between, God, even reading Finkelstein's books are unbelievable. And then chasing the annotations,

it's David Irving. Yeah, he'll ask things or he'll say something. It's like, let's go read the actual source on it. It's like, what? That's what you got from that? It's like, unbelievable. Yeah. Try looking at the annotations on Rashid Khalidi's book. Oh, I've heard of his name, but I haven't read any of his. Oh, the footnotes are actually meaningless. Anyway, sir. Well, I just have a couple of questions about attention deficit hyperactivity disorder by May, for which you are being treated with Lisdedex amphetamine i'm reading is the correct that's right is the chem name for the brand name vivance is is adhd um something that

causes distress or is it just something that um causes uh poor functioning and like if you had a billion dollars you didn't have to work you didn't have to make any money would adhd be a problem would it be hurt you got a billion dollars not you didn't have to work, you didn't have to make any money, would ADHD be a problem? If you got a billion dollars, not much in life is a problem, I guess. Well, depression would be a problem. Yeah, it could. It's distressing. But is ADHD distressing? I don't know if ADHD would be considered distressing.

I think that basically what ADHD means is you have varying levels of executive dysfunction. So for an ordinary person, you should be able to do a thing you don't really want to do, but you can force yourself to do it, and you should be able to do that. And for ADHD, those types of tasks become exponentially more difficult. So you're more impulsive, you've got a really hard time staying on task if it's something you don't really have much of an interest in. That would basically be ADHD in a nutshell, I think. Yeah. The issue with all types of mental stuff though, is that like everybody will have it in varying degrees. So it kind of seems like, well, yeah, I could have ADHD or whatnot. I have some, but you also have hyper-focus, right? That's also a thing that people with ADHD have. I think hyper-focus is a bit of a misnomer. I think what happens is, is if you have ADHD, your brain is pretty dopamine starved. So when you find something

that gives you a constant stream of rewards you can fixate on that so i had this issue with my son for a while before i thought that 82 is a real thing when he was six seven i think is when he was diagnosed and i was like there's no way my kid has adhd he plays minecraft for 10 hours if i let him and i'm a professional gamer i play starcraft for 16 hours a day there's no way i have adhd but then i do a lot more reading and then i realize that i'm like oh okay well i guess it makes more sense that yeah yeah, the hype, people, I don't like it when people go hyper-focused, because the implication is that you can, like, when you need to,

you can really concentrate on something, but it's only when there is that direct reward that's, like, right there for you, so if you've got to cram a paper immediately, if somebody's standing over your shoulder with a gun, you can sit there and do it, but, I mean, a normal person could do that. That's what I was, when I was in, but in school,

I just couldn't focus. It was horrible. But then finals week, I could sit down 12 hours a day and study for the... Also, you could sit and play guitar for long periods of time as well. Yeah, sure. I could do that. Anything I like doing, I could do. But the discipline to do some things, to this day, things I really don't like... Well, look, if you don't, I think everybody has that. If the definition of ADHD is having a difficult time doing stuff you don't want to do, that's probably everyone. My roommate, Don, in college, he did his homework every day. He was organized.

He, he, and, and, you know, he, he powered through it. And he, and he was unhappy if he didn't. And I could never do that. I couldn't match his will. And it just feels, yeah, and it's very, it just feels stupid. Because it took me until I was 34 and, you know, whatever, 35. Because I just feel like every day I was like, I can do this. It's just, I just have to sit and do a thing.

And it feels stupid. Like, why the fuck do I need a pill for this? How, like, how much of an idiot am I that I can't just, like, sit and read a particular thing? But, oh, my God. I mean, like, yeah, I didn't know anything about it. Truly, like, people make fun of pill for this? How much of an idiot am I that I can't just sit and read a particular thing? But oh my God. I mean, yeah, I didn't know anything about it. Truly, people make fun of me for this, but I didn't really know much about anything in the region prior to October 7th.

And then I was like, okay, fuck it. Let's just start reading. You're a moron. Yeah, true. Is there any- Let him go. Motormouth Wikipedia. Something that the first time I saw him,

I had a little bit of respect for him. I couldn't tell if he was fucking me the whole time. There was one time towards the end of the debate where I copied his strategy and he does this thing. He does like the Vader hand where he holds his hand. There's one time at the end of the debate where I do that. I was like, let me finish stuff. And he actually shuts up when I do it.

