The Majority Report with Sam Seder - 2736 - Massive Cave on Media Monopoly; Possible Democratic Future of Foreign Policy w/ Alvaro Bedoya, Matt Duss

Episode Date: September 22, 2026

It's News Day Tuesday on The Majority Report On today's program: NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani hosts a press conference with Donald Trump on the lawn of Gracie Mansion where they addressed migrants with protected status and the Trump's assault on free speech. Alvaro Bedoya, Senior Adviser at the American Economic Liberties Project and former commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission joins to discuss the Paramount / Warner Brothers merger. Matt Duss, Executive Vice President at the Center for International Policy and co-host of The Un-Diplomatic Podcast, joins to discuss the state of American foreign policy. The conversation covers Trump at the UN, the Iran war, Ukraine, and a whole lot more. In the FUN HALF: JB Pritzker releases a campaign ad that calls out his Republican opponent over his private Christian school's curriculum teaching kids that humans and dinosaurs co-existed. A megachurch pastor says that God told him that gas prices are going to come down very soon. The RNC Chair must not be speaking to God because he says that they just need a decade or two to bring prices down. Secretary of Agriculture Brook Rollins suggest that people eat other proteins if they find beef too expensive. all that and more. Please consider helping the Aldaghma family, they are the family behind Gaza Bakery, which provides bread and meals to displaced families, and Future Flowers Kindergarten, which gives children a place to learn, play, and experience moments of normalcy whenever conditions allow. On Sunday, October 4, Emma will be in Los Angeles doing a Bitchuation Room Live with Francesca Fiorentini at the Lodge Room. Get tickets here. 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: ZOCDOC: Find and book the right doctor https://Zocdoc.com/MAJORITY NUTRAFOL: Get $10 off your first month's subscription + free shipping at Nutrafol.com when you use promo code TMR10 SUNSET LAKE CBD: Head to SunsetLakeCBD.com and use coupon code 'Left Is Best' to save 20% your entire order. Follow the crew on X @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

You are listening to a free version of the Majority Report. Support this show at join the Majority Report.com and get an extra hour of content daily. It is Tuesday. September 22nd, 2006. My name is Sam Cedar. 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, Alvaro Badoia, senior advisor at the American Economic Liberties Project, former commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission, on the Paramount Warner Brothers merger and, frankly, betrayal by Democratic A.Gs. Then Matt Duss, executive vice president, the Center for International Policy, co-host of the undiplomatic podcast on the state of foreign policy within the Democratic Party and also this little war that we have going on.

Excursion. New report, FBI anti-corruption unit was honing in on a Susan Collins bribery deal when Trump essentially. fired all the anti-corruption FBI agents. Meanwhile, Trump's approval rating hits the 20s. The roaring 20s. I just remembered when we did the space jam thing. And it cost us a ton of money.

More on that later. Republican support for Iran war begins to weaken. Voters, Republican voters, supported 15% less than they did just a couple of months ago. Meanwhile, Iowa Senate candidate calls for an end to the Iran War after voting for it as a Republican Congresswoman. And Mike Rogers also the latest Republican Senate candidate to call for an end to the Iran war. Ben the knee, bitches. Trump to address the U.N. General Assembly, as the U.N. says U.S. strikes on alleged drugboats could be crimes against humanity.

An appeals court reinstates the Missouri Republican gerrymandered map. Flights resume after the Department of Transportation equipment outage. They accidentally cut the wrong wire, literally. Iran announces a willingness to open the Strait of Hormuz if the U.S. eases military pressure. Immigrants with deportation orders are now being scrubbed from the ICE detainee locator before they're deported. Video game workers at Microsoft owned Blizzard

when their first union contract. All this and more on today's majority report. Welcome, ladies and gentlemen. It is... Newsday, Tuesday. Yeah.

It seemed very excited about saying that. Well, I was happy to see our in studio guests come in and, you know, it's a good day. So far, it's fall weather officially.

I was playing to a crowd. She's all excited. I am. Look, I'm, I brought out the sweater today. I feel like it might have been a little bit premature because it's now super hot in here. But what are you going to do? Yep.

We're about 15 degrees warmer in here and then outside. Yeah. So that's the... Matt Dust will be joining us later in the program in studio. Also, I hope everybody who celebrated yesterday had a easy fast. I did. and then but the real

problem was after cold Nidre services Saul and I came home and I let him play box with me and he punched me in the jaw and I can't chew

so made the fast a little bit easier I'm sure it'll be fine Well that's how he's a man now Yes exactly We will We got a lot of news to get to And I will fill everyone in

on how he punched me in the face but later we were play fighting so so he didn't totally own you no not he's not the man of the house now it's still up in the air okay

pretty big milestone it's a pretty big milestone yes congrats all yesterday Donald Trump nor Zoramam Dani were fasting they were working yesterday neither one of them

being Jews so they did not celebrate Yom Kippur. Trump is in town ostensibly to speak at the UN. I think he spoke this morning. I don't know if we have clips of that yet. I'm sure it was I'm sure it was an impressive speech. Top line is he wants to annihilate Iran and rebrand AI.

I want to annihilate Iran again. AI, AI, annihilate Iran and then rebrand AI. It's all about the escalator. and his wife's ass. Here is, let's play a couple of clips. Now, we should just say,

Um, Mamdani got Trump to come, uh, to Gracie Mansion. Um, we should say, Mamdani, obviously,

I think he's now, uh, one of the most popular Democrats, certainly in New York. Um, and, uh, gaining in popularity nationally,

even though he's just the mayor of New York. He, um, his stats after now, like just three quarters in New York City are pretty impressive. Over 200,000 pothole repairs, which is up like by 25% from last year. Speed bump installations also up 25%. They have planted like 61% more trees in the city, which of course, you know, it's not just about making the city more livable and more beautiful. Beautiful. It cools in the summer. Trees have a big deal.

It makes it a little bit easier to shovel your walk when the trees are holding that stuff up. Bus lane installation have doubled. A curbside collection made its first target for the first time in 21 years. And that's with still three months to spare. Affordable housing completions up 20%. Job placements are up 33% through the city's Human Resources Agency. youth job placements up by 25%. Wait times for primary care appointments down 31% for adults,

24% for children. There's more and more of this. Murder rate is down 20%. Burglaries down nine, robberies down nine, auto thefts down 7%. Again, I think the crime stuff, we had a blip during COVID, and we're returning to the mean,

although actually dropping below the mean, but frankly, the mean was a downward trajectory, which, again, I am, I think the most compelling theory about this is getting lead out of gasoline's, but, you know, happy to expand on that more in a different time because I've talked about it so many times over the years. But here is Mamdani with Trump at the White House. And Mom Dani, you'll recall yesterday the White House pool stopped doing coverage of Trump. I think maybe we have that clip where the White House tried to videotape it but forgot about microphones because the pools usually do that. So you can't hear anything that Trump is saying. Meanwhile, Mom Dani invited all of the press and essentially sent a subliminal message of like, this is what free speech is.

is about. Yes, and Politico's Will Seekin reported this morning that the joint presser here was not originally planned, according to his source. Mom Dani asked Trump on the spot if he would join him and called on three news outlets Trump had banned from the

White House, and he does it with a smile. And here is clip number one. Mary, do you first, what's your response to President Trump banning outlets from the White House grounds? Did you challenge him at all about this in your meeting

with him, historians and legal scholars have called it textbook authoritarianism. And Mr. President, are you banning outlets like MSNF, CNN, and Politico in order to distract from the Iran war and the high gas prices? I told the president

that we're going to have all of the members of the press here on the lawn, and that is something that I believe in is everyone, no matter of the opinion or the critique, that we engage. Mr. President. It's interesting because they said they were going to boycott me, but they never boycott me. So I wasn't very worried about that.

Look at all that press. But no, I'm only doing it because I think the press also is an obligation. And, you know, I won in a landslide. I won the election in a landslide. I've done great things. I've done a lot of great things. I've settled eight wars. We have the best economic numbers for the country in the history of our country.

We have $21 trillion. dollars pouring in. The biggest number ever any country was three. Nobody's ever done what we've done. I never get anything positive. It's always negative. Even having to do with the war, we've done so well. We have told, look, they're not going to have a nuclear weapon. Let me just put it that way. And they're not doing well.

They're not doing it. In fact, I have meetings on it today. They're doing very poorly. Like us. You would think that an outlet would rate at least reasonably well, but never. If you look at CNN is fake news. if you look at MS now. I don't even know what MS now is.

I guess it's the MSNBC, what it used to be, or MSDNC, as some people call it. That's Democrat National Committee. It's just biased news. Pause it for a second. Just pause. Don't take it down.

