The Majority Report with Sam Seder - 2709 - ICE's Insane New Toy; How The Israel Lobby Conquered US Politics w/ Eli Clifton

Episode Date: August 13, 2026

It's an Emmajority Report Thursday on The Majority Report On today's program: Happy birthday to the great Michael Brooks who would've been 43 years old today. If you are new to the show or unfamiliar with Michael, we strongly suggest you check The Michael Brooks Show. Wired reports on the hundreds of allegations against Customs & Border Patrol workers who used government data bases to spy on exes, crushes and co-workers. These complaints are from 2009-2022, well before this $85B that have been dumped into DHS in Trump's second administration. Tom Homan defends the $20M DHS has spent on buying ICE agents electric shock gloves as a way to make people more "compliant". 404 Media publishes the shock gloves manual which warn that using these shock devices can cause sudden death. Eli Clifton, co-founder and senior advisor of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, joins for a conversation about his book co-written with Ian Lustick: "Israel's Lobby: America in the Grip of a Foreign Power". In the Fun Half: Brandon Sutton and Matt Binder join. Channel 4 in the United Kingdom reports on a pickup artist that used Meta glasses to record himself hitting on a 17-year-old girl at a train station. The girl says she was terrified during the interaction. Troy Jackson responds to the announced $42M that Elon Musk, Miriam Adelson, Paul Singer and more are pouring into Susan Collins' re-election campaign. Zohran Mamdani is polling at a record high in favorability in New York City. At a press conference Mamdani announces free Broadway tickets for over 2000 high school students. all that and more. To connect and organize with your local ICE rapid response team visit ICERRT.com The Congress switchboard number is [phone]. You can use this number to connect with either the U.S. Senate or the House of Representatives. Follow us on TikTok here: https://www.tiktok.com/@majorityreportfm Check us out on Twitch here: https://www.twitch.tv/themajorityreport Find our Rumble stream here: https://rumble.com/user/majorityreport Check out our alt YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/majorityreportlive Gift a Majority Report subscription here: https://fans.fm/majority/gift Subscribe to the AM Quickie newsletter here: https://am-quickie.ghost.io/ Join the Majority Report Discord! https://majoritydiscord.com/ Get all your MR merch at our store: https://shop.majorityreportradio.com/ Get the free Majority Report App!: https://majority.fm/app Go to https://JustCoffee.coop and use coupon code majority to get 10% off your purchase Check out today's sponsors: NUTRAFOL: Get $10 off your first month's subscription + free shipping at Nutrafol.com when you use promo code TMR10 ZOCDOC: Find and book the right doctor https://Zocdoc.com/MAJORITY ZBIOTICS: Go to  https://zbiotics.com/majority and use MAJORITY at checkout for 15% off any first-time orders of ZBiotics probiotics." SUNSET LAKE CBD: Head to SunsetLakeCBD.com and use code BIRTHDAY26 at checkout to save 25% on everything sitewide. Spend over $100 and get a bonus gift on top of it all. Sale ends August 17th at Midnight.  @SamSeder @EmmaVigeland @MattLech On Instagram: @MrBryanVokey Check out Matt's show, Left Reckoning, on YouTube, and subscribe on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/leftreckoning Check out Matt Binder's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/mattbinder Subscribe to Brandon's YouTube channel: https://ww.youtube.com/Th3Discourse Check out Ava Raiza's music here: https:/www.youtube.com/@avaraiza

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Code majority for 15% off your first order. We will put a link down below in the video and episode descriptions and at majority.fm. Now, time for the show. It is Thursday, August 13th. 2026. My name is Emma Vigeland in for Sam Cedar, and this is the five-time award-winning majority report. We are broadcasting live steps from the industrially ravaged Gowanus Canal in the heartland of America, downtown Brooklyn, USA. On the program today, Eli Clifton.

Investigative journalist, co-founder, and senior advisor at the Quincy Institute joins us to discuss his new book co-written with Ian Lus. Israel's lobby America in the grip of a foreign power. Also on the program, a third person has died in ICE custody at Geo Group's Delaney Hall. More than 50 people have died in ICE's hands since Trump took office at the start of 2025. An ICE agent pleads guilty for throwing an activist to the ground in Illinois. A wired investigation fines Customs and Border Protection Workers have for years been using

DHS tools to spy on exes and colleagues. No. Not the fine men and women and mostly men at CBP. Some bad apples, surely. Surely. Caroline Levitt is stepping down as White House Press Secretary after doing the noble work of defending the president's renovation choices

on a daily basis. That's what I call a patriot. Go off into that good night, Caroline, aka a job at Newsmax. The White House has finalized a rule that ends gender-affirming care through CHIP and Medicaid. As a heggseth and other Republicans demand that young men in the military

inject themselves with testosterone. Israel is carrying out a massive campaign of evidence destruction, trucking out millions of tons of rubble that also contains body parts undoubtedly. U.S. ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee has been forced to publicly rebuke the Israeli settler theft of a home belonging to a Palestinian American. Reports of U.S. military personnel attempting to jump overboard the USS Abraham Lincoln come out.

They have been at sea more than 250 days, which is over a record. Little excursion. The CIA has low confidence, or had, I should say, low confidence in the Israeli intelligence assessment that Iran was trying to assassinate Trump, which I guess is why he, you know,

did that Turkey maneuver. He's very paranoid, which is not a great sign. There's no reason Iran wants him not in office. Of course. They're winning the war. It's like saying Israel wanted to kill Lindsey Graham. The Pentagon finds that the U.S. killed more than 150 civilians in Yemen last year, which is undoubtedly a severe undercount.

Republican Max Miller's ex-wife sues him over publishing a nude photo of their daughter online. Oh, so out of character. And lastly, what did you say? X? No. Lastly, happy, happy, happy birthday to the late Michael Brooks, our friend,

he would have been 43 today. All this and more on today's majority report. Welcome to the show, everybody. I am back. from my little vacation. I'm feeling a little refreshed. I unplugged for probably a solid three days. Three days, like no tweeting, no nothing, not worried about it.

