The Headlines - New Details on Gaza Cease-Fire Obstacles, and Musk Interviews Trump

Episode Date: August 13, 2024

Plus, scenes after a Ukrainian attack in Russia.   Tune in every weekday morning. To get our full audio journalism and storytelling experience, download the New York Times Audio app — available to Times news subscribers on iOS — and sign up for our weekly newsletter.Tell us what you think at: [e-mail]. On Today’s Episode:Israel Was Less Flexible in Recent Gaza Cease-Fire Talks, Documents Show, by Ronen Bergman, Patrick Kingsley and Adam RasgonAt a Russian Border Post, Scenes of Ruin After Ukraine’s Surprise Attack, by Andrew E. KramerMusk Tees Up Softball Questions for Trump on X, After Technical Problems, by Michael GoldRobert F. Kennedy Jr. Cannot Appear on New York Ballot, Judge Rules, by Rebecca Davis O’Brien, Jesse McKinley and Jay Root

From The New York Times, it's The Headlines. I'm Tracey Mumford. Today's Tuesday, August 13th. Here's what we're covering. Just two days before ceasefire negotiations are set to resume, The Times has learned that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has insisted on conditions that his own negotiators think could be obstacles to a deal. Together with my colleagues, Patrick Kingsley and Adam Raskin, we got access to documents from the inner circle of the negotiation that clearly shows during the last rounds of the negotiation, Israel has inserted new terms and additions

that are making the negotiation much harder. Times reporter Ronan Bergman has been covering the talks over how to end the war in Gaza and secure the release of hostages. He says Israel proposed a deal in May with conditions that were mostly accepted by Hamas. But Netanyahu then added new conditions in a July draft. The details are sometimes very complicated, but there are at least two sticking points of the new obstacles that were introduced by Israel. One of them suggests that Israeli forces should remain in control of Gaza's southern border. This is a detail that was not included in Israel's proposal in May. And also, it showed less flexibility about allowing displaced Palestinians to return to their home in northern

Gaza once fighting is halted. Many high-rank Israeli officials with whom we spoke believe that these are new obstacles inserted by Mr. Netanyahu to sabotage the deal. They think that he is afraid that if he agrees to a deal, the ultra-right elements of his coalition, who already threatened to disassemble the government if a ceasefire is accepted by Israel, they will go for it. And high-rank Israeli defense officials believe that Mr. Netanyahu is putting his own political survival on a higher priority than the life of the hostages. In a statement to The Times, Netanyahu's office denied that the prime minister added new conditions.

It said that he was adding, quote, essential clarifications to the proposal. Ronan says the obstacles to a deal aren't only on Israel's side. Hamas has also shown an unwillingness to compromise. And taken together, Ronan says the chance of a breakthrough at this week's meeting is very low. On Monday, Russian President Vladimir Putin vowed to push back the Ukrainian offensive that's currently underway inside Russia. Ukrainian troops are holding nearly 400 square miles of Russian territory after launching a surprise attack last week. Putin's remarks came in a tense televised address that showed the Kremlin's been unsettled by the new offensive. More than 100,000 Russians have had to flee the region,

and it's the first time since the beginning of the war that Ukrainian troops have had a foothold in Russian territory. Yesterday, the Times' Kyiv bureau chief, Andrew Kramer, traveled to the area where Ukrainian forces punched through the Russian defenses. We saw a Russian border post that had been destroyed in fighting. There was extensive damage from shelling or from explosions. The sheet metal construction was banging in the wind. And this scene of destruction really indicated that the Russians had not been prepared for a major fight at this location.

The fighting is now deeper inside Russia, perhaps five or 10 miles or more in some locations. So it was fairly calm right at the border. There were soldiers recovering Russian dead and packing them into body bags and securing the area. I spoke with some residents of Ukrainian border villages, and they were hopeful that Ukraine might push the Russian army far enough from the border that they would be out of range for artillery to shell their villages. There was also a sense of some payback. One Ukrainian woman who had been evacuated from a border village was saying that it was time now for the Russians to feel what war is like. And she said, let them try being occupied, being invaded, to hear how children cry in bomb shelters, to see how old people suffer.

She was saying that, at least in this one area, tables had turned for Russians. All right. Hello, everyone. So my apologies for the late start. We unfortunately had a massive distributed mail service attack against... Last night, Elon Musk hosted Donald Trump for a live-streamed interview on X, formerly known as Twitter. And it got off to a glitchy start, kicking off 40 minutes late. Donald, great to speak. Trump was once banned from Twitter after the platform ruled that his posts surrounding January 6th incited violence. But when Musk bought the company in 2022, he reinstated the former president's account.

And last night, Musk said he was hosting the chat not to ask tough questions, but so people could, quote, catch a vibe of what Trump is like in conversation. It's nice to have a forum like this where I can discuss something at length. And by the way, you think Biden could do this interview? Do you think that Kamala could do this interview? They would take a pass on you? No, they could not. Trump repeated false claims that the 2020 election was rigged

and that the criminal charges against him are a conspiracy. He also hit familiar baseless talking points about border security and crime. They're taking their criminals, their murderers, their rapists, and they're delivering them into... Musk largely agreed with his points and let Trump talk for over two hours, reaching what X said was an audience of a million people. It was a much smaller scale.

Previously, Musk spent years being critical of Trump, but he's now aligned himself with the former president and endorsed him last month. Musk has co-founded a super PAC that plans to spend millions of dollars on canvassing efforts to get Trump re-elected. Meanwhile, a New York judge has dealt a blow to Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s presidential campaign,

ruling that Kennedy can't be on the state's ballot because he filed election paperwork using what the judge called a sham address. Kennedy spends most of his time in Los Angeles, but earlier this year, the petitions he circulated to get on the ballot in New York listed an address in a small town upstate. A group of New York residents, backed by a political action committee aligned with Democrats, challenged that. During the trial, the group's lawyers called the owner of the house Kennedy listed as his address to testify. She said Kennedy sometimes stayed in a spare bedroom there, but the judge said it was, quote, highly improbable, if not preposterous, that Kennedy could live in that one room with his wife, multiple pets, and all his personal

belongings. She concluded that Kennedy had a long-standing pattern of borrowing addresses to make it seem like he lived in New York. Kennedy has said he will appeal the ruling. If he loses, his eligibility in other states could be endangered, since he used the same address on petitions to get on those ballots, too. Those are the headlines. Today on The Daily, Times chief political analyst Nate Cohn breaks down how voters feel about Kamala Harris. You can listen on the Times audio app or wherever you get your podcasts.

I'm Tracy Mumford. We'll be back tomorrow.