Maldani has that thousand-yard stare through the entire thing. And all that's going through his head is, my God, this guy cannot shut his mouth. He is, it is amazing. This is like, that, what was that drill, Twitter. I'm not mad.

I'm not mad. Don't put in the newspaper that I'm mad. Yes. And Momdani's clearly been coached to fixate on one particular point and just keep blinking. Because if you really listen to closely the Trump, you're going to react to what he has to say. And he can't facially react. And he has shown a lot of discipline not to smile basically or pose with him on camera at all in that way. He looks like a cardboard cutout.

While still getting Trump to eat out of his. hand. And he's almost like purposefully focusing not on the reporter's response. Exactly. Don't make eye contact with anyone. Watch the horizon. Watch the horizon. Watch the horizon.

It's like fix it against some statues somewhere. Right. Go back a little bit. NBC. MS now is I guess it's the MSNBC, what it used to be, or MSDNC, as some people call it. That's Democrat National Committee. But it's just biased news.

And I think that these outlets have an obligation to be fair. and if they're fake news, I really think I have an obligation not to allow them into another very special house. This is a special house, where does you mention? Well, the White House is the most special of all houses, I have to say, and I don't even think that mayor would argue with that. And I think I have an obligation not to let fake news. They're very bad for the country, very good for national security. So I have that obligation. So we'll see how it works out.

Incidentally, we should say that the press pool did boycott him at the White House and all of his, other functions, they just were coming to Gracie Mansion. Because Mom Dani invited them and then didn't also tell Trump that he was holding the press conference. He big-dogged him. We do have this newsmex club. Oh, yeah. Let's just play this. Here we go.

This is, uh, yeah. The White House shot this, but they didn't know you needed microphones. Adam Curtis is like, gosh, I wish this could just be for me. Which White House staffer got fired from that? not bring in XLR. There's no microphone because there's no microphone because the pool cameras aren't there. So maybe, Tim, this is one example of it backfiring just a little bit. Yeah, just a little bit.

I mean, he's got guys with hard hats and vests on around him. We have no idea why. Let's go back to the Mamdani presser. mom dani was attempting to get trump again this is the federal government

mom dani has probably the highest level of immigrants in the entire country i would imagine in in terms of the city uh if not uh you know number two but i think it's number one most immigrants in the in the country in new york city Houston would be close, but yeah.

And for him protecting those immigrants is paramount, and this is, I think, what much of this was about. There could be trying to skeer federal funding for affordable housing. All outlined material gets, which is important, because we'll talk about the sort of the attempts by some of the centrists to criticize Mom Downey over this, which is fascinating to me. But go ahead. The mayor will say to take a few questions.

a lot of New Yorkers are here on protected status and it's been removed. Well, the mayor feels very strongly about it. I can tell you that he did bring it up, but he feels very, very strongly about it. I feel strongly about a lot of things. I feel strongly about taking care of people. And that's what we do. We're doing a good job of it. Submissive.

Trump can't tell. He's like, I can't tell if I want to be him or want to be with him. I mean a mom donnie just literally at this point I think it feels like he's just sort of playing him but again here's the thing mom donnie is meeting with Trump with a very specific material agenda

Donald Trump for better for worse has all of the executive power in this country and stuff like this I honestly find just fascinating. It is, I think it's a function of either, again, really deep emotional problems with some of the people who have been in the leadership of the Democratic Party, or they just,

whoever their future paymasters are or current ones will like to see this. There's really no other explanation for it. Here's Jamie Harrison. Former DNC chair, but most know that. consultant because a lot of the outrage against leftists are coming from consultants who don't like these kinds of campaigns where they won't get big fat commissions. So Jamie Harrison

says here if you want to Well yeah, we'll read it, but just understand the premise here, it's not explicit. But this is what I think people, oh yeah, no, it is explicit here. Hakeem Jeffries, you'll remember a couple of weeks ago, met with non-government

official, non, the only constituency he seems to have is his bank account, Jared Kushner. And when Hakeem Jeffries met with Jared Kushner in private secret, it leaked out that they had met. Jeffrey said we met because of affordability. You know, the unelected Middle East envoy who's a notorious slum lord taking billions of dollars and bribes from foreign governments. He's all across affordability. I mean, what's strangest, Jeffries could have said we met to get an update on negotiations

regarding Israel and Gaza or whatever it is because that's what Kushner does. But they either didn't want to say that they were talking about that or whatnot. I mean, anybody who believes they met about affordability is honestly like, I've got a, I've got a, I've got a, bridge to sell you, maybe multiple ones.

Insanly and Seltin, and I would also had, he was asked like what you got from that meeting, and he said, Zilch. He admitted nothing. But, but a few days later, he stacked some of those top House committees on foreign affairs and intelligence with a bunch of pro-Israel Democrats. I think it was the next day. It was like, it was definitely the same week. So Cushner may have gotten something. I got the give part.

I just didn't get the get part. Um, here is, so here's Jamie Harrison. I'm going to sit here and clock all the out. rage. Sanders can appear at an event with Bannon. I'm not even sure what this is regarding. Mamdani invites Trump to Gracie Mansion. The idea of a mayor seeking literally policy concessions from Trump in public seems like an apples and orange type of situation. And it was because Trump is in town for the United States. nations and they were also discussing the Sunnyside development, which is quite literally something

material that he's garnering from Trump. But honestly, I can't even imagine who else could be as demented to be fixated on this. Yeah. Besides Jamie Harrison, he's sitting out there all alone. And it's really difficult to imagine who else could be so, so upset. Oh, wait a second. we got it you have that other clip of near a tandon doing the same thing oh oh sorry sorry well spoiler alert it might have been near a tandon maybe the same kind of corrupt official well instead herndon our friend of the show responded saying the first was a public event the second is the president and they held a press conference after and the last one was a private meaning revealed by the press after the fact i feel that's like that's important context i would agree with estead and i just

want to quickly point out this about Mom Dani before we move on. He really is putting on a master class in standing strong in your position and not caving to pressure when you have values and an actual commitment to protecting your constituents.

We see how other mayors across the country have folded with ice or have not used all of their tools at their disposal. You know, the people, the idiot centrist that are like, keep the same energy you have for Trump in person. or whatever.

They don't understand or prioritize, I would say, the art of smiling in your opponent's face to disarm them and then extracting what you need from them materially. Mamdani has mastered that art and that's what matters. And that included, by the way, him at the 9-11 memorial going up to Rudy Giuliani, who had just gone on a racist screed about him and saying how he shouldn't, because of his faith,

be at that memorial. He went up to Giuliani and smiled in his face. And what he did before that was release a bunch of these 9-11 first responder documents that those first responder families had been wanting for so long, directly implicating Giuliani in the cover-up. So you can still harm your political opponent while smiling in their face and out maneuvering them in that way. and I really do think conservatives, especially of the old guard, are completely disarmed by a Democrat doing that because they've dealt with weak-ass P-word neoliberals for their entire career. Apparently Sanders and Bannon were at a meeting about AI. There were hundreds of people there. True. But they did not appear together. I doubt that they were holding hands in any photo.

or whatever it is. Here is near a tandon, I am perplexed by the idea of these two doing a press conference together because I've been told appearing with Liz Cheney who fought Trump as the work of the devil. This is just one of the dumbest things I've ever heard. I mean, I can't even, it's stupid if I just take it at face value. It's obviously some type of sarcastic thing, but Kamla Harris was the more powerful of the two. You are bringing Lynn Cheney around to say that I have got the endorsement of the real Democratic Party. I mean, the real Republican Party out there, aside from the fact that Cheney voted with Trump as much as anybody else, aside from the fact that just two years earlier, Cheney is out there saying that

Democrats want to kill live babies. People have forgotten that. But aside from just how toxic she was and obviously what a failure it was just as a as an actual like campaign device. The fact of the matter is what was Harris going to get from Cheney? She thought wrongly that she was going to get more votes. You've got a mayor of the city going to someone who literally is in charge of the purse strings and in charge of sicking a paramilitary on a huge cohort of the citizens in his city. There's just no comparison

in this situation, but the level of desperation by these people or just simply who they tweet for. I mean, this is a performance that she's doing here for, I would imagine, the same people who claimed that Mom Donnie, you know, was going to put Sharia law in New York City. I think Christian Gillibrand was one of those people.

Racist disgusting comment. The people who wouldn't go to the Democrats who wouldn't go to his inauguration or just the big money people who might fund whatever endeavor she's doing or maybe

you know, Rahm Emanuel will have a way of getting her into the White House. Who knows what this is for? Other than that, it really does seem like a mental break. But speaking of break, we got to take one in just a moment. Whoa! Professional broadcaster.