I did not text you anything about the show. You did not. I did send you some critiques of some comedians, which is perfectly above board, which I'm allowed to do as I unplug. God, this one comic that I saw, whatever, I can't even, I can't even I can't even express it but I wanted to say

of course happy birthday to Michael Brooks this year his birthday fell on a Thursday so we don't have Sam here I'm sure we'll touch on it a little bit tomorrow but we also wanted to make sure

that we brought in a guest that Michael would appreciate so we're excited to talk to Eli Clifton shortly about his book and about the Israel lobby and of course Michael's words on Israel and the ethno state and the apartheid are as relevant today as ever,

and people can look up his extensive work on that. It's super educational to this day. So when we talk about the abolition of ICE, we're talking about an agency that has an institutional rot that predates Trump and is in fact embedded in its foundation. and because the Bush administration after 9-11, as we've repeated many times on this show, abolished the INS, which was the Immigration and Naturalization Service. That was kind of a more standard immigration agency.

Within the Justice Department. Key, point, Matt, exactly, because that meant they were under the auspices of domestic U.S. law. But not anymore, essentially. They've become a separate entity that is an outgrowth of the war on terror. Under the Department of Homeland Security, ICE, CBP are under that umbrella as well. And they are essentially a domestic surveillance agency. We transformed a small immigration processing agency into one that surveils people, on U.S. soil with many of the tools that the War on Terror Hawks said would be exclusively

reserved for foreigners. No, no, no, of course. We saw immediately after the 9-11 attacks also how Muslim people were targeted by both like the states like New York and New Jersey. I mean, Chris Christie was horrendous in New Jersey on this. but also the federal government, right, Minneapolis, areas that have large Muslim populations, they were the subject of countless civil liberties violations. But it's accelerated in the last decade to this fever pitch. Just 10 years ago, ICE's budget was $6 billion. Now it's the most funded U.S. law enforcement agency, I say that by, you know, being,

very clear that this is not a law enforcement agency. This is a rogue Gestapo. But they have $85 billion. From $6 billion, 10 years ago to $85 billion. And people talk about how the Republican Party has destroyed itself. This is their agenda. Since Trump came into power, look at that. How he's made immigration the central focus when he came down that escalator.

And he talked about how Mexicans, some of them are rapists, some of them are good people. This has been what has been central to his right-wing project, and he has had immense success from $6 billion ice to $85 billion. And there has been some great reporting from Wired, per usual, one of the only outlets that's doing substantive journalism in the Trump era, showing that CBP under this DHS umbrella, going back in this analysis from 2009 to 2022, So again, predating this new Trump era and including the Obama era,

wired found obtaining eternal records, and we can put this up here, that United States Customs and Border Protection employees and contractors were accused of abusing sensitive government databases for reasons that had nothing to do with their jobs. The records contain hundreds of allegations of misuse of law enforcement databases, including federal agents, agents, curing. data to look up querying, I guess is how you would say it, to look up romantic interests,

monitor family members, expose various personal information, and in some cases provide intelligence to suspected smugglers or drug trafficking organizations. So yeah, they looked at this from 2009 to 2022, showing how these employees

of CBP use this for their personal domestic harassment or like personal use to go after people in their life. In one case, a CBP officer allegedly used government databases to contact a flight attendant. In another, an officer was accused of pulling information from trusted traveler applications to ask people out. Other CBP employees were accused of providing border crossing data to someone involved in a heated divorce.

And yet another DHS employee allegedly used controversial ad tech-derived location data to track several co-workers' cell phones. which appears to be the first known internal abuse case involving DHS use of ad tech-derived mobile location data. So this is a really good, I mean, illustration of what the internet sort of always was or became, which is a commercial surveillance apparatus that can easily be switched to a state surveillance apparatus when it needs to be. Exactly. Go to a wide range of use as part of the. the article, it's down a little bit further. There's just more examples. I just wanted to highlight this.

Several cases involve officers using database access to allegedly peruse or harass private citizens. In 2010, a customs officer allegedly pulled data on an Air New Zealand flight attendant, as I mentioned, and used it to contact them, a case that was referred to labor and employee relations. In 2017, another officer faced a formal OPR investigation over allegations. that he misused government databases to harass a different airline employee, the case's resolution code was left blank in the records.

In 2017, another officer was accused of querying his neighbors in the federal computer databases, and in 2022, an employee allegedly used a CBP database to obtain an ex-husband's leave schedule as a part of a harassment campaign.

It also goes into details about, it seems like, they were providing information to this drug smuggling organization, as was summarized, as was summarized at the beginning, and how intensively Palantir technology has been embedded into this as well. People can read wires reporting there. It really is phenomenal. But so when you hear about this, by the way, CBP, those officers, if you'll recall, there was a pro-Publica piece some years ago. I think it was either under Biden, I think it was under Biden, where they were passing around these violent sexual images of Elgin.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. So it's not just ICE. This is everything under this domestic surveillance umbrella under DHS that is making all of us less safe. You mentioned Palantir. Peter Thiel has a book called Zero to One. And the basic idea behind that book is to use the digital technologies to create things that didn't exist before and use it to get around laws.

So like Uber being a famous example, we had like pretty stringent laws and like unionized taxic. cabs and stuff like that you create uber you're able to undercut all that stuff this is similar to what palatir is doing for surveillance states all this stuff would have been covered under warrants or you wouldn't had way more scrutiny under if this was like you know filing cabinets people had to go into now it's just something that any bum can when he's in the middle of scratch his ass and his lunch break get the desire to look up his ex-wife and now he can find out anything that this massive big brother technology can know that I mean we

We've also, we've talked about these ice warrants, not even being warrants. They're essentially toilet paper that you don't have to go through even a FISA court, which is like that was what had to happen after the Snowden revelations came out. And it was determined that the Obama administration through many of these tools was undergoing a mass surveillance campaign. Then the reaction was like, okay, let's at least involve a FISA judge in this who's almost always going to rubber stamp whatever we want. but we at the very least need a judicial sign-off

on targeting people and getting their information collected. With this ICE and DHS stuff, they don't even bother with a judge. It's so extra legal in its construction as they pretend they're about law and order. So here's Tom Holman speaking of Obama, who was hired under Obama.

On with Brian Kilmead. And he's asked by Kilmead, about the new toys that ICE is giving out. These gloves that shock people that they're trying to detain, $20 million could be spent, apparently, on these electric shock gloves. Here is what Holman had to say on Fox and Friends about this. So you have something else I like to bring your attention to or talk about.