And he leans back and he smiles a little bit. I was like, are you fucking with me the whole time? I actually can't tell. God, fuck. I think there's an element of that. Yeah, I think there is. Yeah, there absolutely is. And you see it through the rest of his, I didn't know until after, the rest of his life behavior oh my god yeah well you're leaving town tomorrow uh tomorrow morning yeah oh shit all right because there's a lot of people coming down tomorrow night that you would love that you'd really enjoy meeting and they would love to meet

you but uh all right that sounded so horrible yeah but the uh that my i live online it's not like a jew Jewish conspiracy thing. I did a clip. So every now and then, okay, so when I was doing my research for all of this, sorry, let me explain the background of that comment. When I was doing the research for all of this, I'm starting from nothing and I'm legitimately reading

and researching everything online. So I'm asking questions and sometimes I look down because I'm asking because I don't know a thing. For instance, there's one part where I'm going through a whole bunch of old maps trying to find if Palestine is on it. And a lot of them are angled differently.

A lot of them have a lot of different names. And there's one map that comes up and it's like colored. And I'm trying to find like, oh, where's Israel, Palestine? And then eventually I find it and it was just an ordinary map. I was like, oh, but people clip that and they're like, oh, three months ago, you couldn't even find Israel on a map. And that's what they're quoting from. And I'm like, okay.

So at some point I'm like, well, fuck it. If I'm just going to get quoted in like 20 second things, I'm going to say some wild, stupid shit. And I went on some one minute thing because I talked to Ben and then I talked to Candace Owens and Candace Owens got fired. And somebody said- She's a great genius, by the way, but go ahead.

Very great genius, yeah. And somebody asked me, did you get her fired? And then I did some whole one minute spiel about how, because I've been so faithful to Israel and the Mossad sends me talking points. Oh, I saw that. Yeah, the Jew alumni. And people went with it online

and actually believed that that was a real thing. So when you just said, now I got a bunch of people that would really like to meet you tomorrow. People are going to hear that like, it's the fucking Messiah. So what he did was he purposely baited people to cut him out of context. But he said, I'm going to say that. And sure enough, they did cut him out of context and spread it around to, you know. But it was such an obviously stupid, the Jew alumni, like alumni for Jews. I said that. And they believed that that was a obviously stupid, the Jew-lumni, like alumni for Jews. I said that, and they believed that that was a real thing, the Jew-lumni.

Like, Jesus Christ. All right. I would love to meet Candace Owens. She's a fellow Stanford High graduate, albeit a couple of years after me. She is really. There are a lot of nuts people out there now who are very influential conspiracy theorists who from time to time say things that many of us agree with and then they get a pass by those people who agree with them to say that they're space aliens and all kinds.

And it's a real problem. She's crazy. You get something right, correct, like one time. Was it a Berber? What was the name of the guy in the big short? Michael Burry? I don't know. I think he predicted the housing stock crash. correct like one time was it a burberry what was the name of the guy in the big short michael burry i don't know i think he like predicted the housing stock crash and now if you look at any of his financial predictions they're all horrible but people will always riot on that one good

prediction uh and it's just like yeah tucker carlson says one crazy thing after another and you'd think he'd be laughed out of polite society. He's not, and smart people will defend him. But didn't you hear when he said that the Pentagon is studying alien spaceships for their weapons systems? And he says, that's a fact. We know that now. That should be the end of Tucker Carlson, right?

When we had gatekeepers back when I was a kid, that would have been the end. You would have just gone off into the night. But now nothing, same thing with Candace Owens. One crazy thing after another. The Muslim quarter is a concentration camp. That's a craziness that keeps them relevant, I think, and is part of the secret sauce to their success.

One of the things I felt recently, I said this, that I don't think anything can happen anymore. That's just like a thing that happens. It always has to be part of some fucking plot. Like the fires in Hawaii was Jewish space lasers, or the train derailment in East Palestine was like the Democrats trying to poison the environment. You remember that a year or two ago?

Or I don't remember. Like every single new event that happened. Oh, the bridge getting hit. Was the Mossad trying to get pressure off of Israel? Yeah, every single thing that happens has to be part of some broader conspiracy. That is so ridiculous. By the Jews. Wow, right. thing that happens has to be part of some broader conspiracy. It's so ridiculous. By the Jews. And most

of them are not. Next episode, you'll tell us which ones are. I can't tell you. We don't know you well enough yet, but we're close. All right, sir. It's a great pleasure to meet you. You did a fantastic job on that debate.

You're a righteous goy. You get an invitation to Shabbat dinner. Thanks. I'll keep that in mind. And as you go in and out of New York, I'd like you to make this a stop to hang out here. You probably enjoy the Comedy Cellar. And I want to thank you very much for stopping in.

Well, thanks. I appreciate it. I've heard really cool things about you. I just came from Brian Long's show, and they said that you were a guy that has like huge principal detachments to talk to a lot of people and they were super grateful you're here so i hear a lot of amazing things about you so thanks i'm honored that you had me here ryan is terrific ryan is comments, questions, and suggestions. Thank you. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.