Alvado. Bedoya will be joined. us and Matt Duss as well. First, a couple words from our sponsors. And speaking of therapy, I know someone who I saw a clip of Ben, what's his face, Shapiro, the way that he goes into reads, and it's amazing. It's truly amazing. I mean, that guy needs a therapist. And he could find one on Zocke.

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Enter the promo code T-M-R-10. That's Neutterfall.com, spelled N-U-T-R-A-F-O-L dot com, promo code T-Mr-R-R-T-Mr-R-R-T-M-R-M-R-10. quick break when we come back. Alvaro Badoia, senior advisor at the American Economic Liberties Project, former commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission. And we'll be talking about this real disaster. The 12 U.S. States, sorry, 12 States Attorney General Cave to Paramount. We'll be right back. We are back. Sam Cedar, Emma Vigland on the Majority Report. Pleasure to welcome to the program, Alvaro Badaia. senior advisor at the American Economic Liberties Project, former commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission. Alvaro, walk us through, I mean, we've talked about this a decent amount on the program, but walk us through just sort of the history of this.

This is like flipped on a dime. This time last week, I think people felt like that the 12 states, attorney generals led by Rob Bonta out in California and then of course Tish James here in New York State had the upper hand, at least in some respects, because at the very least there was a fee being paid on a daily basis. But walk us through that. Yeah. So we're talking about the Paramount Warner Brothers merger. And as you said, what was really remarkable about this is, that the Department of Justice politicals just did

Donald Trump's bidding and bless this thing and even wrote a long statement about how it was awesome. There was this weird, lavish bribery dinner at the Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace. There's the payments from CBS, $16 million, $20 million side deal, the purge of CBS News,

the promises to purge CNN. And yet despite all this, despite the big dog of the DOJ not being in the fight and actually hurting the fight, these 12 state attorneys general sued to block this thing. And kind of improbably, because usually these mergers are only stopped if the DOJ or FTC is in the mix, the federal judge denied the paramount's desire to not have a pause on the deal. The judge ruled in favor of the state attorneys general. The judge looked at just one of their three

claims and found compelling evidence that the merger might be illegal. And what was happening around this, Oh, and then Paramount agreed to pause the whole thing until as late as next June. So they were basically on their back legs, which is a big shift from this posture where they said, oh, we're going to win this thing. There's nothing to see here. And the financing for this deal was starting to come into question because they're about to be hit with these daily ticking fees of like $7 million a day, which actually start adding up when there's many months before you go to trial. Just the ticking feel deal, we should be.

clear is part it was a deal that they made with warner brothers who basically said we need to close this by uh whatever it was october uh one and if we don't we need seven million dollars a day as a way of incentivizing this to move forward so that was a good deal for warner brothers yes it was a very good deal for warner brothers but all of a sudden you know the ellisans don't want to wait for the courts they wanted to wait for the law or a trial so they said look, if we don't get our merger right now, we're taking our ball and going home. They threatened to leave California. And the first to crack was Gavin Newsom, who said, well, actually, I think we need to settle. And then Javier Bacera cracked. And over the weekend, Attorney General

Rob Bontacracked. And I think what was really shocking about this was that he had been out there, like anyone who does law enforcement, you know, I did it for years at the FTC, he's done it for years, know that what are called behavioral remedies, in other words, like a pinky promise to do X and Y and Z in order to stop the bad things that happen from a merger, in other words, prices going up, wages going down, those things fail. They fail spectacularly because, you know,

someone has to find out, you have to choose to enforce, it takes years to actually remedy this stuff. Bonta had been out there on national television saying, I want structural remedies, I want you to divest the studio, I want you to divest cable channels. I don't want a pinky problem. promise. It's no good with me. And yet over the weekend in about a 48-hour period, the tune completely

changed. And he ended up agreeing to this weird week settlement with literally no divestments, right? This was his red line and we're not even at 80% of the red line or 50% of red line. There is no line, right? It is just a series of promises to do X and Y and Z, which when you look at the fine print are worth very little. And this is also not just you saying this. There, some of the attorneys general who were joining in on the lawsuit have come out with scathing kind of indictments of this, this agreement that, that Bonta has essentially struck. But without California here, because that's where all of, you know, most of this business is taking place, the rest of these state attorneys general didn't feel like they kind of had the muscle

to, to continue to push this, this through. So Banta Caving really ended it for them. And I, I'm, there's no way to spin this other than this is Gavin Newsom, Bacera, and Banta, aiding the Trump administration in an oligarch takeover of media and art and consolidating that even further in a time where we already have all of this monopolistic power. I want you to address like sort of the role of the California people, but why can't, is it a question of resources? Is it a question of leverage? I mean, because it seems to me the leverage here is they need to get this done by October, and then they start paying $7 million a day. And, you know, like you say, that adds up. If they go to the spring of next year or Q2 of next year, you're talking over a billion dollars.

And then financing starts to wonder, hey, wait a second, what's going on here? Why didn't? Like, why did Tish James cave as well? Like, why did the others, did they just not have the resources without California? So let me be really clear. We don't really know. But I, my suspicion is it has to do partly with the politics of these are businesses headquartered in California. The California AG is falling up.

But ultimately, I think you're getting at it, Sam. I think what's going to come out is that this is a resource question. And I think it's an important question with us being about two years out from the next presidential for people to start reckoning. with this. You know, you generally can't stop one of these billionaire mega mergers without either of the Federal Trade Commission of the Department of Justice. Look, kudos to this group that threw in their hats in response to this massive outpouring of support. But when you actually look at the states, it's only states like California and New York that have actual meaningful budgets to have these fights. That probably shouldn't be that way. We send all this money to federal law enforcers.

But hey, it turns out if you have a unitary executive, they can just turn off. that switch and just do buddies for their deals. Sorry, deals for their buddies. And we're S-O-L. And so maybe we need to be sending more of these resources to the states so that they can actually have these fights. And we're not on this just TikTok of either anti-monopoly law applies or no, it's golfing buddies or bust.

And let me point out one of the things that's come out, the Connecticut Attorney General has tried to signal his problems with this weak. editorial independence board. So one of the big concerns is, as I was saying, they promised to purge CNN, both father and son did, according to the press. And so they put this weird provision in the settlement that says, we're going to create an editorial independence board. Like, you've been around the block, you're like, yeah, I've seen the Facebook oversight

board. That thing is BS. I don't want that. But regular people might hear that and be like, okay, okay, that sounds kind of real. turns out if you read the fine print of the settlement guess who picks who was on the editorial independence board the ellicence guess who that editorial independence board reports to the alicence so this is a this is worth is the board situated in a place called independence i'm trying to figure out what the what what is what is what is that word doing in that title quite nice of the summer

nothing it is it is it is actively misleading people and so for that reason you actually have the attorneys general of Washington and Colorado say, hey, I don't want any part in this weird thing. Yeah. So, okay, I want to return to that. But let's go back to California and Emma's question. What is the, is it just because I'm looking at the settlement in part, you know, you've pointed out this, that they're supposedly going to make X number of movies and it doesn't appear they're going to do that.

They can get out at their force major and having worked in Hollywood, if a recession could be force major. Like, you know, a lot of people would have been able to get out of their contracts a lot easier if a strike. Because the unions are going to get destroyed in this as a member of SAG after as well. Like, all my friends are just like, this is going to be a disaster. But they don't even seem to be offering California that much. and I'm trying to figure out why. Except to stay.

Well, yeah, but not even for only for like four or five years. And that's nothing that's a drop in the bucket. I'm trying to figure out what benefit, like the benefit to the state seems more like a fig leaf to me than the actual benefit that may, like what's going on there? We don't know, but speculate for us, please. look um you said it by the way a lot of people at first said okay well at least paramount's going to stay the headquarters will stay in california if you read the fine print of the settlement it actually says look we're going to continue operating the lots for film and television and it was so bad when people read this that ellison had to quickly come out and say no no no we're staying here

but pay attention that's just a pinky promise from ellison that's not the settlement that's binding it binding them to do this and so um honestly my my we don't know what happened here but i think the important thing is that the action speak louder than words we are in 2026 and people in this country want champions who are not scared of rich bullies and this was a test gavin newsome failed it haviar basera failed it rob banta failed it and at least one of those gentlemen wants to be president in 2029. And we need to remember that when his feet were to the fire, he sold us down the river. And speaking of California, you are right. There is this commitment that says $1.5 billion in domestic spend for productions. And look, okay, you know,

when I read that, I was like, okay, let's start reading the fine print. And sure enough, the fine printers all these outs. But it would have been one thing had for California's purposes, for Gavin Newsom's purposes that it said. And 750 of that is in the great state of California, right? It'd be one thing if it actually bound them to keep their headquarters there, that is not what has happened. This is one of those uncomfortable situations where you've got to look at the paper and say, these guys got played. And so reporters, I know for a fact, I think Matt Bologna on the town was talking this morning saying, it's real weird what happened. We're trying to report the behind-the-scenes story. We will find out. But the key thing is that there was a test. Can you go head to head with an oligarch

and hold your cards and try to win? And they lost. And the other thing is that some people are saying, well, Alvaro, the case wasn't that strong. Look, I think it was strong. The judge said it was strong. But what mattered here is every single day, the screws got a little tight. You had leverage. had they just held on for another couple weeks, another couple months, we could have been in a very different world. I suspect Trump was very interested in having them online for the midterms. Yes. And I would, there are two things I just want to consider. One is that with Bacera, you know, being essentially very likely to become the governor, it takes out some of like, perhaps the incentive to to buck Gavin Newsom, even if he's pushing for it, because that would be a lame duck thing.

but there's continuity with Becerra. But what is shocking to me here is that if this acquisition happens, more consolidation also could potentially mean destroying jobs for actors and writers as well, because when you consolidate in this way, when you merge, there's going to be an incredible amount of debt, especially given the fact, you know, the Skydance merger from last year. Like, people are going to lose their jobs in the industry as well, just by the nature of them attempting to cut costs due to their debt from consolidation.