DHS plans to spend $20 million on electric shock gloves to aid federal agents. How would that work and what role would they play? Well, look, it's another device to help someone be compliant whether or not. You know, you just can't go from zero to 100, right? And first thing you go for is lethal force. So, you know, we have OC spray. We have tasers. So the glove is, you know, the latest thing they're looking at to.

Can these fat asses not get to their belt buckle fast enough to get the taser? Or so they need it right easily accessible. I mean, I do chuckle to think about how many times they are going to accidentally shock themselves. The problem is you shot... When they're pissing. Right, because of all the sweat and moisture. That's kind of an occupational hazard for these hogs. You shot American citizens, like in two famous, at least two famous cases I could think of in Minneapolis.

It wouldn't have been better if you shocked them. Like, Renee Good, like, what, are you going to reach your hand through her window? and like shock her when she's in her car. Like this is again like we thought we asked like where we're going to get money for to keep these hospitals open or pay for health care. It's like well $20 million for shot gloves. What are these going to do for you? They're trying to water down their image and claim that they're using non-luthal options

and they have more money than they know what to do with. This is insane. This is a very funny way to say. Look how nice we are. We have shock gloves. But 404 media as you'll hear in a second uncovered actually the manual. of these gloves and it's not as kind and cozy as is being described. The thing you go for is lethal force. So, you know, we have OC spray. We have tasers.

So the glove is, you know, the latest thing they're looking at to help in the situation. You've seen the videos in the past year and a half. The fights on the street where officers are overwhelmed. This would be a tool they can use and make someone compliant. Now, you know, there's a lot of training involved. There's still some, you know, bad, ground issues that need to be dealt with. So the implementation of these gloves out on the field are going to be a while. I think they serve a better purpose and detention facility that were where detainees get out of control and there's fights in the facility.

So we'll see. So we'll see. More training for the shock gloves. It'll serve better in places where there's no surveillance or camera or anybody out of public. We're going to zap people in the concentration camps. Yeah, exactly. Detain them. You guys solved it inside of the walls of these camps.

Well, Joseph Cox, 404 Media found the manual on these gloves. ICE and Customs Enforcement, or sorry, immigration and customs enforcement plans to spend tens of millions of dollars on buying specialized gloves that pulse with electrical energy, which make it easier for. agents to subdue people, the Associated Press reported on Tuesday a user manual for glove or generated low output voltage emitter. Shut up. Sold by a company called Compliant Technologies provides more specifics on how the gloves are supposed to work and allegedly be used. No more than two, one pair or equivalent of glove devices should be applied at one time to a single subject. The manual reads, 404 media found multiple copies of the manual online and archived a version here. The manual says the gloves may even contribute to sudden death. It says conductive distraction and de-escalation devices or CD3s may, quote, increase the effects that can cause sudden death.

They misspelled effects in the manual. And 404 notes it. Increase the effects that can cause sudden death, including psychological changes. It then lists... Physiological. Oh, physiological. I'm sorry. And it then lists increase in blood pressure, respiration, and heart.

rates, changes in heart rhythm, and increases in adrenaline. It all... Yeah. The manual also points out that users should avoid using the glove device against elderly people, small children, pregnant women, and the severely handicapped... You're going to have to take the gloves off when you're beating them. Exactly. You're beating the women and the handicapped and the elderly.

Right. And ICE would never use violence against, say, anybody we could take it down now. anybody who is elderly or a child. We haven't seen videos of them beating up children, dragging them out. We haven't seen videos or there haven't been multiple instances of, okay, say that blind man, that CBP dropped off and killed in Northern New York. Like these are the kinds of people, this is the kind of regard or lack thereof that they have for the individuals that they're dealing with.

But we should trust them that they won't put two hands. on the person with their zap gloves that they're trying to throw into a concentration camp or break up their families or ruin lives. It's astonishing the slush fun that we've given them. And there is no reform. There is only a breaking apart of this agency that will solve this. They're such dumb little boys, too. That's like a magic shop trip.

You know, the hand buzzer that you would get at like a magic shop? Exactly. What are they going to do next? Will be cushions that blow off their asses? Compliant Technologies is a veteran-owned company, so you guys better be... I'm sure it is. I'll explain why effect was misspelled. Brian gets to say it.

Brian gets to say it. Time for some water balloons, am I right? Yeah, I know. I'm just picturing them in the rain just all shaking and frozen. Yes. They all sound like Susan Collins as the rain falls on them. You know, back in the born this way era, Lady Gaga used to dress in latex outfits. Maybe those can be repurposed.

I forgot. Maybe some aluminum sheets in a jacket. You were thinking of hurting them back. I was thinking of protective. Yeah, this is why you're cooler than me. Also, because I made a Lady Gaga born this way reference just now to complete silence in the room. I don't care Just put a fork in your pocket

Right? Stick a fork right in the ball Stick a fork and um This is We do not advocate for violence on this program This is all just fun and games All right In a moment

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Thank you so much for having me on. Of course. I'm excited to talk about your book because, you know, you really do. do trace, first of all, the Quincy Institute, we frequently picking up a guess from the Quincy Institute. The work that you guys do there is so essential, given the fact, really, that so much of Washington, D.C. is filled with think tanks that they're just pro-militarism, so appreciate your work as well in that area. But let's just back up and define the Israel lobby. APEC gets a lot of attention right now, specifically, of course, its role in Democratic primaries in particular. but it's massive on the right.

But the lobby is larger than that. It's Coofee. It's J Street. It's the military industrial complex. It's these now, like, tech surveillance firms. How do you describe the Israel lobby? So we describe it pretty broadly as a panoply of organizations, groups and individuals. Some of them include Jews, Christians, and others who advocate for U.S. policies that explicitly favor the interests of Israel. And again, that explicit part is really important.

here because we're not making a wild conjecture. This isn't a conspiracy theory. In a sense, it's a broad definition, but it's also narrow in that we should believe these groups and these individuals when they tell us who they are. And when they say that they are pro-Israel and that they seek to advance these policies that are beneficial to Israel, which is indeed a foreign country, 6,000 miles away, we should believe them and take them at their word. You mentioned that it's a foreign country. I'd love to talk about this with you because it seems like it's a bit of a rhetorical debate, at least among critics of our support for Israel and its genocide in Gaza and its other belligerent actions across the region. Your book describes the

Israel lobby as a, quote, out of control foreign influence operation. And sometimes I hesitate to describe Israel as a foreign entity given its incredible and almost unprecedented entanglement with the U.S. and in the way that it acts as an extension of our interests. Why do you feel it's important to distinguish Israel as a foreign entity and emphasize that it's a foreign government? Well, I think it's important to sort of look back quite far, actually, to George Washington's farewell address, where he actually spoke about in a very prescient manner about some of the phenomenons we're seeing right now. Now, at the time, the world was a much smaller place. But he warned about that American democracy was set up in such a manner that there would be factions all the time that would form.