Yeah, they described $6 billion in synergies, which is the word Wall Street uses, the word everyone else uses is layoffs. But look, I want to point something out here because I don't want all the people who stuck their necks out for this, and many of whom I suspect are your viewers and listeners to to not see this. Something extraordinary did happen here, which is normally you need one of these big dogs, FTC, DOJ, to jump in to stop the merger.

Not only do you do not have either, you had one actively working against it. And yet, because of this outpouring of support, you had these 12 AGs who came really close to shutting down what would have been, what will be one of the most damaging mergers we've seen. And I want people to appreciate that the people on Wall Street

see that. The people on Wall Street are now thinking hard about the next merger because they know it's not going to be a walk in the park. Or at least I would like to think that and I believe that because these people watch these things closely. I don't want people to look at what happened and say so much for that. We're effed. I want them to see it more as that moment in one of those movies where people are trying to break into a room and like right before you get into the other room and break through like you make a big run and it just pushes you right back because there is a blueprint for how to fix and break up the consolidation that's happened, because the people in Hollywood and California have lived it. You used to have rules that separated the content makers from the distributors. We can return to those rules. We can return to the restrictions on how many media affiliates, broadcast affiliates you can own. And we can vertically break up these companies if we actually have the political will to do it. So that is my

hope of what was said here. I have one more, I have actually two questions. One is a about the sort of like the response, if we get an administration that is dedicated to the sort of classic antitrust that we've had in this country, you know, trust busting. We had 40 years of conservatives from the University of Chicago and Bork notion of antitrust. But we have at least as a society, maybe not so much the leadership of it, sort of returning to this idea that you know, we don't want this type of concentration of power with corporations. What about Europe? And people have asked, like, why do the states have authority here?

They have antitrust laws on their books. They have rights of action. They rarely take it because it's usually so expensive. But you also have a, you know, all of these places do work in California or New York. They're also in Europe. Could Europe in any way slow this down? or have they already sort of folded? Europe has already blessed this.

And I will point out, look, in the U.S., under President Biden, I served alongside Chair Lena Kahn. And the great thing about Chair Kahn is that she was not in the revolving door. Neither am I, neither was my colleague, Becca Slaughter. We're not going back to work in industry, as many industry heads do. In Europe, this is still something of a problem. You have a very close relationship with some European regulators and UK regulators, between the heads of those agencies and big tech, you have people who were resistant being pushed

out. And so there absolutely are ways in which Europe has better protections against major corporations than we do. But there are also ways in which they are a bit behind to the degree, or maybe not compared to Trump's America, but, you know, they still suffer these revolving door problems in the way that often we do. All right. So lastly, in terms of like, what can happen to this deal and others like it in a post-Trump, post-Republican non-Gavin Newsom presidency, you know, because obviously Newsom has shown his true colors in this regard. But an administration that says, hey, maybe we should have Lena Con back. maybe we should have Alvaro Badoia back, Jonathan Cantor back.

What could you do? I mean, there's no double jeopardy here or anything like that, right? You can go back and look at the structures and things that have happened since then and whether this deal worked to achieve what it ostensibly meant to do. Can that happen? Yes. Let me offer a different more, more. potentially effective path. So nowadays Congress doesn't really govern. They say, hey, don't do that war in Iran.

We keep on doing the war in Iran. And they're like, okay, I guess we'll go home to campaign in our districts, right? But state legislatures are one of the few places where we actually are still governing. And something really special happened in Arkansas, happened in Mississippi, and almost happened in Louisiana, where you had state legislators who are legislatively breaking up the big pharma, pharma company. the health insurers, pharmacy middlemen, and mail order pharmacies that are ravaging rural America, they're not sending their AGs after them. They're saying as a matter of law, as a matter of legislation, you guys have to break yourselves up. And right now, there are bills in Congress that some Democrats like Cory Booker and unexpectedly Chuck Schumer say, hey, if your merger was consummated

via corruption, via bribery, we're going to break that up. That's Cory Booker's. Clean Mergers Act. Chuck Schumer has a bill to break up the meatpacking industry. And whether or not, if the Democrats come back in power, the real question is, are you going to do your job? Are you going to put your money where your mouth is? You talk this big populist game. And by the way, I'm sure you see this too. Everyone's an economic populist on the left now pretty much. Right. So all right, get in, past these breakup bills, because let me tell you, retroactively breaking up one of these companies is a once in a generation legal generation experience and you lose half the time. It takes millions of dollars. It takes years and years. What is infinitely easier and what Congress can

do is actually govern, actually pass laws commanding these breakups. And so that is the path forward. The states, states like Arkansas, states like Mississippi are actually leading the way on this. Let Congress follow because I think there'll be a lot of common ground between honestly people, some people who voted for President Trump and some people who are going to vote for whoever the Democrats put up in the next election. Now, Vera Badoia, we will link to the American Liberties Project and maybe we'll throw Stoller's big money piece on this as well into the podcast and YouTube description. Thanks so much for your time today. I really appreciate it. Thanks, time and guys, be watching.

All right, we're going to take quick break. And then our in-studio guest will join us. Matt Duss, Executive Vice President, the Center for International Policy, co-host of the Undiplomatic podcast, will be joining us to talk about all things foreign policy. We'll be right back. We are back, Sam Cedar, Emma Vigland. On the majority report, it is a pleasure to welcome in studio. Matt Duss, Executive Vice President, the Center for International Policy, co-host of the Undiplomatic podcast. and I think it's like the first time in,

I think at one point we had years ago, we had a setup similar to this where we have a separate camera for our guest. It's amazing. It's really great. It feels great. Yeah, there we go. Totally different thing. There you go.

Gotcha. You know? Yeah, it's impossible for me to do this show without being corrected on the mic. I don't think I've ever done it. So we've gotten that out of the way. I think it's really not your problem. It's our problem.

Yes, we're still working on it. We're all in this together. Yeah. And maybe if you shift over this way a little bit, yeah, and then just bring the mic and then Emma, yeah, there you go. There you go. Fantastic. Centured. We are so locked in.

All right. All right. You're, let's start with the UN. You're in town, obviously, for the big UN gathering. Let's just start with taking a shot, a clip from Donald Trump who addressed the General Assembly. And really. really acted like a statesman. He really, it's very, you know, he took it seriously.

He's changed. The office has changed him. This is the day I became president. But I have a big decision to make. Will a deal be made with Iran that lets them rebuild and create a far greater country than it ever was before? Find out next week. Maybe one of the greatest in the Middle East

or even the world. Or do I annihilate the Islamic Republic and do it quickly, never giving them a chance to kill and destroy people and countries again? Do I drive them into hell with no chance of survival and no hope of future greatness or generations? But I believe we'll make a deal right after the election. Because it doesn't make sense for them not to. They're waiting to see how I do in the midterm. election. What they don't realize is that I'm not running. I did that already and won in a landslide. We won in a giant landslide. And I'll be here for two and a half years. I just got

distracted. The Republican Party is running and I'll be helping them. But I am not running. I gave absolutely no credence and will not give credence to the election when it comes to Iran. it doesn't even enter my mind. The only thing that does is that Iran will never have a nuclear weapon. It doesn't. So this is like, he is attempting so ham-fistedly to claw back the leverage from the Iranians by saying, I don't even care about the midterms. Because what Iran has learned after decades of U.S. economic sanctions attempting to drive the public into an uprising,

against their government is that now, even without a nuclear weapon, given their capacity with the straight-of-four moves, with these drone attacks and their ability to choke it, we can actually cause economic pain on the West and do what they did to us

to try to hurt the Republicans at the midterms. I'm not running. I literally cannot run because they have my balls in a vice. So what Trump is trying to say to, and other Republicans should probably listen to this if they know what's good for them,

his position, his priority is making the Iranians think that he doesn't care about the midterms and the high gas prices that are going to impact him. But he does care. Clearly. And I think, you know, he may think that's what he's trying to make them think. I also think he's trying to, you know, speeches like this are always, but especially with Donald Trump, they're to his own base. They're not to the people in that room.