And for the most part, the founders figured we would just let, they would let it sort of, they would let these groups fight it out. Because as one faction grew, presumably there would be a countervailing faction that would at least balance or temper the influence of one faction versus another. But Washington was very clear that there was an exception to that, to that theory and that formulation, which was situations in which a faction held a great sympathy or great hostility. toward a foreign power. And in the case, he was clearly warning about it was the French. But his warning was that when that occurred, there would not necessarily be a counter-availing faction that would emerge within the United States. And I think we're seeing that very clearly today with Israel's lobby.

And, you know, people always ask us, well, what about Qatar? What about the Emirates? What about the Saudis? And I would say, and as we addressed throughout the book, that Israel's lobby has a unique position within our democracy and within its ability to influence policymakers. And that is the fact that Israel's lobby is largely comprised inside the United States of Americans, or at least dual nationals, who have full access to our political system, and they certainly have full access to our campaign finance ecosystem. And that is not something that any other country has at anywhere near

the same level as Israel's lobby. Now, that grassroots support that one would assume goes along with has been diminishing, as I'm sure you've covered extensively on majority report. Over two-thirds of Democrats now want to see a dramatic reduction in aid. Republicans as well, that support is sinking in groups that have been traditionally so lockstep pro-Israel, such as Christian evangelicals and Christian conservatives. And we see that now with, you know, the, what seems like the emergence of potentially a third party with Tucker Carlson and Joe Kent and Thomas Massey and Marjorie Taylor Green. But where this is really going now is something that when we say it's an out of control behemoth, it is.

Because there is enormous gap, a chasm, if you will, between public opinion in the United States about what our foreign policy should be in the Middle East, particularly vis-a-vis Israel, and what our policy is. And that's where we put a great deal of focus in our book, is how Israel's lobby has clung to power and to the influence that they've held in the past when Israel's, Israel has been much more popular with Americans than it has been in recent years. But now they've had to use coercive, more manipulative techniques. For instance, flooding our campaign finance ecosystem, as we saw in Michigan, and across the current cycle where they've raised 160 million, they've already spent 130 million, there's a fair question about whether it will be a quarter of a billion dollars in expenditure for pro-Israel groups just in these midterm elections.

Or in the ways that they've used the coercive powers of the state, both during the Biden and Trump administration to try to completely shut down criticism of Israel on college campuses, both through withholding or threatening to withhold hundreds of millions of dollars of federal grants to universities, but also through the really disturbing efforts to deport green card holders because of, again, there are criticisms of a foreign country. So when we talk about it as a foreign country, yeah, it's really important to see it as that, because that's ultimately the interests that are being advanced is something that advances. that serves a foreign government and a foreign country,

but it is very much both part and parcel of our democracy and the way it was set up that we are facing these challenges today. As, you know, once again, as George Washington warned about passionate attachments to a foreign nation is what is driving so much of the political spending and the debate that we're now living through in, again, in this midterm election. So it's here and now in the news cycle and in our discourse.

well said eli i just uh watch out for tapping the table so your mic doesn't pick it up but otherwise it sounds really great so don't worry about it um so i mean the i just want to register my skepticism about the third party that's starting with tucker carlson and and marjor taylor green and joe kent i feel like they're in media now and i wonder if this is an attempt to grow an audience and then we'll support the republican come 2028 but i mean none of us are prognosticators here that's just my suspicion. However, what you're saying is true in that this is a recognition of the changing political realities. And these are actors in the media space at this point who are not having to be responsive to the lobby so they're more eager to be responsive to public opinion because that's

what makes them money. And it just shows how perverse our incentives have become, or at least our representatives' incentives have become. Really since, I would say, you know, for a long time, but 2010 is an important period to talk about with the Citizens United Decision. And your book looks, since 2012, tracking the $1.7 billion made in political donations by pro-Israel donors. And that's in part what I really like about what your book does, is that it follows the money. The Adelson's obviously are big players in this, but who would you define as in the current, you know, post-citizens United, dark money context as the big players in the Israel lobby? Well, I want to be very clear here. The $1.7 billion that we identify in the

book was political contributions, not dark money, money that was completely disclosed. $1.7 billion came from just nine explicitly pro-Israel billionaires that included the Adelson's, included Bernie Marcus. It included Paul Singer, Heim Saban, Jeff Yoss, people like that. And these are people who were very clear that the motivating reason for their engagement in our national politics and their motivation for giving millions and millions of dollars had to do specifically with Israel.

Now, we focus on them because, and that's a narrow number, to be clear, because that doesn't include the broader super PAC money necessarily that was raised by the United Democracy Project, in APAC, and it doesn't include the dark money that we just don't know about. So it's probably a fraction of the money that came in that was directly tied to trying to promote politicians and policies that were directly beneficial to Israel in our campaign finance system. Now, I think 2012 is really, really interesting because, you know, there was a really good book that was published in 2007 by John Wall, by Steve Walt and John Mearsheimer, the Israel lobby and American foreign policy.