They're not to the Iranians. The Iranians, I think, have a savvy enough read on American politics. that they understand. I will disagree with you on this. I actually do think that he thinks that he's like, outsmarting outsmarting them. Oh, of course. Because he's been doing this for months.

Like all the, like, I don't care about gas prices. All this is him trying to signal to the Iranians that like, I don't, you don't have me over. Like he said, when you first came in, you don't have me over a battle. I have you over a barrel. And they like to go up there and to say that this is, but this has been, it seems to me, the one consistent through line of this whole disaster of attacking Iran, which is a total underestimation of the savviness of the Iranians and of their structure of their government

and of like none of the things they thought were going to happen. have happened. That's right. I mean, well, you even had, there was a clip I saw this morning from Mark Arubia who was on Fox News and he repeated his usual refrain about Iran is run by religious lunatics. And I'm like, well, religious lunatics who are smart enough to come up with a strategy to keep the United States completely on its back foot and, you know, the global economy held hostage. So again, I don't know whether they are. Who knows what Trump actually believes? I think what you're saying makes some sense. But we've seen throughout, this war, he's constantly, I mean, you mentioned, you know, have to wait and see. Someone termed it

governing by season finale. I have to just wait and see even. I don't know what I'm going to do. But he's, you know, constantly makes these moves. All those talks are getting serious. It's all an effort to calm the markets. Right. But really, I mean, this idea that I'm going to make my decision after the midterms just kicking the can down the road, I think some people are concerned that he is waiting to after the midterms. He still has an idea that he can escalate even further because the Iranians are quite understandably not giving him any kind of off-ramp, short of humiliation right now. And it's gotten much worse for, in terms of like the vice that Trump is in,

because of what's going on with the Houthis in Yemen, in essentially shutting down Saudi Arabia's, it appears almost like their entire oil business, which is their business. That's their business. Walk us through this dynamic. I mean, Saudi Arabia keeps going to the United States and saying, please bomb these guys for us. And it's not like Donald Trump is, you know, we've bombed Somalia now, I think, for the 83rd time this week, literally under Trump, this year, rather, I'm saying.

And so it's not that he's hesitant, generically speaking. Why do you think that he has not been helping out Saudi Arabia? and then B, what does this mean for Saudi Arabia? Because I'm reading stuff now that they're having trouble like making payroll. Yeah. Their structure of their government, you know, broadly speaking, is because MBS did a change in the line of succession, it's not as clannish in some ways that it used to be. So what's your sense of that whole?

Right. Well, I think, I mean, first of all, let's just understand. like the two choke points here on either side of the Arabian Peninsula. On the western, I'm sorry, on the eastern side, you've got the Strait of Hormuz, which everyone understands now. The Iranians, it's a small waterway leading it to the Persian Gulf that the Iranians have a central or had shut down for a long time. The United States, in response, has dedicated enormous resources to try and open it and to get at least a trickle of the energy flows that were going through. It's some 20% of global energy supplies that travel through the Strait of Hormuz. On the other side of the Arabian

Peninsula, there is the Babel Mandab Strait, which leads up into the Red Sea, and that is the area that the Houthis took over the coast of Yemen just recently and are now threatening that. They were already able to threaten that traffic from different sites, but they've taken even more key geographical positions to challenge that. In addition to that, they are striking inside refineries and pipelines inside Saudi Arabia, so it's a real problem. I mean, the Houthis had their own reasons internally for stepping up their attacks. At this point, you know, the Houthis are, for all intents and purposes, the government of Yemen.

There is an internationally recognized government that is, you know, stationed in the southern part of Yemen. But the Houthis essentially control. Run by a committee that's appointed by Saudi Arabia. That's right. So in terms of who has the guns, who has the control, it's basically Ansar Allah, this is the name of the Houthi movement. But they, as often is the case when you have these rebel movements taking over countries, they're not very good at governing. There's enormous pressure internally. So for their part, this is a way.

to join the war on behalf of Iran, but on behalf of themselves to release some of that pressure and externalize some of their political problems, certainly not the first time we've ever seen that. But for Trump's part, he's already caught in this ridiculous trap of his own making. The idea that he wouldn't want to expand and further escalate. I mean, obviously the Saudis have been hoping, expecting on this, you know, not only from Trump, but in Biden previously. I mean, there were attacks from the Houthis on Saudi Arabia that they were shocked and dismayed that the Biden administration didn't jump in and help them with. So the Saudis, for their part, you know, they've been talking with Iran on and off,

sometimes on, sometimes not. But I think this is really underlining for them that this is getting to be a very different situation. And so, I'm sorry, just to follow up on that, do you think, like, what is motivating Trump here? I mean, if Saudi Arabia is being pushed to the brink of collapse, which it I mean certainly they're reacting in such a way with the amount of panic that it sort of feels like it. How could it be that he doesn't want to walk away from some type of deal between Iran and Oman to charge like, okay, that's going to raise the price of oil. But what also will raise the price of oil is some type of like collapse of the Saudi government and gosh knows what could be a available like what well I don't understand what the thinking is he why can't they cut their losses why can't

the Trump administration yeah I honestly I wish I had a better answer too I mean I feel like the MOU that they came out with a few months ago that it seemed okay we could at least kind of stick with a ceasefire it's not ideal not like he's he's above pretending we won exactly he could come out tomorrow that's exactly right yeah he really could come out tomorrow and just say boom I mean like with this Greenland deal all right The 1951 U.S. Denmark agreement, which he just offered, you know, I've essentially re-signed this agreement, high five victory. He could do that with Iran. My sense is there's just a lot of pressure from Nanyahu, from Miriam Aedelson, from other Hawks in Congress, although one fewer

with Lindsey Graham being gone. But honestly, getting inside the head of Donald Trump and what he, what kind of victory narrative he needs to invent for himself, I don't have a great answer, because this war is devouring his presidency. It's bizarre. What if it's just Laura Lumer? Maybe. I mean, it could be. But Greenland, that has no stakes with any lobby here in the United States.

In fact, everybody wanted him to abandon his fixation on that. So that's an easy offer. He doesn't have any political pressure. In fact, it was the opposite side. The Zionist lobby? Miriam Adelson, $100 million for his reelection effort, and just like let alone how we saw how Netanyahu's and Israel's rosy intelligence hoodwinked him from the start.

I don't know if we can overestimate the amount that the Israel lobby and the hawks have kind of taken a grip on even like the information that he's receiving about all of this. Yeah, no, I think that's a good point. You know, who's talking to him, who's in his ear. But I do think, I mean, what's weird about this is, you know, he has such control. control over his party that if he just came out tomorrow, I'm not going to say that pressure would go away. You're quite right that they have a lot of influence and they have a lot of ways of making that pressure felt. But they might be manipulating him and saying you're humiliated.

And that's the truth. The truth is that he's got nothing. Right. What? I just, I, like, the idea that he would be like, I'm sorry, Miriam, I gave you the other stuff. And like, him walking away, like, I don't need your money anymore. Um, I, I got a, I, I got a, I, There has to be... He wants to win. He wants to look like he's won. That's all he cares about, though. I don't know.

In Greenland, he's also willing to lie about it. I think it's got to be... It's some dude at a dinner party who was like, we need to get those, you know, whatever, the rare earth minerals in Greenland or something like that. I think there's got to be a deal. But the Greenland people in his administration are saying, you won, you won, right?

That's what they're saying to end it. The Hawks in his administration are saying, you're losing, you're losing, right? That's the information. But I mean, you have the JD Vances. He's got to be making money. This is bad news. I think that is where I was going to go next.

There has to be some deal with Venice. Maybe he's making money. Maybe all of this shutdown. Look, we know that Exxon and mobile, Exxon Mobil rather, all of these U.S. oil companies are making profits, like record level of profits. Right. And if he is somehow controlling Venezuelan oil or has a Vig, or like for every dollar above $100 a barrel, that just goes to me.

Like there's some, there is money for him somewhere in this. That's how it makes sense. That's the only way that makes sense, it seems to me. Right. I think that makes sense to me. But meanwhile, what happens if Saudi Arabia, like, also, like the idea of, like, if you wanted to go and and I'm not, I'm agnostic as to whether the petro dollar should exist, tied to the U.S. dollar, I mean, all of these for the sake of this question.

If you wanted to make, if you wanted to put a spike through the petro dollar, what, what thing differently would you be doing right now? No, I think that's right. I mean, listen, if you wanted to just come up with an excuse to get the United States out of the Middle East, this entire war where our facilities across the region have been devastated, where the USS Abraham Lincoln couldn't even go and resupply at the fleet's base in Bahrain because it had been too damaged. You've created that excuse now.

I mean, I'm sort of in favor of that. I mean, this is the, I mean, honestly, like, but I fear there has to be another side of that coin. And that may be worse, but or maybe not. I mean, to rebuild this infer, I mean, on some level, and this is like, I think the thing that people don't fully understand with the Trump, this administration, it is going to be too costly to reverse what he has done. That's right. Not just in this instance and many other instances. Listen, I mean, fading empires tend to behave very stupidly. We've got numerous examples of this.

So, again, I think, you know, there will be, there's going to be. tendency in the foreign policy establishment to try to do exactly what you were talking about. Oh, we can kind of hold to our position. We can kind of get back in the game here. And I think that is extremely dangerous. So let's try to be the exception to the historical rule when it comes to fading empires. When it may be too early to assess this, but when people in your circles are talking about a post-Trump world in the U.S. foreign policy, like what does it start to look like?

Because my sense always with Iraq was that for guys like, you know, it was probably a two or three for guys like Cheney and Wolfowitz and Pearl and all those guys. But I think one of the things was if we control that area, this is where China gets all their oil, et cetera, et cetera, we'll have some leverage point with China. China apparently also realized that. and figured out how to create enormous strategic reserves. So like something like this can happen and they're still, they seem to be more or less fine.

But what, like, if we are no longer controlling that region, on some level I would imagine Israel becomes even that much more important to us as a surrogate there from the perspective of Hawks. although not a terribly stable one, it seems to me. What becomes the sort of broad U.S. foreign policy? Yeah, I mean, I would say, I mean, part of the value of, I mean, let's just to stand Israel for a minute. I mean, during the Cold War, the logic, I understand. I mean, it was a strategic partner in a region that was, you know, also had a lot of Soviet, you know, partners. And that's why the Camp David Accord was so important to flip a leading Arab state, Egypt, to be part of the U.S. side. But I think after the Cold War, especially post-9-11, yes, a region that the United States was investing in heavily militarily, having Israel as both a strategic partner, also a base for U.S. weapons, made sense.

That was a way of projecting U.S. power. So I think I would maybe differ from what you said a little bit. I think if the Middle East becomes less important strategically for us, Israel becomes less strategically important. That's not to say we completely break the relationship. I think that's an opportunity to right-size the relationship, which is something I think we should do across the region, both in terms of strategy, in terms of morals. You know, I think there's a way we can uphold a consistent set of values, uphold our own laws, what a concept in the region. And I think that's where I would go. I think the conversations, at least among, you know, progressives who talk about foreign policy is what if we reinvest in this idea of an actual rules-based order, you know, a rules-based order, but for real this time?

And I realize that is a very, very tall order given the state of the world right now. And who would believe us? Who would believe us? Right. No, this is a generational project to start to reestablish some measure of credibility. We start first at home by holding accountable officials of both parties who have, who are corrupt, who have violated international law, who have supported genocide. I think that's a really important way for us to start to demonstrate that we are serious about these things. There was a poll that liberal currents did, I believe.

showing wide support amongst potential Democratic primary voters for prosecuting members of the Biden administration for their complicity in the Gaza genocide just to show how widespread this is. But, you know, then what does accountability look like in terms of reimagining the relationship with Israel and then Palestine as well? I'm sure you've listened on our show. I believe that the two-state solution has been dead for a long time and I believe in a one-state future. But that would require things like truth and reconciliation and real punitive measures for the people that have committed this genocide. Do you see that there's a political will here in this country for that in our political class?

Because I feel there's a real lack of imagination, even from our most leftist members, about what this looks like. There's no way to return to even a more disaggregated relationship with the state of Israel without real accountability. And I'm waiting for that to actually be more concretely defined. Yeah, no, it's a great question and it's a really important one. I mean, accountability is just something that doesn't exist in Washington, unfortunately, especially when it comes to foreign policy.

I mean, again, mentioned Dick Cheney. I think we've talked about before. Go look at the Keselist for Dick Cheney's funeral to understand how accountability works in Washington. It does not work. It does not exist. That's a huge problem. We're talking about Iraq. We're talking about torture.

We're talking about the 2008 financial crisis. Now we're talking about Gaza, and we will soon, if we're not already, talking about the Trump administration's violation, the boat strikes, the blatant corruption. We need a commitment to not just accountability, but accountability with consequences. The way accountability tends to work in Washington is like, oh, man, a bad thing happened. I hope that doesn't happen again. That's it. But I want to see, you know, Congress, we're going to have Democrats taking over the House, almost certainly, possibly the Senate.

And I know this is a heavy lift. It's always easier to hold the other side accountable rather than your own. but there is massive opposition to the Biden administration's Gaza policy on the part of Democratic voters. And I think there could be some support for Democrats, at the very least, bringing in senior Biden officials, putting them under oath and making them explain why and what they did, what they knew, and when they knew it. And here I just want to put in a plug for my good friend Akbar Ahmed's new book. We are going back and forth in terms of scheduling. Good. Have them on.

Again, I mean, he's done fantastic reporting all along. This book is stupendous. I cannot recommend it highly enough. But also, it is a brief for the prosecution, essentially. He talked to a lot of people in the administration, some on record, some off record. But it really is a pretty detailed case to show how this catastrophe was perpetrated by the Biden administration. And we should say that that recent excerpt from a new book from Haret's reporters that was just released, I guess it was a week ago in Horett's. One of the details of this was Hamas was attempting to release civilians hostages on October 7th.

They sent three that were shot by the IDF. So they said, you know, we need some type of like moderator, like the Red Cross or some entity that can protect the hostages as we release them. And they asked Blinken essentially to come and deal with. this and he said, I need a couple of days before, which is stunning. I mean, the Biden administration knew from day one

that at least, you know, the hostages, I mean, you take military personnel, you're engaged in a, they're prisoners of war, but the hostages, the civilians, could have been released within hours, were

there a desire to receive them? Yeah. Both by America, And Israel and America, the Biden administration, was aware of this throughout the entire time. And they were aware of the fact even before October 7 that Gaza was a powder cake. Yes. Multiple Israeli sources, Palestinian sources, American sources, going back years. Well, it seems like Sinwar was doing its best to say, there's a deadline here. We're about to do something that's going to be huge.

It's unclear even what he was contemplating at that time because I think there's a reason case to say that what they were trying to do because they attacked two military bases, they thought they were going to kidnap a bunch of military personnel, did not know that the concert was going to continue on that extra day. It's hard to assess this at this point, but that's what it appears. And Netanyahu had withheld the information about the potential attack, which would have been relevant to the extension of the concert right here the border. And the The Emirati source who talked for that book said there was a deal potentially on the table before October 7 to get a release of prisoners, to get some aid into Gaza, to just at least loosen the screws on Gaza, because that is the context for all of this. This siege that had been imposed on this territory for years and was just treated as some kind of normal.

And it just faded into the background. So every time there was some kind of missile attack or rocket attack or some movement by Hamas or other facts, actions coming out of Gaza, people would be just like, oh, why have they disturbed the peace? There was never any peace for Gaza. That's just very important context. It's often lost. Let's go back to sort of the global view of American foreign policy because I wonder how much coincidence there is between Trump perpetrating a coup in Venezuela. It is unclear, like, what oil profits we have gotten from Venezuela,

We seem to control Venezuelan oil through our proxy now in Venezuela. It's unclear where that money is going. In fact, this was the subject of hearings last week where Bessett was like, was asked like point blank, like, where's the money going? Apparently some bank account and Citibank. Right. You know, just a slush fund. I mean, like, to use for whatever.

But is there a coincidence that, I mean, let's just play this out a little bit. the petro dollar ends up losing its salience, like in one way or another. Maybe Trump's waiting to the end of his term to like essentially give up in Iran and, you know, all of those forces will take over. And the market then crashes and he's like, it's all right. I've already put, I'm good. I already put my shorts in. And, um, but, uh, we then have now control of, I think literally Ruby.

said it the other day or somebody, we have control of the natural resources of Venezuela, which I imagine at one point we're going to have to give back. Will we? Well, but that's my question. Is that the new, like, are we going to be living the Donro Doctrine in three years from now? Again, I obviously hope not. Democrats, you know, I think have been in general critical, been pushing back on Venezuela, I've been pushing back on Iran, honestly.