And in it, they predicted. And I think that it was an accurate prediction, and other than that events happened that they could not have possibly have anticipated. And they said, listen, public support is ultimately dwindling for the lockstep U.S. relationship with Israel. And they track it back to, and polling certainly supports this, the death of the Oslo Accords around 2000. The global war on terror made Americans more critical of U.S. foreign policy in general and questioning the underlying. And that slow trickle away of support, they said, is probably going to lead to gradual change in policy as we have the rise of some countervailing groups such as JVP or J Street within the pro-Israel space or at least the Jewish-American space more broadly, but who are bringing new ideas and asking for a more balanced set of policies. And they may have been right, that that may have been what would occur, except three years after they published their book,

Citizens United, and the speech now decisions came down, which opened up these floodgates of money into our elections. And what that has meant is that when Citizens United happened, so much speculation and fear was built in that it was going to be corporate money that would flood our elections. And that did happen to some degree. But when you look at who are the largest individual donors, again, you go down the list for both Republicans and to some degree in the Democratic Party as well. And you'll see that at the very top of the campaign finance ecosystem for both parties are these individuals who we list out, who gave that $1.7 billion, and who, again, are entirely clear and explicit about the fact that Israel is the reason that they are doing what they're doing. You mentioned 2012. 2012 is super interesting because, as I was saying, they're explicit about what they're doing. And in 2012, people were shocked to see the money that Sheldon Adelson was spending, first to try to boost New Gingrich.

and then when that didn't work in the primaries to back Mitt Romney. And Adelson and all of his advisors and spokespeople around him wanted to make it very clear that the motivating reason for why Sheldon Adelson was doing this had everything to do with Israel. And it's funny because that was a different time when the concept of foreign influence, this was obviously pre-Russiagate, before all of these fears were sort of more fresh in people's minds. And at the time, it sort of just went by that this was a real, reason that somebody was doing this. But I think we should look back at that as being really the beginning. And again, people said why they were doing what they were doing.

The arrogance of the openness, I think, you know, is something funny to look back on, given how AAC is now concealing its political contributions through these shell packs. And I want to talk about AAC in particular in just a second. But how are other foreign law that? is restricted versus the Israel lobby. I think people may not be aware of why the Israel lobby is able to operate so uniquely in this country. Super important question. Most foreign lobbies, I'm going to talk about most foreign lobbies. Then I'll talk about how Israel's lobby is different and how it's becoming maybe more similar

to some foreign lobbies. Most foreign lobbies operate with money and direction coming from outside the United States. So presumably it's often a government ministry, for instance, a ministry of foreign affairs in a foreign country that cuts checks to, you know, communication specialists, to lobbyists, to what have you, inside the United States in order to disseminate their message, to lobby for their interests. And in doing so, they establish a principal agent relationship. And that means that the foreign principle is whoever it is outside the United States, who's directing this, the agent. is whoever is the American who is acting at the direction. And by establishing that relationship, they have to file under the Foreign Agent Registration Act.

I should say the agent has to file under the Foreign Agent Registration Act and disclose what they're doing, the size of the contract, some details about the direction as well as the materials that are being distributed. Now, when we talk about the Qataria, the Emirati lobby, you see a lot of money at play there. Israel's lobby for the most part has not had to operate under that structure. They have enjoyed the benefit of having a number of supporters inside the United States, who are Americans or dual nationals, who are able to fund the efforts,

as well as direct it, at least at an immediate level. And that means that when you talk about the board of directors at, for instance, APAC, they're all American, to the best of my knowledge. When you talk about who their donors are, they're all American. to the best of my knowledge. Now, when we talk about should APAC file under Farah, I don't think it hits those benchmarks of needing to do so. APAC definitely responds and takes the lead from Israel's government, but that is not the same as the principal agent relationship that you see with all of these other foreign lobbies. And APAC and Israel's lobby have been very, very successful and effective

because they are able to operate in that space without having to disclose what they're doing, and they are able to give money into the campaign finance ecosystem, particularly after Citizens United, because once again, they are Americans. And that is not something that the Qataris, the Emirates, any other foreign lobby has the significant capacity to do. Now, you can also. Go ahead.

No, no, it's just interesting how diaspora plays a role in different U.S. foreign policy objectives. The Iranian diaspora, very right-wing in many ways, supportive of capitalism, Cuban diaspora, supportive of U.S. anti-communist policies towards Cuba, like the Israel lobby, and that should be seen in many ways as an extension of that kind of political crafting project. Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Now, what's really interesting is that while this has worked very well for Israel since 1948, it appears there are some cracks emerging in it. And I think a lot of those cracks have to do with. where they feel they are losing influence with Christian evangelicals and Christian conservatives. And I say that because for the very first time, this year, really, we are seeing significant sums of money, tens of millions of dollars in these contracts coming in from Israel. Into the United States, agents are filing under the Foreign Agent Registration Act. Brad Parascal, Trump's former campaign manager, is the largest of them.

And that that's something that we have not seen before. And these contracts are for geo-targeting, messaging, and advertising through digital ads, as well as using AI and large language models to target individual churches in some cases, to target regions where Christian evangelicals have significant numbers, and usually it's in deep red states. So I think this is very interesting because it's signaling at some level that the traditional methods and advantages that Israel's lobby has enjoyed are no longer working

in holding onto the support of what was supposed to be the group that was the most pro-Israel within the United States. And, I mean, it's fascinating. And you can see that desperation, I think, in the way that Netanyahu is going on Fox News and more conservative media and in their anticipation of the expiration of the 20, of the Memorandum of Understanding, which expires in 2028,

and this effort to integrate Israeli and U.S. military cooperation in a way that boxed us out the public is essentially indelibly, even more so than is the case now, which is astonishing when you really think about it. Exactly. They are trying to integrate the U.S.-Israel relationship, certainly at the military-industrial complex level at ways, Annie in manners, that it's not just about making it more opaque,

it's about making it more difficult to disentangle. And I think that that goes alongside this huge emphasis on American tech companies, especially when you talk about Oracle and TikTok and the Ellisons. All you have to do is listen to what Netanyahu said when he was in New York at the UN General Assembly just last fall, when he was talking about, you know, what are the most important things in getting Israel's message out there? And he was talking about TikTok. And he said the purchase of TikTok.