I think it is worth noting as critical as I tend to be of the kind of democratic establishment's views on foreign policy. I think we do have more anti-war voices on the Democratic side than we have before and on the Republican side, frankly. But I think over the next few years after the midterms as we get into the primary, this is where we're going to see candidates hopefully articulating what are we going to do differently. And not just within the accepted bounds.

And that's going to be the litmus test too. Or not litmus test. This is going to be the, they're going to be. they're going to illustrate, we probably will see more difference in the foreign policy, I would imagine, of this primary field, Democrats, than really, like, you know, short of Kucinich, you know, 20 years ago, than we've seen in the past, because people are going to have to make some serious decisions about stuff. And people care about foreign policy, maybe more than they ever have. Yeah. I think that's right. I mean, Gaza will continue to be a key tension point.

in the coalition. Again, you don't, if you want to know how this issue has shifted, look, I'm sure you talked about Rahm Emanuel speech in Tel Aviv a couple months ago. Again, I don't have many illusions that Rahm has turned into a big piecenik, but for Ram to stay viable, to kind of lay out this menu of consequences that are pretty serious. I think that just shows how this debate is shifting. But yeah, how does this reflect, how does this relate to the broader debate about America's role in the world? Here I can be. a little bit forward in mentioning the book that we have coming out, publishing on November 3rd.

It's basically a foreign policy platform for 2028, 18 chapters, 30 different authors on a whole range of issues. Our goal here is to kick off a debate about what is America's foreign policy for as we move into the 28 primary process. And this is a long overdue debate, but I think certainly the party is ready for it, and I think the country is ready for it. Right.

And by party, you're talking about the Democratic voters as opposed, I mean, we just saw Hakeem Jeffries place on the Foreign Relations Committee. I mean, people who I think honestly represent 15% of the Democratic Party. That's right. I mean, is that fair to say? No, that's fair to say. Yeah, he put, you know, Debbie Wasserman Schulz, Wesley Belle, and then Mark Pocan, who is a good progressive.

But then Jared Moskowitz, who was given the new. the ranking chair, possibly will become the chairperson of the Middle East subcommittee of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Psychotic. Really, it's just, it's amazing. Like, let's just understand this. Like, when the war began with Iran, over 80% of Democrats reported opposing it. A few months later, that number was over 90%.

And they managed to give the chair of the Middle East Subcommittee to one of, I think, maybe five Democrats who have supported the war. I mean, just absolutely absurd. After Jeffries met with Kushner. After Jeffries met with Kushner, again, don't know. Yeah, don't, yeah, don't know what was traded there, but I think we are right to be asking questions. But again, it goes to a deeper problem of, you know, for years we have seen the Democratic base take these positions, opposing war. And yet, the Democratic leadership remains overwhelmingly pro-war.

The presence of Democratic foreign policy hawks is completely. out of step with the expressed views of the Democratic base. Well, let me ask then a thornyer question then that I don't necessarily know if a lot of Democrats are ready to answer. Ukraine. What

is the plan? Like, you know, much of what Biden did was a bit retrograde in his focus on, you know, old alliances and NATO and our defense commitments to Europe. It seems

to me that those are going to have to be throttled down and we're going to have to move to a new kind of era of retreating from that, making Europe a little bit more self-reliant on their defense, but there's no seemingly political will to do that on the Democratic side overwhelmingly. And on the Republican side, they ran as anti-war and through Ukraine in there, but the way that they vote is as hawkish as it gets and they're willing to fund it as, indefinitely, basically. Yeah, I mean, I think for Democrats, and I think, listen, just for my part, I think all things considered the Biden administration, while they could have done things differently, I think they could have leaned in earlier and harder on diplomacy. I think helping Ukraine defend itself. I see some important values there in terms of international law, in terms of progressive values. But this war, you know, it goes back and forth. Are we in a stalemate? Russia is making advances. Ukraine is responding. It's hitting targets inside Russia. But ultimately, we haven't seen any evidence that Putin is interested in ending this war. And that's the question I haven't been quite able to answer.

I think it is very good that the Europeans are, in fact, stepping up, not as quickly as I would hope, but they are actually stepping up and giving more to Ukraine developing their own, or kind of restoring their own defense industrial base. And this is why it's kind of a counterintuitive for me as a progressive, who's not that crazy about defense spending. I think there is a good argument for Europe doing this more to help us weaken and eventually hopefully throttle our own military industrial complex for Europe to become more self-reliant, to develop actual strategic autonomy. Develop some type of parity. Right, exactly.

Not just because it's good for us politically here, but it's also going to help them deal with this problem in their own backyard. It seems to me, I mean, I remember quite vividly the run-up of the Russian invasion. and it seemed like Biden was out there, A, saying, this is going to happen. Nobody believes us, which as far as I can tell, nobody did. Yeah. And B, my sense is that they thought Russia was going to take over Ukraine within two weeks. Oh, yeah. And so nobody was prepared to do anything about it.

And then after two weeks, Biden realized, like, wait a second. Ukraine is holding its own. Russia is weaker than we thought. I remember Hillary Clinton out there saying, one thing that could be good is that this could be a protracted situation that drains Russia. Which is horrible. Which is a horrible, but it feels like that's exactly like where we're at, where there's been enough of we can help undermine Russia by,

protecting Ukraine, which is not to say that protecting Ukraine, or to the extent that we have, is the wrong thing to do, but we're stuck in, like, this is a quagmire in many respects. I think that's right. I mean, just to back up a little bit, and listen, I'm certainly critical of a lot of the Biden administration's foreign policy moves. I think that's clear. I mean, I think the evidence is that Biden really just wanted to park the Russia relationship out of the way. They had this summit in April 2021. They understood, listen, we're not going to be friends with Putin, but at least we can bring some clarity and predictability to this tough, unfriendly relationship. Putin had other ideas.

He thought the time was right to go ahead and move on Ukraine. And I will say that, you know, what we've seen from Trump, he has, I think, put a lot on the table that one would expect Putin to go for. You know, control of basically a third, the eastern third of Ukraine, including territories that Russia doesn't even control right now. a lot of concessions that I would think that if Putin was actually interested in ending the war, he might go for it. And he has not. I think that's an important piece of evidence. But still, it doesn't answer the question of how do we get out of this quagmire. I mean, it feels like we can either sort of seed the entirety of Ukraine.

if we offload some of the responsibility to Europe to provide for this, I mean, that works as well, it seems to me. But I would also imagine that the incoming administration is going to want to repair things with Europe. And the one way we're going to be able to do that is to say, we're going to help in your defense because Putin is signaling like, I want to go as far as I can go here. And gosh knows where that is. I mean, I think

making up the relationship by just providing more material, I think would be a mistake. I think where the United States can actually help Europe is to say, listen, we are going to lean into finding some way of talking with Putin.

Right. Because for Putin, he wants this to be the United States and Russia, two historic great powers that are making the decisions for all these little countries around them. Now,

we don't have to subscribe to that belief. We can constantly be in consultation, first of all, with the Ukrainians and also with the Europeans, but give, if you want to call it a concession, call it a concession, that Putin gets to sit down with the United States. Is that all he wants is just to be like we're still a superpower? I don't think that's all. I mean, I'm not going to say that that solves the problem, but I do think the United States does have the ability to grant that to say, all right, we're going to sit down with you and try to identify some way to end this war that satisfies Russia's legitimate security. concerns. Every country does have legitimate concernary concerns. Let's try to find a path. And I think

that's worth doing. Frankly, I think that is the best thing that the United States could do for Ukraine and for Europe. Sanctions relief? Put those on the table if Russia is willing to take steps. I mean, again, none of this will be easy. And we have, even before we get to this horrible problem of the kidnapped children, I mean, just staggeringly awful, there's so much that needs to be on the table. But I think the act of just sitting and talking. helps, you know, professional diplomats talk about this a lot, even just sitting down and talking across the table potentially identifies pathways and ideas that you wouldn't have thought of before. So there is value in just in talking.