That's one of the most important things. And saying that Elon Musk is a friend of ours as well. So it's very much about not just shaping that narrative, but working through these tech oligarchs to try to box out criticisms of Israel. But also then, again, you look at these efforts to integrate the U.S. and Israeli militaries and especially the development of weapon systems. And I think that runs very much alongside it. This is an effort to make it so tightly intertwined that it's impossible,

or at least it would take a great deal of time and effort to disentangle as we move down the road. What is the history of APAC? And where would you point to its inflection point in terms of flexing its muscle and its ability to influence U.S. politics? Like what is the trajectory of APAC in America? political lobbying and influence operations. So it was founded in the early 1950s. It was to protect Israel from criticisms that it was facing from bloody reprisal raids

that were being conducted against Palestinian villages, including a 1953 massacre of more than 69 Palestinian civilians, two thirds of whom were women and children, which was led by actually Israel's future Prime Minister, Aral Sharon. And it changed its name. in 1959, and emerges sort of the dominant voice within what is considered the pro-Israel community. It claims a membership of over five million, but they actually, anybody who receives their emails is considered a member. So they might be overstating a little bit, certainly the concept of active membership. Now, APAC has typically flexed its muscles and shown its influence through its annual conferences,

where you see, you know, leadership in both political parties coming to speak, and their ability to whip votes and get support from both political parties. So their bipartisan credentials were always extremely, extremely important to their influence, as well as their image, which was to project the notion that this was that the pro-Israel consensus ran across both parties. Now, I think a really important inflection point was the Iran nuclear deal during Obama's second term. I am so glad that you said that. I am so glad that you said that. Continue. Continue. And what we saw on that was, you know, very early on in the process of negotiations, when it became clear that an agreement was probably going to come together.

Israel came out and said, and Netanyahu said that, you know, that this was ultimately danger he was opposed to the agreement. He wanted a better deal, whatever that might be. He never really said what that could be. And it put APEC in a really tough spot because they, I think quite accurately, by all the reporting that came out, identified that this was going to be a bitter partisan fight

because, and again, I think they were accurate in this assessment early on. And as it turned out, most congressional Democrats got on board, ultimately when they were told they had to choose between APAC and the signature foreign policy agenda item of the Democratic president. But they put over $20 million of advertising into attacking the deal. You know, they had Netanyahu came and spoke to a joint session at the House and Senate.

Once again, very partisan tinge to it. And the fact that- When around Obama, I should say, went around Obama to do so as a sitting president. And also he did this like PowerPoint presentation to talk about how Iran was cheating on the deal, like trying to do his own, have his own bully pulpit to influence American politics. So at one level, we have this partisan aspect to it, which is really harmful to APEC. But there's a second piece here that also, I think, was very harmful to them, which is that they lost, at least in the short term. The fact that ultimately, they didn't have a lot to show for the work that they had done.

they didn't have a lot to show for the fact that they had basically been in lockstep with Netanyahu. All that really it showed was that AAPC actually could be defied and that APEC did not have a stranglehold on U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. So I think that was a really, really, really impactful and important set of events that happened there. We quickly see APEC enter into electoral politics in a way that they had not done so before. They spin up the United Democracy Project, which is their Super PAC. They become one of the biggest spenders, not just in the elections, but in the primaries as well, as they try to influence, especially the Democratic Party in who were the candidates that would ultimately be put forward in general elections. So you see a really dramatic transformation as APAC becomes far more political, far more electoral focused and far more partisan. And once again, when we talk about how they're partisan, I think we should flash forward to the here and now,

which is that when we talk about the UDP and Apex election spending, let's not forget that the largest donors to the UDP are two pro-Trump Republican mega donors, Paul Singer and Jan Kuhm. So why are Paul Singer and Jan Kum financing an effort in Michigan, for instance, trying to get Michigan Democrats to pick Haley Stevens, over Abdul al-Syad. Something seems really off here, and that's something we saw in the past cycle as well, with Jamal Bowman and Cory Bush's race as well. They are raising money from the Republican Party to try to influence Democratic primaries.

But that shows you how messy and how contentious the space is that APAC had previously avoided entering into, and I think that they entered into it out of a sense of necessity, particularly as a growing number of Democrats and Republicans, particularly post October 7th, find the lockstep support that Israel has enjoyed from both the Biden and the Trump administrations, now with the war in Iran, to be anathema for a variety of reasons depending on their political beliefs.

The JCPOA as a pivot point is so, I think, crucial because one, I just want to point out that I don't think this could have happened under the Hillary Clinton State Department. There was a change when John Kerry took over a secretary of state that made diplomacy more possible with Iran. And I do think it was Obama's signature foreign policy achievement, given how good it looks compared to essentially what Trump is trying to extract via violence and how Iran has reasserted itself. but in hindsight when you see how much the Obama administration really was taking on the Israel lobby

and how the Israel lobby doubled back and tried to bring and successfully post his presidency many of the Democrats that were national leaders were as pro-Israel as it gets. They got Hillary Clinton as the nominee in the Democratic Party

in 2016. But even crucially, the Senate Democratic leader who took over for Harry Reid was vocally opposed to the Obama nuclear deal in Chuck Schumer. And he ended up after Obama left being the leader of the Democrats in the Senate. So there you go. The Israel lobby has the entire Republican Party locked up at this point. And they were able to kind of, at least temporarily, make their influence felt within the Democratic Party with their representatives, let alone Hakeem Jeffrey is taking over for Nancy Pelosi, although that's

more of a continuation than anything. Yeah, I mean, I think what's really interesting here, though, is that, again, these cracks are showing with the electorate. You know, Obama, for instance, ran in 2008 very much criticizing the foreign policy of his predecessors and saying, we need to have a new foreign policy. We now have had three successive presidents, Obama, Trump, and Biden, who have all said that they wanted to reorient U.S. foreign policy towards managing a rising China. They want to focus more on the Pacific.

they want to disentangle from the Middle East. Now, all three of them have been thwarted in that effort in various manners. And I think it's, again, really important to look at Donald Trump as actually being evidence once again of that shift within the electorate, not within the policy elites, not within the donor class, but within the electorate. Because remember, in 2015 and early 2016, when he was running as this outsider primary candidate, he was the only one on the debate stage other than Ray and Paul. who was saying that actually the Iraq war was a huge mistake. He was also saying some other things that we were told were completely disqualifying for him as a Republican candidate, like that the United States needed to be a more neutral arbiter

between the Israelis and the Palestinians. And he said that as terms of the Iran nuclear deal, when again, every other candidate on the stage was saying we got to just tear it up, he said actually his biggest problem with it was that Iran was signing more contracts with Airbus than with Boeing. Now, and we track kind of the TikTok day by day nearly in the book about when and how he changed, but to make sort of a long story short, in the period of time after he clinched the nomination and the convention, he had to raise a billion dollars for the general election.

And you see it that he's having these conversations with especially Sheldon Adelson. And his messaging and his positions on Israel and on the Iran nuclear deal start to transform into what we've seen in his two terms as president now. But this is not where he started. And to be very clear, Republican primary voters were completely comfortable with the positions that he was staking out back then, which are very different than what he became and were very different than every other candidate on the debate stage. Yes.

And that's important to point out, just as you say, it's important to point out that once the money got involved, things change. And I also think that Trump is uniquely easily manipulated. is in ways that actually benefit Netanyahu so specifically in this moment, particularly to return to the JCPOA. Because despite those, you know, more nuanced critiques and it's always still about us getting ripped off even back then, all that needed to be said was that Obama negotiated the deal. It's a bad deal. And now we're where we're at. Absolutely. And, you know, the refrain that keeps happening is that, you know, well, this is, this war is what Netanyahu

wanted from successive presidents. And he finally got a president who would go along with it. Now, I don't want to just say that that is all Trump's fault because I think that that, especially on the left, is something that's often used to sort of downplay then the influence of the lobby. They've been pushing for this war. They finally got the president who would go along with it. But once again, how exactly did he raise the necessary funds to stage three general election campaigns? he's pretty explicit that it was all, you know, the people he owes the biggest debt to are the Adelson's. And he's very clear that their biggest issue is Israel. He actually, when he was speaking at the Knesset, he said that he thought Miriam Adelson loved Israel more than the United States.

Yeah, he said that explicitly, which is just another incredible thing that he can get away with just by the ridiculousness of his personality saying things that are true, right, but are sometimes considered taboo. wrapping up with you shortly, Eli, I just wanted to ask you what, you mentioned how many of these donors are dual nationals. There are many dual nationals in Israel. You know, it might be a British Israeli or an American Israeli or whatever. What would Israeli society look like if there was no U.S. financial support? And what's your sense of how many of these dual nationals are maybe going back to the U.S.? going back to Eastern Europe, going back to the U.K. Because Israel makes these numbers very opaque,

but it seems clear that there is some semblance of an exodus from Israeli society, given the fact that the world sees them as pariahs committing genocide. I mean, first I would say that if that exodus is occurring, it's something that, and I've certainly heard evidence to suggest that is, it's probably also the people leaving first and foremost of the folks who would have been in the past seen as the potential, you know, return to a more progressive or any steps or people who would be supportive of any meaningful steps towards a two-state solution. Now, I think the window has closed on that quite a long time ago, and I think Israel's political space and any future coalition governments they have are not going to be. willing to entertain any steps toward a peace process, a two-state, a one state, or what have you, they are looking clearly towards a permanent occupation of Gaza and the West Bank and what

appear to be a series of endless wars in the region as well. But I think your question earlier about the role that Israel's lobby has played here, I don't think it's just the financial support that they provided to Israel. I think it's also the diplomatic support that they've provided. As Israel has found itself more and more isolated by behaving more and more as Israel's own grand strategists would characterize it as a crazy state, they are losing friends left and right on the international stage. And the United States has played a pivotal role in shielding Israel now for many years from consequences, be it at the United Nations or at the international criminal court or in efforts to try to cut off even the sale of weapons to Israel.

So I think that Israel would not be what it is today, were it not for Israel's lobby here in the United States, that has allowed a small Middle Eastern country 6,000 miles away, to behave in increasingly crazy manners that are hurtful ultimately to Israel and to everybody who inhabits the land under the control of the Israeli government, but also to the United States as well. And that's why we characterize it sometimes this is sort of a toxic relationship. And the idea that it is purely one-sided just harming Americans in the process or just harming, you know, people in Israel who don't agree with the lobby is really inaccurate. Israel is what it is today and is able to pursue these really dangerous policies that it has now been pursuing for decades because of the unconditional support that Israel's lobby secures for it in Washington, D.C. Lastly, we just have a viewer question from Ryan Edwards. Emma, can you ask Eli? how much, if at all, APAC interferes in Israeli elections. And maybe you could say the Israel lobby more broadly. I think that Israel's lobby has made it impossible for politicians who are anywhere

sort of to the left of center right in Israel to rise up or have any success within the electorate in Israel. So in that sense, I think they've had an enormous impact. But that goes back to the fact that Israel's lobby has prevented Israel. and Israelis from feeling the pressure and full consequences of the policies that they have been pursuing now for many, many years of endless occupation and war in many respects with their neighbors such as Lebanon or Iran. Eli Clifton, investigative journalists, co-founder and senior advisor at the Quincy Institute,

his book, new book, co-written with Ian Lustick, Israel's Lobby, America in the grip of a foreign power is it's out now right eli it is out now and please please pick it up it's a go to bookshop.org or amazon and uh order it it's on ebook hard copy and audio books well we will put a link to that down below in the video and episode descriptions and you know i'm a big fan of giving books as passive aggressive gifts to people that need to hear them and this is a really good one for that purpose i would say so uh Eli thanks so much for your time today really appreciate it. Thanks for having me, Emma. Of course. With that, folks, we're going to wrap up the free part of this program and head into the fun half. We will read your IMs. Maybe we'll take your calls. We shall see.

I'm actually operating at less than full capacity today because my computer broke. So I normally handle the phone computer on that. I've got an iPad here. I'm not sure how it's going to work. So we'll see. Wasn't my fault. Wasn't my fault. Wasn't my fault. Pair's fully covering it. Hammered, watching Peggy Flanagan win? I wasn't, but I was very happy about that when I found that out. Even though it looked at front, that Hong results, it was really unfortunate. I think the electability arguments hurt her a lot towards the end of that race.

But it was close, right? It's also just another example of how primary polling is garbage. Oh, yeah. Yeah, total garbage. There was one poll where she was up by 30 points. I mean, it's ridiculous. They can't, they need to figure this crap out. out.

And I also just think, you know, neither AOC nor Bernie endorse in that race. And, and they're, you know, we'll see. We'll get them next time. Sam asked Bernie about that yesterday.

If you get, yeah. Oh, I haven't seen it. What did he say? It was just basically. You expect resources and what you're focused on this or that.

I mean, that's the thing is like she, I don't know what Hong, to the extent that a Hong asked for these because I don't think she even saw the national DSA endorsement. It was a pretty low profile campaign until the very end. Yes.