When you look at the potential for the 2028 field and maybe like, you know, new leadership in, I mean, it seems to me like I'm looking at what Hakeem Jeffries did in terms of that subcommittee, which again, you're on, it's like you're on the 10 of a 1090 side within your own party. And increasingly, frankly, on the Republican side, too, not by the same dramatic numbers. But it's very possible that Chuck Schumer's career goal of making sure that the left in this country is supportive of Israel, he has failed in his one job that he decided he had one job to do and that it was the wrong job it's very likely at least i would imagine in 2028 or come 2029 that he is no longer the senate majority leader and of this potential senate majority leaders who are out there uh or minority

leaders for that matter. I don't see one who has his same sort of agenda when it comes to Israel. So we could have a Senate that is led by a Democratic leadership that is going the opposite direction of where the House is, assuming Hakeem Jeffries is still around and, you know, seniority exists on the foreign, the House foreign policy, foreign relations committee. Well, I would hope and, you know, thinking about some of the people who are talked about to replace Schumer as the leader of the Democrats in the Senate, I think all of them would be better on this. In terms of foreign policy, you know, the waiting to take over the Senate of Foreign Relations Committee from Gene Chene is Chris Coons, who, again, we face the same problem. He is just basically, you know, a post-Cold War, Biden 2.0, one of a small and dwindling faction. Aren't we close, though, to being able to say, like the Republicans have done this where they say it's not. about seniority anymore.

You know, the Senate is weird, but that doesn't mean we couldn't do that. I mean, I think just raising, and that's part of why I wrote about this for the nation last week, is like, this is ridiculous. At what point do Democrats actually get to demand leadership that reflects the expressed views of Democrats? It is long past time. Did Matt Iglesias and the other popularists sign on to your piece? Because that seems right up there out.

No, no, it should be. I'm waiting. I think just any moment they're going to jump out. Aren't they coming on? because that seems like you have completely capitulated to their agenda in, no, no, I'm on board. Let's do something that is, let's be on the right side of the 90-10 split in the Democratic Party. Right.

What else? I mean, what other, I mean, have we left anything on the table? I don't know. We could just watch more of Trump's speech. Wendy, oh, do we have more clips of Trump's speech? Do you have a hard out or anything like that? No, man, I'm here to hang out. I look at the time because Sam just gets lost in the interview.

Oh, gosh. Yeah. Well, we should, we should, we should go. But let me, just last thing I want to ask you about is Cuba. Like, they've been quiet about Cuba. And I think in part because they're like, we can't, there's only so much we can do right now. And Marco's like, we should have done Cuba first. They should, I mean, I would imagine.

I mean, like, the last thing I think they did was. just deport some Cubans to Central Africa but what can you tell me about the status of what's going on in that country? I mean obviously still like this is in the wake of

the fall of the Soviet Union they had what they called the special time there which was incredible deprivation and I imagine right now we're in a very similar period if not more severe. No I think that's right. I'm just rolling black Backouts, you know, medicine, all shortages of everything.

We've also had a number of congressional delegations going to bear witness to that, you know, to bring back. But as I said, I mean, we have a Secretary of State on top of the fact that U.S. policy has been very stupid toward this country for a long time. We have a Secretary of State with future ambitions for whom this is an absolutely key issue. So, unfortunately, really, you know, I don't expect that this administration is going to make the policy better. I think given, you know, how horrible things are going with Iran and all the other messes they're dealing with it, they might not be inclined to make it worse right now, but they're making it pretty bad. All right. One last question. You look at the 2028 field of potential candidates. You know, who knows who it's going to be. But we have a vague notion of like at least a bunch, you know, a bunch of them. Do you guys in your world, do you have a list of people who you think are, you think are. are going to be potentially open to the stuff in your book that's coming out.

And you start to work on them and personnel who you think are going to fill their administrations. Because a lot of the candidates are governors. So they don't have foreign policy people. And do you feel like, I'm just curious from the perspective of like folks like you, do you see them as like a jump ball? Yeah. I mean, that's the point. I mean, we wrote this for everyone.

We want to be talking to everyone. Again, I have my own feelings and suspicions. Some people seem to be more on board with what we're talking about, some less. But we want to be talking to all of them. Because I think, you know, me and my co-authors really feel like what we are talking about in this book expresses a real tendency, a real constituency, not just in the Democratic Party, but in the country right now. How about a United States that works to make peace? How about a United States that works to benefit workers around the world that fights corruption, that promotes cooperation? We think that's a really politically attractive message, and I think that's something that could help any of these candidates win.

And I just, to bustress your point, it's part of why the attacks on Trump with Putin and stuff like that or Kim Jong-un haven't landed because people are less inclined to just sign up for the constant antagonism. There's actually bipartisan desire for cooperation in a way that I think our political class is completely behind them. That's right. I mean, I would put it like this. Talking to adversaries is a sign of strength. There is just this dumb tendency in the foreign policy establishment to say, oh, you're giving him this gift. You know, okay, sometimes that can be true if you give him a photo op with nothing out of it. But talking with your adversaries is the way you get to possible off-rams, the way you de-escalate, the way you get to a possible resolution. And that's something the United States needs to really, really reinvest it. Sounds like you haven't contemplated the idea that if we,

fuck up enough that getting that photo op has less value domestically for them. Yeah. There you go. Right? Like if America becomes a big loser and you get invited to the White House domestically in that country, people are going to be like, who cares? Yeah. Well, that's one theory. Matt Duss. Uh, thank you so much. We will

we will have you back on in the wake of publishing that book. Thank you. because it sounds like there's a lot of stuff that we're going to be interested in there. And it's going to be interesting to see who out of this 2028 clown car that we're going to get is going to be interested as well. Folks, that's it for us in the free half of the program. We're going to move into the fun half of the program where and we'll have fun. We will take your IMs. We will do – we're not going to get the phone calls today.

I'm not going to lie. but we will take a couple iams and we have all sorts of fun things to talk about. Just a reminder, it's your support that makes the show possible. You can become a member at join the major report.com. When you do, you only get the free show free of commercials. You also get the fun half where you can IAM us. Hear the story about how my son punched me in the jaw. And what happens, interestingly enough, when you get punched in the jaw to other parts of your jaw.

Also, just coffee.coffey, dot co-op, fair trade coffee, hot chocolate, use the coupon code majority, 10% off. Matt, what's happening in the Matt Lecky and Media universe? Yeah, new left reckoning tonight talking with Chip Gibbons. Actually, not tonight. I read after the show today. Chip Gibbons from defending rights and descent talking about the McCarthyism of Donald Trump and where we're out with that. Also, Connor Mulhern of Progressive International talking about Fernando Ceramato, the Latino Steve Bannon, who's sort of operation unraveled when he tried to get his partner assassinated and she survived and started talking about how he's helping Bolsonaro and Malay and all sorts of Latin American right-winger. So check that out

coming up right after the show today on Left Reckhne's YouTube channel. That's always tricky. Check it out. And also link down below for people who have still not gotten tickets, Sunday, October 4th. I will be live with Francesca Furentini for the Bituation Room in L.A. at the Lodge Room. We've got myself. We got Asif Ali of the Deli Boys and Jess Craven as well. Check it out, folks. tickets are kind of almost out so get them while you can Siff is incredible he's a very good friend of mine

That's awesome Say hello for you. I will I won't actually I won't just because you asked Wow Folks seeing the fun half Three months from now Six months from now

Nine months from now And I don't think it's going to be the same As it looks like in six months from now And I don't know if it's necessarily Going to be better six months from now Than it is three months from now But I think around 18 months out, we're going to look back and go like, wow.

What? What is that going on? It's nuts. Wait a second. Hold on for a second. The majority. Emma, welcome to the program. Hey. What is up, everyone?

Fun pack. No, me, T. You did it. Fun pack. Let's go Brandon. Let's go Brandon. Bradley, you want to say hello? Sorry to disappoint. Everyone, I'm just a random person.

It's all the boys today. Fundamentally false. No, I'm sorry. Stop talking for a second. Let me finish. Where is this coming from, dude? But dude, you want to smoke this? Seven, eight.

Yes. I think it is you. Who is you? No sound. Every single freaking day. What's on your mind? We can discuss free markets and we can discuss capitalism. I'm going to guess how like.

Who libertarians? They're so stupid though. Common sense says, of course. Gobbled e-gook. We fucking do. So what's 79 plus 21? Challenge met. I'm positively quivering.

I believe 96, I want to say. 857. 210. 35. 301. 1 half. 3-8s. 911 for instance.

$3,400. $1,900. $6.5,4. $3 trillion sold. It's a zero-sum game. Actually, you're making think less. But let me say this. Poop.

You can call it satire. Sam goes to satire. On top of it all, my favorite. My favorite. part about you is just like every day, all day, like everything you do. Without a doubt. Hey, buddy, we've seen you. Folks, folks.

Obviously. Yeah, sundown guns out. But you should know. People just don't like to entertain ideas anymore. I have a question. Who cares? Our chat is enabled, folks. I love it.

I do love that. Got to jump. I got to be quick. I get a jump. And the two o'clock, we're already late, and the guy's being a dick. So screw him. Sent to a gulaw? Outrage.

Like, what is wrong with you? Love you, bye. Love you. Bye-bye.