I think, I don't know, Sam was on Ari Melbur last night, I think it was. And I think his answer was really good on that, which is like the idea that this is some kind of major setback. Like she was only that close to a person who had the entire establishment backing and money backing because Wisconsin DSA. And that's not going anywhere. And so I think, you know, take another stab at it. Yeah, exactly. I built an infrastructure, basically. Well, it's just amazing that even with some of her controversies or like meant by controversies, I mean statements about...

The dumb horseshit that our press likes to focus on. Yeah, exactly. I mean, but it traveled. I mean, people that had no idea about this race were like, the woman that hates Thanksgiving, like that kind of stuff, it's frustrating that our press focuses on it. But like, the fact that she got that close in spite of that is a testament to the power of DSA and organizing. And with such little name recognition. towards the end. So I think that people are,

they're desperate for any narrative that's going to show them that DSA doesn't have the power that it does. And I think that the results are kind of showing the opposite, frankly. Matt, what's happening in the Matt Lechian media universe? Yeah, Yostin Hauga,

on to talk about China and whether or not we've been left in the dust and aren't really recognizing it or coping with it well by Chinese model of production versus the model preferred by America, the Western venture capitalists and financial institutions, which mainly makes them get rich while we can't build bridges and shit.

All right, check it out, folks. Also, today I will be on Francesca Furentini show, The Bituation Room, 4 p.m. Eastern. Check it out. Hello, Brandon. Hello, how's it going? It is going well. What's happening over on the discourse?

Oh, well, you know, we've been like, I think a lot of shows delving into the results of the primaries in the United States over the past week. What we can learn about it, the upcoming general elections resulting that. We also talked about the story. I don't know if you guys touched on it about all these sailors jumping off the USS Lincoln. We're going to talk about that in the fun half, I think. Yeah. Oh, well, then like, sure, I guess I won't spoil it then. But definitely go over to the discourse with Brandon on YouTube and Twitch and check it out.

We're really getting up there in numbers. We're almost at 26,000. I'm excited. That's amazing. That is very exciting. And yeah, maybe check, you can check out the discourse first and then come back to check out our coverage of this. USS Abraham Lincoln.

Yeah. Talk about that in the fun half. Pretty nuts. Matt Binder. Hello, hello. How are you? Hello. Can you hear me?

I can hear you great. Perfect. What's happening on your shows? Check out Leftist Mafia tonight at 8.30 p.m. Eastern Time at YouTube.com slash Matt Binder. I've been, I was away for a little bit. So I'm a little bit catching up on the news. I missed the election stuff. Could anyone tell me? Did Kamalo beat Trump? I'm out of the loop here. Not quite. Not quite. Other than that, yeah, see you guys tonight at YouTube.com slash Matt Binder. All right, see them there, folks. As a reminder, the show relies on your support.

Join the Majority Report.com. Become a member. You will, you can, IAM us if you become a member, and I'll read them in many instances. Josh from Molly writes in, Josh from Ollie, I guess, writes in, 55-year-old Jew here yesterday with Bernie and Sam made me feel like I was taking a schvitz.

Um, that's awesome. Yes, I was super jealous that Sam got to talk to Bernie when I was out yesterday. I guess it came together at the last minute. I was traveling. So I guess there was no feasible way I could have joined the interview. But in my, in my mind, I wish I could have been there. So this is him getting him back for the, the AOC interview, getting me back. I'm going to have to really want up him on, on guests next time.

We'll see. I said yesterday this competition is just great for the show. It really is. It really is. But I'm trying to think of anyone who could be a bigger get than AOC or Bernie, and I'm really racking my brain. I said yesterday I was going to get you Odell Beckham Jr. and Greta Toomberg. Honestly, man, those are my other dream guests. Greta would be, I would, I would act like a total idiot. Anyway. I feel like she would do it. Why? I think she's out of reach. That's someone who's totally within reach, I think. Well, I have reached out several times. I've reached out nothing. But, you know, and now I'm too insecure to do it again. So we'll see.

But maybe, maybe in the future. All right. We'll see you in the fun half. Guys, see you there. Okay, Emma, please. Well, I just, I feel that my voice is sorely lacking on the majority report. Wait. Look, Sam is unpopular.

I do deserve a vacation at Disney World. So, ladies and gentlemen, it is my pleasure to welcome Emma to the show. It is Thursday. I think you need to take over for Sam. That's good. Sir, I'm gonna, I'm gonna pause you right there. Wait, what? You can't encourage Emma to live like this.

And I'll tell you why. So it's offered a twer. Sushi and poker with the boys. Twerk? Sushi and poker with the boys. Someone's offered a twer? Yeah. Sushi and poker with the boys.

What? Twerk. Sushi and poker. Uh, Tim's upset. Twirl? Yeah. Sushi and sushi and... Ah, that's what we call bids.

Dwar? Sushi and Sushi and I just think that what you did to Tim Poole was mean. Free speech. That's not what we're about here. Look at how sad he's become now. You shouldn't even talk about it because I think you're responsible. I probably am in a certain way, but let's get to the meltdown here. Twerk.

Ugh. Sushi and poker with the boys. Oh my God. Wow. Sushi. I'm sorry. I'm losing my fucking mind. Someone's offered a twirb?

Yeah. Sushi and poker with the boys. Lots of boy, boy, boy. I think I'm like a little kid. I think I'm like a little. kid, I think I'm like a kid. I think I'm like a little kid. Add this debate.

A little kid. But just don't understand. So I'm not trying to be a dick right now, but like, I absolutely think the U.S. should be providing me with a wife and kids. That's not what we're talking about here. It's not a fun job. That's a real thing. That's a real thing.

That's a real thing. That's a real thing. That's a real thing. That's a real thing. What's that a real thing? A real thing. Sam has to be a real food or stuff. Offered it to work.

What's going on? Live YouTube. Sam has like the way to the world on the shoulders. Sam doesn't want to do this show anymore. It didn't do it anymore. It was so much easier. One of the majority of report was just you. You were happy.

Let's change the subject. Rangers and Nick are going great. Now, shut up. Don't want people saying reckless things on your program. That's one of the most difficult parts about this show. This is a pro-killing podcast. I'm thinking maybe it's kind of burry the hatchet. Left is best.

Violet twerk. And don't bitch. To the way. To you now. You are to the right of the unslaw policy. We already fund this real good. Incredible steam song. I Bumbler.

Emma Viglin, absolutely one of my favorite people. Actually, not just in the game. Like, period.